Love Rules (27 page)

Post-coitally, with Saul on his back panting himself back to a normal heart rate, Thea snuggles against his chest. She cups her hand lightly over his cock still semi-hard and twitching lazily. ‘God, that was good,’ Saul declares. Thea smiles. Good.

‘Saul,’ she says in a quiet, little-girl-lost voice she is not in the habit of using blithely, ‘promise me we won't ever be like that.’ He twists his head down to look at her and she gazes up at him, with a beguiling bat of her eyelashes. ‘Like Alice and Mark,’ she says very quietly, all wide-eyed and winsome.

‘I thought there was something up,’ Saul declares. ‘What's going on with those two?’

‘I don't know,’ Thea evades, ‘nothing, probably. You know
Alice. The point is, I never want us to loiter on that plateau of complacency.’

Saul kisses Thea on the forehead. ‘I know what you mean – it was as if Alice was unaware that her husband was dining with us at all. They converse without really communicating – they didn't really chat to each other. They just made up the numbers for a table for four.’

‘I just want you and me always to stay close – and always truly feel
in
love,’ Thea declares. She kisses Saul back and turns to fall asleep, feeling a little happier and safer.

P.I.C.

‘Cover for me!’

Thea's heart dropped and she felt like hanging up the phone. She'd become reluctantly resigned to such a call from Alice, which wasn't to say she hadn't been deludedly hoping Alice might say Paul had changed his mind, or he was staying in Lancashire, or she'd changed her mind and was ignoring his calls.

‘Cover for me?’ Alice implored. ‘Please! Come on – you promised. You must honour our promise to be each other's P.I.C.’

Thea suddenly deeply regretted that fateful school day in the second year when they had snuck behind the science block to smoke – daring each other, declaring they'd be each other's Partner In Crime, swearing solemnly that if one was caught the other would go down with her. But neither was caught and they puffed their way through the packet of Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes over the next eight lunch hours. And after that, when it came to anything which implied risk or wrong, Thea and Alice committed to being each other's P.I.C. I'll do it if you do it. Come on, let's try it! I won't tell if you won't. We'll say it was
both
our ideas! The difference
now was that this was the first occasion in eighteen years that the P.I.C. was acting merely as lookout rather than collaborator.

‘It would be the one bloody week Mark isn't travelling,’ Alice bemoaned, ‘so cover for me, Thea. You
have
to.’

‘When?’ Thea asked out of a sense of duty, an unwilling partner in a crime she did not want committed.

‘Tonight! Tomorrow night! The night after!’ Alice's effervescence and excellent spirits were seductive and Thea had to sternly remind herself of the deplorable cause of Alice's mirth.

‘What's your story?’ Thea sighed.

‘Pilates tomorrow night – with you. And some late-night preview shopping thing at Heal's on Thursday night – with you. He flies back Friday afternoon.’

‘When does he arrive?’

‘Late tonight,’ Alice enthused.

‘You're not going to climb out of your window and steal away to him tonight, are you?’ Thea asked flatly.

‘No, I'll just about resist!’ Alice laughed.

‘You
so
owe me, Mrs Sinclair,’ Thea told her.

‘I think I ought to be Miss Heggarty for the next three days, don't you?’

‘I wouldn't mind going to that Heal's thing anyway,’ Thea justified. ‘Saul and I could look at dining tables.’

‘I made it up, silly!’

‘Alice,’ Thea cautioned, ‘are you sure you're doing the right thing here? Isn't it bloody dangerous?’

‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘it
is
dangerous but I have to do it – I feel compelled to – so in that respect, it must be right even if, on paper, it's wrong and dastardly. I have to rid it from my system.’

‘I thought the one-night stand had done that,’ Thea reminded her.

‘So did I,’ Alice said darkly. Then she brightened. ‘Guess what!’

‘What?’

‘I'm going to play hooky from work tomorrow afternoon and Thursday morning.’

‘Christ, Alice,’ Thea exclaimed, ‘you really need to tread carefully.’

‘Oh shush, Thea – you know you'll be gagging for details!’

And that was it. That was just it. No matter how greatly Thea deplored Alice's actions and despaired at her abhorrent lack of morality, she did indeed crave details. The whole scenario was car-crash horrific, but like a terrible road accident, one is compelled to look. Because it's bizarrely life-affirming to gasp and recoil from something so appalling you can't believe it's real. And it's sobering to think thank God that's not me. And it's chastening to think I hope it never happens to me.

Miss Heggarty and Mr Brusseque

Alice's first thought was Christ, what on earth am I thinking, let alone doing? This isn't me. This really isn't.

However, her need to live out her fantasy as a foxy temptress, to fulfil her desire for debauchery with the rock-climbing, nature-communing sex god, overruled her crashing dismay at where the dirty deed was to happen. Paul had given an address in Clapham – 23a Blanchard Road. It was the ‘a’ that unnerved Alice most. As the taxi stuttered its way along Blanchard Road, with the driver and Alice craning to see numbers, she kept her hopes up. The road was pretty. And quiet. That was a good start. The fare was expensive and Alice justified it would be money well spent.

‘Number twenny-free, darling.’

Alice noted the scruffy front door and numerous bells and hoped they were but an ironic façade to a
bijou
residence. Perhaps the beer bottles and takeaway cartons tossed aside in the front garden were there as a cunning foil to would-be burglars. As she rang the bell, she lowered her expectations and just prayed that there wouldn't be batik bedspreads pinned up as wall hangings, or Jim Morrison looking down in his Jesus-like way from posters Blu-Tacked to the backs
of doors. Please no CND symbols graffitied with marker pen onto the fridge door. And dear God, no patchouli joss-sticks.

You're a snob, Alice.

No, I'm not – I've merely outgrown the ‘dope-smoke digs’ thing.

Been there done that?

Exactly (though I've never used a bedspread as a wall hanging).

But now you're a married woman of thirty-three living very nicely in Hampstead.

Exactly.

Sloping off work for a little light adultery in the after-noon.

When Paul saw Alice through the spyhole, he hovered and stared. What a great suit. He watched Alice grow impatient, saw her looking with certain disdain around her. He grinned. He'd give her something to moan about. And just then, the expense of his trip over to England, the negotiation it had necessitated at work, the lies he'd told to Brigitte, whom he'd just started seeing, were all worth it.

‘It's not the Ritz,’ he said as he opened the door, bran-dishing his easy smile and looking Alice up and down like a tipster evaluating a racehorse, ‘but the sheets are clean and no one's here.’

‘I could've booked us into a nice hotel for the price of the taxi fare!’ Alice pouted, brushing past him and finding herself in a communal hallway badly in need of a Hoover. She primly offered her cheek for the kissing but Paul took her chin between his finger and thumb and turned her face towards his, sinking his mouth over hers, their tongues suddenly in a whirl.

‘Let's fuck,’ he murmured. Alice's desire to be in bed with him was so strong that she didn't notice the scruff of pizza flyers and general detritus littering the hallway, the rude waft
of other people's cooking. It may as well have been the Ritz, for all the attention she gave the surroundings. The flat itself was unkempt with drab, tired furniture and unforgivable features such as the paper lantern with a glaring rip in it, a plate with dried HP Sauce left on the sofa. Alice did note that there were no ethnic bedspreads on the walls and for her, just then, this fact alone both rose-tinted the rest of the flat and justified her illegal exeat from her marriage and her career that afternoon. So, on a mattress on the floor, under two sleeping bags zipped together, Alice romped the after-noon away with her lover.

It was only when she awoke with a start from a doze she couldn't recall slipping into, slightly chilly and aware of the irritating sound of Paul's semi-snoring, that it struck her she was on the other side of London to where she lived and worked and that her surroundings were categorically unpleasant. On any normal Wednesday, she'd be making her way home by now. An image of her sumptuous bathroom, the luxurious fluffy weight of her Egyptian cotton bath sheets came to mind. With it came a stab of guilt. But if she felt guilty it meant she was in the wrong and she wasn't prepared to own up just then. The best thing to do was to put it all out of her mind. And the best way to do that was to give herself something else to think about. So she rolled over and started to kiss and caress Paul. Soon enough they were fucking again and all thoughts of work, marriage and scuzzy bedrooms were flung far from her conscience.

Every time the phone rang, Thea jumped, fearing it was Mark wanting to know if she'd seen his wife. What was tonight meant to be? The Heal's do or Pilates? Saul assumed that Thea's tetchiness was due to her anticipation that the phone would be the estate agent ringing with news, bad or good. She didn't tell him but she was almost relieved when it turned
out to be the vendor's agent turning down their revised offer on the new property.

‘Come on,’ said Saul, ‘let's go out – let's go for a few drinks, perhaps a stonking hot curry, and not think about bricks and mortar.’

But Thea worried they might bump into Mark, which was highly unlikely as he wasn't that partial to curry. ‘Let's catch a film instead,’ she suggested, thinking that she'd be safe in a dark cinema.

‘Good idea,’ said Saul, ‘Arnie's new film would be a welcome distraction. Let's go.’

However, Thea suddenly thought what if Alice needed her? What if all had gone horribly wrong in Clapham? What if her phone didn't have a signal in the cinema? She couldn't risk that. ‘No,’ she flummoxed, ‘curry. Let's go local.’ Saul was now a little irritated but it was nothing a karahi chicken couldn't soothe.

As Alice took a taxi all the way back to Hampstead, she began a text message to Thea but stopped mid-word. What was she meant to write? State the obvious – been shagging non-stop and now walking like John Wayne? Perhaps theorize instead – orgasms this good cannot be bad? Instead, she pressed the speed-dial button to phone Thea. But what would she say? We fucked until suppertime and then I tried to have a shower in a bath with scum-marks and one of those rubber shower attachments you bung onto the taps like a milking machine? Was she to tell Thea that the flat was rented by a bloke who was a friend of a friend of Paul's? That some bloke had arrived back at some point and was quietly rolling a joint on the sofa next to the plate with the dried-on sauce when she and Paul surfaced? Which precise details of the afternoon were worth recounting? The only people who knew of her whereabouts were she, Paul
and Thea. And they all knew the purpose of the afternoon was solely sex and no matter how mind-blowing the orgasm, the mechanics of sex were pretty straightforward.

All this thinking had passed the journey. Her cab was already travelling through Camden. She decided she'd send Thea a short text before she went to bed, confirming lunch the next day. Please don't let Mark be at home.

Please don't let this be a day when he doesn't have to stay late for some conference call or other.

Thea thought how Alice's teenage fluster and giggle the next day were actually quite endearing. If this Paul bloke was good for anything, it was reinstating her best friend's bounce and spirit.

‘God, I can't wait for you to see him!’ Alice declared, drumming her fingers on the restaurant table in the safe territory of Maida Vale. ‘I'm telling you, he's more gorgeous and sexy than
anyone
you'll ever have seen – in reality or on screen. Honestly!’

‘Shut up, you idiot.’ Thea poked her. ‘You sound like a teenager.’

‘He's here – here he is!’

Thea was desperately disappointed. She was a firm believer in beauty being much more than skin deep. But she had to admit that Paul was quite spectacular looking, in a rugged, Timberland-branded sort of way. Not really her type at all – but unquestionably attractive and obviously smitten with Alice. He shook her hand and took Alice's in his which made Thea feel awkward.

‘Are you enjoying your trip?’ Thea asked him with a stern edge that made Alice kick her under the table.

‘Very much,’ he said, ruffling his already tousled hair.

‘What have you done?’ Thea probed, moving her legs out of kicking distance. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Oh, you know, mainly hanging out in Clap Ham.’

His enunciation of the silent ‘h’ struck both Thea and Alice but while Alice thought it sweet, Thea let it irritate her supremely.

‘You haven't seen the sights then?’ Thea challenged him.

‘Like Bucking Ham Palace, you mean? Or Saint Paul's Cathedral?’

Silent ‘ai’, you prat.

‘Any of the galleries?’ Thea persisted, holding Alice's glare. ‘Our glorious parks?’

‘Not this time,’ Paul said, throwing a furtive smirk over to Alice which Thea intercepted. ‘I'm on a tight schedule, you know? Perhaps next time, though.’

‘Next time?’ Alice exclaimed.

‘Next time?’ Thea challenged.

‘Hey, the trip over was a doddle – why not!’

Alice excused herself and went to splash cold water on her face. Thea and Paul glanced at each other awkwardly.

‘So,’ Paul said, ‘is her man a bit of a bastard then?’

‘Who?’ Thea shot. ‘Mark? A bastard? He's one of the nicest people I know.’

Paul seemed surprised. ‘Well, she's obviously not getting what she needs.’

Alice returned before Thea had the chance to respond. ‘We could, if you like, go for a stroll in Regent's Park this afternoon,’ Alice said to Paul, ‘if you felt the need to authenticate your trip.’