FREYA NORTH

Love Rules

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005

Copyright © Freya North 2005

Freya North asserts the moral right to b identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007180363

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007325771

Version: 2015-10-13

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Praise for Love Rules:

‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals with the darker side of love – these are real women, with real feelings.’

She

‘Tantrums, tarts, tears and text-sex … what’s not to love about this cautionary tale for true romantics?’

Heat

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship.’

Glamour

‘Plenty that’s fresh to say about the age-old differences between men and women.’

Marie Claire

‘Sassy, feel-good read … Chick lit with a good sting in the tail.’

Cosmopolitan

‘Raunchy sex and realistic emotional wranglings make this chick-lit with class.’

Eve

‘An intelligent tale of chance encounters, long-lasting friendship and what it’s like to fall in and out of love.’

B Magazine

Dedication

For Lucy Smouha, Kirsty Johnson and Clare Grogan

My glory is I have such friends.

Epigraph

Something’s gotten hold of my heart

Keeping my soul and my senses apart

Greenaway/Cook

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Mark and Saul and Alice and Thea

Thea Luckmore

Mark Sinclair

Saul Mundy

Alice Heggarty

Thea and Saul

Barefaced Bloke and the Girl with the Scar

Mr and Mrs Sinclair

Mundy, Luckmore & Co.

Quentin

Beth and Hope

Girls and Boys

Adam

A Year Between the Sheets

The Isley Brothers

Crowded House

Peter, Gabriel

Cohen & Howard

La Grande Motte

Le Retour

What?!

txt sex

Table for Four

P.I.C.

Miss Heggarty and Mr Brusseque

Loggerheads

Thea’s Twelve O’Clock

Thea’s Six O’Clock

Cold Shoulders

Black Beauty

Alice?

Thea?

The Oldest Trade

Thea’s Two O’Clock

Thea’s Four O’Clock

Thea and Sally’s Six O’Clock

Ryanair’s 10.10 a.m.

Saul’s Three O’Clock

Peter’s 4.26 p.m.

Alice, Thea, Mark and Saul

Cold Feet

Avon Calling

Friends

The simple lack of her is more to me than others’ presence

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own

Love is often the fruit of marriage

Mr Alexander’s Three O’Clock

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Freya North

About the Publisher

Mark and Saul and Alice and Thea

Mark Sinclair liked to think that there was an inevitability to happy-ever-afters. He believed that they were granted to those who were good in life, to people whose thoughts were honourable, who had worthy goals, whose deeds and dealings were principled. However, at the age of thirty, Mark Sinclair understood that he would need to modify his belief, revise his dream and compromise. He intended to do this without turning into a cynic or allowing his ethics to suffer. He’d just have to let his dream of twenty years fade. It wasn’t going to be easy. But there again, the dream wasn’t going to come true, no matter how virtuous he was.

Mark Sinclair’s dream was Alice Heggarty. But she had gone and fallen in love with someone who wasn’t him. Again. Just as she had at the age of twenty-five. And at twenty-three. And before that, annually at university. And before that, with the captain of the first XV at his school. The girl Mark had loved for so long had gone and fallen in love again but this time Alice was nearly twenty-nine. Mark knew she’d have made a calculated decision that this love ought to take her into her thirties and onwards, into matrimony and children and a house in NWsomewhere. The time was right for her own happy-ever-after. ‘So dream on,’ Mark told himself sternly, ‘dream on.’

In the two decades he’d known Alice, Mark had always had hope because he’d always had the dream because, being a man of patience and principles, he’d taken a philosophical view on waiting. He theorized that Alice had never broken his dream because he’d never brought it out into the open. Besides, she’d been so busy, permanently falling madly in love and despairingly out of love with all those other men. At the time, Mark felt this to be a positive thing and he did not regret keeping his own feelings secret. After all, it meant that Alice had never made a decision against him, she’d never turned him down, never ditched him in favour of another, never suggested they revert to being ‘just good friends’.

As lovers charged in and stormed out of her life, and as girlfriends breezed into his and left quietly, their friendship had remained unscathed. Alice was never possessive of Mark and Mark accepted her periodic disappearance into the fast eddies of new love-lust. Indeed, Mark had always found it encouraging that Alice went for a type – and that the type she went for was the antithesis of him. It meant she’d never fallen for someone like Mark; she’d always gone for men who were diametrically opposed to all that he was. Tall, loud, movie-blond beefy blokes with heartbreaker reputations or ice-beautiful arrogance Alice was convinced she could conquer and melt. Consequently, Mark could not feel jealous of the men in Alice’s life though he envied them Alice. Rather, he was irked that they were delaying his personal happy-ever-after.

Very very privately, he was also relieved that invariably it was they who left her. Looking after Alice with her heart all hurt was actually even more rewarding than being in her company when she was hyper-effervescent with the distractions of love. Though it scorched Mark’s soul to see her distraught, he knew he could make her feel better. It was a job he could do brilliantly. And it augmented his hope. Because when his dream came true, he’d never leave her. Of that she could be as sure as he was.

Whereas Alice rushed headlong into love affairs, Mark merely dabbled in what he believed to be just an interim after all. Now, with Alice in love once more, yet again not with Mark, and given their respective ages, he acknowledged, sensibly, that an interim was a period between two points and that there really was no point in holding out for Alice. Because he loved her, and because he’d been privy to her teenage turmoil and twenties torment, he wanted only peace and fulfilment for her in her thirties and beyond. Even if her joy and contentment meant he’d never have her cry on his shoulder again.

Mark was happy for Alice, but he was not so altruistic not to be sad for himself. He had believed, mistakenly, that if he lived well and worked hard, if he was honourable in his thoughts and actions, his reward would be all he had dreamt of. Reluctantly, he had to accept that good behaviour and a belief in the potential of one’s wishes ultimately might not win the prize. Neither Alice, nor the Man Who Will Marry Her, were at fault or to blame. And, just because he now no longer believed in happy-ever-after didn’t mean the future need be misery-for-evermore.

He was going to moderate his desire without seeing compromise as a tragedy. He’d have to stop letting down gently all those lovely girls after the fourth or fifth date. He’d need to see the wider picture and take a view. There had been two or three he had liked enormously. Previously, when he’d reached the stage of thinking of them fondly, planning holidays, masturbating in their honour, browsing Liberty for trinkets of his affection, an image of Alice glancing at her watch had always sprung to mind. As if she was waiting for him. And though the lovely girls were let down gently, all wished to remain friends. Mark, as Alice once told a girlfriend who was single, was one of life’s great good guys.

Mark was a good person because for twenty years he had always believed that if you are a good boy, all your dreams come true.

Saul Mundy stumbled on his Road to Damascus at roughly the same time that Mark Sinclair stepped resignedly onto his. Saul had been with Emma for three years when he met a pretty and friendly blonde in a bar. They chatted and smiled and flirted lightly. Saul had no true desire for her, no intention of asking for her number or grabbing a furtive snog. Until that night, he had quite enjoyed the occasional, harmless, forgettable flirt because his affection for Emma and monogamy had remained unsullied. That night, however, it wasn’t that he wanted the blonde, it was that he didn’t want Emma.

He blanked the blonde, made hasty excuses to his friends and stumbled out in a daze onto Tottenham Court Road. The sudden clarity of the situation was ugly but he knew he mustn’t look away. If he did, complacency would wheedle in soon enough and honesty would be replaced by betrayal. Saul wouldn’t let that happen. He believed in doing the right thing and he was going home directly to do so. He had to, he was committed. It would be far easier to stay than split, far easier to act fine than confess, to hide than confide, but Saul’s belief in his relationship had gone and the only honourable thing he could do was go too. Waiting for a taxi, he shivered and sheltered in a shop doorway, gazing at the rain-sluiced pavement. It looked polished to perfection, like a meticulously varnished floor. Actually, it was just grey concrete that was wet and grimy. The truth was it was dull, no matter what tried to cover it. Surface details were worthless if the integrity of structure was lacking. Saul couldn’t believe that the last three years of his life amounted to a comparison with London pavement.

That morning, he had left the house to go to work. Now he was returning only to leave home. Had he kissed Emma that morning? He couldn’t remember. Would the offer of just good friendship be a possibility or a cowardly digression? Would she believe him when he said that he was so sorry, that he did love her and felt wretched for hurting her? That it wasn’t her, it was him? Would she believe him that he truly felt she deserved more than he could give? That he didn’t mean to sound exactly like all those articles in the women’s mags she pored over in her long bubble baths and that he browsed through when he’d forgotten to buy an Evening Standard? He doubted it.

He had the taxi drop him off on Upper Street and he walked, reluctant but resigned, towards the house, to Emma blissfully unaware, sitting beside the home-fire she’d kept burning.

‘I don’t burn for you any more,’ Saul whispered, eyes closed, forehead resting against the door frame, ‘and I should. It’s a prerequisite. I can’t compromise.’ He couldn’t even summon a spark of it from the deepest recess of his soul. His heart might be warm for her, and would continue to be, but he was absolutely sure that it wasn’t enough. He wished there was a kinder way of being so seemingly cruel. But to use a cool head to decipher his heart would give the cleanest cut, though he knew that all Emma would read written all over his face was Heartless. Saul put his key in the front door for the last time.

A decade before Mark and Saul had their epiphanies, Thea Luckmore had hers when Joshua Brown ditched her at Alice Heggarty’s eighteenth birthday party. It was irrelevant that he proceeded to snog Rachel Hutton in the kitchen. It didn’t matter that Alice, incensed, had poured Woodpecker cider over his head and told him he was a wanker who should fucking fuck off. It wasn’t even that Joshua no longer wanted her, it was that Thea was still in love with him. She didn’t ask Alice how she could win him back, instead she asked her what she should do with all the feelings of love.

Alice suggested getting off with Joshua’s mate to piss him off.

‘But I don’t feel anything for him,’ Thea had qualified.

‘Exactly, it’ll be easy,’ Alice had encouraged.

‘Alice,’ Thea balked, ‘I can’t kiss someone I don’t feel something for.’

Though Joshua Brown’s friend would have done anything for a snog off Thea, Thea decided then and there that unless she experienced a shudder of desire for someone, unless she could detect potential, unless her heart swelled approvingly, she’d be keeping her kisses. Warmth or revenge were not enough. She realized that it was the love she had for Joshua that was the point. Despite the fact that he was a cad. She’d read enough Austen to know that love was a good thing and, whether it made one feel wonderful or wretched, it was her ultimate requirement for a fulfilled life.

It was the dyed-dark drama student who captured Thea’s heart during her second year at Manchester University. Though she was never quite sure whether he was proclaiming his innermost feelings or reciting his lines, she adored him and was glad to lavish love on him. They smoked dope. They had his-and-hers unkempt pony-tails. They made vast vats of ratatouille. They found deep and meaningful tenets in Joy Division. They rejoiced in the intensity of their world of Us. They went InterRailing together during the summer vacation and slept on beaches, watched sunsets and professed to truly understand e. e. cummings. He fell out of love with Thea just before her finals a year later, citing that love was life’s torment and proclaiming the wring of his feelings was a headfuck.

‘Did he actually say “headfuck”, Thea?’ Alice asked, not sure whether it was interference on the Cambridge–Manchester phone line or Thea’s sobbing.

‘Yes,’ Thea said, ‘but he also said that his love for me was so all consuming—’

‘– that it threatened to devour him?’ Alice interrupted. ‘Life is love’s torment or vice versa?’

‘Yes!’ Thea gasped, comforted that Alice had obviously been in such a situation herself, no doubt with that third year from Trinity with the double-barrelled surname.

‘Did he say something about only the winds of time could determine where his seed would fall and take root?’ Alice asked.

Thea paused. ‘Yes,’ she said, hesitant.

Alice continued gently. ‘Do you remember that God-awful theatre-thing, that art-performance-bollocks you dragged me to when I visited just before Christmas?’

‘Yes,’ Thea wavered.

‘He was performing his friend’s prose poem?’ Thea didn’t reply. ‘You were gazing at him too adoringly to actually hear any of it, weren’t you?’

Thea’s broken heart clanked heavily against a sudden twist of mortification in her stomach. She was speechless.

‘Thea,’ Alice continued quietly but firmly, ‘I promise you, you’ll find love again. And I promise you one day you’ll laugh about this one. We both will. We’ll laugh until we pee our pants. Trust me.’

Alice always kept her promises and she was the one person Thea always trusted. Alice, it turned out, was quite right. Memories of Headfuck Boy continue to provide them with much mirth and they can still quote his friend’s prose poem verbatim. Headfuck Boy did not cause Thea any lasting damage, nor did he in any way alter her belief in the virtue and value of falling head over heels in love. Thea Luckmore was not one to compromise.

Alice had her epiphany over a bowl of soup, ten years later – just a few months after Mark and Saul had theirs. She left her office near Tower Bridge, grabbing new issues of magazines just arrived from the printers. Though she’d never intended to take public transport anyway, the whip of November chill that accosted her outside further justified the taxi.

‘Chiltern Street, please,’ she told the cabbie, ‘the Paddington Street end. You know, off Baker Street.’

‘And do you tell your granny how to suck eggs?’ the cabbie teased her. Alice looked confused. ‘It’s my job, love,’ he continued jovially, ‘the Knowledge? Short cuts? Crafty backdoubles? Bus lanes? I do know Chiltern Street – amazingly enough.’

‘Sorry,’ Alice said meekly, ‘I didn’t mean to.’

She thought how Bill absolutely detested her habit of giving directions if she wasn’t driving. In their early days, he had gently teased her, even indulged her. A year on, it now irritated him supremely. ‘Which way do you want to go then?’ he’d give a henpecked sigh before they’d set off. And if Alice’s route proved circuitous, or with a proliferation of speed bumps, or beset by roadworks or vengeful traffic lights, he’d let his stony silence yell his disapproval and annoyance.

‘I’m not a control freak,’ Alice said out loud, not intentionally to the cab driver but not out of context either. ‘It’s not an obsession, it’s just a trait of my character.’ She gazed out of the window, about to ask him why he was going along the Embankment rather than via Farringdon at this time of day. But she bit her lip. Was it a loathsome quirk of her personality? Should it be something she should resolve to change? She could feel her tears smarting and prickling. She’d kept them in check all morning and her throat ached from the effort. ‘Here!’ she unintentionally barked at the taxi driver who swerved and shunted to a standstill in response.

‘Can you tell Thea I’m here,’ she said to the receptionist in Thea’s building.

Thea’s ‘there there’ was precisely what Alice had come halfway across London in her lunch hour to hear. The sound of it triggered the tears. ‘There there,’ said Thea again, and Alice cried all the more. ‘Let’s get some soup in you,’ Thea soothed, guiding Alice to Marylebone High Street.

Alice sipped obediently. ‘I’m going to sound like Headfuck Boy,’ she admitted, after a few spoonfuls, ‘but if I don’t end it now, it’s going to consume me. And I’ll end up all spat out. Again. I’m just so tired.’ Though Thea knew her friend’s face by rote, objectively she noted a sallowness to the complexion, a flatness to the eyes, cheekbones now too sharp to be handsome, a thinness attributable to stress rather than vanity. ‘I’m nearly thirty,’ Alice concluded in a forlorn whisper. ‘When am I going to learn?’

‘You’re not fretting about that, are you?’ Thea asked, due to turn thirty a month before Alice.

‘Look at this,’ Alice said, showing Thea the new copy of Lush magazine. ‘It’s the “Alice Heggarty This is Your Life” issue.’

Thea read the cover lines out loud. ‘More Shoes Than Selfridges.’ She looked at Alice. ‘But I’ve never known you to buy a pair and not wear them out. ‘A Chef in the Kitchen, A Whore in the Bedroom.’ Thea patted the cover of the magazine: ‘Why, that’s a skill others envy you.’

‘Look!’ Alice declared. ‘Falling For Mr Wrong.’ She jabbed her finger at the magazine. ‘Passion Drove Me Insane,’ she proclaimed, ‘Lovelorn or Lustaholic. For fuck’s sake, I’m meant to be the publisher – not the inspiration for every sodding article.’ She sighed and continued in a quieter voice, ‘Lush is directed at the early-twenties market, Thea. I’m basically thirty and still slave to all these insecurities and issues.’

‘Bill,’ Thea said darkly, buttering a doorstep of bread and dunking it, watching the satisfying ooze of butter slither off the bread and dissolve into the soup.

Alice covered her face with her hands. ‘If I say it out loud, it has to be real,’ she said, ‘if I look you in the eye, I can’t hide from the truth.’ She laid her hands in her lap and regarded Thea. ‘He’s Mr Wrong,’ she whispered, ‘it’s as simple as that. I’m exhausted. I’m a lovelorn lustaholic and passion is driving me insane.’

‘Gentle sympathy or hard advice?’ Thea asked.

‘You’re my best friend, I need you to tell me what I need to know,’ Alice said, ‘even if it’s not what I want to hear.’

Thea regarded Alice levelly. She tipped her head to one side. ‘You’re right,’ she shrugged, ‘Bill is Mr Wrong.’ Momentarily, Alice felt like springing to Bill’s defence only Thea jumped in first. ‘In Bill’s defence,’ she said, ‘he’s a gorgeous and charming man. With a great car. Physically, you make a beautiful couple. But your relationship is ugly.’ She’d witnessed enough blazing rows, spiked sarcasm, hostile silences and relentless bickering to speak with authority.

‘It’s been such hard work,’ said Alice, stirring her soup as though it was a cup of well-sugared tea, ‘constantly trying to safeguard his love and lust for me. Even though, sometimes when I get it, I don’t actually want it,’ Alice confided. ‘I hate feeling so pathetically insecure, when actually I don’t think I really like him anyway.’

‘He is what he is,’ said Thea fairly, ‘gorgeous and aloof and rich and a sod.’

‘It seems we’re always playing some horrid power game – either I’m the one who’s pissed him off or else I’m in a manipulative sulk with him.’ Alice paused. ‘We just ricochet from his stony silences to my flouncy strops. It’s exhausting.’

‘The renowned playboy,’ Thea told her, ‘he was captivated by your feistiness but to be honest, he’d be better suited with a bimbo or a mousy-wifey.’

‘Could change?’ Alice said meekly and with some ambiguity.

‘You or him?’ Thea asked pointedly. ‘Don’t you dare go compromising. And what would you change him into? And don’t say a frog.’

But Alice was off on a tangent, gazing into the middle distance, reinventing Bill. Or, rather, creating an entirely different man simply clad in Bill’s likeness. ‘Someone calm. Someone who adores me and I’ll never doubt it. Someone who won’t mind the way I’m a back-seat driver. Someone who makes me feel safe, someone who won’t cause me panic when I find their mobile phone is switched off. Someone who won’t play games. Or play around. Someone who won’t flirt in front of me. Or when I’m not around.’

Or with your friends, Thea thought to herself remembering more than one occasion when Bill had paid her a little too much attention. They scraped their soup bowls with their spoons and then used the last of the bread to swab them dry.

‘I would have finished it months ago,’ Alice said, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘but in some ways it was easy to become addicted to the fabulous passionate making-up sex which always concludes our rows. But you know what? We rarely have sex unless it’s concluding an argument. And we’ve never, ever, made love.’

Thea snorted. ‘I haven’t had sex, made love, shagged, fornicated, humped or mated for eleven months!’

‘You and your daft standards.’ Alice laughed a little. ‘I’m surprised you don’t just take yourself to a nunnery and be done with it.’

‘Christ,’ said Thea, who was actually an atheist, ‘I love sex. I’m dying for a fuck. I’m just not so desperate as to lower my standards.’

‘Do they actually have to proclaim their romantic intentions, their degree of wholesome love before you’ll permit entry?’ Alice teased.

‘Piss off!’ Thea joshed. ‘You’ve missed my point. They can feel all they like, they can compose poems and do the bended-knee routine. But if I don’t burn for them, if I don’t feel that spark – no chance.’

They ordered tea for two and cake to share.

‘You’re in love with love,’ Alice said, dividing the gateau with her fork and offering Thea the choice of portions, ‘while I lust for lust.’

‘Sounds like a magazine article, if ever there was one,’ Thea said, choosing the end of the wedge, rather than the point.

Alice glanced down at the cover of Lush and gave a little snort. ‘From Heartbreak to Happy-Ever-After – 7 Steps to Take You There.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps I ought to practise what I publish.’

The girls skimmed through the relevant article. Neither of them thought that Number 1 Time for a New You – Go for a Funky New Hairdo!! was the answer. Nor was Number 2 Flirt with Your Best Mate’s Brother!! a remotely feasible idea. Thea’s older brother was a densely bearded academic who rather unnerved both girls. Numbers 3 and 4 dealt predictably with Take Time and Make Time for Me Time!!!! and Rebound Repercussions – A Quick Shag is Not a Long-Term Fix!!!

‘Number 5 is interesting, though,’ Thea remarked, ‘It’s Not Who You Love It’s How You Love!!!’

‘I detest exclamation marks,’ Alice said. ‘I’ll have to have a word with editorial.’

‘Change What’s on Your Wish List!!!’ Thea read out Number 6. ‘Perhaps there is some sense in rejigging your requirements, Alice?’

‘What about you?’ Alice retorted. ‘Why do I have to do all this personality-dissection, inner-feeling workshopping?’

‘Because I’m happy being celibate while true love eludes me.’

‘You must have the Rolls Royce of vibrators,’ Alice murmured.

‘Well, you’d know,’ Thea countered brightly, ‘you bought it me.’

‘Got it free,’ Alice stuck her tongue out.

‘Should’ve kept it for yourself then,’ Thea gurned back.

‘Number 7,’ Alice returned to the article, ‘Blink!!! He Might be Standing There, Staring You in the Face!!!!’

‘The postman!’ Thea gasped with mock eagerness.

‘That guy from the ad agency we use,’ said Alice, with genuine enthusiasm. Thea regarded Alice sternly, but Alice licked her lips and winked. And then, like a mist descending, anxiety dulled her eyes and turned her mouth downwards. It was just a magazine article anyway, with too many exclamation marks and a target market half a decade younger than them. ‘I’ll finish it with Bill tonight,’ Alice said, quietly but decisively, ‘I bet he won’t even care.’

‘I think he does care about you,’ Thea said, ‘but I think you’re doing the right thing. I’d better go, I have a client in five minutes and I mustn’t have cold hands.’

‘Will you be around later?’ Alice said, her face fragile and her voice wavering. ‘In case I need you?’

‘Of course,’ Thea shrugged, as if it was the daftest question to even think of asking your closest friend.

So it turned out that Mark Sinclair was right. He was so right that, for some time, he would quietly wonder if something must be wrong. Alice Heggarty was to be married, just as he predicted, by the time she was thirty. Actually, she would turn thirty-one on honeymoon because her meticulous attention to detail and aversion to compromise meant the wedding was shunted to accommodate seamstress, florist, venue and cake-maker. Though, normally, she liked to have her birthday planned to perfection too, she didn’t actually know where she would be when she turned thirty-one. That was up to the groom and she had relinquished some responsibility to him in return for assurances of untold luxury. After all, she was not so secretly dreaming of the Caribbean.

All that Mark had wrong was her choice of groom. Alice wasn’t going to marry Bill. In all other respects, though, Mark had been absolutely right. It turned out that if you are good, you can indeed earn yourself a happy-ever-after. Obviously, Mark Sinclair must have been very very good. Because Alice Heggarty was going to marry him.

Thea Luckmore

Thea Luckmore’s twelve-o’clock client, a fit man in his mid-thirties, groaned under her. She kept the pressure steady and insistent until she could feel him yield, sense the tautness of his body ebb away, the grimace on his face ease into an expression of relief. She rolled his flesh between her fingers. Under her hands, he now felt as soft as his appreciative sigh. She lightened her touch and changed rhythm and direction as a wind-down. Finally, she placed both palms on his bare back, between his shoulder blades, and inhaled deeply. She closed her eyes, feeling warmth interchange between them. She exhaled quietly but deeply and opened her eyes.

‘OK,’ she said softly, lifting her hands away very slowly, ‘there you go.’ She wondered if he had fallen asleep.

‘Can’t move,’ he muffled, his face buried in the bed, ‘amazing.’

‘I’ll leave you to rest and get dressed,’ said Thea as she closed the door quietly behind her and went to wash her hands. She ran her damp fingers through her hair, giving her short, gamine crop what her mother termed ‘an Audrey Hepburn nonchalance, darling – if Audrey had been mouse-brown’. Thea hadn’t had hair long enough for a pony-tail since Headfuck Boy of her student days.

‘God, that was good,’ her client grinned, handing over £50 though he would gladly have doubled it. ‘Can I have you again next week?’

The session had drained Thea; her bones felt soft and her joints felt stiff. Often, the clients for whom her treatment had the most extreme results were those whose negative energy she absorbed in the process. Which is why they felt so energized and she felt so sapped. She flicked her hands as if trying to fling something away, shook her arms and legs and splashed cold water on her face. She could climb on the bed and sleep for an hour, which was tempting, or she could pull herself together and step out into a gorgeous spring day. Thea Luckmore always tried to do what she felt was right, even if it wasn’t quite what she felt like. So she opened the sash window to air the room and went out for a brisk walk. With an extravagantly stuffed sandwich from Pret a Manger, she strolled to Paddington Street Gardens and had an impromptu picnic with a copy of Heat magazine for company and light relief.

Her phone showed two missed calls from Giles. And a voicemail message. Thea felt burdened. Giles was nice enough. ‘But not nice enough,’ Thea explained to a pigeon who was bobbing at a respectful distance within pecking reach of any crumb she might dispense. ‘I’ve tried telling him that I value our friendship too much to jeopardize it by taking it further, but he saw that as a challenge rather than a gentle let-down.’ Filling from her sandwich dropped to the ground. The pigeon, it seemed, didn’t care for avocado. Patiently, it continued to bob and coo. ‘I like him but I don’t fizz for him. No spark – no point.’ A slice of tomato was tried and rejected so Thea gave the pigeon more bread. ‘I’m just going to have to be blunt with him. Tell him he’s simply not my type. Not that I really have a type.’ She watched the pigeon wrestle with her chewy granary crust, fending off the pestering of other birds. ‘Just a feeling.’

Thea wasn’t expecting her six o’clock to come early – she’d expected him to be at least ten minutes late. She’d developed a theory, based on ample evidence over the years, that her clients tended to be early in the winter months, when inclement weather and darkness by teatime saw them jump in cabs to arrive early yet apologetic, as if sitting quietly in the waiting room, thawing out, was somehow taking a liberty. Come the spring, her clients would stroll to her, or jump off the bus a couple of stops early. They were simply not in so much of a rush to be indoors from outside. With this March being one of the warmest on record, Thea’s clients were not turning up on time. Apart from this one. It was unexpected. But not half as unexpected as seeing Alice in reception too. Alice and the client were standing side by side awkwardly, both fixing her with a beseeching gaze like puppies in a pet shop competing for her attention. Thea mouthed ‘one minute’ to her client and with a tilt of her head, she beckoned Alice through to the kitchenette. Maintaining the mime, she raised one eyebrow to invite an explanation from Alice who thought, just then, that her best friend would make a very good headmistress. Indeed, Alice suddenly felt a little bashful, turning up and surprising Thea while her six o’clock loitered. She proffered a clutch of magazines. ‘Here,’ she said in a contrived, sheepish voice and a don’t-beat-me look on her face, ‘these are for your waiting room.’

‘Are you all right?’ Thea enquired in a discreet whisper.

‘Fine,’ Alice tried to whisper back but found that her smile of prodigious proportions caused her voice to squeak. ‘I have something to tell you.’

‘I’ll be an hour,’ Thea told her, glancing at the clock and seeing it was now six, ‘perhaps quicker. He may not need the full session today.’

Alice waited in the kitchenette while Thea led her client upstairs, small talk accompanying their footsteps. Then she returned to the waiting room and removed magazines by any rival publisher, arranging her copies of BoyRacer, HotSpots, GoodGolfing, FilmNow, YachtUK, and Vitesse. Something to cater for all of Thea’s clients, she hoped. She sat and waited, fidgeting with her hair, twisting her pony-tail up into a chignon, then French plaiting it, letting it fall in billows around her shoulders. She smiled, remembering how, when they were young and horse mad, Thea would marvel that Alice’s flaxen hair really was like a pony’s tail.

‘It’s so thick and amazing!’ Thea would say.

‘It’s a bother,’ Alice would rue, ‘I’d prefer your soft silky hair.’ Thea would brush Alice’s hair smooth, utilizing a technique they’d been taught at the riding school – holding the bunch in one hand whilst softly, gradually, rhythmically, sweeping strands away. Finally, she’d take the bunch in one hand and spin it before letting it fall, wafting down into a tangle-free fan.

‘If we were ponies, you’d be a palomino and I’d just be a boring old roan,’ Thea had said, without rancour.

‘Then pull out any dark hairs!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘Apparently, palominos can’t have more than twelve dark hairs in their tail.’

Even now, Thea automatically searched Alice’s hair. Though, if there were any rogue dark hairs to pluck, Alice gave her West End colourist an earful. She was still flaxen, but the glint and shine of her pre-teen hair now required strips of tinfoil and banter with the colourist about holidays and soap operas, for two hours and a small fortune every two months.

Thea’s six o’clock all but floated down the stairs at ten to seven and paid cash for the Cloud Nine privilege. Alice waited behind a copy of BoyRacer until Thea came to her.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

‘Nearly,’ Thea replied, ‘I just have to tidy my room.’

‘Shall I come?’ Alice suggested. ‘Help?’

‘If you want!’ Thea laughed.

Thea’s room, at the top of the building, though small in terms of square footage, appeared airy and more spacious because of the oddly angled walls and Velux windows. It was also painted a very matt white which appeared to obscure the precise surface of the walls and gave the small room a sense of space. Underfoot was a pale beech laminate floor. A simple white small melamine desk with two plain chairs in white frosted plastic were positioned under an eave. The bed was in the centre of the room. Shelves had been built in the alcove and they were piled with white towels. Three baskets, lined in calico, were placed on the bottom shelf and filled with potions and lotions in gorgeous dark blue glass bottles.

‘It’s lovely since it’s been redone,’ Alice said. ‘Did all the rooms get the same makeover?’

Thea nodded. ‘New beds too. It’s a great space to work in – our client base has soared.’

Alice pressed down onto the bed as if testing it. Then she looked beseechingly at Thea. ‘Go on, then,’ Thea sighed, raising her eyebrows in mock exasperation, ‘just a quickie.’

‘Is that what you say to your clients?’ Alice retorted. ‘Seriously,’ she whispered, ‘do they never get the wrong idea?’

‘What?’ Thea balked. ‘And ask for “extras”?’

‘Most of your clients seem to be gorgeous sporty blokes,’ Alice commented.

‘Fuck off!’ Thea objected. ‘I’m a masseuse, I specialize in sports injuries, I barely notice what clients look like – all I’m interested in is the body under my hands and how I can help to put it right. Anyway, sporty beefy isn’t my type.’

‘Yes, yes – you don’t have a type,’ Alice said, ‘just a feeling.’ She and Thea caught eyes and laughed. ‘Well, I tell you, I wouldn’t mind copping a feel of some of your clients.’

‘Well, you’re a filthy cow,’ Thea said, ‘and I’m a professional with standards.’

‘Have you let Giles into your pants yet?’ Alice asked, taking off her top.

‘No way,’ said Thea, ‘not my type.’

‘You’ll be a virgin again soon,’ Alice remarked as she silently slipped her shoes off and unzipped her skirt. She eased herself onto the bed, lying on her stomach. She placed her face into the hole of the padded doughnut-ring at the head end.

‘OK,’ Thea said softly, ‘let’s have a feel of you.’ She placed her hands lightly on Alice and then began to work. Within moments, it felt to Alice as though a troupe of fairies was travelling all over her back, lifting her shoulder blades and dusting underneath, doing synchronized roly-polys down her spine, breathing relief in between her vertebrae, unfurling the muscles around her neck, marching over her biceps, soothing her scapulae, giving her hip-joints a good spring clean. She hadn’t had a massage from Thea in ages. Guiltily, she recalled how dismissive she had been when Thea had announced years ago that despite her first-class geography degree, she was going to train as a masseuse.

‘Pilates has had a really positive effect on your back,’ Thea declared, bringing Alice back to the present, ‘but you should check the ergonomics of your desk, chair and screen at work.’

Slowly, Alice sat up. Her face was flushed and her eyes were gently glazed with relaxation. ‘You’re a genius,’ she declared woozily, ‘you have healing hands.’

Thea, however, snorted almost derisively. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, ‘they’re just “helpful hands” – if you want truly healing hands, you want to have Reiki with Maria. Or Souki’s acupuncture. Or have Lars tutor you in the basics of Feldenkrais. My massage is more a satisfying after-dinner mint to the main course served by the other practitioners.’

‘Would you just give yourself some bloody credit, girl,’ Alice said, almost angrily. ‘You didn’t see the look on your last client’s face. Blissed-out is an understatement.’

‘I didn’t need to,’ Thea shrugged, ‘I felt his back say thank you all by itself.’

‘Can I make one tiny suggestion?’ Alice asked. ‘Ditch the plinky-plinky rainforest music in reception. It made me want to yell and wee simultaneously.’

Later that night, Thea sat up in bed, flicked on the bedside light and looked at the clock. It was in fact the early hours of the next day. She couldn’t sleep and she knew the worst place to be was her bed. She pulled on her fleece dressing gown and padded out of the room. The brutal change from soft carpet to cold floor tiles still unnerved her though she’d lived with it for four years. By the time she reached her small kitchen – a matter of only a few steps – her feet had acclimatized to the tiles. She made a cup of tea and went through to the sitting room and the comfort of carpet once more. Her mother liked to say that the flat was placed around a sixpence and it made her quite dizzy. The perpetually cold central hallway, small indeed and basically circular, was the hub off which the other rooms radiated. The bedroom, the kitchen, the sitting room, the bathroom. Standing in the hallway with all the other doors shut and surrounding you was a slightly disorientating experience. But Thea loved it. ‘It’s my little slice of Lewis Carroll Living,’ she’d proclaimed to her mother when begging her for a loan for her deposit. Viewed from the pavement, the side of the building where Thea’s flat was located was a turreted, cylindrical add-on to an otherwise unremarkable Victorian exterior.

‘A satisfying expression of Gothick-with-a-k,’ Thea’s usually serious and conservative older brother had declared with surprising approval, ‘don’t you think so, Alice?’

‘I reckon your sister just wants her Rapunzel moment!’ Alice had said.

Thea scrunched her toes into her shaggy rug and sat down, hugging her knees. She didn’t drink the tea – the ritual of making it and cupping her hands around it had been the thing. She saw her mobile phone on the sofa and reached for it. It was on and a text message was unopened.

u r happy 4 me?!! Say u r!! xxx

course I am!!! Thea replied. brill news – u deserve hap-ev-aft! Xxx

Though Alice’s news was undoubtedly brilliant, Thea was still somewhat overwhelmed by the shock of it. She thought back to Alice linking arms with her and hauling her off to Blandford Street for sushi.

Guess what!

What?

You’ll never guess!

What?

Guess!

What? Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! That bloke from your ad agency?

I’m getting married!

That bloke from your ad agency?

No, silly. No! Mark Sinclair!

Mark Sinclair?

Yes!

Mark Sinclair?

Yes! Yes!

Mark Sinclair?

Yes, Thea, Mark Sinclair!

Does he know?

Alice hadn’t met someone. She’d found someone. Those had been her words and she was effervescing with excitement, exclamation marks now peppering her speech.

‘I found someone! I’m getting married. Fucking hell! Can you believe it! I’ve found someone!’

Initially Thea was gobsmacked into jaw-dropped silence but Alice’s animation was infectious. Though baffled by the simple facts that Alice was now engaged, that Mark Sinclair was fiancé, and though stunned by the speed of it all, Thea soon spun into Alice’s excitement. She sketched wedding-dress possibilities on serviettes while Alice, flushed and gesticulating, re-enacted the entire proposal before launching into list-making.

‘You know what? I can’t believe I didn’t think of him earlier. I mean, I’ve known him for ever! I’ve always loved him. Because he’s always always been there for me.’

Thea agreed. Mark Sinclair had always always been there. She knew him, of course, without really knowing him at all. The lovely guy who always made Alice feel better, who had always been there for her when some cad or other had done her wrong. With hindsight, Thea recalled the gaze he’d bestowed on Alice now and then over the years which, at the time, she’d interpreted as brotherly affection. After all, it was Mark who had shared with Thea the job of looking after Alice when some Lothario had broken her heart again. Mark who had gladly taken Alice out to lovely restaurants or opening nights at the theatre when she was without a date and down in the doldrums. Mark who’d been at the other end of the phone as Alice’s late-night insecurity guard. Mark who assured Alice that not all men were bastards, that there were fish in the sea aplenty and she was the prize catch. Thea had been grateful to him for this. Without ever really having had the forum to tell him so. Well, she could now. Here was one man she’d never have to take to one side to threaten that if he hurt her friend she’d kill him. He was the absolute antithesis of Alice’s previous pick. That’s why it was such a shock. Such a revelation.

And yet it made sense. Since breaking up with Bill, Alice had indeed had a quiet, sometimes pensive few months. Maybe she had made a conscientious decision to practise what she published. Perhaps it really was as easy as reassessing her wish list. Blinking and seeing that the man to marry was standing right in front of her. Learning it’s not who you love, it’s how.

‘But how long have you been seeing him? I mean, how come I didn’t know you’ve even been seeing him?’

‘Two weeks. Don’t shout at me, Thea!’

‘Two weeks? And now you’re engaged?’

‘Be happy for me – or you can’t be bridesmaid.’

‘Of course I’m happy for you, idiot. Ecstatic. I’m just shocked. Two weeks?’

‘He’s perfect. What was the point of waiting? Kind, considerate, calm – there are no safer hands in the world for handling me.’

‘Are you madly in love with him? With Mark Sinclair?’

Alice looked at Thea. ‘You do know that feeling of “madly in love” is merely phenylethylamine, Thea?’ Alice said with a sigh. ‘It’s just a natural amphetamine – which is why it’s addictive. It’s the same hormone that’s released during high-risk sports and eating chocolate.’

‘Whatever,’ said Thea, ‘but you need to be in love with someone to actually marry them.’

‘So fiction and films would have us believe,’ Alice said. ‘There’s more to marriage than being head over heels. In fact, my feet are firmly rooted and my head is now out of the clouds and firmly on my shoulders – that’s why I know it’s going to work. I’m ready for this.’

‘And you do love him,’ Thea said.

‘Everyone loves Mark,’ Alice smiled, ‘he’s one of life’s good guys.’

‘And you love him,’ said Thea.

‘I’m the love of his life. And he’s my love for life. That’s why we’re marrying. What more could I ask for?’

Now, contemplating quietly in the conducive early hours, Thea likened it to Alice having a good tidy-up and coming across something she’d forgotten all about. Like something never worn, bought on impulse, never even tried on, pushed to the back of a cupboard, then rediscovered. A perfect fit, it transpired. A delightful surprise. What disconcerted Thea was that she hadn’t ever thought that when Alice did her tidy-up, she’d find Mark. What unnerved her most – and she could now admit it in the silence and privacy of her space – was that she was actually slightly taken aback. Alice had brought Thea the best news in the world. But for the first time in their friendship, she’d done so without the need to ask Thea’s advice or seek her opinion first.

Mark Sinclair

Mark Sinclair had an aptitude for diplomacy and an instinct for manners. They hadn’t been drilled into him at home, he hadn’t learnt them at school or been trained in them after university. They were simply part of his personality and throughout his thirty-two years they had won him friends and influence. These qualities, combined with a head for figures and a heart with a strong work ethic, saw his rapid promotion through the hierarchies at ADS Internationale for whom he worked as an investment analyst. He was invaluable to them. He could speak languages, keep calm under the pressure of City finance, didn’t get drunk over business lunches, never fell out with colleagues or associates, travelled uncomplainingly and trained his immediate team into an efficient, likeable unit. The company had no need to incentivize him and every reason to reward him which they did, handsomely.

Whoever met Mark, wished to befriend him. It helped that he was fluent in Spanish and French, passable in German and Italian, and that his work took him abroad frequently. A full Filofax and a packed Palm Pilot kept track of his worldwide friendships. He was a terrific host when people came to London. He’d stock the fridge for them, tailor a list of sights to see, and provide his membership cards for a variety of museums. He’d meet them after work, having secured great seats at theatres or enviable tables in top restaurants. Mark was also a wonderful guest – as comfortable sleeping on the bottom bunk of his godson’s bed in Didsbury as he was staying in palatial grandeur in a suite at the Peninsula, Hong Kong. He loved hiking hard in Skye with his old friends the McLeods and he enjoyed putting the world to rights in French with his new friend at the Paris office, Pierre. He went on safari by himself in Kenya and made Jeep-loads of new friends there. He was a Friend of the Royal Academy of Arts and soon made friends at the Royal Academy. He had friends who’d invite him to Glyndebourne and others he’d accompany to Glastonbury. Mark Sinclair was open-minded, kind-hearted and plain good company. He hated confrontations and far preferred to bite his tongue than fall out with anyone he cared for. An even keel was what he aimed for. Which is why he had so many friends but not actually one best one.

Alice looked at Mark expectantly. She smoothed her white shirt, flicked her hair back, cocked her head and regarded him again.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked, while patting his pockets to double-check on keys, wallet, mobile phone. ‘Shall we go?’

‘But how do I look?’ Alice said, standing her ground a little petulantly. ‘Will they approve? Do you think I should wear a skirt instead?’

‘You look gorgeous,’ Mark assured her, congratulating himself on the earrings he’d bought her. ‘You look – brown?’

‘Thea did my fake tan,’ Alice said, with no embarrassment. ‘I felt a bit pale and peaky from my cold last week – I don’t want your mum to think you’re not looking after me. Do you think your parents will approve? Do you think they’ll like me? I hope your mum is a good cook – I’m starving.’

‘Of course they will,’ said Mark, ‘who wouldn’t. Come on. Mum’s Sunday Roast is legendary – but don’t touch the white wine. They only do Liebfraumilch.’

Gail Sinclair busied off to the kitchen to prepare the dessert, turning down Alice’s keen offer to help. Gail was delighted. Better still, she was charmed.

‘Charmed, absolutely charmed,’ she practised quietly to herself in the kitchen whilst decanting Marks & Spencer custard into a jug and carefully transferring their cherry Bakewell onto her best cake dish. Charmed, she continued in a whisper, Alice is delightful, Hazel. Absolutely winning to look at. A magazine person. She brought us copies – a real variety, Mary. She dotes on Mark, Carole – absolutely dotes on him. Chris and I couldn’t be more happy.

‘She’s a cracker,’ Chris Sinclair, who’d never mastered the art of the whisper, told his son; while Alice sat to his right and tried to look as though she wasn’t eavesdropping. Gail heard, even though she was at a clatter changing their everyday crockery for the best china. Chris thinks she’s a cracker, Joyce, and I know you’ll agree once you’ve met her.

Alice reckoned Chris to be in his mid-sixties, dapper despite the patterned sweater and corduroy slippers. Thinning silvery hair cut neatly, bright eyes, elegant hands and a healthy complexion due to his love of golf and gardening. She reckoned Gail to be five years younger, her hair cut into a short, neat style appropriate for her age, any grey expensively masked by an overall coppery sheen. While Mark talked to his father about PELS and Gail poured Marks & Spencer’s coulis into another jug, Alice thought how best to describe Mark’s parents and his childhood home to Thea. ‘Refreshingly nice,’ she would probably say, ‘just normal, nice people.’ She stifled giggles into her serviette, predicting how she and Thea would then analyse the mothers of boyfriends past. Callum’s mother who wore the same Whistles jeans as her own but a size smaller, Finlay’s mother who’d insisted Alice call her Mrs Jones despite allowing them to sleep together. Tom’s mother who was insanely jealous of his affection for Alice and would thus drape herself over him quite alarmingly for the duration of their visits. But Mark’s parents seemed to be simply nice, ordinary people.

‘You look like your dad,’ Alice suddenly announced though it momentarily halted conversation and fixed Gail’s cake slice mid-air. Alice was happy to predict that in thirty years or so, the man seated opposite her, whom she was soon to marry, would look a little like the gentleman currently seated to her left.

Charmed, Gail thought to herself again, charmed.

Chris and Mark browsed the Sunday papers while Gail poured coffee and Alice effervesced over the beauty of their garden.

‘God, I completely love your verbena.’

‘Viburnum,’ Gail corrected lightly. ‘Have you a garden?’

‘Well, at the moment, I’m restricted to what the lifestyle mags call patio living,’ Alice said. ‘It’s basically a small, glorified back yard covered with cream gravel and pots with plants that die on me on an annual basis. And twisty wire furniture that looks amazing, cost a bloody fortune and is bloody uncomfortable.’

Gail looked at Alice without expression at much the same time that Alice thought to herself shit! Is ‘bloody’ swearing? And Mark jerked up from the Sunday Times thinking oh shit, she bloody swore.

‘Perhaps once you’re married, you’ll find a house with a garden,’ Gail said diplomatically. ‘Herbaceous borders pretty much look after themselves and perennials do just what they’re meant to do.’ She took a thoughtful sip of coffee. ‘They needn’t be expensive either.’ See, no need for ‘bloody’.

‘Lovely idea,’ said Alice warmly, helping herself to another chocolate because she noted that Gail was on her third.

‘Now, I want to hear all about the proposal,’ Gail said expectantly, ‘all the romantic details.’

‘Mum –’ Mark remonstrated, raising his eyebrow at his father for sympathy and assistance.

‘Did he get down on bended knee?’ Gail asked. ‘Did he take you to a restaurant and have the maître d’ present you with a diamond ring?’ Mark groaned but Alice giggled. She thought Gail probably had the makings of a rather good mother-in-law. ‘Perhaps he whisked you off to Venice for the weekend and popped the question aboard a gondola?’

‘Last week,’ Alice grinned over to Mark who was attempting to disappear behind the Sunday Times, ‘at Mark’s flat. He was cooking that amazing chorizo and butterbean casserole thing with the six cloves of garlic. We had a glass of Rioja. I was eating a carrot.’

Gail had never been a fan of garlic, let alone Spanish peasant fare, but she tried to look enthusiastic.

‘It struck me, it simply struck me that it was the best idea ever,’ Alice said dreamily.

‘Yes, but how was the question itself popped?’ Gail persisted. ‘Mark’s father whisked me to Paris expressly to propose.’

Alice grinned. ‘It was quite matter of fact, actually,’ she said, ‘I had to turn down the radio to be heard. It all made such perfect sense. Even though I had a mouth full of carrot, I just looked at Mark and said “Marry me, Mark, marry me.” He looked at me as if he was having difficulty understanding my language. So I swallowed the carrot, repeated the question and added “please”. Still he stared. And then he said yes.’

Gail stared at Alice as if she had difficulty understanding her language. Chris just stared. ‘What’s that on your shirt?’ Gail exclaimed, looking horrified. ‘On the collar and cuffs? It’s brown.’

‘What?’ Alice looked at her collar and cuffs. ‘Oh bugger!’ she declared. ‘It’s fake tan. I’ll bloody kill Thea.’

‘Do you think they liked me?’ Alice asked Mark as they drove away.

‘Of course,’ Mark assured her, concentrating on the road, biting his tongue on being cut up by a man with a sharp haircut driving a car that was obviously meant to look like a Porsche but was glaringly not. Alice gazed out of the car. She pressed her cheek against the passenger window. She needn’t have had the fake tan – the wine at lunchtime, the effort of being on best behaviour had made her feel quite warm. She looked at the trees, some bursting into leaf, others in full blossom. She’d learn the names of lots of plants by the time she next met Mark’s parents. And she’d try not to swear.

Saul Mundy

Saul Mundy had assumed he’d buy a sensible two-bedroom house in a popular postcode, take out a mortgage with Emma and have a leg-up onto the London property ladder. He had been thinking about Brondesbury or Tufnell Park or Ealing as safe bets. But then he hadn’t been thinking about breaking up with Emma. Twelve hours after the relationship ended, Saul signed a short let on a top-floor space in central London, a location he’d previously never considered as residential. It was uncompromisingly open plan, and he reckoned the landlord had probably marketed it variously as office space, storage space, apartment or studio according to the potential tenant’s requirements. Saul chanced upon it en route to a meeting in Baker Street and rented it because it was available that afternoon and had a view he knew he’d never tire of, a privileged panorama of the city from a vantage point available to few. He need never elbow his way onto a crowded Tube again. And with upmarket delicatessens such as Villandry on his doorstep, he need never resort to frozen meals again.

When the short let expired six months later, Saul bought the place, having unexpectedly fallen for the charms of city-centre living and having learnt to cook at an evening course run by Divertimenti a stroll away. Twelve months on, Saul has become a dab hand at property improvement and is quite the house-proud DIY-er. He partitioned the expansive area with a curved wall of opalescent glass blocks, dividing the space by a sinuous line into attractive and practical zones. Privacy in an arc for sleeping; an ample and quirkily curved section in which to relax and a clever paisley-shaped bud concealing his home office. He’d mosaiced the bathroom, laid funky rubber flooring in the kitchen, and given great thought to lighting. He loved it.

And he loved the location. He hadn’t stepped on the Northern Line for eighteen months. He swiftly attained an enviable knowledge of the capital’s hidden secrets and the added advantage of living so centrally was that soon enough he was known and warmly welcomed at them all. Consequently, he was never ripped off at a convenience store. He had no need for a car and therefore never had parking fines or the Congestion Charge hanging over him. Marco, who owned the sandwich shop and deli, let Saul park his scooter under cover for free. He was always guaranteed a table for breakfast at Bernard’s Café, usually with the day’s papers presented to him too. At lunchtime, Marco always over-filled Saul’s sandwich and if it was Maria serving, she’d slip in a chocolate brownie for free. He never suffered a lousy curry. Or a dodgy Thai. Or disappointing sushi. Even if he was out of change, Dave on the corner would still have Saul’s Evening Standard for him, ready folded. He was able to secure just what he wanted, at the best possible price, during the sales, before crowd-swamping made shopping unbearable. He never had to resort to an All Bar One. He’d never been in a Pitcher & Piano. He didn’t have to fight his way through bars thronging with over-excited and over-made-up office girls, or over-indulged and over-the-limit City smart arses. He could have the liveliest and latest of nights out without ever being ripped off by a minicab, he could just stroll home. So, when Saul’s friend Ian Ashford called and suggested a night out, Saul was able to say that he knew a great little place to meet.

The Swallow, nestled between a printing shop and an ironmonger’s along one of the little streets forming the tight clasp east of Great Portland Street, was an old-fashioned hostelry. It appeared unprepossessing enough from the outside to safeguard against clientele other than locals and regulars. The drab paint, the windows seemingly in need of a basic wash to say nothing of new frames, were a shrewd exterior to protect an interior that was actually bright, cosy and spruce. The place was not big and resembled an elongated sitting room; the bar itself was confined to one corner and cramped enough for the staff to be unable to serve side by side necessitating an intricate but effective pas de deux. Whilst one pulled a pint or reached for a whisky glass or discussed the runners at Kempton Park, the other would look over his shoulder to take the next order. And then they’d change position with a courteous glide. A coal fire murmured away constantly from November until March. From May until September, the back door was permanently open to a small patio complete with its own grapevine, increasing the pub’s interior capacity of twenty-eight seated and six standing to a further twelve standing. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, sausages and mash were available. At other times, peanuts and crisps were complimentary.

At the Swallow, though no one actually knew what anyone actually did or where they lived, the atmosphere was congenial and every now and then, a sense of community emerged. Arthur gave everyone a great tip for shares to be bought in a new Internet start-up. Lynton offered Marlboro cigarettes for less than half the shop price. When Barry’s flat was broken into, his home was restocked courtesy of the staff and clients at the Swallow. Eddie’s cousin owned a locksmith’s concession and sorted out new security. Anne ran up two new pairs of curtains for Barry because the burglars had ripped down his to use as sacks. Lynton knew someone who did CD players on the cheap and as they owed him a favour, he secured one for Barry for free. But Saul earned himself complimentary pints for a month. Not that free drinks were Saul’s motivation to provide Barry with more CDs than he’d owned in the first place, an electric shaver, an electric toothbrush that retailed at twice the price of the shaver, a digital camera, an Alessi teapot and a lava lamp.

‘Blimey, mate,’ Keith the landlord had marvelled, pulling Saul a Guinness on the house, ‘is all that kosher?’

‘You got a little shop or something?’ asked Barry, hugely grateful but also quietly wondering what else Saul had. ‘Or you got the back of a lorry?’

‘Knock-off?’ Lynton quizzed, defensive but interested.

Saul had laughed. ‘It’s kosher, Lynton, your patch is safe, mate! I’m a writer,’ he shrugged, knowing he’d told them before at some point. ‘I’m sent stuff all the time to test and review. Mostly, they don’t ask for it back. I’ve had a 42-inch plasma since the summer.’ Barry glanced up hopefully from behind the ziggurat of CDs. ‘They’ve only just asked for it back,’ Saul continued, ‘they’re talking about installing a home cinema for me to test next.’ Saul was called everything from lucky geezer to jammy bastard and the wish-lists of the staff and clients at the Swallow were discreetly presented to him.

So, when Ian Ashford phoned Saul, Saul suggested the Swallow as perfect for a mid-November, mid-week drink, with perhaps sausages and mash if they fancied.

‘Jesus, it’s been a while.’ Ian shook Saul’s hand warmly, nodded and grinned. ‘What’ll you drink?’ he asked, glancing around the Swallow and nodding approvingly.

‘I’ll have a Stella, thanks,’ Saul replied, reciprocating Ian’s amiable nodding with a friendly punch to the bicep. ‘Good to see you,’ Saul said warmly, ‘it’s been bloody ages. Where’ve you been?’

‘Otherwise engaged,’ said Ian. He watched Saul take a long drink. ‘Literally,’ he added. He winked, sighed and took a swig of beer. ‘Engaged.’

‘Work been a bitch, then?’ Saul enquired.

‘Work?’ Ian said. ‘I’m engaged.’ Again he winked and raised his eyebrows along with his glass when he saw the penny drop for Saul.

‘Christ!’ Saul exclaimed. ‘Bloody hell,’ he raised his glass and drank urgently before chinking Ian’s, ‘bloody hell – and there was I thinking you’ve been up to your eyes in some crucial trial at the Old Bailey when all the while you were waltzing up the road to eternal love and heading down the aisle to domesticity!’

‘You sound just like your column,’ Ian protested, ‘don’t you go featuring me.’

‘Here’s to you and Liz. Congratulations,’ Saul said, with genuine affection.

‘Er, I’m engaged to Karen,’ said Ian. ‘Lizzie and I broke up.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Saul said. Though he hadn’t expected Ian to be engaged, he certainly hadn’t reckoned on it being to anyone other than Liz.

‘I left Liz for her,’ Ian said lightly.

‘Bloody hell,’ Saul said darkly.

‘I know,’ said Ian guiltily, ‘I know.’ He sipped at his beer and looked into the middle distance. ‘I always thought it would be Lizzie. Then I met Karen and there was no contest. No conscience, even. It’s what you’d call a “no-brainer” – I had to be with her. Simple.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Saul said, his vocabulary sorely limited by the shock of Ian’s news. He downed his drink thirstily. ‘Another pint?’ He went to the bar, ordering sausages and mash at the same time. ‘How’s work?’ Saul asked Ian on his return, a packet of crisps between his teeth.

‘Oh fine,’ said Ian, ‘manic. Karen’s a lawyer too so she totally understands the stress and long hours issue. She works in Litigation. At Tate Scot Wade.’

‘Right,’ said Saul, ‘right.’ He didn’t want to dislike Karen before he’d even met her, he didn’t want his affection for Liz to colour his acceptance of her. But he couldn’t help but resent Ian’s surprise fiancée for dominating the conversation thus far and for having monopolized his friend in recent months.

‘How about you?’ Ian asked. ‘What’s happening?’

‘More work than I can do – but I can’t turn any of it down,’ Saul laughed. ‘I love it. Mostly.’

‘Karen’s a fan of your column,’ Ian said, ‘we both are.’

‘Which one?’ Saul asked, genuinely flattered.

‘ES magazine – it’s so much more than a consumer low-down. It’s like a little slice of your life – very self-effacing and engaging. Well written, too.’ Ian chinked his glass. ‘I chuckle but you have Karen in stitches.’

‘Cheers, mate,’ Saul said, ‘cheers.’

‘And you still have your regular slots in the men’s mags?’

‘Yes,’ said Saul, ‘GQ have expanded my section. I do the gadgets pages for that new mag, Edition, my columns for the weeklies and the odd bit of roving reporter here and there, some editorial consultancy for launches on the side.’

‘Don’t suppose you’ve any iPods knocking around?’ said Ian, who could easily afford one but loved the idea of a freebie. ‘Any cool press trips? Golf in the Algarve? Scuba anywhere?’

‘Just the one iPod,’ Saul said, ‘and as for press trips, there was Bermuda for sailing and Sweden for sledding. By husky. And a lost weekend in Prague with Sonja from the Tourist Office.’

‘You jammy bastard,’ Ian laughed.

‘Three thousand words, though I had to censor most of it, thanks to Sonja,’ Saul said, as if it was an occupational hazard.

‘And how about you?’ Ian asked again, with a concern Karen had taught him how to access. Saul tucked into his sausages, nodded and shrugged. He’d rather have his mouth full than talk. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’ Ian asked, partly because Karen had told him to.

Saul chewed thoughtfully. He shook his head. ‘Not at the moment,’ he said, wishing for more mash.

‘Anyone on the horizon?’

‘Why?’ Saul laughed. ‘Has Karen a queue of luscious friends?’

‘Actually,’ said Ian, ‘yes.’

Saul shrugged. ‘Cool,’ he said, ‘why not. There hasn’t been anyone since Emma. I’m not sure if I count the tryst with Sonja.’

‘Blimey,’ Ian said, ‘we’re talking a good eighteen months, mate. Sounds like celibacy to me.’

Saul shrugged again. ‘You know me,’ he said quietly, ‘I can be quite choosy.’

‘Mind you,’ Ian theorized, ‘your social life is pretty lively and there are always relatively funky work do’s on. I bet you don’t even notice the absence of a girlfriend.’

Saul considered Ian’s overview. ‘Actually, it’s not so much that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’m quite into the idea of a steady partner – even the concept of commitment. However, I just can’t be bothered with doing the singles-circuit-dating games. It’s too contrived.’

‘Too time consuming,’ Ian agreed, ‘and expensive.’ God, he thanked his luck for Karen. ‘Mind you, celibacy must be a bit bloody frustrating.’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘I do what a lot of other blokes do,’ shrugged Saul.

Ian shrugged back. He also made a mental note to provide Karen with a current description of Saul to circulate amongst her friends. He’d heard Karen refer admiringly to similar hairstyles as ‘bed hair’ and no doubt she’d declare the colour of Saul’s to be like caramel or something. He noted his friend still had a thing about trendy footwear and approved his Oris watch as an indication that Saul’s career was going very well indeed. Armani soft black jeans. And a shirt he’d tell Karen was Paul Smith. They were already compiling their guest list for the wedding. It would be cosy if by then Saul attended with a girlfriend who happened to be a friend of Karen’s. Ian glanced at his watch. ‘I’d better be going, mate. Does this place not have last orders?’

‘It’s when the last person orders,’ Saul informed him.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Ian said, ‘let’s not make it so long, next time. Come over to ours. Karen is a great cook. You’ll love her. I’ll call you.’

Saul sat on alone in the Swallow with another pint. Lynton sat by himself too. And Barry was on his own tonight as well. They all nodded amiably at each other but were quietly content to sit separately. That was what Saul loved about the Swallow, its concept of relaxed companionship, that it wasn’t necessary to cramp around the same table to be in warm company. Saul looked over to Eleni, snuggled against her boyfriend. He reckoned he was their age or thereabouts. When Anne, the wife of the landlord, had brought over the two plates of sausage and mash, she’d ruffled Saul’s hair maternally. He reckoned she was close to his mother in age.

Saul walked around the corner back to his flat. He scanned through the draft of the article he’d be writing the next day and then logged off his laptop, content. There was nothing watchable on television. He thought he ought to run a bath – he’d been sent products by Clarins For Men to test. All that talk of women and wives and girlfriends and his own barren situation had left him quite hollow and horny. So he decided to do what a lot of other blokes do. He’d lie in a bath later. He grabbed his jacket and went back out into the night.

Alice Heggarty

I keep singing the corniest of songs. ‘I’m Getting Married in the Morning!’ In the daftest of voices. ‘Going to the Chapel and We’re Going to Get Ma-ha-ha-rid.’ The daftest of songs in the silliest of accents. I even sang ‘Nights in White Satin’ in the cab today. It struck me, for the first time, that it was actually ‘nights’ and not ‘knights’. And then I was absorbed for at least an hour wondering why it had never previously crossed my mind that a knight got up in white satin would be pretty odd in a heterosexual love song.

Anyway, I am going to be married in the morning. Thanks in no small part to the girls on Dream Weddings magazine and Mark indulging me, it’s going to be a fairy-tale wedding. I’m feeling deliriously excited – but a bit stressed too. I’m even feeling a bit pissed off – like I want everyone to continually pat me on the back and acknowledge how much hard work I’ve put into it all. We only got engaged in March, after all. Eight months later, and I’ve researched and secured the flowers, the dresses, the venue, held auditions for the band, even written the vows. I want it to be the best day of my life. And Mark’s too. And I want it to go down in the annals of the guests as the best wedding they’ve ever been to.

I must pack for honeymoon. Initially I wanted the destination to be a surprise, but I pointed out to Mark that I’d be a stroppy cow if I packed salopettes and we arrived in Bermuda. Actually, I just pressed and pestered him because I really did need to know. It’s not that I’m a control freak, though I suppose I am, it’s just that I know myself well enough to admit that I’m a nightmare if I’m disappointed. So, if I was going to be disappointed, at least I could’ve had the chance to get over it in advance. Shit, OK, if I have to admit it, I might have subtly persuaded Mark to change the plans if need be! Anyway, bless him, Mark must have picked up on all my not-so-subtle hints and he is whisking me away to St Lucia. A helicopter to the Jalousie Plantation between those two iconic Piton mountains you see in the films, in the brochures. They know we’re honeymooning so hopefully they’ll lay on all sorts of little extras. I am going to be princess for a fortnight. And why not – because when we get home, I’ll be just boring old Mrs Sinclair!

They gave me a great send-off at work. They must have had quite some whip-round as they’ve gone for the Gaggia coffee machine from the wedding list. Anyway, all my mags will be fine – they can spare me for a fortnight but if they need me, I’ve told them they can phone the Jalousie.

I’m getting married in the morning. Bloody bloody hell. Ding dong. I really really am. I’ll be thirty years old. And fifty-one weeks. I, Alice Rose Heggarty, am going to marry Mark Oliver Sinclair in approximately twenty-three hours’ time. How do I feel? Still a touch peaky from my hen-night! I feel ready, actually. Everything is going according to plan. All I need to do is turn up and say ‘I do’ and look ravishing. I want Mark to feel that he’s the luckiest bloke alive. I feel good. There really is no better man for me to marry. Lovely dearest Mark. He’ll look after me and cherish me and keep me safe. None of those other wankers ever did. It’s so lovely not to worry. It’s a novelty for me. It’s so wonderful to be loved so unequivocally. Unconditionally. No one could possibly love me more – so what more could I possibly ask for? Tomorrow I’m going to be the bride of his dreams. I’ll make sure I cry a little when I say ‘I do’ because I know he’ll love that.

I’m so happy Thea is staying over with me tonight. I can’t wait to snuggle up with her and have hot chocolate with marshmallows and reminisce about our olden days. My best, beautiful friend. My bridesmaid. My only bridesmaid. Me being me, I’m glad out of the two of us I’m the first to wed. Just recently, though, I’ve been hoping that perhaps she’ll not be too long behind. Whereas I’m now the first to admit I used to fall in love with a type – and the wrong one – I’ve seen that my path to happiness necessitated me walking off course. And in doing so, I came across my kind, gentle Mark. Who’d have thought it? Who’d have thought!

I think, at our age, after the highs and lows experienced through our twenties, the time comes to alter your focus, a shift in perspective. I decided to turn my back on a view which actually gave me little joy. I want Thea to take a leaf out of my book – we’re similar and yet so different. I hated ever being single – I used to wait until a replacement was a dead cert before breaking off an already failed relationship. Thea, though, would rather be all on her tod than dally with someone she doesn’t experience her elusive spark for. It’s actually infuriating – I’ve introduced her to a couple of Mark’s friends who are really nice, successful, balanced blokes. But in each instance Thea has said ‘He’s really nice – but he doesn’t do it for me.’ I know she’s hardly on the shelf, but still I don’t think she should be so choosy. I wish for her all that I’m headed for. Though, if I’m honest, as nice and successful and gentlemanly as Mark’s friends are, I concede they are just the tiniest bit dull. Just the tiniest. Well, I’m not marrying them, I’m marrying Mark Oliver Sinclair.

I’ve just thought – when Thea marries, I won’t be called her ‘bridesmaid’. What is the term? Something like Lady of Honour? No no – that can’t be right – that sounds like an eighteenth-century hooker attempting to turn her life around. Lady in Waiting? No no – that’s what royalty have and although I’m princess for a day tomorrow, my delusions of grandeur are not on that scale! Matron of Honour? Damn and bugger. That’s it, that’s what married women in bridesmaid capacities are called. Bloody Matron. God, it sounds horrendously frumpy. But there again, by the time Thea gets her act together, I’ll be the definitive boring old housewife! Maybe we can fix her up with Mark’s American cousin tomorrow.

Thea will so fixate on the notion of a dashing hero – it’s her yardstick and she resolutely refuses to alter the scale. I’ve tried to tell her that in my experience – and especially my discovery through Mark – it doesn’t really work like that. But she won’t believe me. She doesn’t want to think that growing up is about understanding that love’s no longer about falling in love. I say to her ah, but look where it’s got me – getting married in the morning and deliriously happy about it. She’ll figure it out, I guess, like I did.

Jesus, it’s here. It’s the day of my wedding. I have exactly seven hours to go. How on earth am I going to make time pass? I only need to have my hair done and put my makeup on and then my dress. Not even I can make that last seven hours. I slept pretty well, actually. Thea’s the best bed-partner a girl can have because she doesn’t snore, she doesn’t toss and turn and she always recounts the funniest dreams. Last night she dreamt that the groom was Bill but that I didn’t notice and she couldn’t make her voice heard because my veil was 30 feet long and wafted all around her like cheap bubble bath and tasted like marshmallow.

We tried for ages to find some deep significance to her dream but we concluded she ought to keep away from sugary snacks and that Bill wants to be where Mark will be but will die a lonely old bachelor. Thea brought me breakfast in bed; a tray laden with pain au chocolat, orange juice, tea and a blush-coloured rose. She keeps calling me Miss Almost Sinclair and Nearly Mrs. I told her I wished I could take her on honeymoon – and I do! I want to be able to run around the bathroom with Thea getting over-excited about all the gorgeous toiletries and sumptuous thick towels.

People keep phoning and asking if I have last-minute doubts, or if I’m a bag of nerves. Actually, I feel pretty level-headed about everything. I’m excited. About my dress. About seeing all the people. OK, yes – about being the centre of attention. Bring it on, I say – all is planned to perfection so bring it on. Yes, I’m full of butterflies but they’re fluttering in excitement and anticipation, not swarming with trepidation or nerves. This isn’t just my big day, it’s huge. I’m going to a wedding in four hours’ time and it’s my own and I can’t wait.

I’m meant to be having a lie-down – that’s what Thea suggested. She’s just in the bath – she was happy to have my bath water. I do love my flat but it does make sense for Mark and me to sell our flats and buy a marital home. One with a hot water tank big enough for more than just one bathful. A house with a ready-matured herbaceous border in the garden. Tell me there isn’t a catch. That life can be this blessed. I need to double-check the cab to take us to the hairdresser’s.

I love my hair! Manuel is amazing. Thea’s looks gorgeous too. She actually had hers trimmed today – I just had the blow-dry of my life. Her hair is gleaming, slightly shorter than usual, cut into the nape of her neck and tucked behind her ears. I hate the way she says it’s boring and mousy. Anyway, she looks like a fusion of Audrey Hepburn and Isabella Rossellini. I’ve had this beautiful grip made for her – a single orchid. I can’t wait to see her in her frock. We chose A-line in crushed velvet the colour of buttermilk; slightly empire under the bust, a low, square-cut neck and wide straps just off the shoulder. I seriously almost wept when I saw her in it. She looks divine. My mum just phoned in some unnecessary flap or other. I spoke to Dad and diplomatically asked him to intervene on any further calls she might be tempted to make. I’m glad the car will take just Dad and me. And I know Thea will cope fine with Mum. I wonder how Mark is. We spoke when Thea was in the bath. I was meant to be having a little lie-down but I couldn’t keep my mind still enough for my body to relax. He sounded fine. He said yes to every single thing on my Double-Triple-Check And Check Again List. He was laughing. He loves my quirks. I hope he likes my hair all heaped up like this. In fact, I wonder whether to warn him in advance that if he touches it, it’s grounds for an immediate annulment. Whoever thought that hair could feel so heavy! Maybe it’s the little pearls that they’ve pinned into it. Fake. Not that you’d know. In fact, I’m getting a stiff neck from admiring the back view in the mirror.

Thea came to say it’s time to get dressed. She’s a glorious vision in the pretty panties and bra we bought from Fenwicks for her. We bought my undies from Agent Provocateur. Mark will blush. I love it that Mark blushes at my sexiness. If he wore glasses, he’d be the type they’d steam up on. Thea and I have set the dress out on my bed and we have twice gone through the precise order that things must go on, be stepped into, have laced up and smoothed down. So I’m stepping in. And slipping my arms through the sleeves. And Thea is lacing me up. And smoothing me down. We’ve gone quiet. We’re listening to some play on Radio 4 but I couldn’t tell you what it’s about. I don’t know how to describe the feeling of my dress. I don’t want to use clichés. It’s duchesse satin, blush coloured – the colour you’d imagine a child’s kiss would equate to. The sensation on my body is like a loved one gently, adoringly, whispering to my skin. I almost daren’t look in the mirror. Thea’s finished the lacing and smoothing and her eyes are welling up. She’s just nodding at me. Nodding. And biting her lip. And nodding some more. With her eyes all watery and her nose now red. I’ll have a look. In a minute. I’ll turn around. I’ll have a look now. I’ll have a little look at Alice Heggarty in her wedding dress.

Hullo, Daddy. Hullo, hullo. Oh my God – the car is amazing! Let’s tell the driver to drive round the block a couple of times. I ought to be five minutes late. Ten, preferably. And we must remember not to stride up the aisle. Mum will kill us. And please please don’t say anything to me that’ll make me cry. Don’t call me your little girl. I am your little girl but if I hear it from you today, I’ll cry and want to run all the way home.

I can’t hear. I can’t hear a thing. I’m watching lips move over the vows I helped pen. I know it all off by heart. But I can’t hear. I’m ever so warm. Actually I feel a bit hot. Mark is saying things. Pardon? It’s my turn. I have to say something. Something for everyone to hear. I know this bit. I know what to say. Please don’t let my voice croak.

‘I DO.’

Thea and Saul

Thea Luckmore had a remarkable constitution when it came to alcohol. Guts of iron, Alice called it. For some, this would be their downfall. For Thea, it was no big deal. She didn’t regard it as a skill, or a gift; nor as a demon to keep at bay, or an affliction to be wary of. She could simply drink as much as she liked, become talkative and effervescent until the small hours yet maintain the presence of mind not to snog indiscriminately, to remember where she lived, to take off her mascara before she went to sleep and to awaken with energy, a clear head and a fresh complexion. Just occasionally, however, a hangover befell her which reminded her that alcohol could be rather a bore. A hangover for Thea bore no relevance to the amount drunk the night before, it was attributable solely to champagne. And at Mark and Alice’s wedding, Veuve Clicquot flowed as if it were lemonade.

So, while Alice was trying to procure an upgrade from Club to First on her first morning as a married woman, Thea was creaking open an eyelid, groaning and praying for numb sleep. When Alice and Mark left Heathrow, First Class, two hours later, Thea managed to creep carefully to her bathroom, take two Nurofen and tolerate an invigoratingly cool shower. Although it felt as if the inside of her skull and the rims of her eye-sockets were being maliciously rubbed with industrial sandpaper, that sawdust had stuck her tongue to her tonsils and that her stomach would never absorb any kind of food again, Thea was staggered to see from the mirror that she looked as if she’d had eight hours’ sleep, a macrobiotic supper the night before and a challenging Pilates session.

She gave herself a stern look and vowed never to drink champagne again. She let the telephone ring and listened to Alice leave a message.

‘Thea? I’m on the plane! I am 38,000 feet high! We’re in First Class. Which isn’t the reason I’m calling – well, it is. But also, would you mind popping into mine while I’m away – twitch the curtains and all the etceteras? Thanks, babes. Oh! By the way, one of Mark’s cousins from America thought you were “hot”. And I’ve given him your email address – apparently, he’s over in Britain on business quite often.’

‘I can’t remember him,’ said Thea, wondering if a warmer shower might be good for the cold sweat now gripping her.

‘And if you can’t remember him, he was the one you danced with on Top Table to “Lady’s Night”.’

‘I was dancing on Top Table? Oh my God.’ Thea groaned.

‘You also danced with Jeff, one of my features editors. But despite his passion for mascara and glossy lippy, I don’t think you were aware that he is in fact gay. And shorter than you. Anyway, must fly – oh, I already am! There’s in-flight massage! Bye, darling, bye.’

A purpose was a very good idea. Thea had a purpose to the day. And after she checked on Alice’s flat, she walked sedately to the top of Primrose Hill. The air was cold and cut through the fog in her head. The wind sliced across her face and elicited tears which refreshed her eyes. She was under-dressed for the weather but every time she shivered, she found that her nausea quelled. So she stood on the top of Primrose Hill, tears coursing down her face, shuddering violently at irregular intervals. And that was when Saul Mundy first saw Thea Luckmore, all silent tears and harsh, spasmodic shuddering. She was staring in the vague direction of St Paul’s Cathedral but to Saul it seemed she was gazing deep into the nub of whatever it was that irked her so. It immediately struck him as peculiar that a seemingly unhinged person he’d never met was in fact capturing his attention. Even more bizarre was his instinct to take off his jacket and place it around her shoulders. He wanted to buy her soup. To sit her down. Though disconcerted, he felt compelled to linger. She seemed oblivious to her surroundings yet at the mercy of the elements. Trembling. Tears. Pale.

‘Hullo,’ said Saul, whether it was a good idea or not, ‘chilly, isn’t it.’ He couldn’t believe he’d chosen the weather as his opening gambit, but he was not in the habit of striking up conversation with a complete stranger, albeit an attractive woman who appeared intriguingly sorrowful. The only other thing he thought of saying was ‘nice view’, but he managed to resist.

Thea didn’t dare turn her head for fear of upsetting the fragile balance she’d achieved. Even glancing down the hill, five minutes before, had made her feel dizzy.

‘Look, excuse me for asking,’ Saul continued, ‘but are you all right?’ Fuck, now I sound like a bloody Samaritan.

‘Thanks,’ Thea mumbled, ‘I’m fine.’

‘I don’t mean to pry,’ Saul said, though it would appear he was doing just that. She said nothing. She didn’t look at him. This was so not his style and yet on he rabbited, grimacing at himself for sounding like an insipid do-gooder. ‘I just don’t like to see people crying and shivering and alone on a cold November afternoon.’

Oh for fuck’s sake, thought Thea, can’t I just have my hangover in peace?

‘I’m fine, OK?’ she grumbled. ‘I have a sodding hangover. That’s all. Go and rescue souls somewhere else, please. The devil’s had mine and I’m a lost cause.’

Saul tipped his head back and laughed. ‘I take back all my sympathy then,’ he joshed. ‘I was going to offer you my jacket. But hey, it’s Armani. And anyway, your suffering is self-inflicted, enjoy!’

Carefully, Thea turned to regard the sartorial Samaritan. And she caught her breath. She had just discovered another component for Luckmore’s Elixir for the Over-Indulged. Fresh air. Nurofen. Primrose Hill altitude. And a rather handsome guardian angel. ‘Who are you? Some zealot Methodist?’ she sparred back.

Again the man laughed. ‘I’m Saul,’ he answered, extending his hand which, to his surprise, she took, ‘and Jesus Christ do you have the coldest hands. I can’t lead you to the Lord because I don’t know the way myself. Just take my damn jacket, would you?’

‘I’m Thea and if it’s all right with you, I will just have a quick go of your jacket.’ Saul placed his jacket around Thea’s shoulders. She thanked him with a slight smile that obviously caused her a little discomfort but was rewarding for him. ‘It was my best friend’s wedding yesterday. Champagne,’ she said by way of an explanation and shrugged.

‘And today you are resolving never to drink again,’ Saul said, knowingly.

‘Did you know they have telephones on planes,’ Thea marvelled. ‘Alice phoned me from 38,000 feet.’

‘Technology, hey!’ teased Saul, who’d made a few calls from even higher altitudes in his time.

‘Amazing,’ said Thea, earnestly.

‘Sit down,’ Saul said lightly, as if the park bench was his own for the offering. ‘You’ll find some Opal Fruits in my jacket pocket. They’ve changed the name to something else so if you’re decades younger than me you won’t know what an Opal Fruit is.’

‘I’m thirty-one,’ Thea said, sitting down gratefully, ‘and I only like the red or yellow ones.’

The sugar rush from the sweets worked wonders. She must patent this cure. Fresh air, Nurofen, Primrose Hill altitude, a handsome guardian angel bearing Opal Fruits. It worked – Thea found she could turn her head with ease. Saul sat beside her. She gladly zipped up his jacket and settled into it. It was soft brown leather, lined with something warm. ‘Gorgeous jacket,’ she said gratefully.

‘Don’t you run off with it,’ Saul cautioned, eyeing it as if regretting his generosity.

‘Yes yes, it’s Armani,’ said Thea. ‘Well, one thing’s for sure – I am not capable of running anywhere today.’

‘Are there any sweeties left?’ Saul asked and Thea delighted in his childish terminology.

‘Two greens and a red,’ said Thea.

‘Well, I’ll be having the greens then,’ Saul said with exaggerated selflessness.

Thea sucked the red Opal Fruit and hummed. ‘Starburst,’ she said, ‘that’s what they’re called now. What a rubbish name for them.’

‘Opal Fruits,’ Saul sang the advert of old.

‘Made to make your mouth water,’ Thea sang back.

‘Er, would you like to go for a drink?’ Saul suggested.

Thea looked as if she might cry. ‘I shall never touch alcohol again,’ she declared, ‘even the term “hair of the dog” makes me feel nauseous.’

‘Why do Americans call it “norshus”?’ Saul pondered, unsure whether Thea had turned him down outright.

‘I don’t know,’ Thea mused, ‘norshus nauseous.’

‘But there again, why do they say “math” and “sports” and we say “maths” and “sport”?’ Saul digressed. ‘Anyway, how about I buy you some carbohydrates and protein cooked in a pan over a flame?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I was worried the term fry-up might make you nauseous or even norshus,’ Saul said, ‘but I can recommend a nice greasy sausage, two eggs slightly runny, a mound of chips, a squirt of brown sauce and a blob of red as an excellent cure for the common hangover.’ Thea groaned and paled visibly. Saul was amused but also disappointed. He quite fancied a cooked breakfast. Even at almost teatime.

‘Perhaps more sweeties?’ Thea suggested.

Saul regarded her and she regarded him straight back. She was accepting his advance. He’d struck lucky on Primrose Hill. Good God. ‘You’d like me to buy you some sweets?’ he verified. He looked at her. Those eyes aren’t watering, they’re sparkling, the minx. ‘Opal Fruits?’

‘Do you know what I’d really like? Refreshers! Do you remember them? They come in a roll, little fizzy things. Like compacted sherbet. If you chew a few at once, they fizz up and fill your mouth and bubble through your lips.’ And Thea settled further into his jacket, dipping her face so that the collar came over her nose. I can’t believe I’m being chatted up on Primrose Hill. ‘Anyway, that’s what I’d like: Refreshers.’

‘Can I trust you to sit still and not bugger off in my jacket?’ Saul asked. ‘It’s Armani.’

‘So you keep saying,’ said Thea. ‘Are you sure it’s not knock-off?’ and she scrutinized the cuffs suspiciously.

‘Fuck off,’ said Saul because he knew she’d stay. He headed off down the hill, thanking God for hangovers and for friends’ flats and for phones at 38,000 feet. As he walked back up Primrose Hill, a roll of Refreshers in his back pocket, her smile floated down to him.

‘Refreshers, milady,’ he announced, proffering them to her.

‘I only like the yellow and pink ones,’ she said.

‘Suck or crunch?’

‘Crunch.’

‘Me too.’

They crunched and hummed and stifled the burps that scoffing the entire packet in a matter of minutes created.

‘I’m thawing out now,’ Thea said, ‘and I ought to go home, I’m exhausted.’

‘Thea,’ Saul said, ‘take my jacket. Seriously. Every man should have one Sir Walter Ralegh moment in his life. Please allow me mine. My mum would be so proud.’

Thea giggled at the thought of this man rushing home: Mum! Mum! I was a gentleman today, I lent my jacket to a chilly waif. Do I get more pocket money? Can I stay up late? ‘But I’m fine,’ she continued gratefully, ‘my car is just over there.’

Saul shrugged and nodded. ‘Yeah, but if I lend you my jacket, you’ll have to return it,’ he concluded with a hopeful trump card. Thea glanced at him and knew she blushed. ‘Perhaps same place, same time, a week from now?’ he suggested, unfolding and folding the foil from the sweets.

‘OK,’ said Thea, thinking to herself how Alice’s mags would tell her to decline and play hard to get, or to suppress her grin for demure procrastination at the very least. But sod Alice’s magazines. ‘Same time, same place, next Sunday then,’ she said.

‘Good,’ said Saul, smiling openly. He slid his hand into the jacket pocket, felt over and under Thea’s fingers and retrieved his keys. Then he pulled the zip down halfway and slipped his hand into the inner breast pocket, taking his mobile phone. He could feel Thea’s breath on his wrist as he pulled the zip up. He looked at her and thought he might suddenly find himself kissing her. But he shook hands with her formally instead.

‘Until next week, then,’ said Saul, standing.

‘Next week,’ Thea confirmed, making to move off.

‘By the way, where do you live?’ he asked.

‘Crouch End,’ she replied, walking off a step or two. ‘You?’

‘The West End, actually,’ he said, heading down the hill. ‘And what do you do?’

‘I’m a masseuse,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘You?’

‘I write.’

Saul spent Monday against a deadline for an article on the new generation iPods whilst trying not to be interrupted by engaging images of Thea. On Tuesday with no deadlines looming, Saul searched ‘massage north london’ on Google but was led to questionable sites he didn’t dare enter for fear of jinxing his PC with a sexually transmitted computer virus. By Wednesday, Saul thought sod it, it’s only a jacket and it was a freebie anyway. Thursday came and he strolled to Armani to check prices on leather jackets. Jesus, that Thea better show up with it. He filed his column for the Observer and accepted a commission from the Express magazine. Saul spent Friday daytime avoiding thinking about jackets and Thea and Primrose Hill, and wrote all day. He went out in the evening with friends and confided to one that he’d met a girl in a park who looked cold and sad and said she had a hangover so he’d lent her his Armani jacket.

‘The brown leather one?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You twat!’

On Saturday night, Ian Ashford invited Saul to meet Karen. And Karen had invited her friend Jo to meet Ian’s friend Saul. And Ian and Karen had also invited Angus and Anna so that Saul and Jo wouldn’t feel it was all a bit of a set-up. And dinner had been fun and Saul reckoned that if Fate was Friend not Foe, Thea would fit in well with his circle. And Jo was smitten and hoped Saul would phone her within the next few days.

Thea felt somewhat at a loss without Alice. Sally Stonehill was a close friend but Thea longed for Alice’s take on the situation, for the dozen scenarios good, bad and downright fanciful she’d hatch. Thea was appalled at herself for daring to quietly resent Alice – or Mark rather – for their inconveniently timed honeymoon. However, Sally delighted in Thea’s challenge and told her to return to Primrose Hill as arranged, but to hide behind a tree early and double-check Saul was worth handing back the gorgeous jacket. ‘But if he’s wearing black leather gloves – run,’ said Sally seriously. ‘Psycho.’

Sally’s husband Richard thought Saul sounded shady, with or without black leather gloves, and told Thea not to go. Richard reckoned Thea should give the jacket to him instead and put a lonely-hearts in Time Out if she was that desperate.

‘Or my mate Josh,’ Richard suggested, ‘he’s still single.’

‘I’m not that desperate,’ Thea declined, while Sally made throwing-up faces behind Richard.

On the Tuesday, Mark’s American cousin emailed Thea politely suggesting dinner when he was next over on business. Thea was still unable to conjure a memory of him but replied accidentally-on-purpose forgetting to give her phone number as requested. The next day, she went to Prospero’s Books in Crouch End on the off chance that a book by a bloke called Saul might catch her eye. There appeared to be none on the shelves.

‘Sally,’ said Thea, ‘have you heard of a writer called Saul someone?’

‘Bellow?’ Sally said. ‘But your Saul may have a nom de plume, of course.’

‘Say he’s an axe-wielding homicidal maniac,’ said Thea, ‘and the police find bits of me all over Primrose Hill on Monday morning?’

‘Well, as I said, steer clear of black leather gloves.’

‘Maybe I won’t go,’ Thea said gloomily.

‘Say he’s not a book writer,’ Sally mooted, because she liked the sound of Saul and his sweets, ‘perhaps he’s a journalist.’

‘Maybe I’ll go,’ Thea said, non-committally.

On Thursday, Thea phoned her mother in Chippenham and suggested lunch on Sunday.

‘Darling, I’m going to the Craig-Stewarts’ for lunch this Sunday,’ her mother said, a little baffled that her daughter was willing to drive down just for the day when Christmas was only six weeks away. Feeling slightly demoralized and in need of unequivocal advice, Thea wondered what Alice would say. She reckoned Alice herself would hide behind another tree on Primrose Hill and keep watch. If she wasn’t otherwise engaged. More than engaged – fundamentally married and lying on the white sands of St Bloody Lucia.

‘You’re still all right to babysit Molly tomorrow?’ Lynne phoned Saul on Saturday evening as he was leaving for Ian’s. ‘We can’t take her to the Clarksons’ wedding.’

Saul had forgotten. But actually, babysitting Molly was a very good idea. It was a cunning Plan B. He’d be on Primrose Hill whether or not Thea decided to turn up. ‘No problem,’ he told Lynne.

‘We’ll drop her round at yours first thing,’ said Lynne gratefully.

Nothing conspired against Saul and Thea planning their trips to Primrose Hill a week to the day that they’d first met. Neither had nightmares the night before. Both had slept well and awoken feeling fine. The weather was glorious, a degree or two warmer than the previous week and sunny too. An autumn day in winter, as precious as an Indian summer in autumn. Thea decided she’d check on Alice’s flat en route to further justify her trip. At Alice’s flat, she took the liberty of borrowing her friend’s cashmere jumper the shade of bluebells, leaving her own boring navy lambswool polo neck in return. She also helped herself to a spritz of Alice’s Chanel perfume in case her own had faded by now. Thea checked her reflection and gave herself an approving grin. She had an inkling that this might be fun; a long-held belief in serendipity said it might be a good idea. She zipped up her jacket and folded Saul’s over her arm. She held it to her face and inhaled. Then she stiffly told herself not to be so daft.

‘Come on, Molly,’ said Saul, ‘best behaviour, now.’

Thea didn’t have time to hide behind a tree. As she approached the crest of Primrose Hill, she could see Saul was already there, jacketless and grinning. She picked up her pace and walked towards him, quickly congratulating herself on how handsome he was, axe-wielding homicidal maniac or not. She saw he was gloveless and at that point she smiled and waved. However, when he waved back, it appeared he was carrying a belt in his hand. She was just about to read great tomes into this, wondering what definition Sally would give belt-brandishing, when Molly appeared. Hurtling. Yapping. Running tight rings around Thea. Thea screamed.

‘Molly!’ Saul half-laughed, half-shouted, loping down the hill towards them. ‘Get down, your paws are all muddy and Thea – And Thea. And Thea – is crying.’

‘Get the dog away!’ she sobbed. ‘Get it away.’

Saul was not used to being torn between the needs of two women. But there was no way that, just then, on Primrose Hill, he could relinquish either. All he could do was call out both their names, imploring Molly to come and Thea to stay. He wanted Molly to be still and Thea not to bolt. What would Barbara Woodhouse have said? Heel? Down? Crazy hound? Paul bloody McKenna would be better.

‘Molly!’ Saul hollered. ‘Heel! Come! Down! Stay! Sit, you crazy hound!’ To Molly this was double Dutch, to the bona-fide dog owners within earshot, this was comedy. Molly was now careering around at speed, zipping through people’s legs, barking joyously and returning to yap and skittle and leap at Thea who stood stock still, her fists squeezed together and clasped under her chin.

‘She’s not mine,’ Saul shouted as if that made the situation better. Molly was now transfixed by the backside of a King Charles Spaniel some way off and Saul crept over to capture her.

By the time Molly was safely on her lead, Saul could but watch Thea hurry out of the park. Beyond earshot. With his jacket.

‘That’ll teach me to talk to strangers,’ Saul told Molly. ‘I should know to steer clear of hysterical types who drink.’ He decided to think of her no more. Nice jacket, though. That was a shame.

Barefaced Bloke and the Girl with the Scar

Thea went to Alice’s flat to prepare it for the newly-weds’ imminent return from their fortnight in Caribbean paradise. She took flowers, fresh milk and bread, opened windows, bleached the toilet, changed the linen and stacked the mail. Then she lit a scented candle and sat down with the Observer and a Starbucks cappuccino. It was nice to have a Sunday when she felt healthy and clear-headed, with no plans and no need of Primrose Hill. And it was comforting to think of Alice winging her way back. There was something relaxing about reading the papers in someone else’s home, no distractions of chores that ought to be done or calls that should be made or fridges that needed restocking or tax returns lurking on the table.

The Observer on a Sunday was an institution; familiar, entertaining, non-taxing and sometimes vaguely irritating, like an old friend with whom Thea conversed once a week. She read it in a very particular order; main paper first, ‘Review’ second, then ‘Escape’. ‘Sport’, ‘Business’ and ‘Cash’ were never read but not wasted, kept instead under the kitchen sink to absorb the slow drip from the washing-machine hose. This week, an interview with David Bowie in the bonus ‘Music Monthly’ magazine was particularly absorbing, rekindling memories of the shrine she and Alice had built in honour of Mr Bowie during their teenage years. Thea pulled out the article and placed it on top of Alice’s post. The ‘OM’ magazine was Thea’s favourite component, savoured last. The voices within the pages were as familiar to her as those on Radio 4. A restaurant close to where she worked was reviewed favourably so she tore that page out and folded it into her Filofax. The cartoon made her laugh out loud, so she ripped that out too and stuck it to Alice’s fridge. Sage advice from Barefoot Doctor made her think. Mariella Frostrup made her murmur in agreement. But Barefaced Bloke’s opening line made her swear out loud.

It was meant to be my Sir Walter Ralegh moment.

‘Oh good God!’

Instead, it turned into a Dog Day Afternoon.

Barefaced Bloke was Saul. Saul Mundy. It said so in black and white. And a black-and-white photo confirmed it.

This week I give you the sorry tale of the Barefaced Bloke, the Gorgeous Thief, a Terrorizing Terrier and My Armani Jacket.

‘He thinks I’m a thief!’

Well, you are, Thea. But he also says you’re gorgeous.

I’m through with good deeds. I’m done with dog-sitting. I’ll bet Sir Walter’s jacket wasn’t Armani.

‘Sally,’ Thea whispered down the phone, having speed-read the article, ‘look at the Observer mag – and tell Richard I need that jacket back.’

At the time of writing, I can’t tell you which way the tide will turn. Will Barefaced Bloke turn into Soft Git and clamber up Primrose Hill for the third Sunday running, hopeful but chilly? Or has Barefaced Bloke turned into Sod It Saul and stayed warm indoors with his X Box not giving a 4X?

‘Saul Mundy is a spunk!’ Sally declared. ‘I love his column – and he doesn’t look half bad either. Saul Bloody Mundy – can you believe it? Aren’t you the lucky one!’

‘I don’t know whether to feel flattered or used,’ Thea said sanctimoniously, ‘and I’m not sure what to do.’

‘Tell her I’m keeping the bloody jacket,’ Thea could hear Richard in the background.

‘Oh shut up!’ Sally derided to both Thea and her husband.

Thea was actually fizzing with excitement but it seemed both arrogant and fate-tempting to admit it to herself, let alone Sally Stonehill, so she maintained her contrived ambivalence.

‘Yes, but—’ Thea attempted.

‘Gracious Good Lord, girl, you’re being flirted with through the pages of a national newspaper. It’s possibly the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard of!’ Sally said impatiently. ‘Away with you to Primrose Hill! It seems to me his balls are in your court.’

Thea paced Alice’s flat, then she sat down and reread the article.

I hope she likes the jacket. She looked far better in it than I ever did anyway.

Was he making a pass or taking the piss? Should she read between the lines or disbelieve what she read? Alice hurry home!

Ultimately, what could the Gorgeous Thief do but tramp up Primrose Hill for the third Sunday in a row?

He wasn’t there.

What could she have been thinking?

Of course he wasn’t there.

‘I made good copy, that’s all,’ Thea said with reluctant resignation, having loitered for half an hour. Overhead, a scruff of crows littered the sky, like flits of charcoal coughed up by a bonfire. Thea found herself wondering if the crows were somehow goading the birds caged in the London Zoo aviary, just down the hill and over the road. Perhaps she’d take herself off to the zoo right now. She hadn’t been for years. And it wouldn’t make her afternoon seem so wasted. Did people go to the zoo alone? she wondered. Were you let in if you didn’t have a child in tow?

‘Where’s my sodding jacket, you gorgeous thief?’ a voice behind her halted her meanderings.

Thea did not turn to face him. ‘My friend’s husband has now nicked it,’ she replied, her eyes tracing the rise and fall of the aviary.

‘Sod my Sir Walter Ralegh Moment,’ said Saul, now pressing up close, enfolding his arms around her waist, ‘and sod my image – I’m going for full-blown Mills & Boon.’ And with that Saul turned Thea to face him, cupped her head in his hands and kissed her.

‘Champagne, madam?’ the stewardess asked Alice who was pressing all the buttons on her vast First Class seat whilst rummaging in its capacious pockets too.

‘Absolutely!’ said Alice. ‘And can you pop my name down for the massage?’

‘Certainly – would you like a massage too, sir?’

‘No, thanks very much, but no,’ Mark declined.

‘Champagne?’ he was offered.

‘Thanks – but no.’

‘Paper?’

‘Yes,’ said Mark, ‘Sunday Telegraph, please.’

‘Madam?’

‘Observer, thanks,’ said Alice. ‘Tory-graph!’ she teased Mark.

‘Limp lefty!’ he sparred back. Without having to be asked, he handed over his luxury complimentary travel pack for his wife to rifle through. By the time Alice had reached Saul’s article, laughing aloud a couple of times, 38,000 feet below, the author of it was scrutinizing her best friend’s scars.

‘Fifty-four stitches,’ Thea told him, ‘from a weedy little terrier. The bizarre thing is, at the time, I was far more distressed that the dog was destroyed.’

Thea Luckmore had never before jumped into bed on a first date, let alone slept with a relative stranger. Moreover, she had hitherto guarded her scars as fiercely as her perceived chastity. Yet here she was, naked and post-coitally languid above the covers on Saul Mundy’s bed, feeling more than fine while he traced the snaking line of scar that scored her waist and the top of her right thigh. He found the site and sight of her injury disturbing but intriguing. The scar was like a single line of pale pink silk braid laid in a particular route. It was obvious where the dog’s jaws had clamped, where the teeth had punctured her, where her flesh had been ripped away and the flap carefully sewn back down. It was almost a cartoon scar, so perfect was the impression of the bite.

‘I was twelve years old,’ Thea continued, ‘and it was Alice’s dog. Tiddler. I’ve been petrified of terriers ever since.’

Saul rolled over and dipped his face down to her stomach. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he murmured, dipping his nose into her navel.

‘I’m not too bad with Rottweilers, oddly enough,’ Thea added while Saul let his lips touch her lightly, so gently that when she closed her eyes she couldn’t tell if he was kissing scar or skin. ‘Big dogs tend to lollop, little terriers just go berserk.’

‘Your scar suits you,’ he said. ‘It tells a story – vulnerability behind the feistiness. If that doesn’t sound too corny.’

‘Corny?’ Thea smiled. ‘Anyone would think you were trying to get into my knickers. Again.’

‘Horny,’ Saul confessed, ‘again. And anyway, where are your knickers?’ he asked, glancing up at her from stroking her bush before returning his gaze and snuffling his nose down.

‘I think you flung them off somewhere in your living room,’ Thea giggled, but Saul was now too preoccupied to reply. He needed his tongue and his lips to explore Thea’s sex. And Thea was now rendered speechless by the pleasure of it all. Their easy chatter gave way to gasps and moans and the seductive sound of her own wetness against Saul’s mouth. She ran her fingers through Saul’s hair, bending her knees up, shifting her hips and tilting her pelvis, rocking and undulating herself against his face. Instinctively, he let her dictate the pace and he didn’t change what he was doing. His lips brushed her, his nose nudged her, his tongue flicked over and inside her. She looked down at him and he looked up at her briefly before closing his eyes to focus better. From previous experience, Thea had presumed cunnilingus merely to be a man’s way to expedite lubrication and permit swifter entry. But Saul seemed to be enjoying himself very much if his appreciative hums were anything to go by. Thea eased his head away from her crotch to kiss and suck his face. They rolled and romped over his bed, his straining cock pressing hopefully, pressingly, against her. She pushed him onto his back, slithered on top of him, her sex just tantalizingly beyond the reach of his penis, her nipples a few inches away from his desperate mouth. She licked her own lips, then darted her tongue along his.

‘For Christ’s sake, fuck me,’ Saul whispered.

‘Condom,’ Thea whispered, hoping he had another.

It occurred to both of them that it wasn’t even yet evening. It was Sunday teatime. How decadent. It meant they could do this all night. Quietly, it occurred to both Saul and Thea that, actually, they could indeed do this as long as they liked. They had no commitments, after all. Not that evening. Nor the next. Not to anyone – nor had either for some time. It was all above board, with no complications. Out of the blue, from a chance daft meeting on Primrose Hill, the saga of a lent leather jacket, the fiasco with a lent harmless terrier, Saul Mundy and Thea Luckmore found each other.

Mr and Mrs Sinclair

‘Bye-bye, Mr Sinclair,’ said Alice over a cup of strong coffee, struggling to counteract the light-headed nausea that a night of jet-lagged semi-sleep had caused, ‘hurry home to me, won’t you?’

‘Of course, darling,’ said Mark, kissing the top of her head, grabbing a slice of toast, his jacket and his briefcase. ‘I’m horrendously late, I really must go.’

‘Don’t!’ Alice implored plaintively. ‘Please bunk off! Go on, I dare you. Phone in sick or something. Please stay. I don’t want you to go. You could work from home! I’ve had you all to myself for a fortnight – I don’t want to be alone.’

Mark smiled at his wife, gazing at him all wide-eyed and winsome despite the bags around her eyes and her hair all mussed up. ‘Why don’t you go in yourself?’ he asked.

‘Because I don’t have to!’ Alice remonstrated. ‘I’m not due in until tomorrow. Anyway, John Lewis are coming with all our wedding-list goodies.’

‘Give Thea a call,’ Mark suggested.

‘Already have – it’s her day off but she doesn’t seem to be at home,’ Alice said with contrived petulance.

‘Why not go and register with some estate agents?’ Mark kissed the top of her head again. ‘I must go.’

‘Will you phone me?’ Alice pleaded. ‘Don’t you miss me already?’

‘Alice,’ said Mark, happily exasperated, ‘have a shower, get dressed, go to Sainsbury’s, track down Thea, sign your flat up for sale with Benham and Reeves and put our wish-list out to all agents covering NW3 and N6. Three bedrooms, garden, no galley kitchens or PVC windows.’ He blew her a kiss and left. He floated down the escalator at Belsize Park and grinned intermittently while the Northern Line took him and a packed carriage of scowling commuters to Moorgate. How nice to have a wife, a beautiful wife, who clung to his shirt-tails begging him to play hooky from work to stay with her. Alice Heggarty had married him, was sending him to work with a kiss and would be waiting for him to come home later – could life be much sweeter? Mark arrived at the office, answered his PA’s misty-eyed questions about his wedding and honeymoon, checked his diary, noted there were 288 emails in his in-box, rescheduled the lunch that was booked, set up two meetings for before lunch and three for the afternoon and called his team to the boardroom for an update. His PA made a note to buy him sandwiches because she knew he’d be too busy to remember to eat otherwise.

Alice did as she was told. She had a shower, dressed, went to the supermarket and phoned estate agents. She also continued to call Thea but her mobile phone was off and there was still no answer at her home. It had been warm and welcoming to return to a sweetly scented apartment, fresh linen and neat piles of post, a fridge stocked with necessities, and Alice now longed to see Thea, to thank her at the very least. She was also tiring of her own company. Alice had never been a disciple of the cult of Me-Time though the magazines she published frequently extolled it as a necessary indulgence. Alice functioned best in company, an audience even. Peace, quiet and solitude were overrated, in Alice’s book. If one had time on one’s hands, why not spend it wisely in company – the return was far greater than silent navel-gazing home alone. If Thea still wasn’t in, maybe she would go into work for the afternoon. She dialled Thea’s mobile again.

‘Hullo?’

‘Thea! Where the fuck have you been – I’ve been trying you for ages! I’m back!’

‘Alice! Alice! Oh my God, how are you? How’s Mark? I’ve missed you! Did you get upgraded again?’

‘First Class – but I’m still jet lagged which I think is outrageous. Wait till you see my tan. Amazing place – you must go. God, I have so much to tell you – shall I come over right now?’

‘Um.’

‘Thea?’

‘I’m – a bit, busy.’

‘When, then?’

‘Um.’

‘Hang on – doing what? Busy doing what? You usually chill out on your day off – you and your me-time. Well, have your me-time with me! It feels like ages since I saw you – I’m an old married woman! Wait till you hear about First Class!’

‘Er …’

‘Is it your tax return? Fuck it – it can wait! I can’t!’

‘Alice—’

‘What’s that?’

‘What?’

‘That! In the background. I can hear someone – is there someone there? There is someone there. I can hear a bloke?’

‘Er …’

‘Thea! Thea! Tell me, you cow! Why am I whispering? I can hear a man! Can I? Can I hear a man in your flat?’

‘I’m not in my flat.’

‘Where are you? Are you in a bloke’s flat? Thea!’

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

‘Who, tell me, who!’

‘Saul.’

‘Who the hell is Saul! Oh my God, who the fuck is Saul!’

‘My boyfriend.’

‘Your boyfriend? You don’t have a boyfriend! Who the hell is Saul? You’re meant to be seeing Mark’s American cousin. You’re going to marry him and then we can be related sort of. I’ve been planning so all honeymoon. You don’t have a boyfriend. Thea! Since when?’

‘Since yesterday.’

‘Stop giggling! What are you talking about, woman? I don’t understand. What do you mean since yesterday? A boyfriend called Saul? I have to see you!’

‘I’ll come to you later, Alice. In a couple of hours, say.’

‘A couple of hours? I can’t wait that long!’

‘You’ll have to. I haven’t even got out of bed, let alone showered.’

‘Thea, for Christ’s sake! Promise you’ll be here in a couple of hours then? No more than three, tops. I can’t wait. I can’t wait! Saul? I don’t know a Saul! And up until my wedding, neither did you.’

Alice had wisely anticipated that returning home from honeymoon would be a comedown, that jet lag would drag her down lower, that her wedding day would seem a dream ago. However, apart from the January magazines already replacing the Christmas issues though it was still December, she hadn’t expected any other changes. In fact, sitting with a cup of tea, waiting for Thea to help her unpack the wedding gifts towering in John Lewis boxes around her, Alice admitted that she had been depending on everything being exactly as she’d left it a fortnight before. She had wanted her world to wait and to long for her return, to crave photos and Technicolor detail of her interlude in St Lucia. She hadn’t expected the world to stop turning but she had hoped it might revolve around her for a little while longer. She was, after all, still the blushing bride, the newly-wed, just married, just home from honeymoon; she had hoped to enjoy the status for at least a few more days yet.

Alice couldn’t work out how Thea had gone off and found a boyfriend when she hadn’t even been looking for one in the first place. How could this have happened when she hadn’t been around to advise her? Thea Luckmore had never been one for the thrill of strangers. So who on earth was this Saul person?

‘How did she manage to do it without me?’ Alice wondered aloud and then listened to how awful that sounded. ‘Not that I’m her chaperone,’ she murmured quickly, unpacking some boxes from John Lewis and wondering if it would be all right to do thank-you notes on the computer, ‘it’s just I’ve always known everything about her. I’ve known when she’s feeling lonely, lovelorn, playful, horny or shy. And I’ve always been aware of names and dates. Because she always, always consults me for a plan of action.’ Alice unwrapped a bulky item and then cursed friends of her parents for deviating from the wedding list in favour of an unnecessarily patterned soup tureen of staggering dimensions. ‘My generation don’t do soup tureens – our soup comes fresh in a carton from Marks & Sparks.’ She knew she sounded spoilt and ungrateful so she blamed jet lag and post-honeymoon blues and wrote a gushing thank-you note straight away proclaiming soup making to be one of Mark’s favourite pastimes.

‘Thea’s always methodically talked through potential entanglements with me first. That was half the fun – analysing it all and digging for signs and significance,’ Alice muttered whilst wondering why she had chosen cream Egyptian cotton towels when between Mark and herself, they already owned more than a full complement of towels and linen. She felt just a little like a fraud, as if she was playing at being a grown-up, dressing up in her mother’s lifestyle. Soup tureens and Royal Doulton crockery. Why had she ordered ‘best china’ when she and Mark tended to turn to Marks & Spencer ready-meals during the week? She felt a little embarrassed, she worried that she sounded horribly materialistic even to herself. There’s more to marriage than wedding gifts. Where would all this stuff go? She made a mental note that ample storage should be a prerequisite on their house-hunting wish-list. ‘I do love my flat,’ Alice sighed, ‘but Mark is right, it is time for us both to move and set up a new home together. How weird that quality plumbing and storage space should suddenly be my priority. But then, I’m not a single girl in my twenties gadding about any more.’ She laughed out loud at how ludicrous she sounded. ‘What am I like – I’ve only been married for two weeks and I’ve been thirty-one for just ten days!’

Alice hung on Thea’s every word. They sat together on the floor, drinking tea, eating double-chocolate muffins, admiring the gifts and fidgeting with the polystyrene packing nuggets. Alice lapped up all the details Thea gave. They marvelled that there was no need for Thea to embellish the facts, to take liberties with details or overdo adjectives.

‘It’s like a film!’ Alice declared. ‘I can practically hear a Morcheeba and Jimi Hendrix soundtrack. Someone like Anna Friel playing you.’

‘I swear to God,’ Thea shrugged, ‘it is exactly as I’m telling you.’

‘And he licked your scar?’ Alice whispered. ‘You actually let him?’

Thea nodded. ‘It even turned me on.’

‘Jesus, I must meet him. Saul Mundy,’ said Alice, ‘his name does ring a bell – in the industry. And of course I know his column from the Observer. But tell me again about the sex – that thing with his tongue and finger.’

‘Thumb,’ Thea corrected.

‘I think I might drop a hint or two to Mark,’ Alice planned.

‘Is married sex a bore and chore already?’ Thea teased. ‘Is it all “Mr Sinclair, prithee do attend to my heaving bosom”? Is it missionary with lights out? And “That was most satisfactory, dear husband but now please away to your own chamber”? Conjugal obligations?’

Alice laughed. ‘For your information, married sex is lovely,’ she declared a little defensively, ‘it’s warm and considerate and we synchronize our climax. Mark’s a very attentive lover. True, it’s without that element of wild abandon you’re describing.’

‘Yes, but I’m in the throes of the first flush, remember,’ Thea defined wisely.

‘I know,’ Alice replied softly, ‘but Mark and I go back so long that there’s never been a first flush. No fireworks, just a gorgeous glow. It’s different with Mark,’ Alice said with a contented shrug, ‘it’s what I want – passion was a health hazard for me. I prefer it this way – sex with Mark makes me feel cosy, rather than racked with insecurity.’

‘Yet here’s me,’ Thea said, ‘a stickler for old-fashioned romance and the sanctity of monogamy – now jumping into and onto and half-on half-off the bed on a first date and shagging in all manner of contortions for twenty-four hours non-stop.’

‘Good for you!’ Alice laughed. ‘I can’t wait to meet him. I mean – you really think this’ll be a goer? More than a fling?’

‘Alice Heggarty,’ Thea chastised, ‘when have I ever had a fling – let alone a one-night stand? When have I ever even snogged – never mind slept with – a man who I haven’t felt an emotional pull towards?’

‘You’re right in that respect,’ said Alice, ‘but wrong in another – it’s Alice Sinclair, remember.’

‘Mrs Sinclair,’ Thea practised.

‘Miss Luckmore,’ Alice cautioned, ‘you must admit it does all seem pretty fast. And with a perfect stranger.’

‘There’s the rub,’ said Thea, ‘he was a stranger – but already he has the potential to be perfect. He’s not strange in the slightest. The real beauty of it is that it all appears to be so uncomplicated. We’re both single, we’re a similar age, our worlds appear to be complementary – I’m surprised our paths haven’t crossed before. We just happened to meet in the open air unexpectedly.’

‘So it’s headlong into the whole boyfriend–girlfriend thing? You don’t fancy an exploratory period of I-won’t-call-him-for-four-days? You’re not going to phone me to fret about bollocks like your bum looking big in this or that? You don’t feel the need for us to workshop a long list of what-ifs and what-do-you-thinks?’

‘Nope,’ said Thea, ‘as Saul said to me this morning, “I could do that thing of not calling you for a few days to keep you keen, but then I’d be denying myself the pleasure of you in the interim and where’s the sense in that?” So, he’s asked me to go to his place straight after work tomorrow and I’ll be there. Funny how you can feel you know someone off by heart before I’ve even committed his mobile phone number to memory.’

‘Thea Mundy,’ Alice mused, ‘it has a certain ring to it!’

‘Fuck off!’ Thea laughed, giving her friend a gentle shove. They chuckled and sighed and contemplated the ugly soup tureen. ‘Do you remember how we’d do that?’ Thea said. ‘Tag a boy’s surname to our names before we’d even managed to kiss them?’

‘You did,’ Alice corrected, ‘you always did a lot of thinking and planning prior to kissing. In fact, sometimes you’d conclude against kissing altogether. If the surname didn’t scan satisfactorily. I just went for the snog and then despaired afterwards at the ghastly phonetics of Alice Sissons or Alice Hillace.’

‘Jesus,’ Thea covered her face with her hands, ‘Ben Sissons – he was the one with the bleached quiff!’

‘He used his mum’s Jolene facial bleach to achieve it,’ Alice said, ‘rather enterprising, really. Until the hairs started snapping off.’

‘And Richard Hillace,’ Thea reminisced, ‘I quite fancied him myself, actually.’

‘I know you did,’ said Alice, ‘and you could have had him later, but you were so irritatingly principled about my offer of hand-me-downs.’

‘Funny to think out of all of them, Good Old Mark Sinclair was the one to ultimately land you,’ said Thea, trying to fathom the use of a peculiar-looking kitchen tool.

‘Land me,’ mused Alice, taking the utensil from Thea. ‘It’s a mandolin – Mark chose it, he knows how it works. Land me – yes, I do feel grounded at last.’

‘I like to think of hearts breaking amongst all those ex-beaux of yours,’ Thea smiled, stroking the towel pile. ‘Mark Sinclair? they are probably weeping, lucky lucky bastard.’

‘Oh, Thea,’ Alice said, throwing a handful of polystyrene squiggles into the air, ‘let’s promise that marriage and Mark, passion and Saul won’t come between us!’

‘You daft cow,’ said Thea, throwing up the packaging as if it was confetti, ‘how could anything, ever, come between us?’

‘Christ help us,’ Alice murmured, having just unwrapped an odd-shaped item, ‘it’s a gravy boat and it matches the soup tureen.’

Under duress from his fiancée, Ian Ashford phoned Saul for the umpteenth time that day. Finally, the mobile phone had been switched on.

‘Saul! Ian.’

‘Ian! How’s it going?’

‘Er, listen mate, Karen’s been on to me suggesting we all go out one evening.’

‘Cool. Love to. When?’

‘This week perhaps? Friday maybe?’

‘Yes, looks fine to me.’

‘And Jo. We’ll bring Jo, shall we? She loved meeting you.’

‘The thing is – I mean, please tell Karen I thought Jo was a great girl – hot too – but I actually have a girlfriend now. Thea.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Jo – great girl. But Thea – greatest yet.’

‘You have a girlfriend? Since when?’

‘Since Sunday.’

‘It’s Monday.’

‘And you can see for yourself on Friday then. You’ll love her.’

‘Hullo, Mrs Sinclair,’ Mark phoned Alice.

‘Hullo, husband,’ Alice replied, glancing at the clock and marvelling how writing thank-yous could make the time fly, ‘where are you?’

‘Office,’ Mark apologized. ‘I’m almost finished – I promise. Another hour. Home by nine. I’m knackered.’

Alice quickly advised herself to be neither disappointed nor pissed off. Remember the jet lag. Remember post-wedding blues. ‘Soup for supper?’ Alice suggested, half wondering whether to decant a carton into the tureen.

Alice felt a little flat. Her place was a mess and the piles of presents suddenly irritated her. She longed for St Lucia. She tried to phone Thea but the line was busy. Alice didn’t doubt that she was talking to Saul. They’d probably been chatting for ages and she reckoned they would be for some time yet. Telling each other about their lives, loves and quirks. They’d be laughing and marvelling and nattering nineteen to the dozen. Ah, the joys and the intricacy of the human mating dance. The thought made Alice feel warm. And just a little lonely.

Mundy, Luckmore & Co.

Saul soon gained everyone’s seal of approval. Sally Stonehill considered various adjectives before deciding on ‘dashing’ to best describe him. Richard Stonehill liked him enough to return the Armani jacket and Saul liked Richard enough to consider telling him to keep it. Instead, he bought him a pint over which they discovered they both played squash. They arranged a game and their standards were so level that it soon became a weekly fixture with the obligatory post-match praise and pints which they enjoyed just as much as time on court.

Mark Sinclair didn’t play squash but he was happy to guide Saul on playing the stock market. Mark was more than flattered when Saul asked to interview him for GQ magazine, an article entitled ‘Barrow Boys and Bowler Hats: Who Stocks the Stock Market’ and they had a jocular but productive lunch on expenses. The other therapists Thea worked alongside at the Being Well welcomed Saul’s impromptu visits. He usually came bearing gifts: fresh juice and brownies, a poinsettia for reception, magazines for the waiting room, a smile to Thea’s face. He also made it his business to recommend the clinic to friends and colleagues moaning about bad backs, tiredness and stress.

Alice had rehearsed an acerbic soliloquy starting ‘Let me tell you about Thea’ and ending ‘so, hurt her and I’ll kill you’. However, she was actually pleasantly surprised that she took to Saul, though it meant her soliloquy remained unperformed. She decided not to be suspicious of his good looks and she detected no cockiness in the fact that he was naturally outgoing. She respected him for sparring back when she tried to provoke him. She liked it that they could talk about their industry. Most importantly, he appeared very taken with Thea. How fortunate that her best friend’s boyfriend had the potential to become a friend in his own right too.

Thea was instantly liked by all to whom Saul introduced her. Karen Soon-to-be-Ashford had to concede to Jo that Thea was great and would fit right into one of their girls’ nights out. Even Lynne took to her, despite having to keep Molly shut in the downstairs toilet for the duration of her visit. Lynne’s husband was so impressed with a five-minute speed treatment Thea gave his interminably stiff shoulder that he booked an appointment, then another and also gladly took Thea’s advice to see Souki the acupuncturist. Staff and patrons at the Swallow gave her a warm nod of acceptance. Marco from the Deli slipped her a complimentary muffin and slid Saul a knowing wink underscored by appreciative insinuations in throaty Italian. Dave the paper man soon called out to her by name whether or not she was buying an Evening Standard. None of them resented Saul taking his custom to Crouch End for half the week. It evened out anyway, because Thea invariably accompanied him when he returned home.

Thea surprised herself at holding her own amongst Saul’s editors and fellow writers at dos down in Soho, even calling the bluff of one cocky columnist who asked her if she gave ‘extras’ with her massage. ‘Of course I do. But I don’t give them,’ said Thea most levelly, ‘they cost.’ He was just about to lick his lips and ask for a price list when those standing near roared with laughter and called him a dickhead. Alice was at that party. Neither married life for her, nor new relationship fervour for Thea, had imposed any constriction on their friendship. Alice decided it was serendipitous that Thea had met someone whose path crossed naturally with her own. And with Mark travelling so regularly it seemed daft not to attend events when Thea and Saul would be there too. What would she do otherwise? Work late? Sit at home showing people around her flat? Simultaneously, Alice’s world became smaller and Thea’s broadened.

‘Saul,’ Alice phoned Saul out of the blue, ‘can I tickle your fancy?’

‘That’s a rather tempting offer on a grim February morning,’ Saul laughed.

‘Let me buy you lunch and whet your appetite,’ Alice continued, her desk diary open, red pen to hand, prepared to rearrange anything already booked.

‘Wednesday?’ Saul suggested.

‘Perfect,’ said Alice.

‘It’s a date,’ said Saul, tapping the details into a Palm Pilot.

‘Top secret,’ said Alice.

‘You can trust me,’ said Saul.

Quentin

‘No one knows about Quentin,’ Alice told Saul over a covert sushi lunch near Liverpool Street. She lit a cigarette and replenished her green tea, aware that puffing one and sipping the other was vaguely contradictory.

‘I thought you only ever smoked at parties,’ Saul remarked.

‘And over clandestine lunches about top-secret things,’ Alice said, her eyes glinting. ‘Don’t tell Mark. He hates cigarettes.’

Saul pulled an imaginary zip across his lips. ‘OK, Mrs Sinclair,’ he said, ‘tell me about Quentin and where I come in?’

‘Heggarty today,’ said Alice, ‘I’ve kept Heggarty for half my life. And Quentin, well, Quentin is my baby.’

Saul popped slippery edamame beans out of their salty pods. ‘Quentin,’ he mused.

‘Code-name: Project Quentin,’ she whispered, adding hastily, ‘you know – after Tarantino, rather than Crisp.’

‘So, we’re talking a men’s mag, hetero rather than homo,’ Saul surmised. He split his wooden chopsticks and rubbed the one against the other to smooth any shards.

‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘we all know the market for men’s mags is huge. We’re not going for anything ground breaking. The main focus is absolutely no compromise on quality. From clothes to cars, columnists to celebrities – quality.’

‘Quality?’ Saul remarked. ‘Sounds pretty ground breaking to me when you think of the tat that makes up most lads’ mags. Talking of tat, where do you stand on tits?’

‘Again,’ shrugged Alice, ‘quality breasts. But not on the cover. We’re pitching at a slightly older market – ABC1 men, thirty to fifty. Not too blokey, but not too staid, of course. Men like you. The covers will be icons, not babes. Someone has practically guaranteed us Clint Eastwood for the first issue if we get the go-ahead.’

Saul raised an eyebrow. ‘Pierce Brosnan had acupuncture with Souki at the Being Well when he was in town.’

Alice raised her green tea. ‘Pierce can have issue two, then.’

‘And David Bowie’s mum and my mum were at school together,’ Saul said.

‘David Bowie?’ Alice had to swallow a squeal. ‘Has Thea told you how complete our teenage love was for David darling Bowie?’

‘Yes,’ Saul confirmed with an overly compassionate expression and a tone of utter pity, ‘I know all about sending red roses to his dressing room at Wembley; that you both promptly fainted when the show began and spent the entire concert sipping tea with the St John’s Ambulance crew.’

‘And the mural,’ Alice laughed, ‘did Thea not tell you about our mural?’

‘No,’ Saul said patiently, ‘though she told me you both saved all your pocket money to buy one pair of blue contact lenses to share between you so you could both have Bowie eyes.’ He poked the tip of his chopstick into the lurid green wasabe. The horseradish shot tears into his eyes and fizzed heat through the bridge of his nose. Fantastic.

‘We did this incredible mural on my bedroom wall – based on the “Scary Monsters” LP cover,’ Alice reminisced. ‘My mum went berserk. Mind you, we hadn’t even been able to smuggle in the paint pots past Thea’s mum at her house. Anyway, if we had Bowie as cover for issue three, I’d be happy to sweep floors for the rest of my career. But I digress. Project Quentin is our big secret – and potentially the company’s biggest launch to date.’

‘What’s the timescale?’ Saul asked.

Alice cleared her throat. ‘Dummy in six weeks, then into research, and if we get the green light, first issue will be June out May.’

Saul calculated dates and weeks in his head. ‘Who else knows?’ he asked. ‘Nat Mags? IPC? Because I know that EMAP are developing too, at the moment.’

‘Will you tell me?’ Alice asked with a coquettish pout and a beguiling wriggle in her chair. ‘Tell me about silly old EMAP? I promise I won’t tell a soul. I swear on David Bowie’s life. Trust me?’

‘Absolutely not!’ Saul laughed, inadvertently shaking a piece of sashimi at her. ‘Like I said – if I’m given a secret, I keep it. No matter how absolute your love for Bowie is. Suffice it to say, I’m not involved.’

Alice contrived to look sulky and offended but her enthusiasm for her project soon overtook. ‘Initially, I was hoping you’d work on the dummy with us, Saul,’ she said, still in a whisper, ‘basically oversee editorial – it would mean committing three days a week for the next month or so. Take the dummy into research, then head up the launch issue if we get the go-ahead. With, of course, absolutely no guarantee of a staff position at the end.’

Saul laughed. ‘I know the score,’ he said, ‘and I’d love to be involved.’

‘Fan-bloody-tastic,’ Alice beamed.

‘Alice, you haven’t eaten a thing,’ Saul observed.

‘I can’t eat when I’m excited,’ Alice declared. ‘Great for weight loss, though.’

Saul thought aren’t girls silly sometimes.

Apart from Thea, of course. Saul didn’t think her silly at all. Her fear of dogs was understandable, her propensity for weeping during ER or re-runs of Cold Feet he found quite endearing, her belief in drinking only juice until noon each day he thought eccentric. But he didn’t think her silly.

‘She’s not a calorie-counting, chardonnay-swilling, Mui-Mui obsessive,’ he quantified to Ian Ashford over a pile of poppadams and a mound of chutney, ‘but then neither is she a drink-your-own-pee, salute-the-sun and wear-hessian-to-Pilates type either.’

‘Does she do Pilates?’ Ian asked.

‘Yes, with her mates Sally and Alice,’ said Saul, ‘and she has a gorgeous figure because of it. But my point is she may drink only juice until lunchtime but she’s also partial to a Marlboro Light with her vodka-tonics after dark. She makes soup with organic produce – but her preferred lunch is Pret a Manger egg mayo sandwiches and a Coca-Cola.’

‘What’s with the juice-till-noon thing?’ Ian asked, wondering whether it might be a good regime for his acid and thinking that the madras he ordered probably wasn’t.

‘She simply doesn’t have an appetite until then,’ Saul explained. ‘I bought her a juicer for Christmas because she was spending a fortune on smoothies.’

‘What you’re talking about is balance,’ Ian said, spooning pilau rice onto his plate.

‘I am,’ said Saul, ‘a girl who balances M&S socks and a top she’s had for ever with an Anya Hindmarsh handbag. Do you know how much those bags cost? But balance, yes – she connects with the yin and yang and whole shebang of meridians and energy flow and shiatsu stuff – but her CD collection is more the White Stripes than whale music.’

‘She’s at ease with herself,’ Ian defined, passing the dhal to Saul.

‘It’s one of the most attractive things about her,’ Saul nodded, passing the Bombay aloo to Ian.

‘Does she keep Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus under her bed?’ Ian asked suspiciously.

‘No,’ Saul laughed, ‘Heat magazine.’

‘So what’s she like in the sack?’ Ian posed, working his fork dexterously through the curry and rice like a bricklayer trowelling cement.

‘She’s great,’ said Saul evenly, ‘for all the same reasons – sometimes it’s deep and meaningful lovemaking. Other times it’s fast and furious shagging. She doesn’t pester me to whisper sweet nothings but she writhes when I talk dirty. She doesn’t sulk to the other end of the bed if all I want to do post-coitally is roll over and snore, and I’m just as likely to wake up to a blow-job as to Radio 4.’

‘Sounds like you’ve hit the jackpot, mate,’ said Ian. ‘I’d suggest you snap her up and put your name on her, quick.’

‘You know how with some women you end up playing along with them just for peace and quiet,’ Saul mused, ‘and you find yourself apologizing for the bits that make us blokes?’ Ian nodded with the weight of someone most familiar with such a syndrome. ‘You know how some women fulfil one part of our criteria but are so sorely lacking in other aspects?’ Saul continued. ‘Beautiful but boring? Interesting but just not sexy? Horny as hell but dumb as fuck? Well, it seems incredibly simple, but I like all of her a lot.’

‘To Thea,’ said Ian, raising his bottle of Kingfisher beer and telling himself he really did not need that last rip of nan bread. He’d do juice until noon the next day, he decided.

‘I wasn’t looking,’ Saul mused wistfully, ‘I was just on Primrose Hill and she came into view.’

‘Good luck,’ said Ian, presuming the evening to be subliminal payback for the time he’d droned on about Karen.

‘It is,’ Saul agreed, ‘it is very good luck.’

‘So that’s it then?’ Ian said slyly. ‘Temptation can lead you by the balls and you’ll resist?’

‘Thea inspires fidelity.’ Saul paused. ‘In my heart and mind, at least!’

Ian and Saul looked at each other for a moment and then chuckled into the last of their curry.

‘Not on a full stomach – surely not!’ Ian said.

‘Your wife’s footing the tab,’ Saul laughed, taking Mark to a restaurant that still believed in starched linen at lunchtime. ‘How was Hong Kong?’

‘Knackering,’ Mark said quietly, ‘but essential. Hong Kong is crazy – but the business is a dream for us at the moment. Tokyo next week.’

‘I guess the bonus will be your bonus?’ Saul said.

Mark tipped his head and chinked glasses with Saul. ‘I need to keep my wife in Jimmy Shoes.’

Saul wasn’t sure whether to correct Mark. He let it go. ‘You get what you pay for!’ he said lightly instead.

‘Actually, Alice is brilliant at blagging,’ Mark confessed. ‘I always offer to buy stuff but she always declines and says she can call in favours at work. I think she gets more of a thrill from getting a bargain or freebie than from the item itself. Have you seen those monstrous rocks in her ears?’

‘The diamonds?’ Saul said. ‘You can’t really fail to notice them.’

‘Three carats?’ Mark suggested. Saul shrugged. He had never bought a diamond. ‘QVC,’ Mark said triumphantly.

‘Is that the sparkle factor or the colour clarity?’ Saul asked, trying to sound like someone who’d bought diamonds.

Mark roared with laughter. ‘QVC – the shopping channel! Alice is forever buying stuff from QVC. Those earrings were £29.95 – and she got a hideous suedette presentation box for being one of the first hundred callers.’

‘Are the Jimmy Choos fake too?’ Saul said subtly.

‘Unfortunately not,’ Mark groaned, ‘they’re bona-fide Jimmy Shoes shoes.’

‘I suppose it evens out,’ Saul said lightly. ‘Think how much you’d pay at Tiffany for gems that size.’

‘Hey, I’m not complaining,’ said Mark, ‘Christ no. I have the most beautiful wife – I was about to say “I could ever dream of” but in fact she is the beautiful wife I always dreamt of.’

‘You’ve known each other ages,’ Saul recalled.

‘Since school days,’ Mark said, ‘friends for years. Confidants. And then one day, Alice says to me, “If you ask me, I’ll say yes.” I hadn’t a clue what she was on about. I mean, I hadn’t even kissed the girl, let alone taken her to bed. I just stared at her gormlessly. She proposed. It wasn’t a leap year. I hadn’t bought diamonds from Tiffany or QVC. I was washing up and, calm as you like, she turns to me and asks me to marry her.’

‘And you still can’t believe your luck?’ Saul laughed.

‘That’s just it,’ said Mark, ‘it’s not about luck. To me, the more you love someone, the more you deserve them – and I’d loved her for a long, long time. Albeit from afar. I hadn’t resented the fuckwits she dated though I hated them when they hurt her. I hadn’t found anyone special and was happy to see women in a non-committal way. And then Alice decided she’d like to marry me.’

‘So, you have this gorgeous woman, successful in her career, who buys her own diamonds, no matter how fake they are, and simply stings you for a pair of Jimmy Choos every now and then,’ Saul quantified. ‘Can life get much better?’

‘Well, I’m looking forward to the bonus,’ Mark laughed, ‘which will hopefully coincide with the next Jimmy Shoes sale!’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Anyway, are we here about Quentin?’ he murmured covertly, with a wink and a surreptitious tap of his nose.

‘We are,’ Saul nodded, privately bemused that such an expensive restaurant hadn’t bothered to fillet his monkfish. ‘Now, because we’re pitching at a slightly older market – not so much aspirational, as can afford it anyway – I was thinking of a City section. You know, investments, portfolios, gift horse and traps; lively overviews on finance and our times, a note of light relief from the Financial Times.’

Mark nodded. ‘Interesting,’ he said, ‘how can I help?’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘I’ll need to make tracks in half an hour, Saul. But I’m back from Tokyo at the weekend.’

‘You bastard,’ Richard Stonehill panted, hands on his knees, his squash racket between his feet, ‘you bastard. You’re just a jammy bastard.’

‘And you’re a bad loser,’ Saul laughed, wiping sweat from his brow onto his T-shirt. ‘My game, my match – your round.’

‘Let’s make it the best out of seven then,’ Richard said, slashing a ball against the court.

‘Fuck off,’ Saul laughed, returning the shot perfectly. ‘What would your wife say when I call her to say you’ve thrown yourself into Highgate Ponds with concrete in your pockets because you lost five–two?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Richard said, ‘you’re younger than me. Anyway, I have a cold coming. But next week I’m going to roast you, mate, roast you. Annihilation.’

‘I look forward to it,’ Saul said, slicing the ball and intentionally missing Richard by a hair’s breadth.

‘You won’t even make it to Highgate Ponds,’ Richard said, returning Saul’s ball impressively, ‘you’ll do the hara-kiri thing right here on court.’

‘And on that note,’ Saul said, ‘let’s go for a drink.’

For a moment or two, both men just gazed at the pints of pale, chilled lager with unreserved affection before raising the glasses to their lips and taking a long, well-earned drink. They said ‘cheers’ to each other, chinked glasses and then downed what was left. ‘My round,’ said Richard, going to the bar at the Swallow and ordering sausages and mash for them both. ‘How’s Thea?’ he asked, on returning.

‘I had a set of my keys cut for her just today,’ Saul grinned. ‘And Sally?’

‘It’s our wedding anniversary this weekend,’ Richard said, ‘five years.’

‘Cheers!’ said Saul, with admiration.

‘Who’d have thought a crazy fling would lead to marriage,’ Richard marvelled wistfully.

‘Are you whisking her off to Paris?’ Saul enquired.

Richard laughed but shook his head.

‘Venice?’ Saul tried. ‘Barcelona? Babington House? No? Well. I assume you’ve been to Tiffany’s.’

‘No,’ Richard groaned, ‘not yet.’

‘Mark Sinclair was telling me Alice buys her own jewels,’ Saul said.

‘Really?’ Richard responded, ‘but on his credit card probably. She has some fuck-off diamonds, that girl.’

‘No, she buys them herself,’ Saul revealed. ‘They’re fake,’ he said, ‘fake! How cool is that?’ He really was more impressed than he would have been had they been genuine. ‘She buys them for small change from the shopping channel.’

Richard laughed. ‘Seriously? Bloody hell. She certainly wears them well. Perhaps I’ll ask her to order double – I’m sure I could pop them into a Tiffany box.’

‘Talking of Alice,’ Saul said, dropping his voice, ‘I’m working on a project with her – top secret. But I have an idea for a property section. I’m not talking estate agents’ advertorials. I’m not talking Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen makeovers. I was thinking of a section that is part DIY, part property improvements, part investment savvy. You know, kitchen extensions or loft conversions or knocking through – a how to, how much, how long.’

‘Sounds good,’ Richard nodded.

‘You’re an architect,’ Saul shrugged, ‘can I pick your brains?’

‘Cool,’ Richard nodded, ‘sure. What’s it called?’

‘Top secret,’ said Saul.

‘That’s a bit naff,’ said Richard.

‘The title is top secret,’ Saul said very slowly. ‘I’m not telling you the title because I can’t. I’m sworn to secrecy.’

‘Code-name?’ Richard asked.

‘Quentin,’ Saul revealed rather reluctantly.

‘Gay?’

‘No – as in Tarantino,’ Saul explained. And he and Richard proceeded to quote salient lines from Pulp Fiction until their sausages arrived.

Beth and Hope

When Beth Godwin and Hope Johnson set up their Pilates studio in Crouch End, Sally Stonehill joined on a whim because there was an introductory offer on. Thea signed up on the recommendation of Lars, the Feldenkrais practitioner at the Being Well. Alice joined on account of the effect of Pilates on the physique of Elizabeth Hurley. Mostly, the three of them synchronized their sessions. It hardly mattered, though. They were so busy concentrating on engaging their pelvic floor and pursuing core stability that they barely said a word to each other apart from ‘great Pikes, Thea’ or ‘your reverse-monkey looked good, Alice’ or ‘I’m finished with the Reformer, Sally’.

Invariably, if they’d been training together, they’d go for a meal afterwards, determined to consolidate the merits of Pilates with healthy salads or bowls of hearty soup and glasses of mineral water. Usually, though, there was some reason for a glass of wine too – from it being good for the blood, to it being necessary to toast one of the girls for something or other. However even the one glass of wine, when mixed with the endorphins of exercise, led to the inevitable ordering of chips. To share, of course. Just to pick at. And mayonnaise too, please. Who’s for ketchup? Anyone for HP Sauce?

‘A large bottle of sparkling mineral water,’ Alice ordered.

‘It’s my wedding anniversary this weekend,’ Sally remarked, with intent.

‘Is it? Right then,’ Alice responded, ‘a bottle of Sauvignon too, please.’

‘I’ll have the avocado and mung bean salad,’ Thea told the waitress with scant enthusiasm.

‘Grilled trout for me, please,’ ordered Alice, ‘no butter.’

‘I think I’ll go for the stir-fried veg,’ Sally muttered.

‘Anything else?’ the waitress asked casually.

‘Oh, one portion of chips,’ Thea added as an afterthought.

‘Actually, make that two,’ Alice said, ‘to share between the three of us.’

‘And some mayo, please,’ Sally called after the waitress.

‘Cheers!’ said Alice, raising her glass. ‘Here’s to you and Richard and to marriage in general.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Sally, ‘here’s to my husband and five lovely years.’

‘Cheers,’ said Thea, ‘here’s to – chips.’

‘You’ll be next,’ Alice nudged Thea and winked at Sally.

‘I hardly see the boy,’ Thea remonstrated, tapping the prongs of her fork against the pad of her thumb before pointing her cutlery at Alice. ‘You have him working all bloody hours on your hush-hush project.’

‘How’s that going?’ Sally asked Alice. ‘Richard likes to think of himself as Editor of Architecture and Interiors or something. The prat.’

‘We’re launching next month,’ Alice said triumphantly.

‘Will there be a glamorous party?’ Sally asked hopefully.

‘Of course,’ Alice said.

‘And may lowly primary school teachers attend?’ Sally asked.

‘You may,’ Alice confirmed graciously.

‘And will there be room on the guest list for a sports masseuse?’ Thea asked.

‘God no,’ Alice laughed in mock shock, ‘but I might turn a blind eye to the girlfriend of the editorial consultant sneaking in.’

‘Cow,’ Thea stuck her tongue out at Alice.

‘How are things with Alice’s Editorial Consultant?’ Sally asked Thea. ‘Richard has spent a small fortune on a new squash racquet. Bad workmen, tools and blame, springs to mind.’

‘Lovely,’ Thea grinned, ‘it’s fun. It’s cosy. It’s sexy. It’s everything I want. And everything I need.’

‘You mean it’s love,’ Sally deduced.

‘Yes,’ Thea confirmed, ‘yes, it is.’

‘Six months after I started seeing Richard, we were already engaged,’ Sally recalled. ‘Mind you, six months after you started seeing Mark you were practically married, Ms Heggarty.’

‘Mrs Sinclair to you,’ Alice retorted. ‘Actually, the craziest thing about it all was that I didn’t even start seeing Mark until we were engaged. Chaste is an understatement.’

‘Chaste is overrated,’ Sally said with a wink, confessing she’d bought Richard, for their anniversary, some peculiar-looking love beads which apparently he was to use on her – if they could figure out how and where.

‘Did you go into a sex shop on your own?’ Alice asked, slightly unnerved by an image of petite Sally unchaperoned amongst stacks of gadgets and racks of hardcore.

‘Mail order,’ Sally giggled.

‘Of course, Saul and I have absolutely no need for gizmos on account of his stupendous natural equipment and our exceptionally resourceful technique,’ Thea began primly. ‘But actually,’ she added in a sly whisper, ‘we have a particularly well-stocked toy chest as well.’

‘Dirty girl,’ Alice marvelled.

‘That was one kinky shopping trip,’ Thea reminisced. ‘I happened to make just a passing remark I’d never been in a sex shop. A week or so later, we were heading back to Saul’s from a restaurant in Soho when he suddenly bundled me through a doorway. Slap bang into this den of iniquity and plastic things.’

‘You never told me!’ Alice objected.

‘Well, it was hardly Joseph or Whistles,’ Thea reasoned. ‘Actually, it was a peculiar experience. Down a really seedy side street yet inside it was all bright lights and the most normal-looking customers imaginable. Though I seem to recall the sales assistant being quite alarmingly tattooed.’

‘Did you giggle like mad?’ Sally asked.

‘At first,’ Thea admitted, ‘but actually, everyone was browsing the wares so casually that I soon found myself assessing the merits of one dildo against another as I would ready-meals at Tesco. Saul spent a fortune. We couldn’t wait to get back to his to try things in.’

‘On,’ the editor in Alice corrected automatically.

‘No,’ Thea laughed, ‘I really do mean in!’

‘Do you have any of these bead things?’ Sally asked, now regarding Thea as the doyenne of kinky paraphernalia.

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