Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

When their taxi dropped them outside the Crowne Plaza in the Place de la République, darkness had fallen, and the nightly gathering of police trucks and vans was already lining itself up along the pavement. Armed officers in flak jackets stood around in groups cradling automatic weapons and drawing on cigarettes. You could smell the smoke in the cool of the night, and sense the conflicting emotions of boredom and fear that stalked them, like the ghosts of both the terrorists and their victims whose blood had stained the streets all around this quartier . You just never knew when something might happen. The reality, these days, of life in the City of Light.

They took the lift to the second floor in silence. Niamh stole a glance at her man, but he was somewhere else. Somewhere, it seemed, that she was no longer welcome. He appeared older, suddenly, than his forty-two years. Short dark curls greying around the temples, shadows beneath blue eyes that had spent much of their time avoiding hers these last weeks. And she ached with a sense of loss. What had happened to them? A lifetime of love, ten years of marriage, evaporating before her eyes like rain on hot tarmac. It didn’t seem possible. Any of it. And it made her all the more determined to guard the secret she had been keeping from him.

As he held the door of their club room open for her she saw the slim package in its brown paper wrapping lying on the dressing table where she had left it. She hurried across the room and slipped it into her bag before he could see it and ask what it was. ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ he said, and he threw his jacket on the bed and went straight into the bathroom.

She heard the water running, and it only emphasized the silence in the room and her sense of loneliness. So she turned on the TV, just to create the illusion of life. Of normality. And walked to the window to gaze down into the courtyard below. Guests sat around tables beneath large, square parasols, eating and drinking, their chatter animated, laughter reaching her on the gentle night air, as if in rebuke for her unhappiness.

She didn’t turn when Ruairidh came out, wrapped in a towelling robe, and she heard him rummaging in his case for a clean top and underwear. Then he was in the bathroom again, and she heard the spray of his deodorant and the slap of palms on cheeks applying aftershave. This time, when he emerged, she smelled him. When finally she turned, he was pulling on a black polo shirt and running his fingers back through still damp hair. ‘Making yourself beautiful for your girlfriend?’ She couldn’t help herself.

He stopped, with his hands still raised. The frown again. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Irina.’

‘What?’ His incredulity was almost convincing.

‘Oh, come on, Ruairidh. Irina Vetrov. You’ve been having an affair with her ever since you came to Paris last spring to seal that deal to provide Ranish for her next collection.’

He almost laughed. But there was something not wholly convincing about it. ‘Irina Vetrov? You think I’m having an affair with her?’

Niamh knew that people often repeated an accusation to play for time, to compose a response. But she didn’t want to hear it. Instead, she walked briskly across the room to the wardrobe, throwing open the door and crouching to unlock the safe. She really hadn’t meant to confront him, but somehow there was no avoiding it any longer. She took out her iPad and flicked open the cover. A four-digit code brought up the welcome screen, and a couple of swipes opened her mailer. She stabbed a finger at the screen and held it out towards him.

He took a step towards her, consternation now in his eyes, and took the iPad, glancing down at the screen. She knew what he was reading. Words engraved in her memory. Read, and reread, and read again. Your husband is having an affair with Irina Vetrov. Ask him about it. She watched closely for his reaction. He looked up. His frown had become a scowl.

‘Jesus Christ, what the hell’s this?’

‘Self-explanatory, I think.’ Her certainty already wavering.

He lowered his eyes to the screen again, and read, ‘a.well.wisher.xx@gmail.com?’ Then raised them to meet hers. ‘Who the fuck is that?’

‘You tell me.’ Which immediately struck her as a stupid thing to say, since he clearly didn’t know. He threw her iPad dismissively on to the bed.

‘It’s crap, Niamh. Just not true. I can’t believe you think it is.’

‘Well, what am I supposed to think? You’ve been so secretive recently. Meetings and rendezvous without me. The little wife left to keep shop.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘Do you deny it?’ She could hear herself getting shrill.

‘That I’m having an affair with Irina?’

‘Yes!’

‘I think I just did.’

‘So why would someone write and tell me you were?’

‘I think you’d have to ask them that, but I haven’t got the first idea.’ He seemed genuinely hurt. A glance at his watch and he said, ‘I have to go.’

‘Where?’ She turned, catching his arm as he walked past her. He pulled it free.

‘I told you.’

‘YSL?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

He stared at her long and hard. ‘They say that when trust is gone, love is dead. Don’t wait up.’

He slammed the door behind him and she stood, a cauldron of mixed emotions bubbling inside her. Now she felt guilty. As if it were her fault. As if the lack of trust she had just so clearly demonstrated was without cause. But it was justified, wasn’t it? The way things had changed between them recently. His strange, guilty behaviour.

The email.

She perched on the edge of the bed resisting the urge to weep. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. Then realized he would never know if she did. But she would. And she was determined not to.

To her left the screen of her iPad, still lying on the bed, had dimmed a little, but the words of the email remained clear and legible. Your husband is having an affair with Irina Vetrov. Ask him about it. Well, she just had, and all it had brought was pain and confusion. Don’t wait up , he had said. But how could he even imagine she could go to bed with everything that had just happened between them left unresolved?

She sat for what felt like hours, but was probably only minutes, before she got up and wandered to the window. People were still eating and drinking and laughing down there. How she wished she were one of them. That things could just be back to how they were before. They had been through so much together, she and Ruairidh, and always come out the other side of it stronger. Or so she had thought.

She stiffened and felt the skin stinging across her scalp. Ruairidh had just emerged from the bar into the courtyard below, a glass of beer in his hand. He sat at an empty table and placed his beer on it, untouched. She watched as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, before dropping his head briefly into his hands. When he raised it again, he sat back folding his arms and stretched his legs out, gazing at the fizzing amber liquid in his glass. But he made no attempt to drink it.

Niamh watched for a long time, aching inside. So many moments of magic, and madness, between them. So many memories. She was tempted to go down and join him. To say sorry for doubting him. To ask him what it was that had gone wrong and how they could put it right.

And then Irina stepped from the bar. Niamh saw her look around before spotting Ruairidh and walking towards him. She was shorter than Niamh, willow-thin, with long chestnut hair cut in a straight fringe that hung in a curtain over her eyes. Almond eyes, almost slanted. So dark they seemed to soak up all the light. Everything about her was feminine. The way she walked, the way she held her hands, so elegant with their long, slim fingers. The seductive, slightly hoarse quality of her voice. Niamh had only met her once, but she had made Niamh feel big and clumsy, which by any normal standards she was not. Tall, yes. Nearly five-eight, but certainly not overweight. Her long, slender legs had been the envy of all her friends at the Nicolson. And her thick-cut, shoulder-length wavy blonde hair gave her the air of a thirty-year-old, rather than the forty she had just turned this year. Still, she had felt oversized next to the petite Irina, and watched her now with a growing jealousy.