she loves her husband, he is fifteen years older, and she feels increasingly that she has grown old before her time. Her sophisticated clothes, her glamorous makeup, are all part of the uniform that’s required to fit in her husband’s wealthy, older world.
Richard made her feel young again. He made her feel carefree. They were the same age, and she had forgotten what it was like to feel forty. Had forgotten what it was like to laugh.
Richard had leaned his head back on the sofa and closed his eyes. He had forgotten his body could tingle like that, had forgotten what it felt like to have every nerve on fire.
“What are you thinking?” he said eventually, opening his eyes and looking at her.
“I’m thinking that you should kiss me,” she said, fighting the impulse to run her fingers through his thick blond hair, wanting to place her lips softly on his eyelids, trace the muscles in his back with her hands.
“Kiss you?” he said, as if in a daze.
“Yes,” she whispered.
And he did.
They didn’t leap into an affair. Not immediately. They met in clandestine hole-in-the-wall places, spending hours walking around parks, making out on benches for hours like teenagers. And that was exactly how they both felt: like teenagers. Falling in love for the first time.
Richard was so torn. He’d leave Nancy and go home to a woman and child he loved, a life he loved, and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t happy, why it couldn’t be enough. For when he was with Nancy he felt consumed with guilt, and when he was at home, all he could think about was Nancy.
Richard broke up with Nancy, determined to focus on his marriage, make it work, but he was so miserable, found life so unbearable without her, he went into her office after two weeks and told her he couldn’t live without her, and the affair resumed.
Five days later he broke up with her again. He choked up as he explained that he had fallen in love with her, but he couldn’t let the affair go on, he couldn’t do this. He was sorry, but it was over, he had to end it.
But he couldn’t stay away.
The first time they had sex, Richard couldn’t perform. The second time they had sex he had got hold of some Viagra, and it was spectacular.
But it was only three weeks before Daff found out. He knew she was in the area, had thought it would be okay, but there were a lot of things that he thought would be okay—lust had, in general, clouded his reasoning so much that he spent much of his day in a fog.
It was a normal Thursday morning for Daff, a morning spent running errands, making phone calls, until she ran out to do some shopping and made that fateful call to Richard’s offIce, then saw him in the restaurant with a woman.
“What did you do for lunch?” she asked him when he got home.
“Grabbed a sandwich at my desk,” he lied smoothly as he was flicking through his mail. “How about you?”
“I saw you,” she whispered, hoping he wouldn’t lie, hoping there would be a reasonable explanation.
“Saw me where?” His face was impassive, innocent.
“I saw you in a restaurant with a woman.”
“Oh, that!” He laughed. “That was just Nancy. I joined her for a coffee. She wanted to talk about a project.”
“That wasn’t a project,” Daff said. “I saw how you touched her.”
“God, Daff, don’t be so ridiculous. We chatted a bit about other stuff. She was upset about a row with her husband. What’s the big deal?”
"What’s the big deal? What’s the big deal? ” Daff was trying to keep her voice calm. “The big deal is you don’t stroke someone’s face like that to comfort them. You don’t look at someone the way I saw you look at . . . her . . . not unless there’s something going on.”
“You’re insane,” Richard said calmly. “Look, what will make you believe me? I swear, you’re the only woman I love. Jesus—” he switched tack, now raising his voice—“how can you even think that? What kind of woman are you?”
“I’m your wife,” Daff said slowly. “And I know you’re having an affair.”
There was a long silence, and then, like a balloon deflating, Richard’s energy disappeared and he admitted it.
He admitted that he had been friends with Nancy up until very recently, that he had realized she was attracted to him, and that the lunch when Daff