The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,45

to soak up some of that free babysitting.’

I bristled. ‘I’m sure they don’t think of it like that.’

He said, ‘Well, they ought to. Everything’s got a price. Even friendship. Don’t make that mistake.’

I blinked, considering. ‘So why are you here, then? What’re you waiting for?’

‘You.’

Thirty-One

Silence.

His eyes seemed to take in my confusion. There was no movement there, just absorption. How would he know I’d come here tonight? I hadn’t known myself. Was he making fun of me? I didn’t know.

After a while, he adjusted his weight in his seat and said, ‘So, are you done? Is it my turn to ask the questions now?’

I pushed the car door with my foot and it opened another few inches.

‘What sort of questions?’

‘What was the score? With you and Wilson?’

‘Nothing.’ I said it too forcefully. Too obvious. I felt myself flush. ‘We were colleagues, that’s all.’

‘Just colleagues.’ His manner was cool. What did he know? ‘Right.’

I hesitated, stammered, ‘Well, and friends, I suppose. I went to his writing group now and then. We’d go out for drinks occasionally.’

He shook his head and there was a sadness in his look, as if he were trying very hard to be nice to me and I was disappointing him.

‘Miss Dixon.’

I started. I hadn’t expected him to use my name.

‘I’m not the morality police, here. You and Wilson fancying the pants off each other, the two of you having an affair, to be honest, I couldn’t care less. Life is for living, okay? So let’s get that out of the way. Adultery isn’t a criminal offence, not the last time I looked. We’re all grown-ups. Just don’t tell the missus I said so, okay?’ His lips twitched in the faintest suggestion of a smile.

I wondered if he really had a long-suffering wife or if it was just a mind game. I wondered what it would be like, being married to a man like him. Safe. Always safe. There was a roughness about him that made me certain he wouldn’t think twice about doing what needed to be done to protect the people he loved, to protect his honour, within or outside the law. I looked at the rainbow-flanked unicorn. Maybe he was a family man, after all. Maybe he had grown-up children, even a granddaughter.

I wasn’t going to admit to anything. I wasn’t that stupid. But I had the sense, sitting with him, that I didn’t really need to tell him very much. He seemed to have the answers already. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

‘Of course you don’t.’ He sighed, slipped his paperback into the door’s side pocket and turned more fully to face me. ‘I wonder how well you knew Ralph Wilson, Miss Dixon? I mean, really knew him?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Did you trust him?’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘He was trouble, Miss Dixon. Some men just can’t help themselves, it seems to me. One woman’s never enough. They don’t care who they hurt. And the riskier it gets, the more they like it.’

I stared at him. I wanted to say he was talking nonsense, that Ralph wasn’t like that. I thought about the theatre and that stupid argument. The excuse which had pierced my heart, which had stayed with me. He didn’t want to be seen in public with me. I was a dirty secret who might contaminate his family. Someone might see us and tell my wife.

Why hadn’t I made more of a fuss? Demanded to know where I stood? I knew why. I had been afraid of losing him.

I imagined Ralph, my Ralph, with other women. Olivia, perhaps. I’d seen him looking, his eyes roving across those long legs. And with her, leading him on shamelessly after he’d broken it off with me.

‘You deserved better, Miss Dixon.’ His eyes were on my face, studying me. ‘Really.’

I bent forwards, suddenly very dizzy. Had Ralph really been a type, a serial womaniser who couldn’t help himself? It was hard to hear. Had he never truly loved me the way I’d loved him?

The man beside me pointed back along the pavement to an elderly man who was approaching us at a shuffle on a walking-frame.

‘You might want to shut the door,’ he said. ‘That fella’s going to struggle to get past.’ He gave that thin half-smile again. ‘Besides, there’s an awful draught.’

I closed the door and sat very still in my seat, facing out through the windscreen, the unicorn square in my sights. I waited until the old man had dragged himself past