Love Rules (38 page)

‘No problem,’ Mark replied from the bedroom, changing out of his suit into something more appropriate for a golf expo at the Business Design Centre in Islington. Saul had sent him press tickets. ‘Is she OK, our Thea?’

‘She's bored of packing,’ Alice said. ‘Mark – we might need to put her up here with us for a while?’

‘Is she OK?’ Mark asked again, his concern genuine. ‘Has something happened with Saul?’ Alice said fine, fine hurriedly. Mark was well aware how Thea and Alice had always been thick as thieves together – momentous events befalling one or the other to be dealt with together in exclusion of the world around them. He both admired and gently envied the self-sufficiency the two of them gained from their friendship. When they'd fallen out a couple of months ago, Alice had seemed so displaced, so at a loss, so narky. He still wasn't any clearer on the cause of their impasse nor did he expect Alice even to sketch Thea's current predicament. Mark considered
how, on a scale of intimacy, there was a gulf between men and their close mates and women and their best friends. He could acknowledge that Alice possibly needed Thea in her life more than she did him. But it was easy for him to feel gratitude rather than resentment. Thea was Alice's great leveller; Thea was the one person who could chastise his wife; Thea was Alice's enduring ally and, Mark knew, an important fan of his. He knew only Thea could chide Alice for her impatience and calm her hot-headedness, that Thea could scold her when she was being churlish; he'd heard her admonish Alice for sulking with him and he knew that Thea reasoned with Alice on his behalf when it came to the pressures and commitments of his job. Good old Thea – he hoped she was all right.

A buzzing caught his attention; it came from under his discarded work shirt, placed for the moment on the floor until he could transfer it to the laundry basket once Alice vacated the bathroom. Under his shirt he found her phone. He picked it up. Message, it flashed. Paul B, it said. Read now? it asked.

Paul B?

Yes, pressed Mark.

ur a bitch – but gr8 tits

It took a while for Mark to actually translate the message, being unaccustomed to the abbreviations of text messaging. He was shocked and indignant. Poor Alice being bombarded by filth – like those obscene pop-ups that occasionally assaulted their home computer screen, worming their way onto some seemingly innocuous website or other. He was sure there must be a way to block them from mobile phones. He was about to call through to Alice about it when he stopped and sat down heavily.

Message Paul B Read now?

It wasn't unsolicited.

It couldn't be.

For the phone to recognize Paul B, Alice needed to have inputted his details. Paul B, whoever he was, was known to her and her tits were known to him. Mark felt less insulted that this Paul B thought his wife was a bitch than he felt mortified that this man was commenting on her breasts. How the hell would he know? Alice was saying something.

‘What?’ Mark asked, distractedly, his eyes fixed on the screen of Alice's phone.

‘I said, don't hang on for me – I'm sloshing on an intensive pro-vitamin hair-restoration mask and it needs to stay on for ten minutes, then have three rinses.’

Ten minutes and three rinses. How long did a rinse take? Multiply by three.

Mark's dilemma lasted seconds. Spy and perhaps suffer? Or ignore and forever wonder? Ten minutes plus triple rinsing was time enough but there wasn't a moment to lose. He scrolled through to the envelope icon. His thumb hovered. Stop singing, Alice. I can't read your text messages with that racket going on.

fancy a fuck?

Another.

u know u want it

Another.

can i c u?

Another.

fuck u! come on! i go 2nite …

Gutted, winded and blown apart, Mark was crippled by a searing pain in his stomach. He wanted to ask himself what it all meant but he knew not even he could be naive enough to expect an innocent explanation. No matter how much he loved Alice, no matter how much he'd love to give her the
benefit of his confounded doubt, the meaning of it all was clear as muck. He couldn't even read between the lines – the nature of text messaging presenting stark facts in black and white. There wasn't the space for purple prose, just a tiny screen filled with fancy a fuck?

My wife.

My wife is having an affair.

My wife has been sleeping with someone else.

Who is Paul B?

How dare he call them ‘tits’.

Mark was devastated. Over and above the scorch of pain and the nausea of disbelief was the horror of feeling a total fool – the quintessential cuckold of a piss-taking young wife conducting her affairs via the puerile medium of text messaging.

I could never be a Paul B. I'm too old-fashioned. Too stupidly gallant and respectful. Those are the qualities I thought she loved most about me. It appears they mean the least. What an idiot. And one thing I have to ask myself – which plunges the final twist to the dagger thrust – is why has she kept not one of my messages?

He could hear Alice rinsing out the special hair treatment for the second time.

Foolish girl – does she not realize I'd love her were she to wash her hair with Fairy Liquid? Or is it foolish me for even deigning to think she maintains her beauty and sets her standards for me, rather than Paul B? Standards? What sodding standards?

He could hear Alice releasing the bath water.

And I haven't even read the messages she sends.

Mark knew Alice was seconds from appearing. She was the last person he wanted to see. Quickly, he put the phone back on the floor, under his scrunched shirt.

No doubt it'll stay there. Alice is blind to dirty washing.
It's always me tidying away. When has she ever cleared up after the mess she makes?

‘Mark set up the DVD for us,’ Alice told Thea who'd arrived just as Alice finished a lengthy, meticulous blow-dry.

‘Your hair looks amazing,’ Thea remarked, holding up swathes of it as if admiring skeins of silk.

‘I used some new product we were sent to trial,’ Alice said. ‘I pinched one for you too. Hang on. Here you go. Now, white or red wine? Look! Mark's even left out the corkscrew so we don't have to go on our usual hunt.’

‘Good old Mark,’ Thea said fondly, opting for Sancerre and reaching for glasses while Alice uncorked the bottle. ‘How are things? How are things with Mark?’

‘It's all going to be fine,’ Alice evangelized though she busied herself with opening Kettle Chips to hide the slash of guilt, the scorch of pain traversing her face. ‘It's going OK, Thea. Things are better – I feel much more balanced.’

‘Good for you,’ said Thea, ‘good for you, Alice – I'm fucked.’

Alice hugged her sympathetically. ‘What are you going to do?’ she whispered, holding her tightly. ‘Are you any closer knowing?’

‘No. I don't know. But I could move into rented accommodation for a while,’ Thea said, her flat intonation suggesting she'd learnt the sentence by rote to quote while inwardly she had yet to figure out the manifold ramifications behind it.

‘Where? How?’ Alice asked, wondering whether Thea would be better off moving in with her for a while.

‘One of my clients is an estate agent,’ Thea said. ‘I asked him earlier today to help. He's found me a place in a mansion block in Highgate already. I'm going to see it tomorrow.
It's not available for another couple of weeks though. Can I perhaps stay here in the interim?’

‘Of course you can,’ Alice said, ‘but Saul?’ Had Thea come to her ultimate decision? Already? Unaided? ‘I mean – have you told him? About rented accommodation at the very least? Have you spoken to him, have you talked at all?’

Thea's gaze dropped, her brow creased and she bit her lip. ‘Haven't told him yet,’ she mumbled. ‘Actually, I haven't seen him for days. I keep fobbing him off. I keep putting it off. I don't know what to do.’

Alice wondered whether now was the time to tell Thea that Saul now knew that she knew. No. It wasn't a good idea. ‘But –?’

‘What am I going to do?’ Thea forces a whisper crackled by the imminence of tears. ‘Everything was sorted and now it's all a mess. And now it's gone. All gone. My immediate future, my long-term future. I'm scared.’

Alice racks her brains for something wise to say. Thea beats her to it.

‘Even if I manage to forgive, even if I get my head round the theory that men can totally divorce sex and emotion, even if I truly believe that I am absolutely the love of his life – I will never,
never
be rid of this suspicion and hurt,’ Thea says, ‘and my own principles that hold it's
wrong
. It's not
nice
. Good guys
don't
.’ She pauses and she and Alice scour each other's faces, their expressions mirroring turmoil.

Alice watches Thea's face crease with despair. And suddenly she is looking at Thea aged fourteen years old. Almost twenty years later, her eyes are filled with the same dreadful fear, exquisite sorrow and terrible bewilderment as they had been when her father had left home. It makes Alice shudder and be thankful not to be Thea. Just as she had been at the age of fourteen. Just as she had been grateful that her father was nothing like Thea's. At fourteen, she'd rushed home from
school and flung herself in his arms, held him tight, felt so lucky that she had him for her father. And now, aged thirty-three, Alice desperately wants Mark to be home soon from the golf show, so she can hold him and rejoice that he is nothing like Saul.

Alice thought it might well be a good idea to inform Thea that Saul knew she knew – it might just facilitate Thea to come to a conclusion. ‘Saul was in for a meeting yesterday,’ she began.

‘I went to a brothel today,’ Thea butted in because it was actually far easier to discuss than her relationship.

Alice was suddenly incapable of any sound, let alone speech itself. All she could manage was a silent, gaping jaw-drop of prodigious proportions. Thea couldn't help but giggle at her dumbstruck expression. It was perhaps the first time she'd been the one to shock the other into silence. In fact, it was probably the first time she'd actually done anything categorically shocking. Alice took a gulp of wine. ‘Where? Thea!’ she managed to gasp. ‘What the
fuck
were you doing there? Thea!’

‘I went to confront the enemy,’ Thea said, ‘so I went to that brothel just near the Being Well. I needed to face my fear.
I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend.
’

‘Who?’

‘Abraham Lincoln.’

‘What are you on about, Thea – you're inspired by the founding father of the United States to take yourself into a brothel in Marylebone and befriend the prozzies? Are you
crazy
?’ Alice was desperate for details yet wondered what on earth she was about to hear.

Thea looked a little sheepish. ‘Not crazy – I just needed proof that this never had anything to do with me.’

‘And?’

‘It was the best thing to have done,’ Thea proclaimed. ‘It
was horrendous and surreal but in retrospect, I have a sense of peace now.’

‘Jesus, Thea!’ Alice couldn't disguise the admiration in her voice though she worried it was inappropriate. ‘Why didn't you tell me! Why didn't you phone! What was it
like
?’

Suddenly, Thea looked back on her visit as a veritable expedition, an adventure. She'd been in a brothel, for heaven's sake! She'd sat on a bed and held hands with a hooker! Surely she was the only person she knew to have done anything like that. Apart from Saul, of course. And perhaps half the men she knew, if statistics were true. ‘I've seen a couple of the girls around,’ she told Alice, ‘you know, buying chocolate, posting letters – just like me.’ She didn't want to tell Alice about the Shipping Forecast, about Kiki greeting Saul. She didn't want to force herself to see how blind love had clouded her view of reality for so long.

‘Christ!’ Alice marvelled. Sod watching
Ocean's Eleven
on DVD as planned.

‘Today, I caught sight of one of them and I don't know, I just went a little mad,’ Thea admitted sadly. ‘I wanted to insult her. I wanted to hate her, I wanted to blame her, I wanted it all to be her fault. But I couldn't and I didn't – because it isn't. Now I see how she doesn't go out soliciting men. Their predilection is not her fault, not her responsibility, not of her creation.’

‘Who
is
she?’ Alice gasped, wanting to forsake the academics in favour of specifics. ‘What's she like? How old? What's her name? What does she look like? What did you
ask
her? What did she
tell
you? Oh my God, did you see any of the clients?’

‘She's young – I didn't ask how young because I didn't expect her to answer truthfully,’ Thea said. ‘She's called Kiki but I don't expect that's her real name. She says she's from a forest.’

‘A
forest
?’ Alice exclaimed, imagining Little Red Riding Hood in a crotchless basque under her scarlet cape.

‘That's what she told me – that her family still live in the forest and she assists them financially. Her take is that a man's sexual needs are distinct from his emotional allegiance and need never impinge on his commitment as a husband.’

‘Right,’ Alice said, thinking that's as may be but I couldn't cope with it.

‘I asked her if she was a sex maniac,’ Thea said.

‘You didn't!’

‘I asked her if she hated men.’

‘You didn't!’

‘I asked her if she hated women.’

‘You didn't!’

‘She held my hand.’

‘She didn't!’

‘I asked her if she enjoyed her work.’

‘Does she? What did she say?’

After a week or so of comforting her friend, sharing her pain, letting her cry but feeling powerless to really help, Alice rejoiced in the apparent return of Thea's initiative and strength. After a fortnight of not really knowing how to advise Thea, of being unable to hearten or soothe her, it transpired that the answer lay in a tour of a brothel.

‘The strangest thing is that actually I liked her,’ Thea concluded, half an hour later. ‘She's sweet and kind. She's nothing like the stereotype.’