Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [94]
‘Poor misunderstood fellow.’
‘My arse.’
‘You have got to get a new job!’
Now there was a thought…
The crowd inside the auditorium erupted into applause, and the first few notes of what even Natalie recognised as ‘We Will Rock You’ played at an unbelievable decibel level.
Tom pulled her arm. ‘Come on, Anita. Time to rock!’
Natalie was smiling through her wince, as he pulled open the door.
Lucy
It was horribly easy for Lucy to make time to see Alec. Lack of time and privacy was one of the things she thought would protect her from being unfaithful, but, like all the other safeguards, it failed her.
One tiny lie.
She was going shopping in London and meeting an old friend from college for lunch. She would be back lateish.
Easy.
Patrick would be busy ferrying the children to and from school. Their children. Her children.
She felt disgusted with herself, briefly, as she pulled away. It was the sight of him dressed for a day at home, Ed peering out between his legs. The knowledge that he thought she was going because she wanted a day away from him. From the depressing, dreary dullness of his unemployment and his presence. That was why he had agreed so easily.
‘You deserve a bit of time to yourself, Luce.’
But half an hour later she was on a train surrounded by people, and it was simple to push him to the back of her mind.
She didn’t want to go to a hotel. She couldn’t have. Alec had a friend, some guy at work, who kept an apartment at Canary Wharf for when he worked late during the week. He was in New York. He’d given him the keys. ‘We don’t have to do anything, Lucy. I just want to see you. Whatever you want, I promise.’ She told herself she wouldn’t do anything, but she knew she was lying. It was time.
He was waiting for her when she arrived. He looked strangely formal when he opened the door: he hadn’t taken off his suit, or even loosened his tie. As if she had come for an appointment, or a meeting.
Alec had drawn the curtains in the flat, but the strong spring sunshine streamed in through chinks and gaps and played on the anodyne, modern furniture. There were just two rooms – this one, with a small kitchen in one corner, and a bedroom beyond, with an en-suite, through wide double doors.
He had planned to offer her a drink. He’d stopped at Tesco Metro on his way there from the office, and hadn’t known what to get. In his friend’s fridge there was a bottle of champagne, some orange juice and milk, for tea.
He had thought they might sit and talk for a while. When he thought about Lucy, that was one of the things he most wanted to do with her. She had such a mind – you could see it beyond all the small-talk and inanities of school, domesticity and life. But when he saw her in the doorway, saw that she had agreed and surrendered and come to him, he was overwhelmed by the need to touch her without other people around, without clothes, without anything between them except how they felt.
She was wearing a cotton dress that appeared to tie at the front and when he pulled it, the fabric fell apart and he could slip his hands in and round her waist. Lucy was pushing his jacket off his shoulders, and he tugged at his tie to loosen it. Her fingers fiddled with buttons, his with the clasp on her bra, and then they stood, and breathed in and out slowly, revelling in the feeling of each other’s skin.
*
If you had asked her, Lucy might have guessed that the sex would be furtive and fast. That the very act of unfaithfulness might mean the sacrifice of beauty and meaning. It didn’t. For two, three, four hours, they were two people who, aside from the lives they led beyond, cared for each other, and at last, at long last, had the chance to show it. She couldn’t believe it was anything else, and the thought occurred to her several times, through the fog of sensation and emotion, as they made love. When he trembled as she touched him, and gasped as he entered her. When he held her face very still and watched her as she came so that she knew