Lord Seeks Wife: A hilariously funny romantic comedy

by Heather Barnett

  After work, she called Mia.

  ‘I’m not sure I can go through with the second interview.’

  ‘That’s what you said about the first one.’

  ‘Yes, but that was different. I was drunk.’

  ‘So, get drunk again.’

  ‘We have to be there at 10 a.m. It doesn’t give me much time.’

  ‘Start the previous evening. Piece of cake.’

  ‘Seriously, Mia, I’m terrified.’

  ‘You won’t be on your own. Lots of people will be terrified.’

  Not Mia though, of course. She wouldn’t even turn a hair. Alice hadn’t even bothered to ask if Mia was through: it would have been like asking Elvis Presley if he’d made it through the first round of an Elvis Presley lookalike competition.

  ‘I could pull out. Or is that rude?’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. If you don’t want to go, don’t go.’

  Twisting around in her seat and dislodging Tom, who shot her a dirty look, Alice mused, ‘Is it a bit ungrateful when all those other people queued for hours and didn’t get through? Basically taking someone else’s place and then wasting it?’

  Before Mia could answer, Alice heard voices in the background and asked, ‘Where are you, by the way?’

  ‘Marrakesh.’

  ‘Oh! Right. Sounds noisy.’

  ‘Yes, I’m in a police station.’

  ‘Oh dear! What are you doing there?’

  ‘Long story – work, mainly.’

  The voices in the background were getting louder and more irate and Alice thought she could detect sounds of a fight breaking out.

  ‘Do you need to…’ she began, as Mia said,

  ‘Listen, do what you feel comfortable with and don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. I’ll speak to you soon – back in a week or so.’

  The phone went dead.

  Alice gave Tom a stroke and he pushed his furry head up against her hand.

  There she was again, Mia – off doing something adventurous-sounding while Alice was sitting on the sofa with Tom after a day at work, wondering what to make for dinner and if there was anything good on telly. She didn’t even have the option of Scrabble, as Tom tended to cheat and chew her tiles when she wasn’t looking. Nothing ever happened to her. Except something had happened. She’d been successful at an interview and had been invited to de Beeble Hall for a day of unspecified ‘interview activities’ along with, the woman on the phone had said, around fifty other people. Of course, there was the rather important point that she didn’t want to marry Lord de Beeble – but then that hardly mattered. The likelihood of being chosen by Noblet to be his wife and then having to turn him down was so remote as not to be worth thinking about.

  In that case, what was to stop her going along on the twentieth? She’d never been inside de Beeble Hall. Mia would be there for moral support. It would be something to tell the grandchildren. (What grandchildren? asked a voice in her head. She told it to shut up.) Why the hell not? This was the new Alice, she did what she wanted when she wanted, she made decisions on the spur of the moment. She would go.

  ***

  Henry was back in London for the week to check everything was ticking over at the office and catch up on some work. Walking into the flat at 9 p.m. he found the huge kitchen table covered with proofs and Annabel and Joel installed on either side of Saskia, poring over them and sipping diet Cokes.

  ‘Hi, babe.’ Saskia pointed to her cheek as she riffled through photographs and he planted a dutiful kiss on the indicated spot. ‘You know I hate bringing work home with me, buggers up our feng shui. Can’t help it today though, we’ve got the deadline for the English Eccentrics issue and we’re way behind schedule. They’re still pulling the copy together, I spent half the day chasing up PRs for missing samples and we’ve not finalised the spreads. Come and tell us what you think of these.’

  Henry thought wistfully of the beer and bath he’d been promising himself on the way home.

  ‘Hi, Joel, Annabel.’ He picked up one of the A3 sheets from the table. ‘What am I meant to be looking at?’

  ‘We’ve gotta can some of these images – we have room for twelve but we’ve got at least twenty that we all think are the total vacuum. It’s a fucking tough call, man.’

  Joel and Annabel murmured something incoherent in agreement while looking as if, at this stage, they couldn’t care less if all twenty of the pictures got canned as long as they didn’t have to look at them anymore.

  ‘And you think I can help?’ Henry went over to the fridge, offered everyone drinks, then took out a beer and prised off the cap. Pulling up a chair opposite Saskia, he said, ‘OK. Which ones are definitely in?’

  Saskia picked up four or five and pushed them over to him. ‘These ones have to go in or we wouldn’t be able to look our own souls in the face – right, guys?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Fine. So we’ve got,’ he counted them, ‘five definites. That leaves, what – fifteen, sixteen possibles?’

  ‘I wish we could put them all in. Joel worked so hard on them,’ she pinched that unfortunate man’s cheek, ‘but it would throw out the whole balance of the magazine.’

  Henry reached out and swept all the sheets into a pile in front of him.

  ‘Right. We’re going to do this methodically. I’ll hold up a picture and everyone votes – either yes, no or maybe. There are fifteen pictures and you’re allowed five yeses, five noes and five maybes each. Then we’ll do it again with the maybes pile.’

  He grabbed some plain sheets of paper for them all to rip up and make into their ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ tokens.

  ‘First one.’

  He held up a picture of a woman standing in a playground smoking a cigarette. Joel gave him a ‘Yes’ token, Annabel a ‘Maybe’ and Saskia, after five minutes of agonising, during which she vocalised her every deliberation, a ‘Yes’.

  ‘Great. That goes in the Yes pile then. Moving on.’

  They went through six pictures the same way. Henry picked up the seventh, a picture of a young woman crouching down to stroke a cat. Glancing down at it, he saw kind eyes staring into his with such genuine warmth that he felt something catch in his throat. Realising that he’d been staring at it for much longer than necessary, he made himself look up and say to Saskia, ‘I recognise her – isn’t she…’

  ‘From the interviews. Yes. Friend of that tall bitch who booked The Proxy.’

  Something about the contrast between Saskia’s sour face and the look of straightforward affection in the woman’s eyes in the photograph made him feel as if everything had shifted a little out of position.

  ‘Her name was…’ he trailed off, waiting for Saskia to finish his sentence.

  ‘Oh God, I don’t know – Ellie or Ally or something.’

  ‘He looked down at the photo again: real. He looked up at his girlfriend. Real? Well, yes. In her own way. But was her own way something he admired anymore?

  ‘Anyway,’ Saskia continued, oblivious to Henry’s sudden road to Damascus moment, ‘I’m voting no for that one. Not sure why I left it in.’

  Apparently, they didn’t need Joel and Annabel to vote on that picture – Saskia whipped it out of Henry’s hand and dumped it on the ‘no’ pile.

  ‘Next! This is a great idea, babe,’ she added, reaching over to stroke his arm, ‘we’re really getting through them. Reckon we’ll be finished by ten.’

  The touch of her hand on his arm made him feel horribly disloyal. There she was, still the same old Saskia – she’d done nothing wrong, she hadn’t changed. She would be stunned if he told her he was having doubts, out of the blue. He wouldn’t even be able to explain his feelings clearly, seeing as they weren’t clear to him. He’d sleep on it. He was tired. Things might look different in the morning.

  The next day, driving into work, Henry thought about Saskia. Taking a step away from their relationship and viewing her through the eyes of a stranger was revelatory. As he drove
down Hatton Garden and on to Holborn Circus, his brain shuffled between avoiding head-on collisions with cars flinging themselves across the junction and listing out Saskia’s core character traits. Insensitive. Self-absorbed. Shit – nearly drove into the back of a Vauxhall that had pulled up with no warning. God, he was painting such an unattractive picture. She couldn’t be that terrible or he never would have been attracted to her in the first place. He thought back to when they’d first met and tried to remember how he’d felt. It was like trying to remind yourself why you’d first made friends with that guy you’d known since school, who all your other, more recent, friends couldn’t stand.

  He’d just turned thirty when he met Saskia. Single for a couple of years, he was starting to get a niggling feeling that something was missing from his life. He’d been working hard since leaving university, gaining experience at work, establishing his own business and making a success of it. He’d enjoyed working hard and going out and having fun with friends, but now that was all starting to pall. He didn’t want to be clubbing every weekend, getting home in the early hours before meeting up with the same people for a hungover brunch the next day. Then, one evening, a friend had invited him to a dinner party. He hadn’t suspected it was anything other than your run-of-the-mill weeknight dinner party; but as soon as he’d got there, he could see he’d been set up. There were four couples around the table – and Saskia.

  Initial impressions had been good – bright, full of energy, attractive; he forgave the match-making friend before he’d finished his starter. Her passion matched his own. They’d both been working hard at what they believed in. They were driven and enjoying life. Three months down the line and they were already living together. It had made sense – despite her inheritance Saskia hadn’t bought a place of her own, she’d been too busy setting up the magazine. The lease was coming up on her flat and his was more than big enough for both of them, so she’d hired a removals truck and had her seventy-two boxes of possessions transported from Kensington to his warehouse conversion in Clerkenwell. Everything seemed right. She introduced him to some of the more avant-garde cultural events London had to offer and he introduced her to Hitchcock, jazz and cricket – with varying success.

  On Shaftesbury Avenue the traffic was stop-start and at one point he had to manoeuvre past a broken-down van, coming perilously close to cars in the opposite lane. That obstacle cleared, his thoughts veered back to Saskia. He had been drawn to her drive, but now he wondered whether she was capable of being passionate about anything other than herself. Work wasn’t everything; he was proud of his business, but he wanted something else out of life. Helping his brother plan his interviews, Henry had found himself reflecting on his lifestyle and values – and what, ideally, his wife would be like.

  At Piccadilly Circus, he stopped at the lights and watched a young, Scandinavian-looking woman in a headscarf cross the road in front of him, one arm cradling the baby in a sling on her front. Children – there was an interesting topic. One of Noblet’s criteria for a wife was a desire to start a family. Did Saskia want children? Would she make a good mother? He couldn’t imagine it, somehow. He felt like his eyes were blinking open after a long sleep and the light was blinding. However unsure he was about quite what it was he wanted out of life, Saskia didn’t seem to fit into any of his vague, unspecified yearnings. Henry wasn’t a cruel man and he wasn’t indecisive. He may have been drifting along with Saskia unbeknownst to himself for some time, but now he’d seen the light he knew what to do. Glancing in the rear-view mirror he indicated right and turned off Piccadilly towards home.

  Saskia was working from home that morning. She’d told him she’d probably be at the flat until about midday, using the peace and quiet to get some final checks done. He knew his timing was dreadful, the last thing she needed was anything distracting her from the magazine deadline, but it couldn’t be helped. If he tried to keep how he was feeling to himself she would be able to tell something was wrong. He locked the car and took a deep breath before taking the lift from the underground garage to their flat on the top floor.

  Inside, all was quiet. He’d expected to find her at the kitchen table with her laptop, but there was no sign of her. She wasn’t in the living area either. Maybe she’d decided to go into work after all. Or maybe she’d overslept.

  He pushed the bedroom door open a few inches, not expecting her to be there – and there she was. He went in. She was lying in bed with her face away from him, eyes shut. Something in her attitude made him suspect she wasn’t asleep.

  ‘Saskia?’

  She fluttered her eyelids and turned towards him, affecting to be waking up. She’d never been a good actress.

  ‘Oh hi, babe. What are you doing here? Did I oversleep?’

  ‘You must have done – it’s nine thirty.’

  ‘Nine thirty! Shit! I’ve gotta get into the office, fuck.’

  Something didn’t ring true. Henry watched her as she pushed the covers away and scrambled out of bed.

  ‘You never sleep this late. I thought I heard you getting up as I was leaving.’

  ‘No, babe, I must have slept through. Anyway listen, I’ve gotta get ready now, we’ll talk later, yeah? You can tell me what you came home for.’

  She was bustling around the room, grabbing bits and pieces of clothing.

  ‘Don’t mind me. I’ll give you a lift in when you’re ready.’

  ‘Oh! Don’t worry, babe. I’ll get a cab.’

  He noticed she’d got a top and some underwear out of the drawers, but seemed reluctant to open the large fitted wardrobe where her skirts and trousers were hanging.

  A moment later he thought he understood why. A noise like a muffled sneeze came from inside the wardrobe.

  Saskia, it seemed, hadn’t heard it as she continued to rifle through a pile of jewellery on the dresser.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘What, babe?’

  ‘That noise. It sounded like a sneeze.’

  Saskia tried to laugh in an offhand way. ‘Must have been next door, babe, I didn’t hear anything.’

  Henry had started to move.

  ‘I’ll check.’

  ‘Unless,’ Saskia screeched, spinning round and holding out a preventative hand. ‘Unless it’s my wardrobe declutterer. Oh my God, babe, yes that’s what it’ll be.’

  ‘Your what?’ The words snapped across the room.

  ‘You know, babe. My woman who comes every few months to declutter my wardrobe, get rid of last season’s pieces, mend any rips and tears, that kind of thing. She’s an angel. Pares things right down so everything’s zen again.’

  She was relaxing a little now, even coming over to pick a stray piece of thread off the arm of his suit.

  ‘And you’re saying,’ Henry was speaking very slowly to allow all the words to sink in, ‘that she does this – decluttering – in the dark. In the wardrobe. With the doors shut.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Saskia nodded, eyes wide. ‘She’s a shaman, man, she has her special ways of being and doing. She finds it calmer in the dark.’

  Looking like he would take issue with this statement and then deciding against it, Henry went on, ‘And how would she have got in the wardrobe without waking you up? You’re not suggesting she’s been in there all night, burrowing through your skirts and cardigans?’

  Saskia’s laugh was forced and shrill. ‘No, of course not, babe! No, she’s got keys so she can come in while I’m at work. She must have come in, seen that I was asleep and slipped in there without disturbing me.’

  Henry could see that Saskia was almost convincing herself now.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well. In that case, I’m going to have to speak to her. I don’t want her having keys to the flat.’ And before she knew what he was doing he was standing at the wardrobe with the doors open.

  Inside, between a kimono and a feather boa, was Joel; naked. After a pause of a year or so, Henry picked up the end of the boa and tapped it against Joel’s nose.

&n
bsp; ‘Allergic?’

  Joel nodded, then sneezed again.

  ‘Shame.’

  Turning to Saskia, he drawled, ‘Perhaps you’re going to tell me that Joel doubles as your wardrobe declutterer? And that he prefers to work naked because it’s good for his aura?’

  For a moment Saskia looked like she might be sick, then she dropped onto the bed and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Oh God, babe, tell me you’re not going to be bourgeois about this?’

  ‘If it’s bourgeois to object to my girlfriend entertaining naked men in our bedroom when I’m out at work then yes, I’m going to be bourgeois about this.’

  She plucked stroppily at the bedspread.

  ‘I’m not like you, babe. You know that. I’m a free spirit. A wild thing. Can’t you accept me as I am?’

  During this exchange, Joel had remained motionless in the wardrobe, one sleeve of the kimono protecting his modesty.

  ‘I don’t think Joel needs to be here while we air our dirty laundry. He’s spent more than enough time with the clean stuff.’ Motioning him out of the wardrobe, Henry stepped back to allow him to pass which he did with alacrity, darting out of the open bedroom door.

  ‘Unless of course, I should be checking for other naked intruders. In the dresser perhaps? Or under the bed?’ Getting into his stride, he pulled up the edge of bedspread and crouched down to look underneath.

  Annabel was lying naked on the floor. She attempted an apologetic smile.

  ‘Darling?’ Henry said, as he let the material fall again. Saskia looked up at him, white-faced. ‘Sack the cleaner, would you? I’ve found something alive under the bed.’