The Good Father by Marion Husband Page B

told himself he wasn’t really lying when he said, ‘We don’t have children.’
    â€˜So she doesn’t like parties, then?’ Val took a packet of cigarettes from her handbag and he stepped forward, offering her a light. As she accepted, she met his eyes, that same honest look sizing him up. At last she said, ‘Why don’t you sit down?’
    He sat beside her on the stair, relieved that it was good and wide and could accommodate them both without any part of their bodies touching. He sat stiffly, straight-backed, feeling huge beside her; in an effort to feel easier, he took out his own cigarettes and they smoked together in silence, music from the ballroom a steady beat he concentrated on. The music and the cigarette combined to calm him; he began to think that perhaps he could get away with behaving so badly. She was a stranger, after all; he would never have to pass her desk in his office or nod to her in his street. He would never see her again after tonight; she would never want to see him after tonight. The thought of never seeing her again was bleakly comforting; he knew he would wallow in the sweet agonies of unrequited lust.
    He got up to fetch an ashtray. When he came back she had stood up too. She stepped towards him, grinding her cigarette out hard, the force pressing the ashtray against his palm; he imagined he could feel the stub burning through the thin tin. She stood close to him; he could smell her perfume that earlier he had tried not to inhale, not wanting to be more overwhelmed by her than he already was. Now though, he had an urge to press his face against her neck, not only to smell but to taste her. Feeling his unruly cock begin to stiffen again, he stepped back.
    â€˜Your wife . . .’
    He shook his head; he had the terrible, absurd feeling that he might cry. She stepped towards him, close again, and touched his hand.
    â€˜My wife.’ He laughed painfully, remembering how Ava had looked at him so blankly over the coiled links of bright paper. All at once he felt angry, a surge of animating feeling that made him desperate, selfish. ‘I want to take you home. I want to be with you, alone in my car.’
    â€˜You want what you wanted on the dance floor.’
    He gazed at her just as she had looked at him, honestly, coolly, despite his raging hard-on. When she looked away, he caught her hand and held it tightly. ‘Shall we go?’
    In his study, Harry picked up his glass of gin only to put it down again. He thought of Val in his car, arching her back in response to his kisses, to his hand cupping her breast. They were still in the front seats and the gear stick had got in the way; he was too big a man to climb all over a woman on the back seat of a car, even a car like his, built to impress, for comfort rather than speed. He had pulled away from her groaning in frustration and despair, his head back, eyes closed, so that it was a surprise when he felt her hand unbuttoning his flies and closing around him. Her hand was cool, soft, and she was tentative at first, as though she had never touched a man before. But she was expert, really, an expertise he had guessed at, of course. Her experience was one of the things he loved about her. When he was with her he didn’t have to be careful; she was his equal, he could relinquish control.
    He got up and went to the window, staring out at his neat and tidy garden, kept neat and tidy by a gardener, just as his home was kept thus by a cleaner, just as Ava was kept by Esther, just as a series of boarding schools had temporarily at least managed to keep control of his son. His life ran rather smoothly, considering, considering there was a hole in his chest where his heart had been.
    He thought of Hans – unexpectedly, because thoughts of that man always crept up on him, ambushing him in his weakest moments – Hans leaning across the table in the interrogation room, his handsome face frowning as though the