‘I’m sorry, darling,’ I said, struggling to remain composed. ‘But I don’t think it’s fair of you to tell me you’ve had a – fling, and then refuse to say who it was with, because … Oh God, Peter,’ I added, my throat suddenly constricting. ‘You’ve been unfaithful to me.’
‘Yes,’ he said, quietly, ‘I have. But it’s not important,’ he repeated. ‘I was put under pressure. I – I’d had a few drinks, it was just … one of those things.’
‘Please tell me who it was with?’ I said again, aware that my palms felt damp.
‘I –’
‘Please, Peter. I’d like to know.’
‘Well … ’
‘Just give me her name, will you?’
‘No.’
‘Go on, tell me!’
‘I can’t.’
‘Yes you can!’
‘Look, I –’
‘Give me her name, Peter.’
‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘It’s Andy Metzler.’ My hands flew up to my mouth.
‘You’ve had sex with a man?!’ Peter was staring at me. He looked shocked.
‘No, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘It’s not all right,’ I shot back. ‘It is absolutely NOT all right, Peter!’
‘Yes it is,’ he insisted.
‘No, it damn well isn’t –’
‘Yes it is, Faith, because, you see – Andy’s a woman.’
‘What?’
‘Andy Metzler’s a woman,’ he repeated. I gasped.
‘You never told me that.’
‘You never asked.’
‘But you never said. It’s been “Andy this, and Andy that” – I had no idea he was a she.’
‘Well,’ he said quietly, ‘she is. I agree it’s a funny sort of name for a woman. But she’s American, and, well, that’s what she’s called – it’s spelled A-N-D-I-E.’
‘I see,’ I said slowly. ‘Like Andie McDowell.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Like that.’
‘And you had an affair with her?’ He nodded. ‘When?’ He fiddled with the salt pot.
‘When, Peter?’
‘On Tuesday.’
‘On Tuesday? Yesterday? Oh yes, of course,’ I said, nodding my head. ‘You were going to take her for lunch at the Ritz. To celebrate. Well, it certainly sounds like you did.’
‘Look, one thing led to another,’ he said sheepishly. ‘She was coming on to me, Faith. She’s been coming on to me for months. Ever since she met me, in fact. And you were behaving so suspiciously, I was fed up and I felt so grateful to her for getting me the job that, somehow, I couldn’t … refuse.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said sarcastically. ‘In order not to hurt her feelings, you slept with her. What a gent. I’m so proud of you, Peter. You took a room, I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘We did.’ And suddenly, in that moment, in that terrible moment when he said ‘we’, I realised that truthfulness was Peter’s least endearing quality.
‘So she did get her bonus, then,’ I said darkly, aware of a lemon-sized lump in my throat. ‘How ironic,’ I murmured as I gripped and ungripped my napkin. ‘How very ironic. For the past two weeks I’ve been obsessing about some Scottish woman called Jean, who turns out to be a Frenchman called Jean; and now you tell me you’ve had an affair with an American woman called Andie, who I was quite convinced was a bloke!’
‘Er … yes.’ I shook my head.
‘Well,’ I whispered bitterly. ‘Well, well, well.’ Then I looked at him and said, ‘This hurts.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. But she pushed me into it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.
‘She did,’ he insisted wearily. ‘I’d made it quite clear that I was – married. But now our professional relationship was at an end and she just … ’
‘Decided to make it personal.’
‘Yes. Oh, I don’t know – she put me under all this … pressure.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I hissed. ‘I think you slept with her because you wanted to.’
‘No I did not.’
‘Liar!’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘Admit it!’
‘OK, then, yes, I did!’
‘You did!’
‘Yes. Since you’ve forced me to admit it, yes I bloody well did!’
‘You bastard!’ I spat. And I was terribly shocked to hear myself say that, because I’ve never called him that in my life.
‘I’ve been under such stress, Faith,’ he groaned. He leaned his head on his right hand. ‘These last six months have been hell. And then you started going on at me. You wouldn’t leave me alone. You were like a terrier with a rat, banging on about this woman or that chewing gum or those cigarettes.’
‘That gum!’ I exclaimed. ‘That chewing gum was for her.’ He was silent. ‘Wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘You don’t like it – you never have. And those cigarettes, they were for her as well, weren’t they?’ Peter nodded miserably. ‘You had gum and cigarettes at the ready for her. How gallant. Lucky Strike!’ I spat. ‘So you’ve had an affair,’ I repeated, my voice rising, ‘with a – what was it you said – “chick”? Oh. My. God.’
‘Look, it was completely spontaneous,’ he said. ‘It just happened on the spur of the moment.’
‘That’s not true!’ I said.
‘Shhhh! Don’t shout.’
‘You’d wanted to shag her for weeks.’
‘No.’
‘Oh yes you had. And the reason I know is because of Katie.’
‘Katie? What’s she got to do with this?’
‘Her psychoanalytic stuff. She’s always going on about Freudian slips, isn’t she? Well, she goes on about the Freudian “telling omission” too. And I think it’s very, very telling, Peter, that you’ve never let on that Andie was a woman.’
‘It wasn’t relevant,’ he said.
‘Oh yes it was,’ I shot back. ‘Because the other night you recited that great list of all the women you know – every single one. So how very strange, Peter,’ I added, emphatically, ‘that you didn’t mention her!’ By now his face and neck were blotched with red. ‘In fact you even told me the names of Andie’s two female colleagues, but you carefully left her out. Now I know why!’ I concluded triumphantly. ‘Because you didn’t want me to know. And the reason why you didn’t was because you already knew you wanted to get her into bed.’
‘I … I … ’
‘Don’t