Stella stretched herself out on the sofa in an inviting way as Graham went across to the drinks cupboard. ‘Look, I got something specially for you. I know you like it.’
He held up a brand-new bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream.
‘Oh, you are an angel, Graham.’
He got out a glass and fumbled with the metal seal at the top of the bottle. ‘Damn. I don’t know who designs these things. They’re always impossible to open. I’ll get a knife in the kitchen. Black or white coffee?’
In the kitchen the coffee-machine dripped intermittently, at the end of its cycle. On the wall hung a collage picture of a girl, made from coloured seeds. It was something Emma had brought from school. For Graham it was an odd reminder that there had once been children in the house. That morning Henry and Emma had come with Charmian and collected their belongings. It seemed like years ago.
He looked at his watch. Twenty-past ten. Pretty well on schedule. So long as everything else worked.
He still felt confident. He hummed tunelessly as he picked up the envelope from the work surface. He opened the bottle of Irish Cream without difficulty. Then he shook the powder from the envelope into the glass. Three tablets. He had been tempted to use more, but remembered the doctor’s caution. Mustn’t run the risk of accidents this end, he thought.
He poured the thick creamy liqueur into the glass and stirred the contents with a spoon. He’d experimented earlier in the week, and had not been able to detect any peculiarity in the taste of the solution.
He threw away the envelope and put two coffee cups on a tray. He took a whisky glass, poured in about half an inch of cold tea he had kept for the purpose, then added a little whisky on top to give the right smell.
He placed the whisky and the Bailey’s Irish Cream bottles on the tray and returned to the sitting-room.
He waited till Stella was half-way through her liqueur before he kissed her. It was a strange sensation. The lips that his probed were different, more fleshy, moister than Merrily’s, but that was not the source of the strangeness. It was the fact of kissing that seemed odd, like the fact of having had children, a distant memory from another life. His tongue did a little dutiful exploration, and his hand, guided by expectation rather than instinct, rose to circle a breast. His other arm moved behind Stella, securing her neck in the crook of its elbow.
From this position Graham could see his watch. Twenty to eleven. The timing was becoming more critical.
For everything to work, he needed to be away by midnight or very soon after.
Stella’s hands were massaging his shoulders, then moved up to his neck and steadied his head for her tongue to demonstrate its own expertise. He had never felt much doubt about her response, and the event proved that confidence to be justified.
Graham felt nothing. His mind hovered above his body, mildly contemptuous of its antics. His penis hung flaccid and uninterested.
Stella drew back her face from his and looked at him. Her eyes were not dewy with romance, but shrewd. There was no deterrence in them, just the complaisance of a woman who knew the score and had given her consent.
It was Graham’s cue to say something, but he felt uncertain of the appropriate phrasing.
Stella yawned. Good, good, he thought.
That gave him the impetus to speak. He selected a voice of humility, tentative, thick with adolescent misgiving.
‘Shall we finish our drinks and go upstairs?’
Stella gave a quick little nod, and drained her glass. She smacked her lips. ‘Tastes a bit funny.’
He brought his right hand swiftly down from her breast to her thigh, which diverted her thoughts sufficiently.
Then he took her hands and they rose. She pressed her body against him. He edged away to hide his lack of physical response. ‘Upstairs,’ he murmured throatily.
On the landing, he indicated the bathroom. ‘Do you want to have a pee?’
‘No, not at the moment.’
‘Who knows when you’ll next get the chance?’ he said. It sounded provocative, promising unrelenting sexual activity, which was how it was meant to sound. The real motivation of the remark was more pragmatic. He didn’t want the pressure of a full bladder to wake Stella up in the night.
She smiled. ‘O.K. You know best.’
As she disappeared into the bathroom she stifled another very satisfactory yawn.
Graham put on one bedside light, which gave a suitably muted glow. He looked at the clock radio on the shelf his side.
11:02. All right so far. The next hour was the tricky one.
He kicked off his shoes and lay down on top of the double duvet. He felt he should have been thinking about Merrily, but his wife’s image was now too thin and insubstantial to stay in his mind.
Stella came into the room. The front of her dress was unbuttoned to the waist in a way that Graham recognised should be enticing. She stretched her arms back, jutting her breasts forward, and yawned hugely.
‘Oh, I feel so sleepy.’
‘Yawns are just a nervous reaction. Anticipation,’ said Graham, holding out his arms towards her.
She grinned and slouched towards the bed. ‘Well, I wonder what you’re after. .’ She affected a mock-innocent little girl’s voice.
Graham felt a violent spasm of hatred. It was Merrily’s way, the sort of line Merrily would have used. Suddenly he felt for this new woman all he had come to feel for his wife in the last years of her life. As Stella slumped on to the bed, he found himself on top of her, his hands reaching to encircle her neck.
‘Hey. Steady. Steady!’
With an effort of will he made his body relax.
The light of panic faded from Stella’s eyes. ‘What are you doing, Graham?’
He smiled boyishly, suppressing the shock inside him. The force of that sudden hatred had frightened him. At that moment he had wanted to kill Stella, and he had no illusion about how easily he could have given in to the impulse.
‘Sorry,’ he murmured, affecting a schoolboy voice. ‘Just the force of mad passion.’
Then, again before his lack of erection gave the lie to his words, he rolled off and lay beside her.
This impotence was worrying. Not from the psychological point of view — he didn’t feel personally diminished by it. Sex was no longer important to him, and this knowledge gave him a sensation of refinement, of ascetic superiority over the rest of mankind. But his impotence was actually threatening his plans, and that was serious.
What he had had in mind for the evening had been to get to this point and then make love to Stella. The confusion of intercourse and its consequent sleepiness might make her less aware of her sudden drop into sleep. But if he couldn’t do it. .
Still, mustn’t write off the possibility yet. Maybe, with a little more stimulation, something could be achieved. He leant over towards Stella and started to undo the remaining buttons of her dress. As he did so, he evolved his contingency plan if sex proved impossible.
‘Like Christmas,’ he murmured. ‘Unwrapping the goodies.’
She smiled and reached up to the top button of his shirt. Swallowing a yawn, she asked, again in the baby voice, ‘And what has Santa brought for me?’
Not what you asked for, thought Graham, controlling the anger her affectation sparked in him.
Two people undressing each other as they lie side by side is not the most efficient way of removing clothes. It takes a long time. Which was exactly what Graham had planned. Minute by minute, Stella was yawning more, and her eyelids flickered with increasing frequency.
But eventually the two of them were just down to briefs and Stella’s searching fingers made further concealment impossible. Graham rolled away and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her, as though to hide his shame. Time for Plan B. ‘I’m sorry,’ he announced brokenly. ‘It’s too soon.’
‘Too soon?’
‘Too soon after Merrily. It’s not that I don’t want you. God knows,’ he lied, ‘it’s not that I don’t want you. It’s just. .’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ He felt Stella’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him round. Again he experienced a flash of
