Free Going Wrong by Ruth Rendell

The idea that he loved one woman and used another for sexual purposes was shameful and abhorrent to him.
    Of course it was not quite like that, it was not like that. He had never been anything but honest with Celeste. She knew he was in love with Leonora, or he had told her he was, he had been quite open. It was not his fault if she persisted in taking it in the wrong way.
    “I don’t mind, sweet Guy, why would I mind? I know I’m not your first, I’d be mad to expect it. You’re not mine, are you?”
    He let that pass. “I’m in love with Leonora, I love her. I can’t imagine life without her. I’d marry her tomorrow if I could.”
    She had smiled at him. “Yeah, sure. You have lunch with her on Saturdays, you’re with her an hour and a half. I guess I can stand that. If that’s the competition, I can take it.”
    Her father came from Trinidad, where the people have East Indian blood. Her mother was from Gibraltar. She had a perfect Caucasian face that happened to be the colour of teak and a body like an Egyptian girl on a vase painting. She was a model. Her hair was a dark russet brown, immensely thick, and grew naturally in deep long waves, like Dorothy Lamour’s in some South Seas movie of the thirties.
    When Guy took her about, men turned to look at her. He could swear that once, walking behind her down the staircase at Blake’s, he had heard a man growl at the sight of her. On the other hand, when he was out with Leonora—or had been out with her, for now it happened very seldom—no one looked at her. Of course it was true that men on scaffolds and men down road holes whistled at her, she was young and her legs were lovely and she was attractive. But the traffic wouldn’t stop for her, no one would stop for her and stare. The odd thing was that this made no difference to him. The seething, positively palpitating admiration Celeste received and the indifference that greeted Leonora’s appearance had not the least effect. He sometimes thought he would be rather relieved if Celeste said goodbye, it had been nice but she’d met someone else.
    He reproached himself. It was horrible, it was unfair. But what could he do? He hadn’t asked Celeste to chase him, he didn’t invite her to be there waiting for him when he got home. He hadn’t even given her a key. She had pinched his spare one and had another cut. She was in love with him as he was in love with Leonora, and that, as he put it to himself, screwed him up. But it wasn’t as bad for her as it was for him. At least he didn’t refuse her, he didn’t show her the door, or have the lock changed or tell her to go to hell. He didn’t restrict their meetings to lunch on Saturdays. He was nice to her. He slept with her, though he often thought rather sadly that he could, if necessary, have done without that, and he told himself he should have ignored his body, obeyed his mind and heart, and, like some knight waiting for his lady, have remained chaste.
    She didn’t drink coffee. He made tea and put the cup on the bed table beside her, touched her shoulder lightly, said, “Cup of tea, love.”
    Her eyes half-open, she said what she always said to him when she woke. “Hi, sweet Guy, love you.”
    She took a long time waking, especially if it happened to be a Saturday, if she happened to have come round on a Friday night and be there on Saturday morning. He wondered sometimes, feeling his own wound, if she avoided waking on those mornings because Saturday was his lunch-with-Leonora day, if she needed to postpone consciousness for as long as possible and awareness of what the day would bring. Perhaps it wasn’t like that, though, perhaps he was only projecting his own feelings onto her, judging her by himself. There is something very low in trying to gauge the emotions of someone in love with oneself when one is far from being in love with that person, and Guy knew it.
    He walked up to his macho health club called Gladiators in Gloucester Road.