Tess Stimson - The Adultery Club (32 page)

extravagant of him. I don’t know what I did to deserve it,

but I shall have to keep on doing it, evidently.’

I shoot Nick a vicious glance. He gave me an identical

necklace as a kiss-and-make-up present after our last row.

What was it, a job lot off the back of a gondola?

‘I do love the Law Society dinner, every year, don’t I

you?’ his wife prattles. ‘Such fun catching up with everybody.

Oh, look, Nicholas, there’s Will Fisher, talking to

that pretty little thing in blue; what an amazing dress,

positively gravity-defying, one wonders how it stays up.

He really is so naughty, his poor wife. Come on, darling,

we need to go and save him from himself before he

actually climbs into the girl’s cleavage. He could be lost

for weeks.”If looks could kill Amy murmurs behind me as Nick’s

wife drags him away.;1

‘Give me a break I say, reaching for a glass of cham-1

pagne from a passing waiter.

‘I don’t know how you had the balls to come tonight

she says, following suit. ‘I’ve never even seen Terry’s wife,

never mind chatted to her over the canapes. Don’t you

feel weird talking to her?’

Weird doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m so consumed with jon lousy, it’s like a vice around my chest. Bile, bitter and choking, rises in my throat, and I knock back my drink to

wash it away. I should never have come. I knew it would

be like this; and yet I couldn’t keep away. Some insane

impulse drags me back to this woman, whom I’m beginning

to hate, again and again and again. Why? Why am I

so obsessed with her? What is it that drives me to Google

her name and order every one of her freakin’ cookbooks?

Or steal the picture of her from his wallet so I can brood

over it at night, and wonder what the hell he sees in her?

She’s nothing to me. Nothing. A rock in the path between

me and Nick.

I narrow my eyes, watching her.

‘That dress is minging. So not her colour. And it makes

her look even scrawnier than usual.’

‘I’d kill for her figure, though,’ Amy sighs.

‘Look at her. Hanging on to Fisher like that, bending

his ear, like he even cares what she thinks. It’s not like

she’s one of us, is it? She’s just a wife.’

Amy stares at me. ‘You’re getting very hard these

days, Sara. You never used to be such a bitch. I know how

you feel about Nick - no one knows better than me - but

it’s not her fault she married him first. Whatever happened to poor thing, I feel sorry for her, she doesn’t understand him?’

I bite my lip. Amy’s words are a little too close to the

mark for comfort. She’s right: I never used to be this way.

I’m turning into a hateful, jealous cow. But this is war. I

can’t afford to feel sorry for Nick’s wife now.

‘She should make way for someone who does understand

him,’ I snap. ‘Why is she hanging on to him like

this, making them both miserable? Why can’t she just

accept that he’s moved on and let him go?’

‘Maybe she still loves him.’

‘Well, he doesn’t love her,’ I say fiercely.

‘Has he told you that?’ Amy asks, surprised.

‘Not in so many words. But he wouldn’t be with me if

he loved her, would he?’

‘Welcome to the adultery club Amy says cynically,

clinking my glass. ‘To bars, cheats and bastards everywhere.

Where would we be without them?’

A man coughs behind us. ‘Excuse me? It’s Miss Yorke,

isn’t it?’ he asks Amy. ‘Tom Stewart. I was opposing

Counsel on the Brennan case a month or two ago

‘Oh, yes she says, without much interest.

T was wondering if I could have a quick word: it’s

about a feature they’re running in the Lawyer next month

on collaborative law—’

Collaborative law my arse. He fancies the pants off her,

it’s as clear as day. And he’s single. I wander off to work

the room, giving him a clear field. It’s about time Amy

had a decent, available man in her life.

‘Well?’ I demand when we nip to the toilet forty

minutes later for a quick debrief before the formal dinner

gets under way. ‘Did he ask you out?’

‘Yes. Invited me to a conference in Paris, actually.’

‘Paris? What do you mean, Paris?’

‘What do you think I mean? Paris, big city on the other

side of the Channel, tall tower thing in the middle, men

in stripy shirts riding around on bicycles with onions

round their necks—’

‘Ha bloody ha. What did you say?’

‘No, of course.’

‘Are you kidding me? What did you do that for? He’s

cute, successful, single—’

i couldn’t do that to Terry Amy says, shocked.

I want to bang my head against the mirror. ‘Amy, you

are so sad. We are so sad. Wasting our lives on lying,

cheating married men, whilst the good, single guys are

getting snapped up by girls with sense enough to know a

keeper when they find one. What’s wrong with us?’

‘Terry’s not like that—’

‘Of course he bloody well is. They’re all like that.’ I

switch off the hand-drier. ‘I just don’t understand why

Nick doesn’t leave her. You saw her; she’s so old. She’s got

to be nearly forty, at least. What does he see in her, when

he could be with me? It must be the children. It’s got to

be. I’m sure he’d leave her otherwise. He’s practically said

as much.’

Amy reapplies her lipstick carefully and presses her

lips together to blend. ‘I really think Terry will leave soon.

He’s promised, by the end of the summer—’

‘Maybe I should give Nick an ultimatum,’ I muse.

‘You can’t. Then he’ll feel trapped, and he’ll choose her

because it’s safer. You just have to wait until he’s ready to

make the move.’

‘But for how long? We could carry on for years like

this.’ I sigh. ‘I left a lipstick in his jacket pocket on purpose once. I thought it might, I don’t know, speed things up a

bit. She found it, but they’re still together - he got out of

it somehow.’

‘She obviously doesn’t know about you. Look how nice she was to you earlier—’

There’s a sound from the disabled cubicle at the end.

We both jump; neither of us realized anyone was in here.

Shit, I hope whoever it was didn’t hear any of that. The

last thing I need is for it to get back to his wife, Nick’ll

go mad.

Then the ladies’ door opens, and Emma sticks her head

round the jamb. ‘You’d better come she says, her voice

brittle with fear. ‘There’s been an accident on the stairs.

It’s Mr Lyon.’

Malinche

Trace and I face each other from opposite sides of the

ornately carved double bed. I’m not sure if my giddiness

is from the delicious wine we consumed at dinner with our polenta pasticciata con le acciughe - I do love anchovies, though they are of course very much an acquired taste or from something else entirely.

‘Cora and Ben aren’t coming, are they?’ I say slowly.

He gives me a boyish, embarrassed smile, and shrugs.

‘They were never coming, were they?’

Tucked up in bed in Bath without a care in the world

Trace admits unrepentantly.

I sink onto the damask bedspread. ‘Oh, Trace. What were you thinking?’

‘You know the answer to that,’ he says urgently,

moving around the bed. ‘Come on, Mai. Don’t tell me you

don’t feel it too? Every time I come within five feet of

you, I’m twenty-two again. It’s like I’ve got goldfish tap

dancing through my veins. Nothing’s changed for me. Can

you honestly look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel

the same?’

I daren’t look at him at all. I’m so afraid of myself right

now, I scarcely dare breathe.

I think I knew we’d end up here from the moment

Cora and Ben failed to turn up at the airport this morning

- ‘Crisis at the restaurant Trace said carelessly, ‘they’ll

join us tomorrow’ - and, recklessly, I decided to come

anyway. Perhaps I even knew when he paid for my Max

Mara frock; such an intimate thing to do, to buy a woman

clothing - Robert Redford knew precisely what he was

about when his indecent proposal started with the purchase

of a cocktail dress. And then again, this afternoon

on the Via Condotti, the exquisite burnt umber gown

in the window of Armani: I only stopped to look, I’m a

woman, it was reflexive; I certainly didn’t mean for Trace

to go in and buy it.

Afterwards we sat at a chrome bistro table in Piazza di

Spagna, sharing a plate of delicious antipasti vegetale between us, the achingly expensive dress in its discreet cream cardboard bag sitting in state on a chair of its own.

‘You’ll have to take it straight back, of course,’ I said,

spearing a piece of carciofi alia provenzale. ‘Oh, have you

tried this?’

Trace opened the cardboard bag, took out the receipt

for the dress and ripped it in two, and then four, the

pieces fluttering onto the cobbles. ‘Can’t return it now.

You’ll just have to wear it and look stunning and think of

me.’

‘That,’ I sighed, ‘is precisely the problem.’

T can’t see why.’

I teased a sliver of prosciutto from its companions.

‘Trace, you are so completely impossible sometimes. I’m

married, I can’t go around wearing clothes another man

has bought me all the time. It’s - it’s—’

‘Inappropriate? Unseemly? Improper?’

‘Well,’ I said, half-cross, half-amused, ‘yes. Yes it is.’

‘Christ,’ Trace exclaimed, ‘women. Why do you have

to make everything so damn complicated? You see a

dress you like, you can’t afford to buy it - and Jesus,

you actually don’t; does Nicholas know how unique that

makes you? - and so I buy it for you, because I want to

and I can. Why can’t it just be that simple?’

He raked his hand exasperatedly through his thick

blue-black hair, his T-shirt rising with the movement of

his arm and exposing several inches of firm, tanned

stomach above the low-slung waistband of his threadbare

jeans. Every female heart in the square simultaneously

missed a beat; including mine.

The waiter exchanged our decimated platter of chargrilled

aubergines, peppers and asparagus for a bowl of fagiolini al parmigiano. I heaped a scoop of the beans into my mouth - heaven! - and waited.

‘It’s like colours,’ Trace said, jabbing at a crocchette di

cavolfiore with his fork. Then only see in sixteen colours,

like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a colour. Pistachio is a nut. Aubergine is a vegetable.

We have no idea what mauve is.’ He crunched a

raw cauliflower floret and speared another. ‘I swear, you

all speak a different language. Never a straight bloody

answer to anything. We’ll ask you what’s wrong, and

you’ll tell us nothing; so we will - forgive us for the

absurdity - assume that nothing is wrong and thus ruin

the entire evening for both of us.’

‘Have you tried some of the heirloom tomatoes?’ I

asked mildly.

Trace was not to be deflected.

‘Anything we said six months ago should be inadmissible

in an argument. In fact, all comments should become

null and void after seven days.’

‘In that case, I’ll wait a week and then return the dress

I said firmly. ‘Now, Trace. If you’ve finished. About Cora

and Ben. What time did you—’

‘When someone loves you Trace interrupted, dropping

his fork abruptly and putting his finger across my

lips, ‘the way they say your name is different. Did you

know that?’

And the careful, casual friendship we’ve both nurtured

these last few months was blown wide open in an instant.

When you’ve loved each other as much as Trace and

I have done, and when those feelings have been cut off

in their prime and never given the chance to grow and

change into a different sort of love, the softer, less concentrated kind of love you find in a marriage, moderated by time and familiarity; never given the chance, perhaps, to

fade to white nothingness like a Polaroid photograph and

gently disappear - when you have had that kind of love,

can you can you ever go back and share something less?

After lunch, we strolled around the Eternal City as if

we had nothing on our minds but touristy pleasure. We

admired the pavement artists in Piazza Navona, threw

coins into the Trevi Fountain, and gazed in awe at the

marvels of the Forum. We ate hot chestnuts from a street

stall and brought little leather handbags for the girls, we

washed down our delicious dinner with cleansing grappa,

and we talked about everything but the only thing we

each could think about: what happens next?

The ornate carved bed creaks as I stand up. Automatically,

I turn and smooth the wrinkles in the damask

bedspread. Somehow, I have to find a safe path for us

through this minefield of nostalgia and unfinished business.

I have to keep my head, even though my toes are

tingling and my stomach is fizzing with excitement:

because of course new love is intoxicating, addictive, in

fact; and that is where we are, the stage we’re still at, the

heat between us preserved all these years like a fly in