Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

‘That’s why I didn’t phone you, I never intended to contact you again after that first night,’ he explained. ‘Really I didn’t. And when I confronted you outside that pub I had utterly convinced myself that I was just there to give you a piece of my mind about that fucking awful story.’

He smiled, softening his next words. ‘I still think the O’Donnell buy-up was a fucking disgrace, by the way.’

She had not bothered to reply. They both knew that everything in their lives, even including, for once, their respective careers, paled into insignificance compared with the desperate urgency of their love affair.

‘Then, when I saw you, legs up to your armpits, hair down to your waist, knowing how sexy you are, knowing what you’re like there...’ He placed his hand over her crotch. Quite lightly. But just the heat of his touch was enough to send her wild again. ‘I just couldn’t keep my hands off you,’ he continued, moving his fingers as if to prove the point.

‘Thank God,’ she breathed huskily, reaching out for him.

Each time the sex seemed to get better and better. Joanna wondered how long that could go on for. She had never experienced orgasms like this before and yet somehow the more she had of Fielding the more she wanted him. She never seemed to be satisfied. And even when neither of them was capable of any more sexual activity she needed to be close to him, to be touching him all the time, almost as if continually to make sure he was still there.

Her feelings for him grew day by day during that stolen fortnight. But she was confused by them. In many ways he was just the sort of man she didn’t like, yet her desire for him knew no bounds. And, in any case, there were so many different sides to him.

One night he confounded her. After making love to her he rolled off her on to his back, then reached out again with one hand and touched her mouth lightly. ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you,’ he told her quietly.

Stupidly, perhaps, she thought at first he was just teasing her. Fielding did not fall in love with the women in his life. He bedded them and, when he tired of them, left them and went home to his wife. She knew that well enough and she had always believed that it was madness to get involved with him. She felt vulnerable with him and she didn’t like that.

She decided to play him at him own game. ‘That’s what you say to all the girls, I know your reputation, after all,’ she said lightly.

He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Sleeping around and being with you are two different things, you silly cow,’ he told her affectionately and kissed her on the end of her nose. God, he was a patronising, arrogant, sexist sod, she thought. Why did he have this extraordinary hold over her? ‘That was then. This is now. I want to be with you all the time,’ he continued.

‘You have a wife and children, Mike. I know your kind. I write about them every day. You always go back to your families.’ She didn’t like be taken for a fool and she still had a suspicion that was what he was doing.

His voice hardened. ‘What do you mean, you know my kind? You quite obviously don’t know anything about me. Do you really think I’m just fooling around with you? Do you think what we have is commonplace? Do you honestly think it could be like this between us if that were true? Do you?’

She shook her head lamely. She supposed he was right. How could it?

‘Of course it couldn’t be,’ he continued more gently, not waiting for her to think of anything to say. ‘I’ve never known anything like this before, never. Look, I’ve been thinking — I’m going to try for a transfer to the Met.’

‘What?’ She had really never expected anything like this from him.

‘I mean it, Jo. I can’t stay with Ruth any more. I’d be living a lie now I’ve found this with you. I’m going to tell her when I get home. And that’ll be the end of it.’

He didn’t leave his wife, of course. Although for a time Joanna really believed that he meant to. Their affair very quickly came to mean everything to her. And she had no reason to doubt that it was the same for him. The frequency with which he managed to manoeuvre time to be with her in London astonished her.

‘When all you think about in life is one thing and how you can achieve it, it’s surprising how much you succeed,’ he told her, grinning. And she knew he was speaking the truth, because that was how it was for her, too.

It was as if every minute that she was not with him was a waste of time. She knew her mind was not on her job in the way that it had always been before, and wondered just how much that was being noticed in the office and at the Yard. She and Chris were living more or less separate lives and had discussed divorce. But for almost three months after the trial and the start of her affair with Fielding they continued to share a home, at least most of the time, and she still went through the motions of giving plausible work-related reasons for her prolonged absences. Habit again. But also she was trying to keep it as civilised as possible. And she successfully kept the affair from her husband — until the anonymous caller decided to start a new campaign.

It was towards the end of July when Chris received a call, telling him, in graphic detail, all about it. Joanna was allegedly away on a story. Again. Actually she was with Fielding. The timing of the phone call was impeccable. The detailed knowledge impressive. But then it would be. You can never keep anything secret from a load of hacks. She had no doubt it was one of her colleagues who was being so malicious and still believed it to be almost certainly Manners.

‘They’re with each other right now, did you know that? They can’t keep their hands off each other. He’s even fucked her in his office...’

Not true but near enough.

Chris repeated the entire conversation to her on her return home. He appeared to be more upset than she would have expected. After all their marriage had deteriorated to the point of being virtually non-existent.

‘Just tell me the truth, Joanna,’ he said. At first he didn’t show his anger, really. He didn’t yell at her and he just looked sad.

She had no intention of lying to him. Not any more. Chris deserved better, she thought, and in any case her affair with Fielding was too important to lie about. ‘It’s all true, more or less,’ she told him quietly. ‘Not some of the details, thank God, but we are having an affair. I’m in love with him and he with me.’

Once she had made the admission her husband’s attitude changed completely. Maybe it was just wounded pride, maybe he really was deeply hurt. She didn’t know. But he totally lost his temper. ‘Please, spare me the sentimental self-delusion,’ he shouted at her. ‘For God’s sake, the man treats you like a slag. He’s fucked you in his office, in the middle of a police station. Did the other pigs join in, or did they just watch? Over his desk was it, or on the floor doggie fashion? Give him blow jobs in taxi cabs, do you?...’

‘Don’t do this, please, Chris,’ she interrupted him, resisting the urge to tell him that sex in the office was one of the details the bastard caller had got wrong — even if only just.

She reached a hand out to him. He knocked it away. It hadn’t really occurred to her that her husband would be this angry, or, indeed, as wounded as he patently was. Not any more. She thought they had gone beyond that. And she cursed herself for not telling him about the affair before he had to learn of it in the dreadful way that he had. She had meant to. It was just that she’d always had a way of putting off unpleasantness and she had hoped eventually to extricate herself from her marriage in as dignified a manner as possible before Chris needed to know.