Даниэла Стил - The Affair

Chapter 2

Nicolas came home for dinner on Friday night, as he still did several times a week, to be with his children and see his wife. He didn’t always spend the night, and slipped away after the girls were asleep so they didn’t know that he had left. They thought he had left for work early the next morning. He still spent some nights at home, though not many, because he wanted to keep up appearances for his daughters as much as possible. And he wanted to see Nadia too. Absurdly, he didn’t want to lose her, despite what he was doing and the way he was behaving. He was loving and kind to Nadia and the girls when he came home, which somehow made the situation even more painful for Nadia.

She was willing to cooperate for the girls’ sake, at least for a while. He had always been a devoted father and adored his daughters. He had been a good husband too, with the one brief exception eight years before, and nothing untoward since. He and Nadia had a solid, loving relationship, or so she thought, until very recently, when she discovered his affair with Pascale Solon.

Since he’d been on location for part of the shooting of the fateful film that had destroyed their marriage, she had been unaware of his spending his off hours, or nights, with Pascale. He had been managing it carefully once they got back to Paris. Nadia had suspected nothing. It had all exploded at the Cannes Film Festival, when he had been openly amorous with Pascale. He told Nadia it was as though he had forgotten who he was for those few days, and the press jumped on it immediately. He confessed everything to Nadia after Pascale told him, while they were there, that she was having his baby. He had lost his mind for a few days. For months before that, he had been excited, and terrified to be discovered. He thought he was in love with her and said he was flattered that a girl so young and beautiful would want him. He had thought it was a passionate interlude that would only last while they were making the movie, and Nadia would never know. He never wanted to hurt her and told her he had had no intention of ever doing anything like it again, with Pascale or anyone else, and he didn’t want to risk his marriage. He had wanted to end the affair when the filming of the movie ended.

He knew that Pascale had a habit of becoming involved with whomever she was working with, which was not unusual among actors and producers or directors. And he assumed she would want to end it too. There was an otherworldly kind of atmosphere on a movie set, and then you came back to earth and went back to your own life. He had tried to do that with Pascale, and had counted on Nadia never finding out, and leaving the affair behind him on the movie set. And then Pascale had begged him to see her again, once they got home to Paris. He had, and discovered that their physical passion became addictive. He knew he had to stop, and wanted to, but discovered he couldn’t. She wouldn’t let him. Pascale appeared so lost and vulnerable, suddenly cast into the pressure and demands of major stardom, it made him want to protect and take care of her, just until she got on her feet.

She had been so overwhelmed and terrified at the Cannes Festival, it had been endearing, and he believed he was in love with her. Then she told him about the baby, and he realized that they had created a new life together, which touched him profoundly, as it had when he and Nadia first conceived their babies. It made his bond to Pascale suddenly real. It was almost as though he forgot he had another life, and a wife and children. All he could think of was this delicate, gentle young woman, and the child that would be theirs forever. Her beauty wasn’t what drew him to her. He thought Nadia just as beautiful, which he told her, though she didn’t believe him. But the new life growing inside Pascale now had made him suddenly willing to risk everything so he could be with her and protect her, at least until the baby came.

And then after the Festival, he woke up when he got home. Within days, he knew the terrible mistake he had made having the affair, letting it show in Cannes, admitting to the affair publicly, and telling Pascale that he loved her when she told him about the baby. It was almost like being in a movie, only it was real. Now everything and everyone he loved was on the line. He was faced with the consequences of his actions. He told Nadia honestly everything that had happened, even that the affair had gone on for months, all during the filming of the movie. Hearing it was like a dagger being plunged into Nadia’s heart, particularly for a woman who was so honest and pure and faithful. Her quiet dignity as she listened made it even worse.

In the beginning, he hadn’t faced what his passion and elation could cost him later, and now he was trying to hold the torn shreds of his marriage together, and not lose Nadia, while trying to work things out with Pascale in some reasonable way. He had a responsibility to her too now, which he didn’t want to shirk. He had never tried to dodge his obligations, and never wanted to fall short with the people he loved and who counted on him. Even now, he wanted to continue to be a husband to Nadia, but she said she just couldn’t do that, not after being publicly humiliated for the past month and especially now that he was having a baby with another woman. His clandestine indiscretion while making the movie would have repercussions for the rest of their lives, whatever they did. Nadia had told him that Pascale’s pregnancy was the final blow to their marriage. It devastated him to hear it, and know it was true. He was going to lose everyone and everything he loved most. And he knew he deserved it.

He had told Nadia that Pascale wasn’t asking to marry him. She felt she was much too young for marriage, but absurdly, not for a child. She said she had wanted a baby for the past two years, and she couldn’t think of a better father than Nicolas, and she fully expected their affair to peter out eventually. She didn’t expect or even want a long-term future with him, and he had risked his family and marriage for her and a moment of passion. He had allowed himself to be lulled into not worrying about her getting pregnant and gotten careless. Now, until after the baby was born and the affair ended naturally, Pascale wanted him to leave Nadia and live with her. At twenty-two, and given her casual, unorthodox, modern philosophies about life, she wasn’t a long-term prospect for him, and he wondered if she understood the forever responsibility of having a child. It wouldn’t be a baby she could cuddle forever like a doll, it would be a child, a person, with illnesses and problems, needs. It would have to have an education, and would become a troublesome teenager one day. She was only thinking of the present moment, and he had been unable to convince her what the future would look like. She was in no way prepared for what she had undertaken, and she assumed that he would be the responsible party, while she would be there to have fun with the baby, which he knew wasn’t how it worked.

She had grown up haphazardly herself. She had never known her father, or even who he was, had a mother who came and went after having her at sixteen, and a grandmother who had raised her and died when Pascale was seventeen. She’d been on her own ever since. And she assumed that any child would survive since she had.

Nicolas was willing to hold up his end with the baby since he had conceived the child with her, and he loved her to some degree, and Pascale insisted on having it. But he knew he would never love Pascale as he did Nadia. Pascale was ephemeral. Most of her charm and appeal were in how fey and childlike she was, but he couldn’t imagine her taking on the role of mother. Pascale didn’t pretend that she was going to love and stay with him forever. She had spoken to her mother, who had agreed to raise the child, since she was older now, and that way Pascale would be free to pursue her career and her life, meet other men, have other children, and do whatever she wanted. Pascale was a free spirit.