imagine we’d get to fourteen years?’ Ness asks.
I look at her. ‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘It’s not that difficult. Back then – when we were eighteen – did you ever imagine us this far down the line? Or did you just think about the present? You know, a bit of fun for the time being. Not really imagine the far distant future?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘What about you? Did you?’
Ness plays with the cake on her plate, pushing it about with her dainty little cake fork. Then she looks up at me.
‘Yes, of course I did. When I got married, I knew – hoped! – it was for life. You don’t enter into marriage imagining it’s not going to be for ever. Do you?’
‘Of course not. So, in answer to your question: yes. I did.’ I smile at her. ‘What’s brought all this on?’
She sighs. ‘Oh nothing.’ She picks up her wine glass and holds it to her cheek before draining it in one. ‘Right, where’s the bathroom?’
While she’s gone, I pull out my phone. I’m desperate to speak to Stell; find out what she’s thinking after last night. The sex blew me away. When I message her, she replies immediately and I type frantically, knowing I only have a couple of minutes. Last night clearly broke some sort of barrier between us but I don’t know if she sees it as a one-off, or the start of something new. I try to lead her on, to goad her into talking about it, but her responses are frustratingly ambiguous. Each reply she sends leaves me desperate for more and, for five, maybe ten, minutes, I lose track of where I am and why. When I look up from the screen, I realise that Ness hasn’t come back.
Gotta go, I type reluctantly to Stell, while hoping that my disappearing might leave her wanting more, then I stand and look around for Ness. I can’t see her in the dining room, so I push open the door to the deck and see her, finally, standing at the railings, staring out at the water. She looks completely, unbearably, alone.
I slip my arms around her waist from behind, getting a face full of hair as I do so, and squeeze her against me, feeling the softness of her waist, where it dips in under her breasts.
‘Hey, gorgeous. Do you come here often?’ I whisper in her ear, as I nibble her ear lobe. She’s stiff for a moment and then I feel her relax into me.
‘I was waiting for you,’ I tell her, but she sighs and closes her eyes.
‘I needed some air,’ she says.
‘It’s lovely out here, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. London’s so beautiful. You get such a different perspective from the river.’
I rest my chin on her shoulder so my eyes are the same level as hers and I get the same view she’s getting. She’s right. London is beautiful at night. The moon’s not quite full and it reflects off the water as the boat moves along, barely breaking the surface. We stand in silence for a few minutes and suddenly I’m imagining that it’s Stell in my arms, not Ness. That we’ll go home together and it’s Stell I’ll make love to, Stell who’ll be the mother of my child. Oh God, could that ever be possible?
‘I love you, Mrs Wolsey,’ I say.
Ness gives a tiny laugh. ‘I love you too, Mr Wolsey.’
‘We’ll be docking soon,’ I say. ‘Come inside. Let’s have coffee.’
We walk back in with our arms around each other.
The evening in the pub with George is the beginning, of course, of an affair. More than that: a love affair.
But, love or no love, it means the start of a series of meetings in discreet London hotels. For my own convenience as much as for his, I stop asking George to come all the way to Hampstead. We start meeting in central London. Snatched moments: lunchtimes; afternoons. We have our favourite meeting places as well as what rapidly becomes a ‘regular’ little boutique hotel in Mayfair, where we act out the pretence that we’re married. The hotel realises, I imagine, what’s really going on, but the staff play along happily enough. George buys a second phone; pays cash at the hotel. If it wasn’t such a cliché, it might be funny.
I’m surprised by how right everything feels. For the first time since I was a teenager, I slowly give myself up to love, enjoying the feeling of well-being with which it infuses me; lapping up the knowledge that I am loved.
But there’s a sticking point. An elephant in the room.
He’s not mine.
I try not to think about Ness. I’m not the one, after all, who stood at the altar and promised to be faithful. I don’t know how George does it, but, if I concentrate hard enough, if I squeeze my eyes shut when I’m lying in his arms and if I focus on the rhythm of his breathing and inhale the scent of his skin, I can just about pretend that Ness doesn’t exist; I can force her from my mind and inhabit a world in which, for an hour or two, for a stolen evening here and there, it’s just George and me.
I can lie entwined with George, and imagine that he really is mine.
As he always should have been.
I try not to dwell on how right I feel in George’s arms; about how our bodies remember from all those years ago how well they fit together. I really try not to. I throw myself into work; I have client meetings, I’m driving our expansion into corporate clients. It’s during this period that I land some brilliant new accounts. People notice. Professionally, I’m on fire.
But then, insidiously, the alien feeling that I no longer want to be alone creeps into my consciousness like the lavender-infused curls of steam I’m watching rise above my bath one evening. I’ve a glass of wine balanced on the edge of the tub and the radio on a chill-out station – this bath routine is my favourite part of the day, but tonight there it is: the notion that it would be absolutely right for George to be pottering about in the bedroom. Just like that, the thought pops into my head and then, once it’s thought, I can’t un-think it. I sink under the surface of the water and imagine George coming into the bathroom; I imagine him plucking a warm towel off the rack and holding it out to me. Me stepping into it, George enveloping me with it, then scooping me up and carrying me into the bedroom and, as I imagine this scene, my whole body relaxes.
But this – this feeling that George should not just be in my apartment but in my life – is disconcerting. I’m a loner. Don’t get me wrong: I can deal with people well enough but, at the end of the day, I like my own space. Sharing my life is not something I’ve dreamed of since I was eighteen years old: ironically enough, not since I was a schoolgirl imagining her life with George Wolsey – and that was presumably just because I knew no better. It’s quite ridiculous if I think about it that, aged thirty-three, I’ve gone full loop. I have to be careful when I’m at work, not to daydream of how this life together might play out, but I’m not very successful. Like a creeping fog, George seeps into my day-to-day thoughts.
I picture a house in the country. Not an old heap with rattly single-glazing and leaky pipes but a barn conversion, perhaps, modernised inside. Lots of light and space; the kitchen glossy white; an office for each of us to work from home a couple of days a week. I’ve always wanted to write a book. The business is ticking over nicely. I could easily take a step back and make time to write. I see myself facing an expansive view of green fields; sucking the end of a pen as I think about my next sentence. But I also picture a small cottage by the sea, roses tangled around peeling blue window frames; a golden retriever running ahead of George and I on the cold, hard sand. Sometimes I imagine a luxury apartment on the river, its picture windows overlooking the glittering lights of the Thames as George and I stand on the terrace on a Friday evening nursing ice-cold gin and tonics. It doesn’t matter, I realise, where we live: the important ingredient of this fantasy is George.