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 Egyptian 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 snapping 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,