Love Rules

by Freya North

  He said how much he loved Thea. He said – and it didn't even strike me at the time – that he was faithful to her ‘in my mind and in my heart’. Why didn't he say ‘body and soul’? Why did he even have to qualify fidelity? He specified his suspect mind, his half a heart while being careful to make no mention of the physical.

  She blinked and halted a shudder as she slowly looked at Saul, sitting opposite her, tapping a Biro irritatingly against his lower teeth while he mused over more ideas for the magazine.

  ‘Paying For It,’ she announced calmly, her level stare belying her racing heart.

  Saul was still formulating ‘That's Not What I Call Music – our inevitable decline into our parents’ and thus failed to grasp Alice's insinuation. ‘Paying For It,’ Saul repeated, as if she had alluded to first-class air travel or NHS prescriptions.

  ‘Cash for Sex,’ Alice continued. She scrutinized Saul for a reaction but there did not seem to be much of one as yet, he was just looking at her intently. Keep the eye contact, Alice. Keep the pressure. ‘Hooked on Hookers,’ she tried. Maintain the momentum. ‘Jades and their Johns.’ Saul was nodding slowly. Did she have him? She wasn't sure. ‘Prostitutes and their Punters.’ She thought she could detect a slight falter to his nodding. ‘Paying For It,’ she said again. Time to raise her eyebrow and then glower. Saul was now taking undue interest in his pen; putting his finger on the ball point. Had she struck a heart chord? Time to go for the jugular. This is for you, Thea. ‘A Shag or A Sandwich? Buying sex in your lunch hour.’ Alice paused to maximize the dramatic impact of her volley. ‘What do you think, Saul?’ She let her question hang, the steel in her voice slicing through. ‘This one is right up your street, isn't it? Right up your Soho side street.’

  Slowly, Saul looked at Alice. She was shocked. There was no glimmer of guilt. No jump to self-defence. No arrogant denial which she could then batter back. No blithering wreck for her to chastise to the hilt. No tears of remorse she could refuse to mop up. Saul simply looked horrifically ashen; far worse than if he'd seen a ghost – more as though he'd fore-seen his own death and it was imminent. ‘You could write this one, Saul, couldn't you?’ she continued spikily. ‘I have a stunning, gorgeous girlfriend but I pay for sex on the side. Put it on expenses! I'll go to petty cash right now! Or do you have an account, Saul?’

  ‘Alice,’ Saul said, but without protest, more just to request she be quiet.

  They sat in the loudest silence; time ticked excruciatingly slowly, reality suspended in a caught moment, their thoughts rocketing far too fast to harness. Nothing could be done. Time couldn't be turned back; neither words nor actions could be taken back.

  ‘She knows,’ Alice said quietly, at length.

  Saul whipped his head away from the unequivocal meaning of the sentence and stared at Alice's door while unseen tears lacerated his throat like thorns.

  ‘She saw you,’ Alice declared hoarsely, her ultimate shot striking the very heart of Saul.

  The toxic silence continued to fill Alice's office like an asphyxiating fog. Alice wanted to fire a million questions. Why, you bastard? What were you thinking? How could you? Why on earth would you? How often do you? What's it like? How does it differ? How much do you pay? How much have you spent? When was the last time? Will there be a next time? Why would you want to when you have a girl like Thea? However, Alice's voice was hampered from materializing by her surprise that Saul should dare to look so broken. Her onslaught was somewhat dependent on the assumption that Saul would jump to his defensive, or accuse her of lying, or lie that Thea was mistaken or that they had no proof. Over the last few days, in imagined confrontations, she'd prepared for these responses and had perfected her final self-righteous lunge. Instead, she was confronted by a Saul who was speechless, defenceless and in imminent need of tissues.

  Please God, don't let me actually have to comfort the bastard.

  ‘How do you know?’ Saul asked quietly. ‘How do you know that she knows?’

  ‘She's my best friend,’ Alice said through clenched teeth.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Saul said with little hope and negligible energy. He was suddenly devastated to realize that Thea hadn't had flu last week, she probably hadn't been at all those Pilates classes nor had she cancelled the trip to his parents because of a commitment to Alice. The simple truth was that she obviously didn't want to see him, she was actively avoiding him. The rejection was shocking. ‘What do you think I can do?’ he asked Alice because he had no idea and he desperately sought guidance from the person closest to Thea. Alice shrugged and narrowed her eyes with hostility. Why should she do any thinking on his part – a problem shared was a problem halved and he did not deserve to have his load lessened at all.

  ‘For fuck's sake,’ Alice declared, ‘you have Thea. Why on earth would you want to even think about jeopardizing that, let alone go forth and fuck and fuck it up irrevocably?’

  Saul's frown furrowed deep behind his eyes. ‘I never, ever wanted to jeopardize my relationship with Thea nor hurt her in any way,’ he declared quietly and with such passion Alice found she could have quite easily believed him.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ she rubbished, ‘you have no excuse.’ ‘I have no excuse,’ Saul agreed, ‘you're right. My only defence is an explanation – and that is: I'm a bloke. I guarantee I'm not a deviant, I'm not a bastard – I just do what a hell of a lot of other blokes do. I have the most beautiful girlfriend whom I love deeply and want to share my life with but I also – occasionally – pay for sex. It's just sex.’

  Alice was hearing it from his own lips. He was confirming it. He was verifying it. He was admitting it. He was owning up, confessing. She wanted to throw something at him. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to see him squirm with suffering and be paralysed with pain. She shouldn't let him just sit there and qualify that he was a bloke, c'est la vie.

  ‘I couldn't love Thea more,’ he was saying while Alice eyed her Rolodex and considered hurling it at him.

  ‘How can you talk of love?’ she spat.

  ‘I am telling you, I love that girl more than I have any other – she is my soulmate,’ Saul countered emphatically. ‘I love her as much as I can – which is more than I thought I could. I adore her. She has never doubted it. And nor have you.’

  ‘Why are you pathologically unfaithful to her, then?’ Alice lunged.

  ‘I don't see it that way. It's just sex. It's nothing,’ said Saul. ‘Unfaithful suggests wilful cruelty and devious disloyalty.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off with your skewed theories,’ Alice hurled. A sickening silence throttled them again.

  ‘You know what, Alice, you're right,’ Saul said at length. ‘You're right – it would make a fascinating article. And maybe I will do it for you, do it for Adam, my swansong if you like. You needn't even pay me – donate my fee to Nick Hornby's charity. But I'm warning you I can't write a self-flagellating parable of shame. I could, however, pen you a doctorate on how it is that men can divorce sex from emotion perfectly and yet still desire and believe in love and fidelity totally.’

  ‘Saul!’ Alice protested, outraged that he should have a plausible explanation and dispassionately astute grasp of the situation.

  ‘Once in a while I pay for sex, Alice,’ Saul said quietly. ‘It's hardly a habit and it's not a problem. Nothing illegal, nothing violent. A straightforward quick shag. I don't do it because of Thea – our sex life is fabulous. I don't do it for some macho power drive. I'm not a misogynist and I'm not a sex maniac and I'm not stressed. I don't do it for any reason other than I can.’

  ‘You can't,’ Alice objected with a screech, ‘you can't – not when you have Thea.’

  ‘But I can. I can make the distinction. I can make the ten-derest love to Thea, have passionate and kinky sex with her but very occasionally, if she's not around, if I feel horny or bored and I can't be bothered to wank, I think, I know, I'll go and get £80 out of the cash point and buy a quick fuck.’

  ‘You're a reprehensible con
man!’ Alice shouted. ‘You're a totally selfish, stupid, fucked-up loser.’

  ‘I am going to lose the most precious thing I ever had,’ Saul confirmed.

  ‘You bastard!’ Alice hissed. ‘Who are you? Nice guys don't– OK? They don't do that!’

  ‘Want a bet?’ Saul objected fiercely. ‘Do a poll amongst all the men you know. Go on. I dare you.’

  ‘Fuck you – don't you dare try to justify or dilute it.’ Alice had leapt to her feet. ‘It's ridiculous, deplorable, unnecessary behaviour for a man with such a charmed life as you.’

  ‘Alice, I have nothing to say in my defence. But for the record, I never meant to hurt Thea. For the record, there was absolutely no emotional betrayal. My only searing regret is that Thea knows. I don't know how I'll cope with her hurt. And the ramifications. Christ, Alice, I don't know if Thea and I can possibly survive this. I stand to lose the love of my life.’

  Alice looked at Saul. There was no solution. There was no point yelling at him. There could be no happy ending. His own acute awareness of Thea's intolerable pain was his own terrible suffering. She could see that, it was written all over his pain-lashed face. No amount of further scolding from Alice could improve a dire situation or make him feel worse. His destiny was that he would lose Thea.

  ‘I have to go,’ Saul said, his voice hollow and choked.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Alice asked sadly.

  He shrugged. ‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘Allow Thea to call the shots. I have to leave it to her. I don't know – perhaps I should tell her I know that she knows. Do I try to fight for her? Do I try and justify? I don't know. Christ, I don't fucking know.’ He stood up and turned to leave.

  ‘Saul, you understand that I can't work with you directly,’ Alice said quietly. ‘I'm sorry. It's over.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ said Saul as he reached for the door handle. ‘I understand. I'll miss Adam. I'll miss you, Alice. I can't think about this right now. I'm losing Thea. I have to go. What am I going to do? What can be done? Goodbye, Alice. Goodbye.’

  And Saul leaves and Alice feels exhausted. But the under-lying emotion worming through her conscience and burdening her soul is Shame. Saul has no shame because he honestly considers he has done no wrong – though he acknowledges it has unwittingly caused his most loved one unfathomable pain. But Alice feels shame like a punch to the stomach. She is winded by it. She can't breathe. She is acutely aware that being so viciously moralistic and heavy-handedly sanctimonious with Saul has an ulterior motive in addition to defending Thea's honour and dignity – it appeases her own guilt. It is as if privately she had placed herself and Saul on a scale of deplorable sins and ensured that, out in the open, Saul lost. His vice is worse. He can go to hell. Alice had accused Saul of ‘ridiculous, deplorable, unnecessary behaviour’ for someone with such a charmed life. Deep down, she knows she should level the indictment in all its savagery at herself. What was it that he had said? He claimed infidelity was wilful cruelty and devious disloyalty. That it was a crime he was not guilty of. But she was.

  Saul had never hurt Thea. If Thea hadn't witnessed him with Black Beauty or Models! top, she'd still be floating in her romantic waft of interior-decorating schemes and dreams of domesticity. Saul's hookers, whoever they were, had never had the wrong idea from him nor wanted anything more than his money. A simple cash transaction. Thanks. Have a nice day. And you. But Paul Brusseque had spent his meagre wages flying himself over to London to be with her. Did Saul send his prostitutes outrageous text messages? Of course he didn't. Did he ever make Thea suffer by cold-shouldering her so he could think of them? Never. Alice feels profoundly ashamed at the hurt and insult she's inflicted on Mark over the months. She goes to the shelf and places the framed first cover of Adam face down, and turns her award around.

  I have behaved far worse than Saul – my actions have directly caused unhappiness and anxiety. Mark has had to bear the brunt of my impatience, my selfishness and my unrealistic expectations of long-term love. I've used and led on Paul Brusseque and behaved badly to him too.

  Alice rests her throbbing head against the window pane. Her office is high up. It's a long way down. There's a long way to go.

  Who was it who said something about it's not who you love it's how?

  She hums a tune and knows it to be ‘Love the One You're With’. Apposite indeed – but she's thinking of another quote, even more pertinent. Slowly, it dawns on her. It is not a lyric or film quotation – it is from an article she'd published. Christ – wasn't it in Lush years ago? She vaguely recalls she and Thea perusing the article while eating soup. She'd just split up from Bill, hadn't she? When was that – four years ago? Almost. Alice goes to the Lush offices two floors below and rifles through their archives.

  From Heartbreak to Happy-Ever-After – 7 Steps to Take You There.

  ‘Number 5: It's Not Who You Love It's How You Love,’ she reads under her breath, in no mood to pronounce the excessive exclamation marks. ‘Number 6,’ she continues, ‘Change What's on Your Wish List.’ Genius. Who wrote it? She recognizes the name – a staff writer long since lured away to Red magazine. However, Alice has always believed that her magazines' ethics are directly her responsibility. ‘As publisher, I should practise what I've preached.’

  Peter's 4.26 p.m.

  ‘Souki, can you take my four o'clock, please?’

  ‘Are you OK? You look dreadful, Thea.’

  ‘I have to get some fresh air. I don't feel so good. Can you?’

  ‘Well – OK. It's the ballerina, isn't it? Sure. You go. Oh, by the way, Saul phoned – again. You haven't fallen out, have you?’

  ‘I'm just stressed about selling my flat.’ Thea bent the truth while wanting to yell why the hell does everyone see us as this golden couple – it's a sham!

  Thea walked quickly down Paddington Street, jaywalked over Baker Street and practically jogged along Crawford Street. She knew exactly where she was heading though she'd never been before, had no appointment and would be wholly unexpected. She'd taken the address from the files at work and had double-checked it on her pocket A–Z. Turn left. Straight on. Dog-leg right. It's here somewhere. But there's a few of them along this street and it's difficult to tell the numbers on these buildings. There! That's it. Here.

  Thea burst into the offices of Henderson-Goode.

  ‘I need to see Peter Glass!’ she declared.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ said an enormous vase stuffed with overpoweringly scented lilies which Thea presumed was some high-tech gimmick until she spied a tiny woman with too much make-up sitting at the desk behind.

  ‘No,’ Thea said, ‘just tell him Thea Luckmore is here.’

  ‘What's it in connection with?’ the painted pygmy enquired.

  ‘Stuff!’ Thea said, levelling what she hoped was a men-acing ‘I'm bigger than you – do it!’ expression.

  When Peter appeared Thea was taken aback. He seemed half his usual height and, as he walked towards her, it was without his usual swagger. In fact, amongst the other sharp-suited agents in the hyper-plush office, Peter seemed to lose some of his brash-bold expansiveness he brandished around the Being Well.

  ‘Thea?’ he asked, looking rather alarmed.

  ‘I need to talk to you!’ Thea tried to whisper though her breathlessness and agitation turned it into a hoarse hiss.

  ‘Come over to my desk,’ he said genially, but Thea eyed the open-plan office suspiciously and shook her head decisively. ‘Come on, let's go outside for a mo',’ said Peter, catching the receptionist's eye and splaying his fingers to signify five minutes. He guided Thea with his hand at her elbow, as if she was a loopy but harmless elderly relative.

  ‘Come on, babes – the Beemer is as good a place as any for a chat.’

  With a key that looked nothing like a traditional car key, he bleeped the car into life and opened a door for Thea. By the time he had walked around to the driver's door and slid into his place, Thea was banging her head on the dashboard, so
bbing uncontrollably. ‘Babes, babes!’ Peter tried to comfort. ‘Easy, easy. Come on now, babes – you'll set the air bag off in a minute.’

  ‘I'm not a prostitute. I need somewhere to live. I'm single. I'm homeless.’

  Peter wasn't sure which of the four revelations he should tackle first, nor really why it was to him that Thea had come. ‘Slow down, darling, take a deep breath. Shit, I haven't a tissue. Hold on.’ He sprang out of his seat and went round to the boot, returning with a butter-soft, relatively clean chamois leather. ‘Here you go, you can use this.’

  Thea blew her nose gratefully. He offered her a piece of mentholated chewing gum, popping two tabs into his mouth when she declined. He chewed thoughtfully and tapped her knee while her sobbing subsided into sporadic shudders and erratic gasps.

  ‘Please could you help me,’ she asked softly. ‘I sell my house in just over a week but I have nowhere to live.’

  ‘What about the ritzy-glitz apartment with your fella?’ Peter asked carefully.

  Thea looked at him, wide-eyed and fragile. ‘I found out something a couple of weeks ago,’ she whispered, ‘that as well as professing to love me and proclaiming I could trust him, he uses prostitutes too.’