Out of the Blue. Isabel Wolff

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СКАЧАТЬ you had an affair with her?’ He nodded. ‘When?’ He fiddled with the salt pot.

      ‘When, Peter?’

      ‘On Tuesday.’

      ‘On Tuesday? Yesterday? Oh yes, of course,’ I said, nodding my head. ‘You were going to take her for lunch at the Ritz. To celebrate. Well, it certainly sounds like you did.’

      ‘Look, one thing led to another,’ he said sheepishly. ‘She was coming on to me, Faith. She’s been coming on to me for months. Ever since she met me, in fact. And you were behaving so suspiciously, I was fed up and I felt so grateful to her for getting me the job that, somehow, I couldn’t … refuse.’

      ‘Oh, I see,’ I said sarcastically. ‘In order not to hurt her feelings, you slept with her. What a gent. I’m so proud of you, Peter. You took a room, I suppose?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘We did.’ And suddenly, in that moment, in that terrible moment when he said ‘we’, I realised that truthfulness was Peter’s least endearing quality.

      ‘So she did get her bonus, then,’ I said darkly, aware of a lemon-sized lump in my throat. ‘How ironic,’ I murmured as I gripped and ungripped my napkin. ‘How very ironic. For the past two weeks I’ve been obsessing about some Scottish woman called Jean, who turns out to be a Frenchman called Jean; and now you tell me you’ve had an affair with an American woman called Andie, who I was quite convinced was a bloke!’

      ‘Er … yes.’ I shook my head.

      ‘Well,’ I whispered bitterly. ‘Well, well, well.’ Then I looked at him and said, ‘This hurts.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. But she pushed me into it.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.

      ‘She did,’ he insisted wearily. ‘I’d made it quite clear that I was – married. But now our professional relationship was at an end and she just … ’

      ‘Decided to make it personal.’

      ‘Yes. Oh, I don’t know – she put me under all this … pressure.’

      ‘I don’t believe you,’ I hissed. ‘I think you slept with her because you wanted to.’

      ‘No I did not.’

      ‘Liar!’

      ‘Keep your voice down.’

      ‘Admit it!’

      ‘OK, then, yes, I did!’

      ‘You did!’

      ‘Yes. Since you’ve forced me to admit it, yes I bloody well did!’

      ‘You bastard!’ I spat. And I was terribly shocked to hear myself say that, because I’ve never called him that in my life.

      ‘I’ve been under such stress, Faith,’ he groaned. He leaned his head on his right hand. ‘These last six months have been hell. And then you started going on at me. You wouldn’t leave me alone. You were like a terrier with a rat, banging on about this woman or that chewing gum or those cigarettes.’

      ‘That gum!’ I exclaimed. ‘That chewing gum was for her.’ He was silent. ‘Wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘You don’t like it – you never have. And those cigarettes, they were for her as well, weren’t they?’ Peter nodded miserably. ‘You had gum and cigarettes at the ready for her. How gallant. Lucky Strike!’ I spat. ‘So you’ve had an affair,’ I repeated, my voice rising, ‘with a – what was it you said – “chick”? Oh. My. God.’

      ‘Look, it was completely spontaneous,’ he said. ‘It just happened on the spur of the moment.’

      ‘That’s not true!’ I said.

      ‘Shhhh! Don’t shout.’

      ‘You’d wanted to shag her for weeks.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Oh yes you had. And the reason I know is because of Katie.’

      ‘Katie? What’s she got to do with this?’

      ‘Her psychoanalytic stuff. She’s always going on about Freudian slips, isn’t she? Well, she goes on about the Freudian “telling omission” too. And I think it’s very, very telling, Peter, that you’ve never let on that Andie was a woman.’

      ‘It wasn’t relevant,’ he said.

      ‘Oh yes it was,’ I shot back. ‘Because the other night you recited that great list of all the women you know – every single one. So how very strange, Peter,’ I added, emphatically, ‘that you didn’t mention her!’ By now his face and neck were blotched with red. ‘In fact you even told me the names of Andie’s two female colleagues, but you carefully left her out. Now I know why!’ I concluded triumphantly. ‘Because you didn’t want me to know. And the reason why you didn’t was because you already knew you wanted to get her into bed.’

      ‘I … I … ’

      ‘Don’t deny it,’ I said contemptuously.

      ‘I … OK,’ he said. ‘OK, I admit it. She’s very attractive. She’s single. She fancies me. And yes, I fancied her.’

      ‘She’s got short blonde hair,’ I said suddenly. It had come to me in a flash. What the French call an éclaircissement. Andie was that unknown blonde photographed with Peter in Quaglino’s. ‘She’s got short blonde hair,’ I said again.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She has. But how the hell do you know?’

      ‘Because … ’ Oh God, I couldn’t tell him. ‘Because … Oh, female intuition,’ I explained. ‘I feel sick,’ I announced as I fiddled with my pudding spoon. ‘You’ve had an affair. How could you?’

      ‘I’ll tell you how,’ he said, and by now his voice was rising as well. ‘Because you’d accused me of having one, and then the opportunity was there and I thought damn it, why not go ahead and do it!’ I was aware by now that we were beginning to attract strange looks.

      ‘Any dessert?’ enquired the waiter. ‘And, er, I’d be grateful sir and madam if you could keep your voices down.’

      ‘No,’ I said, ‘I will not keep my voice down, because my husband has just been unfaithful!’ I was aware of eyes swivelling in our direction, and of the sound of breath being sharply inhaled.

      ‘Well, madam,’ said the waiter, ‘I just feel that … ’

      ‘I don’t care what you feel!’ I hissed. ‘We are having marital difficulties here.’ By now all conversation in the restaurant had stopped and everyone was staring, but I couldn’t have cared less. ‘After fifteen years of marriage,’ I informed the waiter, ‘my husband tells me that he’s strayed.’

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