A Night on the Orient Express (16 page)

Then suddenly she realised with a bump that it was past six o’clock. She was filled with panic. The last train was at ten to seven. There was no chance of her getting back home, and even if she made the train by some miracle – perhaps if it was running late – she couldn’t arrive back three sheets to the wind. It would be totally out of character. She never usually got drunk, but for some reason that afternoon she had drunk whatever was given to her and the drink, as is its wont, had made her feel invincible and a little bit reckless.

She went into the tiny lavatory to contemplate her predicament. It was filthy, with a cracked sink and no soap or towel. She noticed too late that there was no paper either. The smell made her nauseous, although it was probably more likely to be the unaccustomed drinking and smoking mixed with panic that was turning her stomach.

She splashed cold water on her face to sober herself up. She sensed she would get no sympathy or sense from anyone in the club, least of all Jack. Nobody seemed to have any responsibility or conscience. She hadn’t seen one of them look at a clock or a watch all afternoon. They had nowhere to be, no one to answer to.

She leant with her back against the cloakroom door, trying to gather her thoughts and be logical. She decided she would either have to get a taxi cab all the way home to Shallowford, or, safer and far less suspicious, stay away for the night. She couldn’t face the thought of reeling in through the front door. It was far less incriminating for her to stay in London. She left the cloakroom, wormed her way through the crowds – the club was full to bursting by now – and went out into the dank evening to find a telephone box.

‘Shallowford 753,’ she told the operator.

‘Brenda has asked me,’ she told William when he answered, very carefully so as not to reveal her state, ‘to stay the night. She wants some help choosing wallpaper and things.’

‘Of course, darling,’ said William. ‘Send her my best, will you?’

‘Of course, darling,’ she echoed.

‘You sound strange.’

‘It’s a terrible line,’ she told him, and pressed her finger down to cut off the call.

She put the phone back on the hook. She rested her head on the cool of the glass, wondering what on earth had come over her. She needed to gather herself together, find a small hotel . . . she looked in her purse to see how much cash she had. Not much. It would have to be somewhere modest. Or perhaps she could borrow some money from Jack . . .

She couldn’t get back inside the green door. She knocked and knocked as Jack had done but no one could hear her. After ten minutes she began to panic. She felt a sense of outrage that Jack hadn’t come out to find her. Surely any gentleman would? Surely if he cared he would? She was about to turn on her heel and find a taxi – she would have to run inside and find the money when she got home – when the door burst open and the Irish girl stormed out, eyes blazing.

She stopped for a moment and looked at Adele.

‘You’re with Jack Molloy.’ It sounded like an accusation rather than a question.

Adele frowned, not sure if it was something she should admit or deny, but the evidence was against her. Her stomach turned over. Perhaps this girl was a friend of Jack’s wife? It seemed unlikely – Rosamund sounded like the most fragrant of women, and this girl was rather blowsy, in a too-tight pencil skirt and very high heels.

‘Yes,’ she answered, then added, ‘He’s advising me on business.’

She sounded defensive. And guilty.

The girl surveyed her, suspicious eyes flicking up and down. ‘He’s a monster. You do know that?’

Adele shook her head. She had very little idea about him at all.

‘He hasn’t a caring bone in his body. He doesn’t know how to give.’ She tossed her head in indignation. ‘Only take.’

‘Oh.’ This was all rather startling information.

For a moment the girl seemed to soften, and Adele saw something bordering on pity in her eyes. The girl touched her on the arm, her Kerry accent silky with concern.

‘Just be careful, darling, is all. Don’t expect anything from him and you won’t be disappointed. In fact, if I were you, I’d get away now, while you can.’

And she was gone, off down Dean Street before Adele could ask her any more. She had no idea if her warning came from first-hand experience or mere observation. She felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her. The girl’s parting shot had shown genuine concern. What had she meant? Was Jack some kind of con artist? Was he going to trick her into parting with money? Or something more sinister? Adele shivered in the cool of the evening air.

In retrospect, she should have gone and looked for a hotel then and there, but the door was still open and she felt she ought to say goodbye, at the very least. And anyway, the Irish girl had seemed a little unhinged. Perhaps Jack had rejected her advances once upon a time? She didn’t look like a girl who took kindly to rejection.

Adele stumbled down the stairs. She was starting to feel rather grim, in the way that you do when you’ve been drinking and you suddenly stop. The room seemed even darker and more crowded. The music was louder and the air was thick with smoke.

‘I thought you’d run out on me.’ There was a glitter in Jack’s eye that hadn’t been there at lunch, and Adele realised he was very drunk, more drunk than she was, though he was probably used to it. For a moment she panicked that he’d rather she had run out on him, that he didn’t want her here, that now he was amongst his bohemian friends she was cramping his style. And it made her realise how much she wanted his approval, to matter, and to belong.

Then he seemed to relent, holding out an arm and pulling her into him. He looked down at her, and bent to brush his lips on hers.

If he hadn’t done that, she might have found the sense to escape, but the whole world seemed to be in that kiss. She pulled herself into him, up against him, and he reached up a hand and tangled his fingers in her hair. No one took any notice.

Adele’s whole world turned upside down but, it seemed, theirs all stayed the same.

Jack took Adele back to his flat, which was only two streets away, above an Italian coffee bar. Juke-box music spilled out of the door, and a clutch of young men in leather jackets loitered on the pavement, smoking and laughing. They greeted Jack as he walked past them.

Adele was surprised how restrained the flat was. She’d expected chaos and flamboyance, but it was remarkably austere. The living room had sash windows dressed with long velvet curtains. The only furniture was a sofa that took up the whole of one wall, a very low table covered in art books and auction catalogues, and Jack’s campaign desk. Everything was very neat and organised; everything had its place.

‘It’s just somewhere to rest my head,’ he told her, ‘and to keep up with correspondence. I never bring clients here.’

What about women? she wondered, and he could see exactly what she was thinking because he laughed at her. The drink was wearing off and she was nervous, unsure of herself. What was she doing here, for heaven’s sake? Coming back to his flat would only mean one thing to a man like Jack, and she was far from succumbing.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I have to go . . .’

‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘The last train will have long gone and it’s too late to start ringing on people’s doorbells – they will only suspect the worst.’

‘I can find a hotel.’

She was in the West End, after all, and she was sure she could spin a yarn that would elicit sympathy rather than suspicion, as long as they didn’t smell the drink on her breath. She looked like a respectable woman.

And then he reached out a hand and ran his finger along her collarbone.

‘I want you,’ he told her.

She tipped her head back. She felt the lightest of caresses on her throat; his thumb touched the place where her pulse pounded.

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s wrong.’

‘Who will know?’

Everyone, she thought. Everyone who was in Simone’s this afternoon. She had seen the knowing glances as they left. She thought of the Irish girl and her warning. ‘Just be careful, darling, is all.’

Jack moved in closer. His cologne wrapped itself around her.

‘Unless they’re actually in this room, watching us, no one can know. It’s just supposition.’

He bent his head to kiss her neck. She felt iridescent, as if her skin was covered in shimmering scales. To her dismay, she let out a sound, something between a sigh and moan.

‘It’s what you want,’ he whispered.

‘I know . . .’

‘You’ll regret it if you don’t. You’ll always wonder . . .’

She knew he was manipulating her. She knew he understood women so well that he could home straight in on their weak spots, their innermost desires. She knew that to succumb would be foolish. But no one had ever made her feel like this before.

And then he stopped. Pulled away from her. Dropped his hands down by his sides.

‘I’m not going to force you into anything you don’t want to do.’

He walked over to a record player in the corner of the room. He picked up an LP, slid the black disc out of its cover.

A terrible feeling washed over her. A cold, desolate feeling.

She walked across the room and took the record out of his hands. She put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled his head forward to kiss him. And in that moment she felt her marriage vows break. Every word she had spoken on that day ten years ago, kneeling at the altar in white satin, meant nothing. She didn’t think of William, lying in their bed in Shallowford, or her boys, slumbering sweetly in their dormitory, and what her treachery might mean to them.

She thought only of herself.

When she woke early the next morning she was shivering, although it was warm in the room and she had been sufficiently covered by a pink silk eiderdown. She thought perhaps she was in shock, her body and mind traumatised by what she had done. The light creeping through the curtains told her it was a new day, the first day of her life as an adulteress. She felt sick, with fear and guilt and the surfeit of drink: its protective shield had worn off, leaving her vulnerable and exposed.

She looked at the sleeping body next to her and wondered how she could have risked everything so wilfully. Her marriage, her integrity, her sanity. Apart from anything, she knew nothing about this man except what he had chosen to tell her. She had no proof at all that what he claimed was true. For all she knew the flat wasn’t even his. He could be a madman . . . a murderer. Perhaps he preyed on women like her, reeling them in with his undeniable charm, then blackmailing them? She imagined the eyes that she had found so bewitching turning hard as he asked her for money before she left, money to keep his silence. Blackmailing the respectable doctor’s wife. How easy . . .

She scrabbled out from under the sheets, running to the bathroom, locking the door, putting her hands to her head and twisting her hair with anxiety as she looked in the mirror at the idiotic woman she now knew herself to be. Weak, shallow, vain, self-absorbed. Her forehead was peppered with perspiration; her skin looked greasy and sallow. There were black rings under her eyes. Not such an attractive proposition this morning, Mrs Russell, she thought, as the heat of panic danced over her.

She washed herself as quietly as she could, rubbing toothpaste on her teeth with her finger. She didn’t flush the lavatory. She didn’t want to wake Jack. She crept back into the bedroom and found her clothes. He was still in a deep sleep as she got dressed and found her shoes and handbag. Compared to the bandbox-fresh woman who had arrived at the Savoy yesterday lunchtime, she was in a sorry state. Her clothes were crumpled, her stockings snagged. She had no scent to spray on – it was in her everyday handbag. She hadn’t expected to need it.

She wondered if Jack was pretending to sleep to avoid an awkward farewell. She didn’t care. She tiptoed out of the flat and down the stairs with her shoes in her hand. She opened the front door and stepped out into the street. The cold hit her, bit her. Cold always felt colder when you were tired. The café was closed up, shutters over the windows. A milk float rattled past, reminding her of how thirsty she was. She thought about stopping it, but she wanted to get away as quickly as she could.

A woman walked past and looked her up and down with distaste. She supposed she looked exactly like what she was: a fallen woman leaving her lover’s lair. Never in her life had she felt so grubby or filled with self-loathing. She limped to Shaftesbury Avenue, raised her hand and called the first taxi she could find.

The journey home was endless.

She asked the taxi driver to stop at Fenwick’s in Bond Street. It was full of normal, happy women who didn’t feel guilty, women treating themselves to a new lipstick, or buying an outfit for a special occasion. Adele bought a pair of stockings to replace the ones that had been torn the night before, and changed them in the Ladies’. She put the old pair in the bin, filled with shame at her attempt to cover up the evidence of her wrongdoing. Then she went back into the shop and randomly picked a pair of gloves, a hairbrush and a pot of cold cream. She needed none of them and could have bought them all in Filbury, but she couldn’t think beyond the fact that she needed some proof of normality, if only to prove it to herself, and some form of alibi. Some meagre evidence to prove her activities had been only too innocent over the past twenty-four hours.

On the train, she sat with her handbag and her shopping on her lap, her head pressed against the window, her eyes burning with fatigue. Her body felt bruised. She couldn’t think about why.

She was back by midday. William, thank goodness, wasn’t lunching at home. She only had Mrs Morris to face and by one o’clock she had gone. She couldn’t bear the thought of food, even though Mrs M had left her out some cold ham and a bowl of garden salad.