A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [144]
I drive myself crazy with images. Don’t. It’s too late for that. This is payback for Anna, for all of them. One man, two years later, his saline and his toothbrush laid out in the bathroom. You have to get used to that.
It was him on the phone.
I run cold water over my face at the sink but cannot stop the questions, the doubts. That he is good in bed, funny, capable of bringing out qualities in Kate that I suppressed. I cannot stop thinking that he makes her happier than I did.
Did Saul know about this? Did he meet him at that party?
Don’t. Don’t wonder what he looks like, what he does for a living, how much money he has or what stories he tells.
She will have met his friends.
They would have been to Paris, to movies, cooked for each other and fucked all night. Don’t. Don’t picture them in bed together because that has nothing to do with your feelings for Kate and everything to do with your vanity. I just don’t want him to be better than I was.
Just let it go. Think about Cohen and let it go.
God, the speed with which she has recovered.
When I come back downstairs Kate has moved into the sitting-room, bunched up on the sofa with a fresh cup of tea and a face like stone. She looks different now, now that I know she has a boyfriend, a man living here under the same roof. The one I feared all those nights.
‘Not much has changed up there,’ I say.
She cannot even look at me. My temper snaps.
‘Kate, if you want me to go, I’ll go. But please, don’t sit there with this air of disappointment, this condescension, because I didn’t come here for that. I genuinely believe that I would never have done this if we were still together.’
‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare blame this on me.’
‘You’re right. I shouldn’t blame you. It’s not your fault. I would have done it anyway. Just like I slept with someone behind your back. It’s in my genes, you say. And for the last time, I’m sorry that I took you for granted. I’m sorry I wasn’t the person you thought you deserved. You had dreams for me that I couldn’t fulfil and fucked up. And now I’ve got involved in a murky business that you find reprehensible. I don’t blame you.’
She looks up at me, twitching with moral authority. Nothing that I say will ever satisfy her. Let’s have this out.
‘If I thought this would happen, do you think I would have done it? Do you? Do you think that if I knew it would come to something like this that I wouldn’t have put a stop to it? It was straightforward in the planning, that’s all I can tell you. I was doing a job that I thought was useful and loyal and significant.’
‘Straightforward in the planning?‘ Her laugh here is contemptuous, the slender jaw gaped with sarcasm. ‘Jesus. Straightforward in the planning?’
‘Let’s not do that thing where we pick each other’s sentences apart, OK? It’s demeaning.’
‘You never think, Alec. That’s just it with you. That’s just exactly the problem. It’s what happened with us, it’s what’s happening now. You take things on with no thought to the consequences, with nothing in your mind but how it can make you feel better about yourself. It doesn’t matter if it’s an affair with a girl at your fucking office or some needless industrial espionage that leads to an innocent guy getting the shit kicked out of him. It’s always the same thing. You can’t live life without turning it into a lie.’
‘That isn’t the case. It’s not that bad.’
‘Not that bad?’ she says. ‘You never stopped lying to me. For the last six months we were together, do you remember, we barely slept together?’
Here we go. Actress time.
‘Get over it, Kate. It’s history.’
‘And when we did, those few times, I had to shut my eyes, I had to hold off the scream in my head. But I did it for you. I let you fuck me because somewhere I still felt love for you, all the time knowing that that love had been corrupted, bit by bit, until all I felt was pity. Towards the end I could barely look at you. I couldn’t touch you. And I’m not sure you even noticed that. I would lie beside you in bed and actually dread your weight, your smell. And do