jovially, ‘the Knowledge? Short cuts? Crafty backdoubles? Bus lanes? I do know Chiltern Street – amazingly enough.’
‘Sorry,’ Alice said meekly, ‘I didn’t mean to.’
She thought how Bill absolutely detested her habit of giving directions if she wasn’t driving. In their early days, he had gently teased her, even indulged her. A year on, it now irritated him supremely. ‘Which way do you want to go then?’ he’d give a henpecked sigh before they’d set off. And if Alice’s route proved circuitous, or with a proliferation of speed bumps, or beset by roadworks or vengeful traffic lights, he’d let his stony silence yell his disapproval and annoyance.
‘I’m not a control freak,’ Alice said out loud, not intentionally to the cab driver but not out of context either. ‘It’s not an obsession, it’s just a trait of my character.’ She gazed out of the window, about to ask him why he was going along the Embankment rather than via Farringdon at this time of day. But she bit her lip. Was it a loathsome quirk of her personality? Should it be something she should resolve to change? She could feel her tears smarting and prickling. She’d kept them in check all morning and her throat ached from the effort. ‘Here!’ she unintentionally barked at the taxi driver who swerved and shunted to a standstill in response.
‘Can you tell Thea I’m here,’ she said to the receptionist in Thea’s building.
Thea’s ‘there there’ was precisely what Alice had come halfway across London in her lunch hour to hear. The sound of it triggered the tears. ‘There there,’ said Thea again, and Alice cried all the more. ‘Let’s get some soup in you,’ Thea soothed, guiding Alice to Marylebone High Street.
Alice sipped obediently. ‘I’m going to sound like Headfuck Boy,’ she admitted, after a few spoonfuls, ‘but if I don’t end it now, it’s going to consume me. And I’ll end up all spat out. Again. I’m just so tired.’ Though Thea knew her friend’s face by rote, objectively she noted a sallowness to the complexion, a flatness to the eyes, cheekbones now too sharp to be handsome, a thinness attributable to stress rather than vanity. ‘I’m nearly thirty,’ Alice concluded in a forlorn whisper. ‘When am I going to learn?’
‘You’re not fretting about that, are you?’ Thea asked, due to turn thirty a month before Alice.
‘Look at this,’ Alice said, showing Thea the new copy of Lush magazine. ‘It’s the “Alice Heggarty This is Your Life” issue.’
Thea read the cover lines out loud. ‘More Shoes Than Selfridges.’ She looked at Alice. ‘But I’ve never known you to buy a pair and not wear them out. ‘A Chef in the Kitchen, A Whore in the Bedroom.’ Thea patted the cover of the magazine: ‘Why, that’s a skill others envy you.’
‘Look!’ Alice declared. ‘Falling For Mr Wrong.’ She jabbed her finger at the magazine. ‘Passion Drove Me Insane,’ she proclaimed, ‘Lovelorn or Lustaholic. For fuck’s sake, I’m meant to be the publisher – not the inspiration for every sodding article.’ She sighed and continued in a quieter voice, ‘Lush is directed at the early-twenties market, Thea. I’m basically thirty and still slave to all these insecurities and issues.’
‘Bill,’ Thea said darkly, buttering a doorstep of bread and dunking it, watching the satisfying ooze of butter slither off the bread and dissolve into the soup.
Alice covered her face with her hands. ‘If I say it out loud, it has to be real,’ she said, ‘if I look you in the eye, I can’t hide from the truth.’ She laid her hands in her lap and regarded Thea. ‘He’s Mr Wrong,’ she whispered, ‘it’s as simple as that. I’m exhausted. I’m a lovelorn lustaholic and passion is driving me insane.’
‘Gentle sympathy or hard advice?’ Thea asked.
‘You’re my best friend, I need you to tell me what I need to know,’ Alice said, ‘even if it’s not what I want to hear.’
Thea regarded Alice levelly. She tipped her head to one side. ‘You’re right,’ she shrugged, ‘Bill is Mr Wrong.’ Momentarily, Alice felt like springing to Bill’s defence only Thea jumped in first. ‘In Bill’s defence,’ she said, ‘he’s a gorgeous and charming man. With a great car. Physically, you make a beautiful couple. But your relationship is ugly.’ She’d witnessed enough blazing rows, spiked sarcasm, hostile silences and relentless bickering to speak with authority.
‘It’s been such hard work,’ said Alice, stirring her soup as though it was a cup of well-sugared tea, ‘constantly trying to safeguard his love and lust for me. Even though, sometimes when I get it, I don’t actually want it,’ Alice confided. ‘I hate feeling so pathetically insecure, when actually I don’t think I really like him anyway.’
‘He is what he is,’ said Thea fairly, ‘gorgeous and aloof and rich and a sod.’
‘It seems we’re always playing some horrid power game – either I’m the one who’s pissed him off or else I’m in a manipulative sulk with him.’ Alice paused. ‘We just ricochet from his stony silences to my flouncy strops. It’s exhausting.’
‘The renowned playboy,’ Thea told her, ‘he was captivated by your feistiness but to be honest, he’d be better suited with a bimbo or a mousy-wifey.’
‘Could change?’ Alice said meekly and with some ambiguity.
‘You or him?’ Thea asked pointedly. ‘Don’t you dare go compromising. And what would you change him into? And don’t say a frog.’
But Alice was off on a tangent, gazing into the middle distance, reinventing Bill. Or, rather, creating an entirely different man simply clad in Bill’s likeness. ‘Someone calm. Someone who adores me and I’ll never doubt it. Someone who won’t mind the way I’m a back-seat driver. Someone who makes me feel safe, someone who won’t cause me panic when I find their mobile phone is switched off. Someone who won’t play games. Or play around. Someone who won’t flirt in front of me. Or when I’m not around.’
Or with your friends, Thea thought to herself remembering more than one occasion when Bill had paid her a little too much attention. They scraped their soup bowls with their spoons and then used the last of the bread to swab them dry.
‘I would have finished it months ago,’ Alice said, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘but in some ways it was easy to become addicted to the fabulous passionate making-up sex which always concludes our rows. But you know what? We rarely have sex unless it’s concluding an argument. And we’ve never, ever, made love.’
Thea snorted. ‘I haven’t had sex, made love, shagged, fornicated, humped or mated for eleven months!’
‘You and your daft standards.’ Alice laughed a little. ‘I’m surprised you don’t just take yourself to a nunnery and be done with it.’
‘Christ,’ said Thea, who was actually an atheist, ‘I love sex. I’m dying for a fuck. I’m just not so desperate as to lower my standards.’
‘Do they actually have to proclaim their romantic intentions, their degree of wholesome love before you’ll permit entry?’ Alice teased.
‘Piss off!’ Thea joshed. ‘You’ve missed my point. They can feel all they like, they can compose poems and do the bended-knee routine. But if I don’t burn for them, if I don’t feel that spark – no chance.’
They ordered tea for two and cake to share.
‘You’re in love with love,’ Alice said, dividing the gateau with her fork and offering Thea the choice of portions, ‘while I lust for lust.’
‘Sounds like a magazine article, if ever there was one,’ Thea said, choosing the end of the wedge, rather than the point.
Alice glanced down at the cover of Lush and gave a little snort. ‘From Heartbreak to Happy-Ever-After – 7 Steps to Take You There.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps I ought to practise