Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (18 page)

in place for you that we had any chance of resisting his

application for the Decree to be made Absolute.’

‘Don’t let him see how much it hurts, Joan,’ Sara urges.

‘Walk away with your head held high. And don’t forget,

this isn’t over yet. By the time we’ve finished, he’ll have

to send his new wife out to work just to pay his maintenance

to you.’

I am not entirely comfortable with Sara’s fiercely

adversarial attitude, but it appears women know each

other better: Mrs Stockbridge certainly seems to respond

to it. Betwixt us, we prevail upon our client to accept the

advice for which she is paying us handsomely, and having

signed a brace of documents, the lady finally takes her

leave. I feel deeply sorry for her. It is most unfortunate

that she caught her husband and the babysitter inflagrante on her daughter’s sofa; had she not done so, I am quite sure the young woman would never have induced her

foolish middle-aged lover to quit his three square meals

a day and neatly ironed shirts for her own undeniable,

but fleeting, bedroom charms. No doubt the entire affair

would have petered out within a very short while of its

own accord. Now, however, the damage is done. Instead

of the comfortable retirement which should have been his

in less than three years, he will no doubt soon find himself

treading upon Lego in the middle of the night once more.

Emma, my secretary, knocks and puts her head around

the door. ‘Mr Lyon, I have the Wilson Form E, it’s been

notarized. Did you want me to send it out to Cowan Finch

in the morning?’

‘We’re getting a little tight for time on the Wilson

hearing.’ I glance at my watch. ‘It’s nearly six now; I’ll

drop it off at Cowan’s on my way to the station, earn us a

couple of days’ grace. Could you give them a call and let

them know to expect it before you leave for the day?’

Emma nods and withdraws. As I gather the Stock

bridge files and follow her out of the conference room,

Sara falls into step beside me. I don’t say anything:

because I cannot think of anything safe to say.

The song she sent me at New Year changed everything.

It said that Manchester was not an aberration, the result

of too much alcohol or the temptation of proximity. It said

that I wasn’t imagining the subtext of her invitation to come up for a nightcap. Sara knew precisely what she was doing when she used a song to ask a married man to

imagine what would happen if we kissed.

I don’t want this. I love my wife. I love my wife.

I want this. I want to sleep with this woman more than

I want to breathe. But I am still not going to do it. I am

Renaissance man, not a brute animal.

I exchange the Stockbridge files for the substantial

stack of documents destined for Cowan Finch, shrug on

my overcoat, and reach for my briefcase.

‘Here, let me take some of those Sara says, forming a

tray with her forearms.

I hesitate, but I am indeed heavily laden. To refuse

would be ostentatiously churlish. With a curt nod, I heft

the Wilson deposition into her arms. A breath of Allure

washes over me, and something else I cannot readily

identify - a sweetness that is Sara’s alone.

We exit the office and walk towards Holborn in tandem.

As we cross a narrow side street a short distance

from the underground station, Sara’s heel sticks in the

gutter. She stops to free it, slipping her foot from the shoe

and laughing as she tries to balance without touching

her stockinged toes to the wet pavement or dropping

the documents. Naturally, I pause beside her. And so we

are protected by the two solid office buildings on either

side of the street from the full force of the blast that tears

through High Holborn a split second later.

Had it not been for Sara’s shoe, we would have been

ten feet further down the main road. Precisely where a

thousand lethal shards of plate glass skewer down, any

one of which would have been enough to kill us.

It’s quite extraordinary, how your instinct for survival

takes over. I throw myself across Sara and propel the two

of us into a shop doorway, our ears ringing from the

explosion. The blast has sucked up all the air and ripped

the oxygen from our lungs. We crouch against the wall,

tenting our overcoats above our heads to block out the

choking brick dust billowing around us, gasping great

gulps of dry air as our eyes stream.

And then our ears pop and we flinch at the abrupt

wail of a thousand car and burglar alarms. Within minutes,

fire engine and ambulance sirens fill the air. The

injured city itself seems to be groaning. It takes me a

moment to realize the muffled sound is the collective

moans of the trapped and dying.

Sara and I look at each other. Our faces, hair and

clothes are thick with grey dust. I see no fear in her silvery

eyes: just curiosity, relief - and a spark of adrenalinfuelled

excitement.

‘D’you think it’s over?’ she asks calmly.

Her savoir faire in the face of such crisis is startling.

I can only imagine Mai’s panic in a similar position;

although, of course, it would be for the children rather

than herself. But Sara has the emotional self-control of a

man; I find it both refreshing and dangerously attractive.

We both jump as more glass and debris crash to the

ground.

‘I think it probably is, unless they’ve booby-trapped it

so another one goes off once the rescue services are here

I say, wondering when we all became so terrorist-aware.

“This may just be one of several in the city, like last

time—’

Another crescendo of shattered glass, this time just feet

away.

‘We shouldn’t stay here,’ I urge. ‘Christ knows how

unstable the blast has left the buildings.’

Sara stands up, brushing brick dust from her clothes.

‘My flat’s in Theobald’s Road she says, ‘ten minutes

away.’

A close brush with death has a salutary effect. One is

forcefully reminded of one’s mortality; the brevity - and

fragility - of life.

Carpe diem. Seize the day.

A brief glance down the road confirms that our office

building has survived relatively unscathed, apart from a

few shattered windows. My first instinct is to run to the

scene of the blast, where I will no doubt prove a hindrance

rather than a help; but a lone police car is already barricading the through road. And so there is nothing to save

me from myself.

ŚŚ.ť, My mobile phone has no signal - standard procedure,

these days, to shut down the networks during terrorist

attacks to prevent further remote-controlled blasts - but I

turn it off anyway.

Holding hands, Sara and I run towards High Holborn

in an instinctive - if absurd - half-crouch against further

onslaught. We jolt to an appalled halt as we reach the main

thoroughfare, stunned by the sheer level of destruction. It

is as if our capital has metamorphosed into the stricken

streets of Baghdad. Upended cars, pulverized buildings,

toppled street lamps; and over it all, a pall of thick, heavy

dust and smoke. I’m astonished by the speed of the rescue

services, who have cordoned off the entire site; but then

they have had a grimly thorough apprenticeship.

We cross Holborn, broken glass crunching beneath our

feet, and up Hatton Garden, paying little heed to the

eviscerated shop fronts of the diamond district. We barely

register the eerie silence in the undamaged backstreets,

the dearth of traffic and pedestrians. I am too busy unbuttoning her blouse even as we run, her hands are too

frantic against my belt buckle as we skirt cars abandoned

in panic in the middle of the road.

We burst through the front door of her apartment

building, and I push her down on the grubby communal

stairs. Shoving her skirt up to her waist and peeling off

her knickers, I thrust my knee between hers and spread

her thighs as I yank down my trousers. And then I’m

inside her, and my blood is pounding, roaring, thundering as I come.

After a moment, I pull out of her and grip the newel post to haul myself upright, panting as I shove my wilting cock back into my pants.

‘Well, that may have been good for you,’ Sara says

drily, Tjut it didn’t do a thing for me

She wriggles upright, pulling her skirt down smartly

and picking up her knickers. I rub my chin ruefully, a

little appalled - and thrilled - by the brutishness of my

behaviour. ; ‘Sorry. Couldn’t help it.’

‘Fuck you couldn’t.’

‘Fuck I couldn’t,’ I acknowledge. ‘But don’t worry. I’ll

make it up to you.’

‘You bet your sweet arse you will,’ she says cheerfully.

I

‘Here?’

‘Yes—’

‘Here?’

‘Christ, yes—’

‘Like this?’ She kneels up between my thighs,

strawberry-tipped breasts glistening with sweat. ‘Nick.

You have to tell me what you want. How else am I going

to know?’

No woman has ever asked me that before.

‘I love that thing you did - on my - with your nails,’ I

mumble finally.

‘This?’ she purrs.

‘That I gasp.

Sara talks during sex. Not mindless chatter or Nazi

instructions or porn-movie dirty; she talks to me.

Do you like this? What about this? Faster? Slower?

Is this better? Does this turn you on? I love it when you

do that. Can you put your mouth where your fingers

just were? Amazing, that’s amazing. Would you like to try

this? Or that? Let’s see if we can. I think we. God, that’s

making me wet. If you could just. Maybe we should try.

Oh, perfect, perfect.

Nothing bothers her. She giggles when our sweatslickened

bodies fart against each other. She laughs when

we get stuck in a particularly gymnastic position and

have slowly to unwind from one another limb by limb as

if from a game of Twister. A condom is produced from

her bedside drawer - ‘Lucky my period is due in two

days, or that fuck on the stairs could have been a frigging disaster’ - with insouciant efficiency: ‘Lemon-and-lime or plain?’

Afterwards, she rolls onto her side and lights a cigarette.

I stare at her, more shocked by this than by the huge

(black) dildo I found whilst groping for a box of tissues

under the bed.

‘I didn’t know you smoked!’

‘I don’t. Only after sex.’ She flips the box open. ‘Ah.

Just one left. Seems a shame to keep a whole packet for

just one cigarette.’

‘It does?’

She reaches for my cock again. ‘Yes, Nick. It does.’

I

It is only as daylight streams through Sara’s begrimed

bedroom window that I allow myself to think of Mai.

My wife. The woman I have just betrayed in the most

unforgivable of ways; four times, to be precise. Though

obviously this is nothing to be proud of.

An excoriating wave of shame swamps me. Christ Almighty, what have I done?

I get out of bed, careful not to disturb Sara, grope in

my jacket pocket and switch on my mobile phone. I listen

to the fourteen messages on my voicemail - all but one

of them from my wife - feeling increasingly sickened as

I register Mai’s mounting panic. Jesus, I shouldn’t have

turned off my phone. What must she have gone through

last night?

Glancing once more at the bed, I move quietly into

the sitting room - extraordinary how the girl manages to

be simultaneously minimalist and messy - and call home.

She picks up on the first ring.

‘Mai? It’s me.’

Silence. I wonder if my phone battery has just died and

check the display. ‘Mai, are you there? Dammit, these

lines—’

‘I’m here,’ she whispers, sounding half-asleep.

‘You saw the news, obviously I say, trying to sound normal. What is normal, when you’ve just broken every promise you ever made? ‘I’m fine, bit shaken up, as you’d expect,

but we were lucky, office lost a few windows but the

main damage was the other end of Holborn. It’s not as

bad as it looks on television, but Christ, it’s bad enough.’

‘But are you sure you’re all right? Where were you when

it happened? What did you do? Where have you been, I

tried to call you but—’

I feel a surge of guilt-stewed impatience. Does she have

to make such a drama out of it?

And then appalled remorse: she’s been up all night

sick with worry. Whereas I-‘I’m fine. Look, I’m sorry you were worried but - hang

on.’

Sara has stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom,

leaving the door ajar. I don’t particularly want her to

know I’m phoning my wife - no need to rub salt into the

wound - but more importantly, I don’t want Mai to hear

another woman’s ablutions. I move into the tiny hallway

and shut the door. ‘Mai, it’s been a hell of a night I

mutter, cupping the phone. ‘I know you must have been

going frantic, but it was out of my hands. I’ll do my best

to get home as soon as I can, but you can imagine what