arrives home with a bunch of flowers and a legibly excited smile.
‘Hullo, you,’ he coos, embracing his wife. ‘God, I missed you – I did try to ring.’
‘No signal,’ Alice shrugs, hugging him back and thinking to herself that he’s had a disastrous haircut.
‘Did you have a great time?’ he asks, taking off his jacket, loosening his tie and top button, rubbing his temples and pinching the bridge of his nose. What a day. Good to be home.
‘It was fine,’ Alice shrugs again. ‘You know these courses – part outward-bound, part bullshit-waffle assertion techniques. We were timetabled to within an inch of our lives.’
‘Was it as dull as you were expecting?’ Mark asks, leafing through the post and leaving it all unopened.
‘I guess not,’ Alice says, ‘but you’ll never guess – they made us share rooms! Can you believe that? Three hangers between us!’
Mark laughs as he selects a good Rioja and hunts for the state-of-the-art corkscrew. ‘Well, you look gorgeous, Wife – look at you. You really do. The outward-bound bit must have done you good. All that fresh air and exercise. God knows I could do with some.’
‘It was all very picturesque. Like a Stella Artois advert. And actually the workshops weren’t too hug-a-tree or primal-screamish. But I didn’t walk the Pont du Gard,’ Alice admits sheepishly, ‘I was too scared.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Mark says. ‘I’ve done it – and it’s pretty hair-raising.’
‘You’ve been?’ Alice is stunned, appalled, intrigued.
‘During my gap year,’ says Mark, still going through endless drawers in search of the corkscrew.
‘Did you go to Les Baux?’ Alice asks, almost accusatorily.
‘Don’t think so,’ says Mark who’s found the corkscrew. ‘Was it good?’
‘So-so,’ Alice shrugs, ‘no big deal.’
When Thea and Alice saw each other a couple of days later, they were each fizzing with excitement, gabbling unexpurgatedly, demanding that the other listen to me me me.
‘So the estate agent reckons my buyer will be ready to exchange contracts in the next couple of weeks! We’re looking to complete perhaps a month or so after that. And this place Saul and I have seen is just amazing.’ Thea looked to Alice for a reaction. Her friend was grinning, eyes dancing, stuffing a chocolate éclair into her mouth. Good. ‘It’s duplex – with a roof terrace! It’s like something you’d see on Grand Designs – beautiful flow of space and just the most incredible fixtures and fittings. You are going to die when you see the bathroom! And the kitchen is my dream kitchen. The views – oh my God – just you wait!’ Alice glowed with excitement, which delighted Thea and spurred her to continue. ‘There’s just a one-bed flat beneath and guess who lives there? Guess! Rene Overton!’
‘Who?’
‘Actually, I hadn’t a clue who he was either,’ Thea laughed into her tea, ‘but we’re reliably informed that he’s the definitive hairdresser to the stars.’
‘So you’ll be popping down, not to borrow a cup of sugar, but rather his ceramic straightening irons?’
‘My hair’s too short for those, silly,’ Thea hooted, ‘but I am hoping that he likes nothing better on his days off than to pop up to the flat above for a quick blow-dry!’ Alice and Thea guffawed excessively. ‘I’m also hoping never to have to pay for hair products again,’ Thea continued, ‘so the whack of our mortgage repayments will be beautifully balanced by freebie haircuts and industrial-sized bottles of shampoo. As long as our offer is accepted. Anyway, so the king of hair is on the first floor and the ground floor is a snazzy interiors company.’
‘So you’re thinking free sofas too?’ Alice laughed. ‘You could offer your home as a kind of living showroom – in return for full furnishing.’
‘Genius!’ Thea exclaimed and they chinked teacups and agreed to share another éclair. ‘So tell me about France? Was it OK in the end? Oh! I’ve got the ER tape for you – here.’
Alice regarded Thea, twitched her lip and let a lascivious smile spread. ‘It was – interesting,’ she said, rolling out the word with cunning. ‘Have you heard of a place called Les Baux?’
‘No?’
‘Cathédrale d’Images?’
‘No.’
‘It’s this place, this space – I don’t know how to describe it. Dante loved it, Cocteau loved it. You’d love it. It’s a defunct quarry – and you walk around while all these massive images are projected all around to amazing music.’
Thea regarded Alice, alarmed. ‘You haven’t gone all trippy-hippy, have you?’
Alice threw back her head and laughed. ‘No, of course not! But it was undeniably atmospheric and intense. And had a bizarre impact on us all. Anyway, Clare Cabot – you know, my nemesis – shagged Geoff Sprite. Practically there and then – regardless of their audience.’
‘You are joking?’ Thea gasped. ‘Blimey! Talk about scandal – outrageous!’
‘And I shagged our guide.’
‘What?!’
Alice bit her lip, glanced away and then dragged sheepish but sparkling eyes back to Thea. ‘This absolutely gorgeous bloke called Paul,’ Alice confessed, her brow furrowed above her excited whisper, ‘divine looking – the sort of physique you see on a Calvin Klein underwear ad. Incredibly handsome – half French, half Australian – a real mountain-climbing, nature-loving, sex-god stereotype. Bit of a toyboy actually – not even thirty. Does the ski season half the year. Anyway, so we’re in the cathedral – cathédrale – and there’s this thrustingly sexy rhythmic music and all these images of Africa. And Paul and I have been flirting since I arrived and it’s obvious he fancies me. And I don’t mind saying it made me feel really fantastic. What a boost – attention like that can certainly restore a girl’s pout and wiggle! So, there I am, walking around this quarry with the sights and sounds of Africa and watching my colleagues dancing. It’s like everyone was stoned (stoned? Quarry? Do you see!). Anyway, suddenly Paul’s there – there’s been all this chemistry, days of lingering looks and lip licking and brushing past each other accidentally-on-purpose. And he’s there, Thea, right up against me. And he just starts fondling me and snogging me. Real snogging – like we used to do at teenage discos. Greedy, lust-drenched tonguing and groping. It was incredible.’
‘What?’
Alice regarded Thea. ‘Then I shagged him!’ Immediately, she covered her face with her hands and groaned.
‘Alice! You did what?’
Alice peeped at Thea through the cage of her fingers. ‘When we returned to the hotel. I bunked off to bonk, basically.’ She placed her hands in her lap, chewed at her lip guiltily. ‘We snuck off and had the most rampant, filthy, abandoned wild sex of my life!’
‘What?’
‘Stop saying what!’
‘But Alice!’ Thea protested, her eyes skittering over her best friend’s face trying to detect a lie, obvious elaboration. Anything but the dance and sparkle that met her gaze.
‘What!’ Alice exclaimed, her face twitching between shame and triumph.
‘You’re married!’ Thea exclaimed. ‘That’s what.’
Alice looked at Thea. She had thought Thea would be surprised – stunned, perhaps