Chapter Fourteen
I don’t know why I had an affair. I couldn’t explain it back then, either to myself or to Neil. It hasn’t got clearer with hindsight. Was I just bored? Flattered by the attention?
Adam was seven, Sophie five. My business was expanding. The other man was a client. When we first met, I felt a swell of pleasure at the sight of him. The same reaction that I’d had when I’d first seen Neil. With this man I concealed it. I was happily married, a mother. I wasn’t in the market for an affair. It wasn’t an option. He was married, too. His wife was at that first meeting. Jeremy and Chandi. They were doing a new-build and staying in a rented apartment while the project took shape. It was an exciting design they had planned, no Barratt home. A two-storey dwelling on a brownfield site in a redevelopment zone. There was a canal nearby and Jeremy wanted a modern, waterside feel. There would be glass-and-steel patio doors along the back overlooking the canal, an open-plan living area, and central stairs to the upper floor. The couple wanted my input into the kitchen design and also a scheme for the colours and soft furnishings in the other areas.
Disconcerted by my attraction to Jeremy, the way my stomach contracted when I made eye contact with him, the pleasing timbre of his voice, I made a point of focusing on Chandi as we talked. She was a hospital doctor; he worked as a translator of educational books; together they had enough of an income to build their dream home. I went away with a clear idea of their likes and dislikes, their specifications and a copy of the architect’s drawings for the site, promising to return in a fortnight with initial designs.
At the second meeting there was no sign of Chandi. Had he engineered it like that? When I asked if she didn’t want a chance to comment, he told me she had to be at the hospital during working hours and would give me any feedback via him. Jeremy smiled and offered me tea. His teeth were white, his lips the colour of raspberries. He was shorter than Neil, stockier. I busied myself laying out my portfolio while he made the drinks. Their rental flat was part of a warehouse refurbishment, very eighties with bare brick walls and wooden floors, recessed lights. The ceilings were surprisingly low, and the décor neutral colours, easier to rent out than something distinctive. The couple’s own furnishings were more eclectic, and included a monster of a couch with a geometric Scandinavian print in turquoise, white and orange clambering all over it. But the piece was too large in the space.
Nervously I talked Jeremy through the plans. Once in my stride I was able to quell the sexual feelings but whenever he asked a question or bent closer to examine a sketch everything shifted and I became clumsy and self-conscious. The encounter was like a badly executed dance: we’d speak at the same moment, or interrupt each other after awkward pauses. Slowly it dawned that it wasn’t just me who was off-kilter.
Eager to leave, I ran through a brisk summary of which options he would discuss with his wife. The Belfast sink and central island with a butcher’s block (salvaged rather than new) were key to the kitchen design and other elements would tie in. He and Chandi would consider whether to accommodate an Aga or go for a smaller oven and hob with a separate wood-burning stove. The latter were quite rare back then and Jeremy appeared to find my enthusiasm for them amusing. He had samples of fabrics for curtains and upholstery to show Chandi and a style board I’d put together.
Finishing my spiel, I gathered up my portfolio. Silence hung in the air, and I looked up to find his eyes locked on me, his face serious, his lips slightly parted as if on the brink of speech. Clearing my throat, I looked away and got to my feet. He caught my wrist and stood up. My heart galloped. He came closer. I let him. He kissed me and lust flared through me, hungry, needy. I dropped my papers. When he began to pull at my clothes, I made no protest. In fact, my hands were running over his shirt, and down, touching his erection through his clothes and feeling myself grow moist in response.
He pulled me over to the couch and I lay down. He ran through to the other room and came back with a condom. He stripped off his pants, slid on the condom. With our clothing half off, he knelt above me, nudged against me and I lifted my hips to meet him. Neither of us spoke and the sex can’t have lasted more than five minutes. Touching myself, I came as he climaxed, his face contorted and dark with blood.
He withdrew and edged down beside me. I wriggled over to make room, keeping my eyes closed. I waited for my heart to slow, my breathing to return to normal. He was still and I thought perhaps he was dozing but when I opened my eyes he was gazing up at the ceiling.
‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ he said.
‘You’re a virgin!’ My joke punctured the tension and we burst out laughing. Part of me was horrified. How could I laugh at a time like this? What on earth had I done?
‘Let’s not talk,’ I said. ‘I’ve a marriage, children. You have a wife. We just forget this…’ I halted and tried again. ‘There are other designers, people I know…’
He shushed me. ‘This can mean whatever we want it to. I didn’t set out to…’
‘Fuck me?’
‘I don’t regret it. And I don’t want anyone else to do the design.’
He was calm and articulate while I felt confused, dizzy as if someone had punched me. ‘I don’t know.’ I gathered my clothes together, began to dress.
‘Debbie.’
I resisted the impulse to correct him; I hate being called Debbie. I’m not Debbie. Perhaps I thought that if he didn’t use the right name it would negate some of what had happened, that I could splinter off this Debbie woman into some cubby-hole – distinct and unconnected from Deborah.
‘I don’t know,’ I repeated.
‘Are you sorry it happened?’
I didn’t answer.
‘It needn’t happen again, if that’s what you want. But don’t run away.’
I shivered. Finished pulling on my clothes. ‘I need time to think.’
‘Fine. Call me?’
At home, I showered and changed my clothes, my mind racing over what had happened. A voice in my head laid out all the reasons to quit the job and avoid seeing Jeremy again.
When Neil got back from school, I was terrified he would sense a change in me, smell my treachery. He didn’t.
The next morning I sat in my workshop, the plans for Jeremy and Chandi’s house spread out around me. I would ring him up and decline the work. There were Neil and the children to think about. I was happy, wasn’t I? Why risk it all for a fling that might be exciting but certainly wouldn’t lead to any greater happiness? I wasn’t the girl in the black vintage silk dress any more, reckless and disinterested. I was a wife and a mother with a business to run.
I dialled his number. And listened to myself arrange a rendezvous for the end of the week.
The sex was always the same: passionate, fast and greedy. Always at his house, always with the pretext of a meeting about the project. We never made small-talk or ventured to suggest meeting anywhere else, to do anything else. We used the couch, sometimes the bedroom. On one occasion I was so eager, aroused with the anticipation as I drove over there, that I grabbed him as he let me in and we screwed standing up against the front door.
Neil never noticed. But Jane did. Jane was newly wed herself then and living across town. We habitually met for a drink and a talk. I didn’t like her husband Mack very much so we had never developed the habit of going out as a foursome. Besides, our friendship pre-dated our marriages and without our partners there we could confide in each other better.
‘You look good,’ she said, as she slipped off her coat and settled opposite me. ‘Very good.’ She took another appraisal. ‘Oh, God, are you pregnant again?’
‘No.’ Then I told her, ‘I’m having an affair.’
She blinked with shock, then a trace of anger edged into her face. ‘Why?’ she asked me. Not ‘who’ but ‘why’?