The Adultery Club (42 page)

I walked into my office and smelled it instantly.

“Don’t put on the light,” she said, as I reached for the switch.

I jumped as she stood up and took the briefcase from my hand. Streetlights gilded her skin as she unbuttoned her coat. Beneath it, she was naked, save for a coffee-colored suspender belt and a pair of dark seamed stockings.

“Close your eyes,” she said, her voice curving. “Now: Open your mouth.”

It took a moment to discern the mix of orange and bitter chocolate. As it melted to a creamy puddle on my tongue, Mal sank to her knees and unzipped my trousers. She took my cock in her mouth, reaching up and feeding me another chocolate. Dark chocolate, this time with a cognac center.

When I pulled away from her, fearing I would come too soon, and pushed her back onto my desk, kissing her hard on the mouth, I tasted white chocolate and mint on her lips. My cock throbbed as I moved lower. She had painted chocolate on her nipples; cocoa powder dusted her pubic hair. It seemed to me, when I bent my head between her thighs and plunged my tongue inside her, that she had become chocolate herself, her center a rich, creamy liquid that made me long for more with every taste.

I can never smell chocolate without remembering that night.

I leave Ms. Schultz’s office and hail a taxi. Without giving
myself a chance to think, I tell the driver to take me immediately to Waterloo.

Salisbury station is deserted
when I arrive; I have to wait more than forty minutes for a cab to collect me and drive me to Stapleford. Forty impatient minutes in which the certainty which impelled me here evaporates, replaced by a knell of doubt and fear thudding in my stomach. This is madness.
Madness
. Mal would be quite within her rights not to permit me through the front door. May well do precisely that, in fact.

“Stop here,” I tell the driver suddenly, as we reach the village.

He pulls sharply onto the side of the road and I get out. “Thirteen quid, mate.”

I hand him a twenty-pound note through the window. As he fumbles for change, I glance up the hill. The house appears to be in darkness; for all I know, she isn’t even here.

I realize dispiritedly how ridiculous this enterprise is. Mal isn’t going to want to see me. She’s made it quite clear that she doesn’t need me in her life anymore—for which I have only myself to blame. I can’t expect her to suddenly trade back, as if we are children in the playground negotiating an exchange of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. And there’s Sara to consider. She’s sitting in London even now, wondering where the hell I’ve got to, pregnant with our child. What does my presence here say about my future with her?

I lean in to the cab to tell the driver to take me back to the station, just as he puts his foot on the accelerator and roars away into the darkness.

A horse nickers softly in a nearby field. Shifting my briefcase to the other hand, I step onto the grass verge to avoid another car, headlights bucking and swaying as it picks its way down the country lane. A wash of ditchwater puddles over my socks and shoes.

In two days’ time, my wife will be served with papers informing her that due to her
unreasonable behavior
, I require a divorce. I know from experience that once that happens, there is no turning back. Our legal mercenaries will enter the ring on our behalf to do battle, and our positions will become entrenched. Such tentative cordiality as we have now will disappear under a storm of disclosures and Form E’s and
our client believes
and
Without Prejudice
. However much I give her, it will be less than she needs or deserves. Whatever access I am permitted with my children, it cannot be enough.

If there is a window, one chance to turn back the clock, it is now.

Grasping my case more firmly, I strike out up the hill.
I love Mal
. I have to convince her of that. Throw myself at her feet and beg her forgiveness, whatever it takes. I’ll sleep in the scullery with the bloody rabbit if she’ll just agree to give me another chance. Counseling, therapy, church, castration, whatever she wants. I made one mistake: a huge mistake, of course, the worst; but I’ve learned from it. Surely she can understand that?
Errare humanum est
, after all. Of course it’s going to take time to rebuild trust, I can’t expect her to forgive me overnight, but if we both work at it, if we both really
want
it to work—

The front of the house is still in darkness when I reach it, but light spills from the back, by the kitchen.

I make my way around the outbuildngs, my shoes crunching on the gravel. God, my feet are cold. I brush past a bank of
lavender; the silky leaves stroke the back of my hand, tickling. I have trodden this familiar path every night for nearly ten years, but I have never truly appreciated it until now. A balloon of nervous excitement rises.
She must understand, she must, she must
. I turn the corner and the back door opens; Mal steps into the rectangle of light cast from the warm glow of the kitchen. My steps quicken with hope. Perhaps she heard me outside; perhaps she is coming to meet me halfway—

And then Trace follows her out, pulls her into his arms for a lingering embrace, and I hear my wife laugh as she playfully ducks another man’s kisses.

A cold wind blows through my heart.
It didn’t take her long to find a replacement
. What was I thinking, coming here ready to prostrate myself like a repentant sinner? Heaping myself with sackcloth and ashes?
When all the time
—

I back away, trembling with bitter fury. I have known she is with him, but to see him, in my own home, with my wife. This man has been waiting in the wings since the day I married Malinche, ready to pounce, no doubt, the moment he had the chance. Or perhaps he hasn’t waited in the wings at all; perhaps he’s been center stage with my wife all along. I always thought the candle she held for him—and I’ve always known about Trace Pitt, known
exactly
how much he meant to her—was just the nostalgic regret of a happily married woman for her first, lost love. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he wasn’t
lost
at all.

Fine.

Fine
.

As of now, he’s welcome to her.

The anger abates
before I even reach London, leaving me empty and bereft. On the morning the papers from Ms. Schultz are due to thump onto the rabbit-chewed doormat in Stapleford, I feel an overpowering sense of loss, as if someone has died. In a sense, someone has. Everything I thought I was, everything I had planned to be, with Malinche at my side, is gone.

Sara is out of the office all day; no one seems interested in where she has gone when I ask, but that isn’t unusual. Since word of our affair leaked out, she has been cold-shouldered like a Nazi collaborator in Vichy France.

I shut myself in my office and work, secretly glad of the respite.

When I get back to the flat a little after seven, I find Sara sitting in darkness, a glass in her hand and a bottle of wine, three-quarters empty, on the table in front of her.

I loosen my tie and throw my jacket over the back of a chair. “Should you really be drinking?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I suppose so. God knows how many babies are conceived when their mothers have had one too many, after all.” I reach for a glass. “Go easy, though. The first twelve weeks are—”

“I saw Malinche today.”

The glass shatters on the marble counter.

“Christ! Where’s the dustpan?”

“Your wife, Malinche.”

“Yes, I gathered that much!” I brush shards of glass into a newspaper. “Where, for God’s sake? Was she here? Did she come round?”

“No. I went to see her.”

Sara hasn’t moved. Her head is bowed, so I cannot see the expression on her face.

I dispose of the broken glass in the plastic bag hanging from one of the cupboards and sink heavily onto the sofa next to her. “What’s going on, Sara?”

She runs a finger around the wet rim of the glass. It sings sharply.

“I told her you loved her, not me. I told her she should take you back—well, not in so many words. But she knew what I meant.”

I gape.

“You told her
what?”

“Come on, Nick,” she says impatiently. “I’m only saying what we both already know. It’s not like this is news.”

I open my mouth to deny it, to plug the gap between us with another lie, another carefully crafted piece of wishful thinking: and discover I can’t. Sara has found the courage that has so far eluded me and dared to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room. Useless now for me to keep on stepping round it.

I get up, find another tumbler, and pour myself a hefty measure of Scotch. The liquid burns a hot path to my stomach, its warmth spiraling out through my body. On the far side of the street, a teenager is panhandling, a filthy blanket wrapped, squawlike, around her bony shoulders. Her shoes don’t match: She’s wearing one thick-soled trainer and one navy snaffle shoe, trodden down at the back. The imbalance gives her a curious gait as she shuffles down the street.

I close the blind.

“You went all that way to tell her that?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” She slugs back some wine. “I don’t know what I planned to tell her, Nick. I didn’t really think it through, if you want the freakin’ truth. I just needed to know, one way or the other.”

“Know
what
, for Chrissake?”

Sara stares at me as if I’m being deliberately obtuse. “Whether
she
still loved
you.”

The room is suddenly very still. My heart pounds in my ears. I only realize how tightly I am holding the glass when my wedding ring bites into my palm.

“What did she say?”

She reaches for the bottle again. “I’m not pregnant, Nick.”

I can’t breathe. A kaleidoscope of possibility explodes behind my eyes.

“I don’t know if I ever was. I never actually did the test—yes, I know,” she says tightly, “I missed two periods, Nick, I was sick every bloody day; I’m sorry, I just assumed—”

“You assumed?” I slam my drink onto the table.
“You assumed?
Jesus Christ, Sara, this isn’t a bloody game, people’s
lives
are at stake here—”

“I realize that!”

“I asked you to
marry
me!”

“Well, now you don’t have to, so that’s all right then, isn’t it!”

I push my face into hers, dropping my voice to a cold hiss: The words fall like hot stones into an icy lake.

“What was it, some kind of trick to keep me hooked? Like the bloody lipstick?”

She jerks, as if I’ve slapped her.

“I gave you the benefit of the doubt that time. But
this
. The oldest trick in the book,” I snarl, “and I bloody fell for it! When were you going to tell me, Sara? As I walked you up the aisle with a fucking cushion under your dress? Jesus Christ!”

“I didn’t make it up! I swear, Nick, I wouldn’t do that, I’m not like that! I just made a mistake—”

“Why should I believe you?”

She leaps up to face me, eyes glittering with anger and tears. “Go back to her, Nick! Go back to her!” She shoves me in the chest with the heel of her hand. “I don’t know why you’ve waited this long! You’ve had your fun, you’ve got your leg over and reminded your dick what it was all about, so now you can go back and play house with your wife and your psychotic children and forget all about me. It’s what you’ve wanted to do ever since you moved in, isn’t it?” Her chest heaves. “Well? Isn’t it?”

Suddenly, she seems no older than Evie. Guilt thuds into me. My behavior has been unforgivable: to my wife, to my children, and to Sara. None of them deserve this. And now I have lost them all. Mal has Trace, and Sara and I have nothing to offer each other but recrimination and regret. My daughters will despise me before they are very much older; if they don’t hate me, the best I can expect from them is pity. And I am left to gnaw at wounds of my own making.
Christ, what a mess
.

I reach out to Sara, but she brushes me angrily away.

“Go on! What are you waiting for?”

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, Sara. I didn’t want you to get hurt. Someday you’ll—”