The Affair
Page 30
It could have been minutes or hours, but suddenly she realized the room had gone very still. Devan was pulling her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry, Connie,’ he said softly.
She stared up at him, clocking his expression. Gasping, she dragged herself away. Looking over to where Jared lay, she jolted. His body was in shadow, his face, previously so full of pain and distress as he begged her to stay with him, now pale and motionless, his turquoise eyes closed. NO …
Connie watched as Devan carefully picked up the bigger pieces of glass from the kitchen floor and swept the rest into a dustpan, tipping the contents into a cardboard box. Then she waited in numb silence, her sore ankle raised on a chair, as he followed the trail of splinters trampled through the house by the police and paramedics with the vacuum cleaner. She was still wearing her coat because it was ice cold in the house, although she’d replaced her damp clothes with pyjamas. The noise of the vacuum, in her sensitive state, sounded brutal and deafening.
When he’d finished clearing up, Devan held out a dusty bottle he’d found at the back of the cupboard. ‘I’ve had enough tea for one night.’
The police had stayed after the ambulance, with Jared’s body, drove off into the rainy darkness. Stacy took charge and made tea – which was fortunate, because both Connie and Devan were incapable.
Sergeant Youngs listened as Devan attempted to fill her in. But his sentences were jumbled with tiredness, scarcely coherent. Connie said nothing. She was beyond speech, beyond any feeling at all.
When Devan had finished the garbled tale, the policewoman was mercifully pragmatic. ‘Listen, sir,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you both come down to the station in the morning and we can take a proper statement? You’ll be in shock, after all you’ve just been through. You need to get those wet clothes off, have some rest.’ She’d paused, eyeing them both closely. ‘Do you want someone to stay with you tonight?’ She glanced across at her colleague, who nodded. ‘That kitchen door’s not secure …’
‘No, thank you. We’ll be fine,’ Devan had said firmly, and Connie had breathed a sigh of relief.
Now she nodded. ‘Brandy would be good.’
‘We can take it up to bed. It’s nithering down here,’ Devan added.
Connie thought of the bedroom and what had recently gone on there. She trembled, her spine prickling, the hairs rising on the back of her neck, as if Jared himself had walked over her grave. ‘Caty’s room?’
The spare bed was chilly, too, but they kept their coats on and pulled the covers round them as they sat propped against the rattan headboard, their hands clasping the tumblers containing the brandy, which burned a warming path into Connie’s system.
A shattered silence filled the room. It was gone five in the morning. Dawn wouldn’t be for a couple of hours yet, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep.
‘This is all my fault,’ she said.
Devan squeezed her hand. ‘No, Connie. Jared took his own life. It was his choice.’
‘But I encouraged him. I let him think …’
Devan gave a weary sigh. ‘He was ill. You couldn’t have stopped him. If it wasn’t tonight, it would have been some other time.’
Silence fell.
‘Would you really have left him to die?’ she asked quietly, staring straight ahead.
Devan didn’t immediately reply. Then he said, ‘He made our lives hell, Connie.’
‘So, if I hadn’t been there, you wouldn’t have tried to save him?’
‘Of course I would have. I did,’ he said, without hesitation this time. ‘I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t.’
Connie let out a long breath.
‘I did my very best. I hope you believe me. His breathing deteriorated so rapidly … There was nothing anyone could do. He must have taken a narcotic of some sort, maybe Tramadol … They’ll find out.’
She turned to him. ‘I do believe you.’ She felt tears pressing behind her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Devan, for everything I’ve put you through,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry too, Con,’ he replied, pulling her gently into his arms.
‘Poor Jared.’ Her tears turned into sobs as she thought of his body, lying motionless on the bedroom carpet. She remembered Dinah Worthington, and the love she clearly felt for her godson. ‘Dinah’s my only family,’ Jared had said. If I’d called her, told her what Jared was up to, would it have made any difference? The idea had crossed her mind after Jared’s Christmas Eve visit. But Dinah was over eighty, and Connie hadn’t wanted to upset an old lady over something she could doubtless do nothing about.
A while later, as she began to sink into a twitchy but exhausted doze, Connie was aware of Devan clearing his throat. His voice was quietly serious as he began to speak. ‘I haven’t said this before, Connie, because I’ve been so bloody angry with you recently,’ he said, ‘but it’s always been there for me. It’s like a solid layer underpinning the crap on both sides.’ He took a breath and she looked up at him in the half-light from the bedside lamp. His mouth was twisting, eyes blurring with tears. ‘You … our marriage … You and me … It’s the absolute … absolute bedrock of my life. The family is important, work is important, but at the centre of everything is the love I feel for you.’ He blinked, biting his lip, obviously trying to control his tears.
She couldn’t speak.
He gave a wan smile as he went on, ‘We’ve been so lucky. Most couples don’t survive what we’ve just been through. But we will survive, won’t we?’ He looked at her beseechingly, his blue eyes still bruised by the anguish of the recent past. ‘Because I really, truly love you, Connie.’
Connie took a breath. ‘We’re very lucky. And we will survive. Knowing I might have lost you was a living hell,’ she told him, laying her head on his chest. Devan’s love for her was tangible, not just in the powerful tenderness of his words but in the strength of his arms, the touch of his cheek to her hair. She felt it vibrate through her body as she breathed her love for him into the warm hollow of his neck. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered into the silent room.
Acknowledgements
As usual, Michael Joseph have provided me with the most excellent support in writing this book. Thank you, Maxine Hitchcock, Clare Bowron and Hazel Orme. Also, Laura Nicol, Rebecca Hilsdon, Emma Henderson, Helena Fouracre, Catherine Le Lievre and Zana Chaka.
Also, thank you Curtis Brown, my wonderful agent Jonathan Lloyd, and Lucy Morris.
For research into being a tour manager, I could not have written this book without the invaluable help of my dear friend Suzie Ladbrooke.
Thanks go to Eddie Mair, the ex-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s PM, for his extended set of interviews with a victim of stalking. It was this which gave me the idea for The Affair.
And thank you to my family, of course.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published by Penguin Books in 2021
Copyright © Hilary Boyd, 2021
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ISBN: 978-1-405-94391-8
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