by Freya North
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 bed-rooms, 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 board-room 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 out-rageous. 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 boy friend? 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 Egy
ptian 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 snap-ping 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 girl friend? Since when?’
‘Since Sunday.’
‘It's Monday.’
‘And you can see for yourself on Friday then. You'll love her.’
‘Hullo, Mrs Sincla
ir,’ 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.