An Affair to Forget (19 page)

Judith glared at him. She knew he was right. But even so. ‘You don’t’ she snapped back, ‘mind me feeding him stories when it suits you. And he
never
lies.’

`Oh
save me. How many more of your friends do I owe my life to?’

‘Don’t
exaggerate. You’re only too happy to use them both when it suits you.’

‘Look, that's not the point,’ he stormed, striding up and down in front of her wrapped in a short white towelling robe, running a furious hand through his hair, finally slumping down into a chair opposite her, slinging his tanned legs across the arm.

`Well?'
she asked in a bored tone, studying her nails. 'What
is
the point?'

He
glared at her. 'The point is I pay you to be there when I need you...'

Judith
knew that keeping calm was her only weapon. Lose it and you're lost on all fronts, she reminded herself.

`Goodnight,
Howard,' she said, rising from her seat and starting to make her way out.

He
was there before her, getting between her and the door. `And where do you think you're going? Goddamn it, Jude, you just don't do this to me. What do you want me to do? Pay you to have dinner with me like some little tramp?'

`Now
you're being ridiculous,' she said, attempting to move past him. 'And you're wasting my time.'

`Marry
me then?'

`No.'

`You're fucking rude as well,' Howard said, folding his arms as he leaned against the door, preventing her from leaving. `Okay, if you won't marry me, have dinner.'

`It's
too late. I have to work for you in the morning.'

Judith
reached behind him to open the door, but he wrapped her in his arms and began rocking her back and forth.

`Come
to bed then?'

Chapter One

The grey dawn light just discernible through the blinds threw a ghostly outline around the understated elegance of the apartment that Judith had chosen for him, the decor she had insisted on at the right address, the dressing room lined with clothes that she had selected for him, reflecting the lifestyle of the sleeping man beside her.

Getting
Howard Dorfman's name past the severe and censorious board of residents in the uptown apartment block that housed half of the most prestigious names on the New York social register had been a feat not even the Dorfman directors thought she would pull off. The task of reinventing the image of the Chief Executive and major shareholder of Dorfman Industries from one of flash cash to stylish acceptability had been strewn with the moral indignation of the socially correct and the dismay of the easily outraged, who saw nothing of the Dorfman empire's founder in his son.

It
was a fortunate thing, Judith thought grimly as she negotiated a new address for Howard, that his father had been well-liked and respected. That, plus the promise of a Canaletto to be donated to the art gallery of which the most formidable board member was a trustee, squeezed in Howard's acceptance by the skin of his even and very white teeth.

Howard's
reaction, however, when he heard the price of admission to a part of town he wasn't particularly enamoured with, was as rich as it was lengthy. Throughout the tirade, Judith had simply sat perched in a window embrasure of his office, calmly surveying the traffic crawling below on Wall Street, ignoring him, just occasionally stifling a yawn as she crossed slim legs, encased in sheer black tights, into a more comfortable position.

A
trip to the Madison Avenue addresses of those whose customers were drawn from old money and, publicly at least, impeccable reputations, ensured that his appearance would now be in the hands of some of the finest tailors in town, and when she ordered Howard's staff to donate his present wardrobe to the nearest thrift shop she had simply swept him aside as he furiously protested, reminding him as she clicked the door sharply behind her, that he was a businessman and not a rock star.

Within
months he was to be seen playing tennis at the River Club and squash at the Harvard Club. Clothes, hair, decor and lifestyle gradually changed, until even his nightclub cronies were only too happy not to be seen in his company. Howard Dorfman, they said, wasn't fun anymore. But Howard Dorfman businessman flourished. While Judith would never have found the old Howard attractive, it was odd how, now she had reinvented him, he seemed a more likeable proposition. The mistake she had made was to believe she could reinvent the man when all she had done was given him a more acceptable package.

Judith
turned her head and looked at Howard's face - his mouth slightly open, his chin slack, the creases around his eyes the only evidence that he was nearer to forty-five than thirty-five — and wondered why he had cheated on her.

No,
not that. Cheated implied a commitment he had never made to her, but one that he assumed she had made to him because he paid her salary.

It
had hurt knowing, in spite of all his denials, he thought she was stupid enough to believe his insistence that all other dinner dates than with her were business. That was just about bearable and forgettable, but the utter humiliation of finding she had been moved sideways in her job was not. No warning, no indication it was about to happen.

David
Corrolla had been appointed over her, not because he was better, not because she hadn't done her job well, but because Howard Dorfman could find no other way of making Judith totally available to him when he wanted her. If her job got in the way, then the job had to be adjusted. To do that meant hiring someone who would take over the work that Judith did so well.

`And
exactly what is he?' she had coldly asked the decidedly uncomfortable Personnel Director, minutes after she had heard about David Corrolla's appointment. 'Someone who reports to me... or what?'

`No,
not exactly,' the man hedged with little conviction and even less truth. 'You're getting a promotion. You work exclusively for Howard and Dave — who is just great, Judith, we are
so
lucky to have him — Dave will take over the nuts and bolts of your present job.'

As
promotions went, this was so thinly disguised as a sideways move that she could hardly speak. No discussion. Howard had simply made a decision because he owned the company and therefore believed he owned her. The one scenario Judith had vowed never again to get involved with, and here she was back at base. Well, no, not quite. This time she was better armed. This time she wasn't in love, not even in lust with the man; that had passed. But a more powerful and seductive force had emerged and clouded her judgement. The need to belong. However, belonging was beginning to blur with being owned. And for Judith the gap between the two was unbridgeable. Howard still thought it was the same thing.

Howard
stirred in his sleep, his left arm lying heavily across her stomach, making movement impossible, unless she woke him. And Judith did not want him to wake, not just then. She wanted to collect her thoughts, to really understand what it was that she was going to do: something conclusive, no loose ends, no messy goodbyes.

Her
feelings for him were uncertain, something hovering between loyalty and need but nothing strong enough to have pushed her over into hopelessness. Judith wanted out before the relationship reached that fragile moment when a parting would consume her for weeks and months on end. It would mean the end of her job — but that had changed anyway. And where was it written, she said to herself as her gaze took in the elegant bedroom, that life was easy for a girl who was still climbing?

Judith
eased her arm from under the sheets and screwed up her eyes to look at the hands of her watch. Nearly five thirty. Down below on Park Avenue, the cross-town traffic had yet to really start moving. In an hour or so the sidewalks of New York would be heavy with commuters striding out towards their offices on Madison or Fifth, into the heart of Manhattan. The bridges would be bumper to bumper as cars and taxis pressed their way over from Westchester and Riverhead and the mid-town tunnel would be alive with the sound of horns and frustration.

It
was time to go. Carefully she eased her body to the side of the cavernous bed. The sleeping man's arm, relieved of its resting place, dropped heavily onto the crumpled white sheets. Judith held her breath. Waited, motionless. He mumbled something in his sleep but his eyes remained closed.

S
he was safe now. Sliding over onto the carpet, Judith straightened up and then gently replaced the sheets, standing for a moment to stare down at Howard's face.

Last
night, there had been the familiar angry exchange, the weary acceptance that neither was going to win. Bed but no sex. 'I just want to hold you,' he had said. That's all she'd wanted; loneliness did that to you. Pride didn't even get a look in. And because he was exhausted and maybe because he couldn't bear to be rejected, he had done just that: held her and drifted into sleep.

In
leaving him she liked him better than at any time in their stormy relationship. But it was no longer enough. Crossing the cream carpet, she sat down at a small walnut bureau and dragged a sheet of paper towards her, frowned for a moment and then began to write. Rapidly as though a moment's loss of time would weaken her resolve, she scrawled across two pages. Then, folding the letter, she sealed it and propped it against the lid of the bureau where Howard would see it when he woke.

Judith
rose from her seat and caught sight of herself in a long mirror which reached the ceiling and reflected the casement windows behind her, the view of tall grey apartment blocks soaring up into the early but already soft blue spring sky of another day in the city. Silently she gazed back at her reflection. She saw a tall slender girl, thin really, with a mass of dark hair pinned carelessly on top of her head; a pale oval face, with a beauty that came more from its laughing brown eyes, straight nose and high cheekbones than from conventional good looks — features which often in repose gave her a distant, aloof expression that was nothing to do with how she really felt, and appeared to give her a confidence she did not always feel. Hastily she turned her back on the mirror.

Nothing
else to keep her there. In one hour, another day would begin for Howard Dorfman and by the time he had finished his breakfast he would be worth another half a million dollars on Wall Street. And Judith would no longer be a part of any of it. Sixty minutes in which to change her whole life. It was enough — it had to be.

As she sat in the cab, the familiar streets of New York that had been home to her for nearly two years flashed by in a blur. Down Park Avenue, right into 79th, past Madison and Fifth. The Metropolitan Museum of Art towered on their right as they sped through Central Park to Judith's apartment on the Upper West Side. For once the lights were with them and as they hit each set and sped through them, Judith gazed resolutely ahead. New York had saved her. And now she was going to save herself from New York.

Another
ten minutes and she was in her own apartment, throwing a fresh jacket and make-up into a large leather holdall, snapping shut two already packed suitcases, checking her purse, wallet, credit cards. In the bedroom, ignoring Dorfman's regular car service, she rang for another company to collect her at precisely seven o'clock. Then she pressed in Jed Bayley's number.

Jed
was perceptive. He had once been her boss in London but he was also her friend. Because of him, New York had opened doors when she had arrived all that time ago. After that, her husky English accent, sharp intellect and easy charm had broken down walls. But Jed knew that under that cool English exterior, the one that had so enamoured and intrigued Howard Dorfman, there was a vulnerability that Judith went to extraordinary lengths to disguise.

The
soft purr of the phone in Jed's town house in the West Village switched to his answer machine. Judith waited until the message came to a halt.

‘Jed?
It's me, Jude... Oh hi...
Jed,
stop swearing, it's too early... listen, I'm leaving New York...'

The
mists of sleep lifted from Jed's voice.

`What
do you mean, you're leaving? Leaving what? Howard?
Howard
? Christ... what happened? Where is he? Hang on; let me get a pen, this I've got to record this. Have you told anyone else?'

Judith
almost laughed. ‘Jed, you're a nightmare. Is everything just a story to you? It's okay, I've left him a note...'

Jed
screamed. 'A note? You left him a
note
? Is that all? He’s going to be
so
humiliated. Why?'

Judith
took a deep breath. 'You know why. Everyone knew except me. It isn't what he is, it's that he thinks he can lie to me, say whatever he wants, because he pays me... it's because he thinks he can re-order my life without consulting me.... oh God, Jed you name it. I just feel like the biggest fool in the world. Oh God, no, not the cancelled dinners and the women. Dave Corrolla. I’m so angry about him. No, not him personally – it’s just that I allowed Howard to think he could do that. That's what hurts the most.'

`Jude,
don't go. Come and stay here... he won't come here, he's never forgiven me for writing what his first wife said about him...'

`Thanks,
Jed... but no. I'm not sure I could trust myself to stay in the US, let alone New York. I haven't even tried to have a conversation with him about Corrolla taking my job, or that he spent the night with a hooker...'

Jed
interrupted. 'Listen, you don't know for sure that he did...'

`Oh,
don't defend him. Connie is the
grave
when it comes to discretion, but he drove even her to dumping him in it. Anyway, it's Corrolla who hurts more, not a Seventh Avenue tramp.' She sighed impatiently. 'I don't want to talk to him. I don't want denials. I don't want promises he can't keep. I want to walk out on him before I'm taken out of his life and straight into a clinic. Do you understand?'

Jed
did. What could he say? He had tried in his own way to tell her what most people knew about Howard Dorfman, something he had known from the moment he had encountered him in the kind of club where Wall Street financiers, politicians, actors and writers go to find pleasure in their own sex or sex that comes at a price and where their sexual proclivities will go unrecorded.

Men
like Dorfman didn't change. He was in the scholarship class when it came to exploiting those around him. Howard, for all Judith's efforts to improve his appearance and his thinking, could never alter what money had set in stone.

Two
ex-wives and a string of not very bright but accommodating actresses and models had thus far filled his life with glamour and excitement of a kind. But Judith was different. She had given him something money couldn't buy. Class of a sort. He had jeered at it, but in the end he couldn't resist it, or Judith. Bringing in David Corrolla to do her job was indefensible.