The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,22
rights here, I knew that. I was an anonymous nobody. If I was in pieces with grief, deep in mourning, I had to keep it to myself. I wasn’t his widow. But this Ralph, this loving father and devoted husband, this wasn’t the Ralph I’d loved.
Seventeen
The day I finally decided to say yes to Ralph and go out for a drink with him, I chose my clothes with care. At the end of the school day, I went to the staff toilets to re-apply my make-up in secret and spray my mouth with minty freshener.
Olivia, all long legs, glanced up at me as I walked into the writing meeting and found a place along the desks and – did I imagine it or did something in her face change? I felt suddenly hot as I sat down. The fat girl at school plastering on lipstick at the school disco and thinking the jock would suddenly notice her. Maybe he was playing with me, that was all. A bet, even. A private joke.
Then he walked in, his leather briefcase spilling papers, and his eyes scanned the room, then found mine and settled there and he smiled and I was beautiful again, shy and happy and glowing like a teenager and who cared what anyone else thought, let them, he was here and it was all to come.
That evening, he hung back as the others gathered up their jackets and coats and headed off to the Half Moon.
He batted them off. ‘Maybe see you there.’
I hung back too. I knew. My whole body was primed and stiff with knowing.
He waited until the corridor was empty, then turned to me, his eyes searching.
‘Let’s go for a drink,’ he said. ‘Somewhere quiet.’
I went to find my car and drove up the hill to the turn-off for the Upper School buildings. He’d parked on the far side of the road there, waiting for me. He indicated and carefully pulled out in front as he saw me approach.
We drove in convoy through the suburbs and into the countryside. It was grizzly weather, already dark with the onset of winter and cold. When I turned, following him off the road into a shadowy, almost deserted pub car park, I sat for a moment, staring over the top of the steering wheel into the blackness.
What am I doing? A foolish question when I already knew.
He appeared at the side-window, physical and real, and drew me out of the car, walked me through the chill with my hand tucked into the crook of his arm, as if we were already an old married couple, and into the warm. It was midweek. He led me into the quiet snug and settled me into a table there.
‘Let me guess.’ He waved his hands about and pretended to be a stage magician reading my mind. ‘Madam’s tipple is, methinks… port and lemonade?’
I laughed. ‘Not even close.’
‘Guinness.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Really?’
He disappeared and came back with two glasses of Shiraz. His signature wine, I soon learned.
‘I’d get a bottle, but not tonight.’ He nodded through the window at the darkness of the car park. ‘We’re driving. Next time.’
Next time. I smiled. It felt so thrilling and yet so easy, so familiar, right from the start.
He was good company. He sizzled. All I had to do was sit back and forget myself, to feel the wine thaw me out and to let my shoulders fall, to let myself laugh, to set down my own awkward heaviness and be someone softer, someone lighter. Someone more like him.
He crackled with life. Funny stories about his English students and his battles to make them read. About the tricks he played on them and the bets he struck with the boys who refused to study anything written before they were born.
He was edgy and flirty and intense and I stopped worrying about why I was there and where this might lead and whether this was really a good idea and all the other anxieties that had made me hesitate until now and I just let it happen.
At the end of the evening, when we got to our feet and made to leave, he stopped me in the shadowy porch and turned me to him, as gently as if I were china, then slid his arms around me and kissed me on the lips, reverently, chastely. His eyes glistened in the low light.
‘Laura Dixon.’ That voice, low and languid. ‘What have you done to me?’
As if it were all