Anabelle

Anabelle watched her husband as he disappeared into the house. He always looked good in a suit; it wasn't so often that she saw him in one nowadays. She turned, submerged herself and swam another length, gliding underwater with long slow strokes. She'd rather be swimming naked, she never liked the feeling of wet bikini bottoms. The swimming pool wasn't visible from any of the neighbour's gardens, if Sofia wasn't somewhere in the house she'd have peeled them off and skinny dipped. Not that she'd really have a problem with Sofia seeing her naked, they were close enough for that to feel quite natural in the right context. But it would feel vaguely anti-social like this, particularly with Toby there too. It would almost be like rubbing Sofia's nose in the fact that her presence might be interrupting the couple's sexual possibilities in their own home. The poor thing had had such a tough year, Anabelle wasn't going to risk making her feel unwelcome like that, it just wasn't worth it.

Toby would be back soon to join her. Maybe she should follow him in instead and surprise him in the bedroom. On an afternoon like this the only two things worth doing were swimming and making love. Sofia must be in her room and might hear them. So what? There was no way Sofia would mind that. Little cousin she might be, but she hardly needed shielding from the birds and the bees by now. A couple of those dating app stories Sofia had told the other night had actually been pretty intense - thank you Château Pape Clément 2017 for that.

Yes, she'd go inside. Now that she'd raised the possibility to herself, she could feel how much her body wanted to be penetrated. She wanted that lazy animal kind of sex, transcending any boundary between making love and fucking. She'd like to lie on her side on the bed, her head resting on the pillow, and let him enter her from behind. Often when he entered her he'd barely move at all for ages, to start off with, and then gradually something would build up in them and he'd be thrusting wildly into her bringing her right to the verge of orgasm. And then it would naturally subside again or he'd check himself suddenly stopping himself before he tipped over the edge himself. Frustrating but exquisite. And with each ebb and flow of that ferocity she knew that the culmination, when it eventually came, would be more intense.

Anabelle pulled herself out of the water, walked across to the lounger and, after wrapping herself in a large striped towel, headed back up to the house. As she was about to enter the house through the back door, she suddenly heard Sofia's voice, sounding distraught. She stopped immediately, rooted to the spot, listening. Anabelle hadn't heard all of what Sofia had said, only the snatches where her cousin's voice had been loudest and most emphatic. But that was probably enough: "my room", "getting off", "your wife", "pervert."

And then there was Toby's voice, hushed, probably trying to make sure she didn't hear him, but with a hissing anger that was palpable. Anabelle had never heard his voice sound so menacing, so violent, in all of the five years they'd been together. Again the words themselves were hard to distinguish. Anabelle thought she heard him hiss something like "it was you getting off." And then Toby's anger seemed to biol over, he seemed to lose the self-control he'd been using to keep his voice quiet, and he almost shouted "you're trying to fuck with my marriage, you whore!"

Anabelle's heart was racing uncontrollably. This couldn't be real. There must be some mistake. Toby couldn't be having an affair with Sofia, with her cousin. That wasn't him. It wasn't possible.

She couldn't see them from where she stood. She edged forward and peered round the edge of the back the door into the hall. But they were clearly both inside the kitchen, hidden from her gaze. As quietly as she could she crept past the open door, stepped over a couple of terracotta pots filled with bright red poppies, and - stepping up onto the low brick wall of a flower bed thick with lavender - peered through the kitchen window.

It was hard to see anything at first, it was so dim inside compared to the brightness of the afternoon outside. She could hear Toby speaking again, his voice was quiet again and with none of the violent anger of a moment before. He sounded apologetic, almost pleading. Now she could see them, both of them, together, just inside the kitchen door - Toby in his charcoal suit, Sofia in that simple white summer dress, that fell to just above her knees. He was holding her by one of her wrists, standing over her. As he looked down at Sofia, Anabelle could see his free hand quivering restlessly, as if he might reach out at any moment and pull her into his arms.

The angle meant Anabelle couldn't see her husband's face, but she could see Sofia's gazing up at him. It was paler than usual and her expression was anguished. It had an intensity that was almost transfiguring, like a female saint awaiting martyrdom in some renaissance painting. She said something in a whisper and when Toby let go of her wrist, she reached up with her other hand and caressed his chest. The next moment she had pulled her hand away, as if stung, and, turning on her heel, disappeared out of the room. Toby didn't move for almost a minute after she'd gone, then he seemed to shake himself back to reality, and followed her out of the kitchen door.

He was going to come out the back door and find her here eavesdropping. That would be a crowning humiliation. Could she hide? No time to move, nowhere to hide. He wasn't coming, he must have gone down the corridor towards the bedrooms. She heard a door open and then close again immediately. Which door? Which door had he gone through? To his room to change? Or had he followed his lover to her room?

She'd go to the room and find out. What would she get from him if he was there? Some pretense of normality - like just now outside - as if nothing was going on at all. She couldn't bear to stay silent, to pretend in turn that she didn't know he was cheating on her. But she wasn't ready to confront him. She had to get all this straight in her head first. She needed space. She realized she was breathing rapidly, jerkily, almost hyper-ventilating. She had to get out of here. Now. Right now.

She ran inside and all the way through the house, grabbed the key for the Audi from the stand by the front door without stopping, and was back outside again in less than 30 seconds. She carried on running all the way to the car, go in, started the engine, and accelerated down the driveway, bumping over the potholes with a series of sickening jerks and clunks. At the end - without stopping or indicating or even really looking for oncoming traffic - she swung the car out onto the narrow country lane. She wasn't sure where she was headed, she wasn't headed anywhere, but she needed to get away from that house, to get away from them. She drove on aimlessly near blinded by the tears pouring down her face.

For some while her consciousness was so disordered that you could scarcely say she even thinking about what had happened. There were no words, just an inarticulate and deranged flood of images. The two of them in the kitchen: Sofia reaching up to stroke Toby's chest; their wedding day, three years before: Sofia, just 16 or 17 and still at school, running up to her wearing that aquamarine bridesmaid's dress, flinging her arms around Anabelle, with a huge smile on her face; her wedding day again, after the ceremony but before the reception: Toby suddenly pushing her back, surprisingly roughly, onto the four-poster in their hotel room, pulling her long white dress up so that it bunched around her hips, half ripping her lace underwear as he pulled it aside, entering her, without asking, without any foreplay, and finding that she didn't need it, that she was already wet, that she was cumming almost with his first thrust into her; Sofia's parents' funeral, in the churchyard after the service: putting her arms around her little cousin, crying herself for pity for her, feeling certain that she would break down, and the surprise of the girl's frigidness in her arms; Sofia and Toby, back at the house, right now, Toby on his knees in front of her as she leans back against a wall, gazing up at her whilst he licks her and her hands in his hair as she whispers something to him.

Anabelle suddenly slammed on the break, bringing the car to a screeching halt - a blaring horn - more screeching - the mirror, in the periphery of her vision, with something hurtling towards her - flinging up her arms as if she were protecting her face from a stray cricket ball. The impact sent her careening towards the steering wheel, where her face met the exploding airbag.

She didn't black out or anything. But after the impact there were a few missing seconds. The almost total emptiness of paralytic shock. The engine had cut out and it was very quiet. There was a slight tinnitus-like ringing in her ears. She brought her attention to her body. It didn't feel like anything was too wrong, though her neck and the back of her shoulders were throbbing from the whiplash. In the mirror she could see a large SUV, its bonnet partly crumpled. A thin, middle aged man in a short-sleeve check shirt was climbing out of it, looking as shocked as she felt, but unharmed.

Anabelle clicked open her door and climbed out as well. As she did, the knot hold her towel in place dislodged itself - Jesus, what had she been thinking - and fell to the floor. She looked at the man staring at her open-mouthed...staring at a wild-eyed eyed young woman standing in the middle of the road next to a smashed up black Audi, barefooted, her hair still wet and dressed in only an aquamarine string bikini. Strange, she wouldn't think twice about wearing this on a beach full of people, but she didn't think she'd ever felt this naked in her whole life. She bent down, picked up her towel, looked at the man again, and broke out into a fit of convulsive, sobbing laughter.