A breath of wind dragged puckers across the surface of the water.
‘Only at the beginning, that first day when I came down to Surrey. She told me then that she loves you and that you love her, and I agreed that there has never been any doubt of that.’
‘Did you?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Connie heard herself say. ‘And I’ve been able to share the weeks since then with the two of you. I’ve been included in her dying, even though the three of us made it impossible to share life. And I am grateful for it,’ she truthfully concluded.
Like Bill, she kept her eyes fixed on the horizon.
‘Yes,’ Bill agreed. ‘I understand.’
He stripped off his shirt and threw it onto the sand, then dived under the skin of the water. Connie stood and watched him swimming powerfully out to sea as if he would go on and on, over the various bars of paler and deeper blue to the glittering line of the horizon, and never turn back again.
The telephone used to ring in the flat in Belsize Park and she would hear Bill’s low voice.
‘I could see you for an hour, this evening.’
And without a thought even taking shape in her head she would answer ‘Yes’, blinded by a flash of delight at the prospect of a single hour. That was how it was.
From their first evening together after the Docklands party, they both knew that there was no hope of a happy ending.
It was even true that to be stalked by the twin threats of imminent discovery and impending pain gave an extra edge to their temporary ecstasy, defining it with the same sharp glitter as the rim of frost on a dead leaf.
Connie told herself that it was enough – more than enough – to revel in the time that Bill could spare away from Jeanette and Noah.
From being an independent woman with money and freedom she willingly became the embodiment of a cliché, the lover of a married man, who sat waiting for him to telephone and who counted the hours until their next snatched meeting.
‘Why?’ Bill asked her.
They were lying in each other’s arms and she pressed her face to his so that their mouths touched.
‘Let me think.’ She played for time, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t sound needy or grandiose, when she needed him so much and loved him with an intensity that – in anyone else – she would have called dangerous. Or insane.
Then she laughed, giving up the struggle. ‘Because it’s what I want.’
‘Hm,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think it’s extraordinary, magical, that it’s so exactly what I want too? How often does it happen that two people stumble on a passion like ours?’
‘Rarely. Eloise and Abelard? Maybe Antony and Cleopatra?’
‘Ha. Don’t cheapen us with pale comparisons, Connie Thorne.’
‘Sorry. Never before, then. Not in the history of the universe.’
He cupped her face in his hands, holding it away from his so he could search her eyes.
‘That is how I feel,’ he said.
Bill could switch from playful to serious in half a sentence, and she knew he did it with her just because he could. She tried never to compare herself with Jeanette where Bill was concerned – but Jeanette couldn’t hear the alteration in his voice from lazy to imperative, or the dip from elation into melancholy, and Connie hugged that advantage to herself with guilty greed. To Bill, the shorthand intimacy of some of their exchanges was as much of a luxury as their long, rambling conversations about music or Italy or food.
Most of the time they spent together, in the fourteen months before the end came, was snatched in brief hours after work when Bill could plausibly have been with clients. They retreated to Connie’s apartment and set about constructing a miniature universe together.
‘I know this isn’t real,’ she said once, sadly. ‘We long for each other so much, and every meeting is like drinking champagne on Concorde. We never see each other on irritable weekday mornings, or when one of us has flu, or when we’ve been spending so much time together that there isn’t anything particular left to say.’
‘It’s real to me. The benchmark of reality isn’t necessarily sharing the breakfast cornflakes.’
‘What would it be like, if we were married?’
As soon as she asked, she wished she had resisted the temptation. But Bill didn’t hesitate.
‘It would be wonderful. I imagine it all the time. To be together like this every day, to see you in the instant before I fall asleep and as soon as I open my eyes. And don’t you think I ask myself every day, how has this happened? How is it that I am married to the wrong sister?’
There was a bitter edge in his voice that was quite unlike him.
‘Bill, I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘Why not? I don’t want there to be even one forbidden topic between you and me.’
Maybe not, Connie thought, but there will be. Not now, but once the inevitable happens.
‘But I can’t leave Jeanette and Noah, you know. I won’t ever do that.’
‘Have I ever asked you to? Even hinted at it?’
‘No, you haven’t,’ he said humbly. ‘What we have now isn’t enough for either of us, but it’s all there can be. Will you forgive me?’
‘No. Because there’s nothing to forgive. We made this choice together. And it’s good.’ Her voice cracked.
‘It’s not good. It’s all wrong, but I love you so, so much.’
A handful of times, when Bill was legitimately away on business, they managed to spend a night together. Connie would travel separately to a hotel in Manchester or York or some other place she had never been to before in her life, check into a hotel, and wait for him to join her. The anonymity of hotel bedrooms, the signs to dangle on doorknobs and the miniature packaging of toiletries and minibar drinks became almost unbearably erotic. The few hours that followed contained the essence of happiness.
And while her affair with Bill continued, for the first time in her life Connie stopped probing at the riddle of her identity. She defined herself simply as a woman in love and all her being was concentrated in the present. It was possible, she discovered, to live almost from one breath to the next.
Just once, they spent three days in Rome.
Bill crammed three days of meetings with an Italian client into a single day. For the rest of the time they walked the streets, drank coffee in tiny bars, and sat in the shadows of baroque churches. They went to
Il Trovatore
, and came back hand in hand to the home they had made out of a hotel suite.
Then, very suddenly, the end came.
Connie and Bill had flown back from Rome, and they were standing at the carousel at Heathrow waiting for their bags. Two whole days and nights with Bill had lulled Connie into a wifely rhythm. She linked her arm through his as streams of luggage circulated on the belt, then stretched up to kiss the corner of his mouth.
An instant afterwards they turned their heads, sensing that they were being watched.
The moment froze into horror for ever afterwards.
Cousin Elaine – who was returning with her best friend from a fortnight in Tenerife – was staring at them across the revolving suitcases.
It was immediately clear to all three of them that a bomb had silently exploded in baggage reclaim and that the fallout was going to affect every corner of their lives.
Within twenty-four hours Elaine had told Jeanette exactly what she had seen.
(‘Well. Not to tell would have implicated me in the affair, wouldn’t it? You couldn’t expect me to enter into that sort of conspiracy with Bill and
her
against my own cousin. No right-thinking person would do such a thing. No, I did what was right and proper and I’m not ashamed of it.’)
Jeanette made an unprecedented journey to Belsize Park.
She marched into the flat with her coat pulled round her body as if to let it fly loose might expose her to lethal contamination. She refused even to sit down. Instead she stood in Connie’s kitchen, her eyes burning and the muscles in her throat working as she fought for the words.
She told her adopted sister that she was a despicable adulterer, ungrateful, a liar and a cheat, and not worthy of having been taken out of council care and welcomed into the Thorne family.
– That’s what we did, and this is your response.
Connie stood and silently took it all. In the grip of hurt and fury Jeanette looked like an avenging angel in a Renaissance painting. With a kind of bleak detachment, Connie had to admire her magnificent passion. Back came the memories of clawing and scratching at each other as children. Those battles seemed almost affectionate compared with this one-sided fight.
–
You are not my sister. You never were
, Jeanette said.
Connie didn’t point out that the biological bare fact was hardly news to her. And if Jeanette now chose to sever the remaining connection, with all its patina of Echo Street and the crannies and knobs of resentment that had accumulated over all their years – then Connie couldn’t really blame her.
– You will not see my husband again.
Connie couldn’t disagree with that either. She said that she was very sorry, and ashamed. She could have tried to add that Jeanette loving Bill so much herself might at least have lent her some sort of understanding of why Connie should love him too, but her fingers felt too cold and heavy to sign one more syllable and her face was stiff with misery.
– I don’t want to see you ever again.
Connie tipped her head in silent acknowledgement. Jeanette wrapped her coat even more tightly around her and swept out of the flat.
After she had gone, Connie stood behind her front door and listened to the silence. She had never felt as lonely as she did then.
‘How bad was it?’ Bill asked in a low voice.
Connie pressed the receiver to her ear as if that would bring him physically closer.
‘It was bad. What about you?’
‘The same.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at the office. I want to see you.’
‘No.’
‘Is that all, Con? Just
no
?’
‘You know that this is not
just
anything.’
‘I do. You’re right. You’ve got more guts than I have. Listen: remember what I told you.’
Bill had told her many things, but what he meant was
I love you
.
‘Me too,’ Connie breathed. She reached out and put the receiver back in its cradle.
Jeanette and Hilda formed an alliance of two. Bill was to be forgiven, eventually, once he had endured enough reproach. But Connie was never to be properly rehabilitated. She tried to forget Bill by immersing herself in work, by travelling to wherever she could reach that was a long way from London, by constructing all the appearances of a happy and productive life.
Over time, the absolute exclusion from the family softened a little. She was invited to set-piece events like Jeanette’s fortieth birthday and Noah’s eighteenth, but by then she was with Seb Bourret and this thawing of the ice probably had more to do with his glamor and fame than with Jeanette’s or Hilda’s reviving affection for herself. But still she went to the parties. The Thornes and the Buntings were the only family she had. And it meant that from time to time she saw Bill, or at least a quiet and correct version of him. They never touched each other, and spoke hardly a word in private. There was, in any case, nothing they could have said that they did not know already.
Then Hilda died, and there was one more terrible argument on the day Connie saw the contents of the old cardboard box.
She and Jeanette did not speak again until Jeanette knew how ill she was.
Connie waded through the water, the soaked hem of her skirt clinging to her legs. At last she saw the dot that was Bill’s head dip as he swam in a circle and headed back to the beach.
She waved her arm over her head and pointed to her watch.
Jeanette was lying on her side, but her eyes were open.
‘Did you sleep?’ Connie asked.
– No. I just wanted to lie here.
Connie helped her to sit up. Jeanette rubbed the sand out of her hair and her face twisted because the movement hurt her. Connie put her wrap around her sister’s shoulders, and chafed her hands as if she could massage some more life back into them.
Bill sprinted the short distance up the beach. He hopped on one leg as he dragged on his trousers.
‘Let’s get going.’ He took Jeanette’s hand to lead her.
Connie picked up the folded blanket and the picnic box and they began the slow walk back. The sand was hot under their feet.
Their taxi was parked in the shade of some scrubby bushes, with all four doors open to catch a breeze. The driver had been asleep on the back seat, but he leapt up as soon as they approached.
‘
Lapangan terbang
. Airport, quick, quick,’ he beamed, and they settled Jeanette into her seat.
They had spent longer at the beach than they intended, and the checkin queue had shortened to a handful of people. Connie could see from the sign that the Singapore flight was already boarding. Jeanette stood with her hand tucked under Connie’s and her slight weight resting against Connie’s arm while Bill checked them in.
– I wish you were coming home.
‘I’ll be there in a couple of weeks,’ Connie said with an easiness she didn’t feel. She had deliberately chosen not to return with Bill and Jeanette because she thought it would be right for them and Noah to have a few days alone together, without having to work out whether or not she should be with them. After that she would fly back to London for what they all knew was likely to be the beginning of the end.
‘We’d better go through,’ Bill said.
At the barrier Jeanette turned and held up her arms, like a child.
Connie kissed her, and closed her arms around her sister’s shoulders. There was almost nothing left of Jeanette’s once luscious body.
–
Thank you. It was wonderful
, Jeanette signed.
‘It was,’ Connie agreed. A man in a booth held out his hand for passports and boarding passes.
Bill and Connie exchanged the briefest hug. Bill and Jeanette held hands, and walked through the barrier. They turned back just once to wave before they passed out of sight. The last thing that Connie noticed was that the backs of Jeanette’s legs were still lightly powdered with sand.