What Was She Thinking? by Zoë Heller Page A

anything happening between the two of them, she said.
    Connolly responded to this with unexpected equanimity. He nodded, understandingly, and suggested that they walk together for a bit. Sheba refused. That wouldn’t be a good idea, she said. Then a man with a dog appeared on the path and glanced at the two of them curiously. Sheba changed her mind. There was no harm in a stroll, she thought. Connolly was behaving so sensibly, it was bound to be all right.
    As they set off up the path, Connolly promised not to “try anything on.”
    “I should hope not!” Sheba said, amused by his presumption.
    But even as she said it, it occurred to her that perhaps he would try something on. Perhaps, she thought, he had plans to rape her. She kept walking anyway. She had begun to feel
strangely detached from the proceedings. “I was sort of watching myself,” she recalls. “Smiling at what a silly I was being. It was as if I had become my own rather heartless biographer.”
    As they approached an area of the heath that was more densely wooded, Connolly turned to her, clasped her hands in his, and began walking backwards, into the trees, pulling her along with him. “Come on. In here,” he said.
    “What are you doing?” Sheba asked. There was indignation in her voice, but she allowed herself to be pulled. It was much darker than it had been on the path, and she could barely see Connolly’s face. A fairy-tale image came to her of a goblin dragging a princess back to his forest lair.
    They continued to walk for another minute or so, and then, just as Sheba was about to protest again, Connolly stopped and released her from his grip. They were standing in a little clearing. He grinned at her. “We can be private here,” he said. He sat down on the ground and took off his jacket. “Look,” he said, spreading it out next to him, “you can sit on this.”
    “You’ll freeze,” Sheba objected. But Connolly didn’t reply; he just sat, looking at her.
    “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I’m not going to sit down. It’s just not on.” Connolly made a suit-yourself gesture and lay back on the ground. “Come on, Steven, you’re going to catch pneumonia like that,” Sheba said.
    He was silent. His eyes were shut. She looked down at him, feeling sillier and sillier. After a while, he opened his eyes. “Fuck, it is cold, isn’t it?” he said. This made her laugh.
    “I’m afraid I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I’m going to go back now.”
    “No you’re not.” Connolly sat up. There was a twig in his hair.
    She remembers smiling at him, knocking her arms against her sides like a little girl. Finally, with a hopeless shrug, she sat down.
    They did not have sex on this occasion. It was far too cold, according to Sheba, and she was far too anxious. I know that they kissed. And Connolly must have lain on top of her at some point because, in speaking of this encounter, Sheba has mentioned having been astonished by how “light and narrow” he was. (She was accustomed, no doubt, to her husband’s more substantial girth.) I also know that at a certain point in the proceedings Sheba asked something woe-struck and rhetorical along the lines of “What are we doing?” To which Connolly responded with a terse reassurance in the vein of “Don’t worry about it.” Sheba remembers thinking at the time that he sounded terribly grown-up and capable. She knew he was neither, of course. But she seems to have taken comfort in the illusion.
     
     
    Going home that night, Sheba was convinced that she would not be able to face Richard without presenting some physical manifestation of her sin. She pictured herself dissolving in tears. Fainting. Spontaneously combusting. But when she arrived at her house, she surprised herself with how expertly she dissembled.
    Richard had waited up for her. He was lying on the sofa, watching Arts Tonight. He held up his hand in greeting when she entered the living room but continued squinting