gamut of a bad cold or the flu without him being aware, but when he caught it, whining about who had passed it on at the office, he moaned in bed for at least three days. When they both had colds she had to deny hers because two people could no more have one at the same time than they could complain of a common misfortune – and he’d never noticed.
The issue stopped her getting to sleep, when up to now she had fallen off the ledge and felt nothing till morning. Whoever robbed her of slumber was guilty of murdering her dreams. Her language lapsed again, something else to destroy him for: I’ll fucking kill ’er. I’ve had the sort of upbringing where I would never let anybody put one over on me. I’ve been spoiled by having it that easy, spoiled even rottener than him with his pampering, which is something he’ll never understand.
Changing position didn’t help. His snoring, as always after he had swined and dined, was like a lawnmower going over rocky ground, but she was bothered more than before because he had set on a stoat to eat up her brain. The shit-nosed little animal was halfway through the front lobes and getting on very well towards the back, thank you very much, but soon there would be nothing left so it would turn round and start again at the front, hoping a few scraps remained from the first time through. The more it stoated back and forth the more determined she was to clock Tom and his moll who had let it loose. First of all – getting out of bed – I’ll go through his things and find out just who that bitch Diana is, because she’s not going to be like herself much longer.
Diana often swore she would never have an affair with a married man, not realising till too late that whoever said never would sooner or later be inveigled into doing whatever they’d said they would never do never about. In the first place, the hole and corner complications would drive her spare, and in the second, if the other woman found out, she might be miserable, which Diana was too humane, or too loyal to her own sex, to gloat over. In the third place she didn’t want to get close enough to another woman to the extent of sharing her through her husband.
And now here was Tom phoning to say that his wife had pulled the big whistle from her bloomers and blown it long and loud after their time in Rome. He wouldn’t be seeing her for a while, he said, though there was nothing he wanted more in the world. He could be lying, of course, because what more appropriate time was there to end an affair than after a wonderful few days on the Mainland? His tone was so adoring that she had to believe his spiel, though her faith in his abilities went down a notch or two at his wife finding out. Had he done it deliberately? Shit-headed Norman Bakewell said that people only let their opposite know of their entanglements when they wanted a bit more excitement; and that sort she could well live without.
She opened a half-bottle of Beaujolais and threw the cork in the bin. Such a sexy weekend made her want to see him next day, tonight, this minute, instead of waiting the fortnight he implied she might have to. She tore off the plastic and put a steak under the grill. His pleading tone was something new. He was afraid of his wife. It was worth a laugh, because most men were. A programme arranged in Sheffield would keep her away for a week, and if her craving didn’t diminish she would see who might be possible among the camera crew. Tom was sleeping with his wife, so she had a right to a diversion as well.
The first message on the ansaphone was from who else? ‘All I know is I’m in love with you,’ he said, and it felt as if a hand were already reaching across her breasts, ‘totally, passionately, irreversibly. Can I see you on Wednesday evening?’
‘You certainly can,’ she said, phoning his office.
Then came six calls from the same heavy breathing person who, not finding her home, wouldn’t commit a voice to tape, but was trying to get her with eerie persistence. Well, you got all sorts in the world, meaning London, so it wasn’t worth thinking about. After the usual hellos from parents and friends she went to the twenty-four-hour shop and stocked up the larder. Supper done, she would stand with brush and palette in the spare room, finishing her notion of a female nude.
Instead of his usual month at a time Tom came every few days, as if the new situation fired his libido. Diana kept the interpretation to herself, but was glad at his visits, couldn’t have enough of them, because a higher intensity came into their affair for her as well. Some evenings the phone sounded several times while they were in the bedroom, most of the callers – or caller, she was sure – did not go on to talk.
‘Someone’s phoning me,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know who.’
He sloped in the best armchair, blowing rings from his long thin cigar. ‘Probably wrong number.’
‘It happens too often.’
‘Any theories?’ He sounded uninterested.
She had picked up the phone once and, expecting a call about work, had stupidly given her name. ‘No, have you?’
‘Could be an old boyfriend trying to get in touch.’
‘I never went with slobs like that.’
‘People do funny things,’ he said.
‘They say them, as well.’
Ash showered onto her carpet. ‘It won’t do any harm. Could be Angela, I suppose.’
‘I wondered that.’
‘Hard to find out without giving us away. I told her we weren’t seeing each other anymore.’
‘Was that wise?’
‘It was easy. You don’t know Angela,’ he said, at the contempt on her lips. ‘Oh, hell, I wonder how she got the number?’
He sounded petulant, but who wouldn’t? ‘You should know.’ ‘I don’t, though.’
‘Anyway,’ Diana said, ‘as long as she doesn’t find out where I live.’
At the back of his address book was a seven-group, unlike any other, and she altered each digit a number ahead. Didn’t make sense. Changing them for the one behind produced a recognisable London number which, when dialled, got this posh trollop on the ansaphone. Naturally, she gave no name, but it must have been her.
She had to laugh at how simple it was. He was piss poor at making codes, and that was a fact. In another part of the book Diana’s address was made plain by similar deciphering.
He had promised, oh so easily, but she knew he wouldn’t stop seeing his Diana because if she had been in love no one would have spoiled her affair, certainly not him. In one way she couldn’t care less whether they broke it up or not, because if it weren’t the whore Diana he would be having somebody else.
She would never trust or love him again, but fired herself to do the job nevertheless, because without much thought he had kicked her so brutally in the guts that the pain still brought tears and such a bumping of the heart that she wanted to vomit. It hadn’t been exciting enough for him to just have the woman but he had to plant the tape recorder where she was bound to play it back.
He came home, and Angela wasn’t there. She so habitually was that the fact worried him. He sat in the kitchen eating bread and salami, a glass of red by his elbow. Diana had been too upset to feed him. And at the office he’d had Norman Bakewell haranguing him in the most obscene language about the jacket of his next paperback. Angela came in with an expression of satisfying superiority, and a shine of dislike for him in her eyes. The curve to her lips
