A Short Affair Read online

  Patsy had everything she wanted, as far as he could see.

  As for him? Well, James was very, very fond of her.

  And so he had swallowed the Omega-3, even though he had a childhood phobia of pills and was always worried they would get stuck in his throat and he would choke to death. But he had done it. For his loving, pliant little wife. For her.

  He doesn’t mind the kombucha. If he drinks enough of it, it gives him a pleasant, heady buzz reminiscent of the first stages of daytime tipsiness. There’s a light white sediment in the bottom of the bottle, he notices. He screws up his face and swallows it down.

  He glares at the screen again. It is the first time he has written a female protagonist, but his agent has been on at him to try something new so he thought he’d give it a go.

  Yesterday, realising he had no idea what it felt like to wear a stiletto, he had shuffled to the bedroom and rummaged through Patsy’s collection of trainers and sandals until he finally came across a pair of patent-leather court shoes that had a modest block heel. He remembered her wearing them to accompany him to an awards ceremony last year. (He hadn’t won. A bisexual twenty-something had scooped the prize for what the judges described as ‘a searing memoir of gender fluidity’. His agent had told him that transgender was ‘all the rage’, but James wasn’t quite up to the task of writing that sort of protagonist.)

  In the bedroom, James had done his best to squeeze the front half of his foot into the shoes and then, after a few seconds, grunted with satisfaction and returned to his desk to write confidently of blisters and nuchal folds.

  He isn’t even sure what a nuchal fold is.

  He’d written it because it sounded nice and he had a vague sense that it was something to do with Down’s Syndrome. He spends another five minutes Googling the term and gazing half-heartedly at pictures of embryos emerging in a cluster of pixelated white dots from the anonymous blackness of the ultrasound.

  He looks at the sentence again. His heroine is a single mother with a shadowy past. He hasn’t named her yet. He is thinking of Megan. Or Kirsten. Everyone is called Megan or Kirsten nowadays, aren’t they? He wants to be modern. Maybe Cressida, he thinks, and he spends a pleasant cluster of minutes thinking of the wetness of her mouth; the excitement of her young tongue.

  ‘It’s so weird,’ Cressida had said, the first time they’d kissed. ‘I studied you for my degree.’

  He glances out at the dog. It has dropped its head onto its crossed paws. The sun is still beating down. It must be boiling, he thinks. Whose dog is it? Bloody stupid people leaving it out there, suffering in the heat without so much as a bowl of water.

  He returns to the screen. Concentrate, Richmond, he tells himself in the voice of his former housemaster. Focus. He looks at the sentence again. It is like looking at the photograph of an ex-girlfriend and he is filled with loathing. He deletes it.

  It’s no good. He can’t do anything with that dog sitting out there, sending him plaintive telepathic messages. He’s never been able to resist the dumb stare of a helpless animal.

  He clicks ‘save’ and listens to the resulting whoosh as the document minimises itself on the computer screen. He goes downstairs, opens the front door and, still in his slippers, walks across the road with scant regard for the passing traffic.

  The dog cocks its head with interest.

  The woman is still staring at her phone, sunglasses pushed up her head.

  ‘Is this your dog?’

  She looks at him vaguely.

  ‘Is this your dog?’ he repeats.

  She shakes her head, tapping something onto the screen with clickety-clack nails.

  ‘Nope,’ she says, not looking up.

  He feels a surge of antagonism towards her. It comes from the knowledge of his own invisibility. At sixty-eight, he is past the point of her interest. He tells himself he doesn’t care and she’s clearly thick as pigshit but he sucks in his stomach anyway.

  ‘Do you know whose it is?’

  His voice, when he hears it, is shriller than he expects. He sounds like a tremulous elderly busybody and he can’t stand it.

  ‘No idea, mate.’

  She turns her face towards him, one cool cheek at a time.

  Did she actually just call him ‘mate’? Extraordinary, the entitlement of the young. All sense of her attractiveness evaporates.

  ‘Well, whoever it is should be ashamed of themselves,’ he says, sounding more and more like his housemaster.

  He unties the dog’s lead. It whimpers apologetically, then stands with scampering paws, aware that something is about to happen.

  ‘Hey, you can’t do that!’ the woman is saying. She’s pushed her sunglasses onto her head. Her eyes are narrowed and black.

  ‘I can,’ he mutters, ‘and I will.’

  He takes the dog further along the railings to a patch of pavement shaded by the leaves of a tall tree and reties the lead. The dog pants appreciatively then sits, wagging its tail.

  ‘There,’ James says, satisfied.

  He straightens, placing his hands against his sacrum and arching his back, unwittingly emitting a groan as he does so. He is lightheaded and for a moment thinks he will need to sit down to gather himself. But the humiliation would be too much. The woman is still staring at him, hostility emanating from her every pore, so he shuffles back across the street in his slippers.

  He can see the front door of the house. It was repainted a duck-egg blue earlier this year at Patsy’s request. He wasn’t sure about the colour. It seemed to be trying too hard.

  He steps up onto the kerb and as he does so, the light bleaches and he can no longer focus on the duck-egg-blue door. It swirls in front of him, just out of reach. Something snaps in his neck and there is an electric river of pain down his right side. He gasps. His chest tightens. He wonders if the dog lead has somehow become entangled around his torso and if the woman outside the cafe is pulling it tighter and tighter until he can no longer breathe. She hates him. She wants him dead. Women. He has never understood them. A car blares past. He stumbles, grazing a knee against the tarmac.

  If he could only make it to the door, to press the bell and alert Patsy. She would know immediately what action to take. That’s all he needs to do. Get to the door. Ring the bell. Lie down on the cool mosaic tiles of the hallway. Get to the door. Come on, Richmond. Ring the bloody bell, boy. Get to the door, Richmond. Ring the bell. Lie down on the hallway floor. Wait for Patsy who would know what to do. She always knew what to do.

  Behind him, a dog barks.

  PATSY

  A friend has come round for coffee, complete with sympathetic expression and Tupperware box of beef stew. They sit at the kitchen table drinking freshly brewed coffee and Patsy can feel the precise moment it happens; the actual second when she slips from shock into a smooth purveyor of anecdote, sanitised of all unpleasantness so that the other person won’t feel uncomfortable.

  Always thinking of the other person. That was Patsy’s way.

  First, there was the usual routine as she started to talk. Kettle. Coffee. Cafetière. Plunge. Pour. Milk. Sip. Automatic motions and social niceties.

  And then – pop! There it was: the appalling calmness of her rational mind easing into gear. Patsy can recount the sequence of events with perfect clarity, in chronological narrative order.

  It was like a coin dropping onto the shelf of one of those childhood amusement-arcade games she used to play on seaside holidays – the one where mechanical sweepers would slide back and forth and you had to hope that the coin would land in the right spot to dislodge the others.

  She can still remember the satisfying rush and clatter when she got it right. Patsy would keep on playing and playing and playing because she thought she was getting better. It was a brilliant game because it gave you the impression of skill while being entirely reliant on luck.

  Just like life, really, when you thought about it. You think you’re getting a handle on things and then your husband has an affair.
And another. And another one after that. The coins drop with a communal clatter. And then you realise you’re angry. Not sad – not any more – but absolutely fucking furious.

  ‘So, what happened?’ asks her friend at the kitchen table.

  A thud on the door was what happened.

  She tells the story like this.

  At first, Patsy hadn’t heard it. She was in the drawing room at the back of the house, the one which led onto the conservatory they’d put in back in the Nineties, before side-extensions and sliding floor-to-ceiling windows became fashionable. The sun was dappling through the glass and Patsy was sitting on the chintz sofa, flicking through the pages of a novel she was meant to be reading for her book group. It was one of those thrillers which described women as girls in the title and came complete with an out-of-focus picture of a shattered mirror and Patsy couldn’t concentrate. She kept thinking of Chloe and whether she would come for lunch next Sunday or not. Patsy had sent an email to her daughter two days ago and had yet to hear back. It was always difficult to know whether to try again or whether such a move would be construed as pushy. Patsy picked at the cuticle of her left thumb.

  She’d give it one more day.

  It was as Patsy was putting the book aside that she heard the thud. She stiffened, senses alert. She waited to see if it would happen again. No sound came.

  She checked her watch. Just after three. Time for her to make him some tea in any case. She switched off the anglepoise lamp and placed the novel on a pile of other unread material – the latest McEwan; a Lonely Planet guide to Southern Spain for a holiday they had never booked, and the flattened crossword page of the Guardian. She levered herself out of the sofa, which seemed lower than it had this time a week ago, and popped into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Then she walked upstairs.

  ‘Jamie?’

  She was the only person in the world who called him Jamie. She had a suspicion it made him feel diminished, but she kept on doing it because it was a mark of her possession – one of the few she had.

  There was no answer. She pushed the door open to his study. No one was at the desk. An empty bottle of kombucha stood by the computer. So he’d drunk it.

  She smiled.

  (This smile does not form part of the story she tells her friend. This smile is hers alone.)

  She moved towards the desk, reaching automatically for the bottle to put in the recycling, and then she glanced out of the window and saw a dog, tied to the railings outside the cafe on the opposite side of the street, and it was barking loudly and there was a woman in sunglasses waving her arms in a state of high agitation.

  Patsy crept closer to the window. She peered out and then, following the dog’s gaze, she looked downwards to the path and the flower beds at the front of the house where she saw two legs, twitching against the paving stones. The windowsill was blocking her view of the rest of the human form, but she needed no confirmation. It was James. They were his greying jogging bottoms. His godawful slippers. The cashmere socks she had given him for Christmas, splayed out with odd angularity.

  She ran downstairs and opened the front door and her husband’s head rolled onto the hallway tiles, speckles of foam at the corner of his mouth, his colour at once both bright red and the whitest pale.

  She acted as she was meant to.

  ‘Jamie! Jamie, wake up! Jamie!’

  She was on her knees now, cradling his head and willing him to open his eyes. His body was twisted in different directions.

  ‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ a voice said above her. ‘Are you okay? Are you okay?’

  She didn’t register that it was the woman in sunglasses from across the street. Patsy nodded.

  She put her hand on his chest. It was hot. His right eye flickered and then he shifted his head to look at her and she could see he was trying to say something, lips moving soundlessly. She bent towards him, straining to make out the words.

  ‘Love,’ he slurred.

  ‘I love you too, darling. I love you too.’

  His right eyelid twitched. He shook his head, the movement minute.

  ‘C . . . C . . .’

  He was trying to say something, trying to get out a word.

  ‘Chloe?’ she said. ‘Of course. Of course you love her too. I know, my darling, I know. Just rest now. Help is on the way. You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be absolutely fine.’

  The woman from across the street was still standing there. Her shoes, Patsy noticed, were round-toed, patent leather, and she was wearing white ankle-socks, the rims frilly like the outer edge of a seashell.

  ‘Cress . . .’ James whispered. And then, again, faintly: ‘Cre . . .’ followed by a steep slope of S’s.

  Patsy craned forwards.

  ‘What was that, darling? I didn’t quite catch . . .’

  ‘I think it was “Cress”,’ the woman with the shoes said.

  Patsy glanced up at her. What was she still doing here anyway? Couldn’t she keep her nose out of other people’s business? Patsy had never been able to abide rubberneckers: those awful people on motorways who slowed down to gawp at accidents and caused long tailbacks.

  ‘That seems unlikely,’ Patsy said more forcefully than she’d intended. The shoes stood motionless. ‘Thank you for your help.’ The woman didn’t leave. She seemed to be determined to stay until the ambulance got here.

  James’s head was heavier now in her lap and he closed his eyes. She took his hand in hers and felt the reassuring coolness of his wedding ring.

  He hadn’t worn one for the first years of their marriage, claiming he didn’t like jewellery on men. But then he’d had an affair and when he’d asked what he could do to make it up to her, Patsy replied that she wanted him to wear a wedding band. He agreed. She bought him one the next day. Platinum. Engraved with their initials.

  He said he’d never strayed again, but of course, Patsy knew differently. She pretended not to have minded for years. But the latest one had been the final straw. Young enough to be their daughter. It was enough, she had decided. It needed to be stopped.

  The sharp wail of sirens approaching. Patsy sat up straighter, took a breath. She felt her usual capability return. She pressed two fingers against James’s neck, searching for a pulse, and then, before the paramedics got to her, she eased herself out from under his weight and gently cupped the back of his head, placing it gently onto the doormat. She kissed his cheek. His face was cold.

  The woman with the sunglasses and the shoes and frilly socks offered to come with her in the ambulance but by then, Patsy knew it was too late. He was dead. The love of her life. How she hated him.

  Afterwards, sitting in the safety of her kitchen, drinking Waitrose Colombian Blend (Strength: a middling ‘3’), her friend will reach across and pat the back of Patsy’s hand.

  ‘How awful for you. Awful.’

  What she doesn’t tell her friend is what happened next. She doesn’t say that, inventing some excuse about having to get her keys, Patsy had run back into the house. She had checked the kitchen for incriminating evidence and found that she had cleaned up very well. The pestle and mortar had been washed of the crushed-up sleeping pills and were resting on the side, where they usually stood. The empty bottle of kombucha was in the recycling. Yes, she nodded to herself, reassured. It had been a tidy job.

  ‘Did he . . .’ the friend asks, hesitantly, ‘ . . . I mean . . . did he . . . say anything before he died?’

  Patsy looks steadily over the rim of her coffee mug.

  ‘He asked for Chloe,’ she says with a small gulp of sadness.

  She keeps on telling the story and keeps on not mentioning the name and after a while, it becomes easy to forget that anyone called Cressida ever existed.

  MS FEATHERSTONE AND THE BEAST

  Bethan Roberts

  Artwork by Gabriella Boyd

  MS FEATHERSTONE AND THE BEAST

  Bethan Roberts

  ‘If women ruled the world,’ said his English teacher, ‘
there would be no more wars.’

  Her name was Ms Amber Featherstone.

  ‘But, Miss,’ said Wayne Collett (they all called her Miss; even Stevie couldn’t bring himself to utter that strange thrumming ‘s’ in Ms), ‘Maggie Thatcher’s a woman, Miss. And you hate her, Miss.’

  As the class erupted into laughter and argument, Ms Featherstone crossed her pale naked legs. No other adult in the school had naked legs, apart from the PE teachers, and their calves were shaped like bags of golf balls. Today she wore turquoise shoes and a grey skirt that hugged her thighs.

  ‘Thatcher’s not a real woman,’ said Ms Featherstone.

  Sarah Figgs put up her hand and said, ‘She’s done a lot for the women’s cause, Miss.’

  ‘She hates feminists,’ said Ms Featherstone.

  Stevie had seen Ms Featherstone’s first name on a letter, whilst photocopying in the secretary’s office – a special privilege reserved only for him, as editor of the school newspaper. Amber. Like her, it had seemed too glamorous to be real. He’d looked it up in the dictionary, hoping for poetry. On finding the words hard translucent fossilised resin he’d closed the dictionary, unsure if he was disappointed or enthralled.

  ‘Margaret Thatcher is a powerful woman who hates feminists. Discuss,’ said Ms Featherstone. She smiled, delightedly. At him, it seemed.

  A few weeks earlier, Stevie’s older brother Mike had left for the Falklands. Stevie didn’t miss him much. Mike was noisy, always crunching on a bag of Monster Munch or swigging on a Coke, belching for real or making belching noises with his hand in his armpit. But there was a strange quietness to the house without him. It was a quietness that Stevie’s parents did their best to eradicate. Every evening since Mike’s departure, Stevie’s father would sit in his puffily upholstered armchair and read aloud from newspaper articles about the war. ‘I saw my missile hit the back of the enemy aircraft. It exploded as advertised. His plane was in flames . . .’ Above his thick hair, a ceramic screech owl flew across the chimney breast, claws stretched towards the geometric pattern on the carpet. After a few sentences, Stevie’s mother would silently remove herself to the kitchen, shut the door and turn on her cassette player. Then she danced. She had a fondness for full-skirted dresses, the like of which Stevie had seen nowhere else in town, and when Stevie watched her dance they seemed to fill the room with their colour and movement. Sometimes he joined her, and had to remember to grimace as she twirled him beneath her outstretched arm.