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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’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