by Freya North
‘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.
Thea went through a lengthy, though obviously mostly fabricated, inventory. ‘No,’ she apologized at length, ‘no beads. My advice would be, if it fits, wear it out.’
‘Mark doesn't know I have a vibrator,’ Alice confessed, half wondering whether he ought, yet unable to predict how he'd react. ‘In fact, I can't imagine using toys with him. The thing is, our sex is admittedly pretty straightforward but actually all the more satisfying for it. I had boyfriends who couldn't get it up unless they could get something battery-operated up first. God, sometimes I used to crave simple, quick missionary in the dark.’
‘I guess I bought these plastic things to sustain the spice,’ Sally said, ‘not because our sex life is lacking or uninspired. I like surprising Richie – though nowadays I sometimes have to remind myself to – because I know he loves it. The day I can't be bothered is the day to worry.’
‘Keeping the marriage alive?’ Thea asked.
‘No, it's not that,’ Sally declared, ‘no need to – all is dreamy. I just like to envisage Richard thinking to himself that he's a lucky boy. I like to think of him all distracted and hot under the collar at work by knowing what's under my pillow.’
‘It's funny,’ Alice mused, ‘how you and I have actually contrived our relationships. You ensure that you maintain the allure of a vamp all these years into your marriage. I eschew my previous incarnation as feisty temptress to secure the stability and fidelity that defines Mark. I guess you could say I'm in an arranged marriage which I arranged.’
‘Richard proposed out of the blue, when we were still at the height of our heady falling-in-love phase,’ Sally reminisced. ‘Me being ludicrously dramatic, I ran away from him to hide in the wilds of Scotland, broke my bloody leg and he then turned up and wrote “will you?” on my plaster cast.’
‘It's such a great story,’ Thea laughed.
‘God, my proposal is mundane in comparison,’ Alice admitted. ‘I asked Mark to marry me with a carrot in my mouth.’
‘I bet it wasn't mundane to him,’ Sally said.
‘Funnily enough, it's the mundanity that I love now,’ Alice defined. ‘Christ, when I think of all that passion I used to put myself through.’ She paused to privately recall it. ‘It was so damned draining; replete with suspicions. Now I am loved unconditionally. I can just be myself and I'm adored for it. It's such a relief that my worries are now confined solely to work or to trivial things like whether we made a mistake using Cath Kidston florals in the bedroom with the rest of the house so minimalist.’
‘How is your new house?’ Sally asked Alice.
‘Gorgeous,’ Thea enthused on Alice's behalf, ‘it's so grown-up!’
‘It really is gorgeous,’ Alice agreed. ‘I'm very lucky.’
‘I love being married,’ Sally enthused with no smugness. ‘Richard is my best friend, my best shag, my confidant.’
‘I love it that to the outside world there's this normal bloke called Saul – but in my eyes I see this knight in shining armour,’ Thea said proudly, ‘a man I burn for. I lavish my love and lust on him and it's reciprocated. That's the best thing – finally with Saul it's this gorgeous two-way rally. Like a ball caught between flingers in a pinball machine – affection, lust, empathy, friendship, love ricocheting between the two of us.’
‘You're a hopeless romantic,’ Alice said fondly, ‘the first person to compare love to a pinball machine, that's for sure. And how many times do I have to tell you there's no magic or mystique in your feeling of “burning” for a man – it's just sudden surges of adrenalin and dopamine released in your brain.’
‘Oh shut up, Alice,’ Thea laughed.
‘Let the girl enjoy her chemical reaction!’ Sally said.
The food arrived and they picked at the salad and polished off the chips. Alice raised her glass and lowered her voice. ‘Look at that gaggle over there at that table.’ Thea and Sally glanced surreptitiously to a table of three women much like themselves. ‘Short of actually eavesdropping or lip-reading, I'll bet you anything they're bemoaning all men are sods and stuff. They look miserable. Down in the doldrums, drowning their discontent.’ Alice replenished their glasses and raised hers, chinking it against Sally's and Thea's. ‘We're bloody lucky, us three. We each have what we want and life ticks along happily because we're blessed with precisely what makes us tick.’
Girls and Boys
Alice sat up in bed; coddled by cloud-plump pillows and finest goose down, bedecked tastefully with Cath Kidston roses, in a waft around her. Her hair tumbled in a breeze-soft fan over her shoulders, glints of spun gold splaying over the creaminess of her skin. She looked like something out of a Merchant Ivory film, Mark thought to himself. Actually, Alice felt playful and horny and was surreptitiously fingering herself lightly as she watched Mark undress. She smiled at how particular his routine was. The order in which he took off his clothes, checked the pockets of his suit jacket before hanging it on a broad wooden hanger, rolled his belt up and put it in his drawer of rolled-up belts and took his dirty laundry through to the basket in their ensuite bathroom. Alice noted her skirt draped over the back of the chair, over jeans she'd worn at the weekend, her jumper strewn on the seat, her knickers scrunched on the floor. She wondered whether she was slovenly or if Mark was particularly fastidious. She wondered if her disregard for end-of-the-day neatness and order irked him.
‘Mark,’ she asked quietly, ‘do you despair of me being a mucky pup?’
‘Mucky pup?’ Mark frowned, slipping cedar shoe horns into his shoes. Alice gestured to her discarded clothes. ‘Don't be daft,’ he smiled, selecting tomorrow's shirt. ‘When I wake up, whichever way I'm facing, I see Alice rumpled. I like that.’ He picked up her jumper. ‘But this is cashmere and you really should fold it.’ He did it for her. ‘Which drawer?’
Alice looked over to the chest of drawers. ‘Middle one,’ she said, suddenly remembering her vibrator was in the drawer beneath. And then she wondered whether perhaps tonight was as good a time as any to introduce Mark to her bright pink, battery-operated friend. ‘Not the middle drawer,’ she announced, ‘I mean the one below.’ Find it! Don't find it!
Mark didn't find it. Alice didn't know whether she was disappointed or relieved. He continued his bedtime routine, inching the curtains back and looking down to the street, up to the sky. ‘Clear night,’ he assessed. It had been cloudy yesterday. Blustery the day before. He flicked his bedside light on, went back to the doorway and switched the main light off, hung his robe on the back of the door, rolled his head to either side while he walked over to the bed. He plumped his pillow, took off his watch and wound it up, checked the alarm clock though he never changed the setting. Though he always awoke moments in advance of the bell, he'd never not set it. He liked the physical act of silencing it just before it trilled so as not to disturb Alice. He reached for his Ian Rankin and skim-read the last paragraph from the night before, settling himself further into his pillow to read a chapter tonight.
He sighed. ‘Long day,’ he said, smiling apologetically at Alice, ‘long day.’
Alice put her novel down. She reached for him, ran her fingertips along his forearm, stroked her hand up to his biceps, rested her touch tenderly on his shoulder. She nestled against him. He stretched out his arm and draped it round her shoulders though this made page-turning a little awkward. He kissed the top of her head. She kissed his chest in reply. Kissed it again, optimistically. Put her mouth over his nipple and changed her kiss to a suck. She looked up at Mark, he looked down from his book. He looked tired.
‘Are you tired?’ she whispered, her fingers tantalizingly tiptoeing a path down his chest and over his stomach.
‘I am a little,’ he admitted, ‘work is a bit of a bitch at the moment. I'm carrying all David's while he's convalescing.’
‘When he's back, why don't we take a week off?’ Alice suggested, her hand resting lightly on his stomach while the conversation remained prosaic.
‘Hopefully,’ said Mar
k, deciding not to tell her about the imminence of trips to Singapore, Australia and Japan.
Alice decided distraction was good action. She traversed his torso with the palm of her hand. His nipples sprung to attention. ‘Mark,’ she murmured, licking her lips lasciviously, eyes asparkle, ‘are you tired tired? Or just tired tired?’
He laughed through his nose. ‘Are you laying claim to your conjugal rights, Mrs Sinclair?’
‘I most certainly am,’ Alice winked and kissed him on the chin, his mouth, nibbling his lower lip, ‘if you're up to it.’
‘I'm tired, but he's certainly up to it,’ Mark said as he led Alice's hand down his body, underneath the duvet to his hardening cock. Alice closed her eyes, closed her hand around him, felt him grow and stiffen and felt herself start to melt and moisten.
Mark held her head in his hands and kissed her softly all over her face. Alice rated him a very good kisser but actually, just then, she didn't want lips romantic and gentle, she wanted him to thrust his tongue into her mouth and gorge. Gently and evenly, he fondled each breast in turn before sliding his hand down her stomach, over the undulations of waist and hips, lightly over her bush and as far down her thigh as he could reach without breaking off from kissing her. She hungered for his mouth to feast on her breasts, she wanted his teeth to rasp against her nipples, she wanted his hands to knead her buttocks, she craved his fingers to delve greedily inside her. She pulled her face away and tried to guide his head down and his hand up. But he buried his face in her neck and nuzzled her there instead, cupped his hand over her sex without exploring further, stroking and stroking the length of her body. Desire for what he wasn't doing was heightening her arousal far more than what he was doing to her. It was as if her body was screaming and he couldn't hear it, so engrossed was he in his slow, tender lovemaking. The deafer he became, the more desperate her longing. It was strangely fantastic and frustrating.
Mark brought his face level with hers and gazed deep into Alice's eyes. ‘You're so beautiful,’ he told her. Gently, he parted her legs with his knee and, without taking his eyes off her, he carefully pushed his way inside her. He was pleasingly hard and Alice could sense her sex wanting to suck him in deeply. Her body tried to buck and grind against him but he had her securely enfolded in his arms and was setting a dignified, rhythmic pace. He moved inside her, gyrating subtly, moved and gyrated intoxicatingly slowly. She wanted to yell out fuck me you bastard but her mouth was plugged with his. She wanted him to thrust into her as if he had no self-control but he maintained his quiet, measured rhythm. He rolled her on top of him, sweeping her long hair from his face, scooping it up behind her head, holding her gaze. ‘You feel so good,’ he murmured. She sat up, the change in angle making her gasp. He stroked the fronts of her thighs whilst marvelling at the sight of her; the dip of her waist, the toned run of her stomach, the soft weight of her breasts, the eagerness of her nipples, the grace of her neck, the beauty of her face. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, ‘God, I love you.’ She was starting to pick up her pace, rotating and pumping as she straddled him. Mark pulled her down, rolled her over and kissed her and kissed her as he came. Deftly, Alice moved against him, the sudden rush of stickiness within her facilitating her own orgasm.