A Fatal Debt

“This isn’t very professional,” she said.

“Fuck my profession,” I said.

I pulled her to me, and as we kissed again, I could feel her draw back. She kept her arms slung around my shoulders as she moved, leading me back toward the open door. I walked along with her and caught her by the small of her back as she almost stumbled passing over the threshold. She pulled me to my right, her back against the hallway wall, as we got inside and reached under my arm to push the door closed. It swung toward the latch but failed to click and I kicked backward with my heel. My foot missed, tipping me to one side and making her giggle. She ducked under my arm and shoved the door with both hands, ramming it closed, then turned to face me again.

I took her face in my hands and kissed her slowly, and then I reached down to the top of her dress and felt for the first of the mother-of-pearl buttons. It was small and thick and I could not catch it at first, wrapped against a scallop of cloth. Then I pushed at it with my thumb and felt it slip through the buttonhole. The next five went faster, and as I got to the last, she pulled away from me, glancing down.

“Keep going,” she said.

“Shut up,” I said.

I pushed her dress off one shoulder and then slipped one bra strap after it and bent my head to kiss her shoulder. Squeezing her body between my hips and the door, I reached down to gather her dress up her legs. I could feel the tiny hairs on her thigh brush past my palm as she wriggled to free herself from the fabric.

She gazed at me, her eyes alight. “Don’t stop,” she said, and I pushed myself into her, hoisting her up the door. She raised one leg to hook it around my hips and moved with me until I came, feeling her quiver and, as she did, all of my pent-up bitterness and sorrow evaporated. We stayed like that, not moving, for a minute and then she lifted her other leg off the ground with a screech, toppling us over. We slid together down the crevice of door and wall and landed in a heap on the floorboards, banging my bad ankle.

“Oww. Why’d you do that?” I said.

“Didn’t want to let you go.”

After a few minutes, we gathered ourselves together and shuffled to a bedroom at the back of the house, dragging our discarded clothes with us. A

The room was sparsely furnished, like a ship’s cabin, with a glass full of white seashells on a table next to the bed and a tapestry hung on a wall. Her yoga mat was unrolled at the foot of the bed, and some of her clothes were gathered in a neat pile on a chest. Through the window, I could see a field of rushes bordering a pond that stretched out to the bay side of the lane. The sky glowed as the sun faded over the water, purples and reds mixing with the dark blue of dusk. I wanted never to move.

“Is this your Goldilocks bed?” I said.

“This is the one.” She reached to brush a strand of hair from my forehead.

“Let’s just stay here.”

We had to get up eventually to wash, to eat. It was night when we did, and A

When A

“Mmm,” she said. “You can move in.”

She sat and I served the food, looping the pasta into a bowl and pouring some wine. Then I sat opposite her and we ate happily. I was reaching for the wine bottle to refill her glass when I saw a light shining over her shoulder through the open blind. It was far away in the distance, and at first I thought it might be the reflection of the moon from a house. But as I watched the beam snaking from side to side, I saw it was a car’s headlights tracing the road along the coast. A

“A

“What?” she said, looking up with a smear of sauce on her chin, then seeing my face and turning around.

I pinched out the candles between my finger and thumb, darkening the room so the driver would not see us. Then we stared from the window in dumb amazement, trapped at the end of this cul-de-sac far from the safety of the city. A

The lights went past the open window and we heard the sound of the vehicle for the first time as it came to a halt by the foot of the Shapiros’ lane, the hum of its engine idling. I reached for A

I reached to part the curtains for us to peer through, hearing her soft breath and feeling her warmth next to my face. She was panting slightly-now out of fear rather than desire. She placed her face beneath mine to look through the parting and we gazed up along the drive, past the split-rail fence and the weeping trees. The car had halted next to mine and the driver was climbing out. I still half wondered if it might be Nathan, having ignored our agreement for him to return to the city. What if he catches us together like this?I thought. He’s going to strangle me properly this time. I didn’t believe it, though. I knew it hadn’t been a man behind the wheel of the car. It was a woman-the one who’d controlled this affair all along and who had fooled everyone but Harry.

As she extinguished the headlights and stepped out of the car, her face was shrouded by dark. A cloud covered the moon and only her outline was visible against the still-glowing sky. She stood by her car, then walked to mine and stepped around it at a slow, deliberate pace, as if inspecting it for damage. She bent to look through one window, then straightened and stepped onto the lawn, disappearing from sight.

“Where’s she going?” A

“I don’t know. I can’t-”

I stopped speaking as the woman reappeared from behind the house and walked up to the kitchen door. She reached into her handbag for a key and unlocked it. As she walked inside, I expected her to turn on the lights, but the room remained in darkness. We had a vista of the front of the house, but it was useless without light. Then the moon emerged from behind the clouds. It shone through the conservatory and cast a glow in the living room. It was empty for a minute or two, until the woman entered the room from the hallway. She walked across the room and then halted in the middle on the spot where Greene had died.