Love Rules (17 page)

‘When are you and Mark going to breed?’ Sally asked Alice, telling herself not to panic that the ring didn't appear to move at all when she dangled it.

Alice took the ring and assessed the sex of a cushion tucked up Thea's jumper. ‘I don't know,’ she said cautiously, ‘I mean, when we were engaged we'd talk dreamily of babies and sandpits and Winnie-the-Pooh. When we bought the house we allocated “kids' rooms”. But actually, we haven't mentioned it.’

‘There again, I've been married to Richard for nearly seven years,’ Sally said, ‘and you two are still pretty much newly-weds.’

‘Coming up to two years, actually,’ Alice corrected. She gave Sally back her ring and hooked Thea's necklace around her neck. ‘I guess I don't feel ready. I guess
Adam
's been my baby. I guess you have to have sex to conceive and my husband is invariably in a different time zone and continent to me.’

‘Mark would make a lovely father,’ Sally projected. ‘How about you and Saul, Thea?’

‘Us?’ Thea said, looking up from a pregnancy magazine. ‘We're not even living together, let alone married.’ Her glum pout surprised Alice.

‘But you've been together for ages,’ Sally declared.

Thea shrugged.

‘You're not waiting for him to ask, are you?’ Sally probed, as if the notion was so old-fashioned as to be far-fetched.

Thea shrugged again.

‘Ever the romantic, our Thea,’ Alice said fondly, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze.

‘So?’ said Thea, resolutely.

ADAM

September, Issue 16

Willem Dafoe cover

• The quiet hero – Dafoe defines cool
  

• Sex – learn the language of talking dirty
  

• Perfect ‘V’ – hone your physique in a month
  

• Divas, sparrows, angels, fruitcakes – female rock goddesses
  

• Yeah man, I was there: Woodstock, Isle of Wight, Glastonbury
  

• Big Brother – 130 CCTVs log your daily movements
  

• Fast-food nation – terrifying facts that'll have you reaching for the alfalfa
  

• Toys, gadgets and gizmos – we don't need them, but we love them
  

ADAM

October, Issue 17

The Survivor's Guide. Underwater cover

• How to love and have lust survive
  

• How to do platonic sex and have the friendship survive
  

• How to dive with sharks and survive
  

• How to play the stock market and survive
  

• How to cook a banquet and have your guests survive
  

• How to renovate your house – and have the building survive
  

• How to win a survival course in the Pyrenees
  

Mark stroked Alice's stomach, turned away from
Newsnight
and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. ‘When is Sally's baby due?’ he asked.

‘Couple of months,’ Alice told him, her eyes on the vast television screen, ‘I think her due date is Boxing Day.’

‘You'd look glorious pregnant,’ Mark anticipated. Alice was quiet. ‘Maybe we should think about trying?’ Mark said. ‘We are married, after all. And we are ageing rapidly. And
we do rattle around this big place. And I don't know about you but maybe the cogs of my biological clock are starting to turn.’

Alice wanted to cry and she hadn't a clue why. She invented a coughing fit and rushed to the kitchen for a long drink of water.

ADAM

November, Issue 18

Mick Jagger cover

• Old enough to be your dad, cool enough to be your mate, rich enough to buy a continent – Sir Mick, we salute you!
  

• Stay or stray? When love loses lust
  

• Lizzie Jagger – what
  would
  her dad say?
  

• Undercover in Afghanistan
  

• Armani or Burton – who suits you?
  

• Fitness – prepare now for your mum's Christmas cooking
  

• Sex and drugs – don't try this at home
  

• Money – save or spend: is it worth it?
  

Kiki had worked in the West End for three years, from the time she came to Britain from Indonesia at the age of seventeen. She liked it. The money was good. Her colleagues were now as close as family. Her clients were mostly fine. Her accommodation exceeded her expectations. She felt she had much to be thankful for because she knew she was much luckier than some. Kiki chose not to take much time off, limiting herself to one morning and one afternoon a week but never a whole day. It didn't seem worth it; her plan was to save and not spend and she didn't hate her job enough to run from it whenever she could. She'd seen quite early on how not much business came in on Monday afternoons and Sundays so these were the times she decided not to work.

In the first year of her life in London, she had spent her Sundays and Monday afternoons too overwhelmed by the scale of the capital city, the pace of it all, to do much else than go from McDonald's to McDonald's, splitting a meal between establishments and giving herself an allowance that stretched to a further soft drink and two cups of tea to fill her free time. It wasn't that Kiki became braver, but as time passed the city seemed smaller; her awe simply dwindled and
her penchant for McDonald's ceased altogether. As her English improved and she found
Time Out
fairly easy to read, she took to venturing further afield. She started with the major museums and galleries, then she sought out smaller collections, traversing London from east to west, north to south as she did so.

She went on a tour of the Thames Barrier and walked around Hampstead with a group of strangers and a guide dressed as Charles Dickens. She lay on her back alongside other visitors at an installation at Tate Modern and craned her neck during a walking tour of the financial district. She went backstage at the Royal Opera House and down into the orchestra pit at the Barbican. She pressed the buttons in the Science Museum and rode the small train at Kew Bridge Steam Museum. She walked around a candlelit restored Huguenot property in Folgate Street in reverential silence and sang ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van’ raucously at a living Music Hall museum. From fans to dolls, musical to medical instruments, from wine to buses – it seemed to Kiki there was a museum to celebrate everything.

Kiki had never heard the shipping forecast. The radio at work, when on, was set to Heart FM and softly at that. But she'd read about an exhibition called ‘The Shipping Forecast’ showing at a gallery space within Spitalfields market and, though she didn't know her North from her South Utsire, it was a rainy October Sunday so she decided to go along.

‘At school, Alice and I did a project called The Shipping Forecast in our second year,’ Thea told Saul. ‘It was our first and – if I don't count our David Bowie collage – our last foray into mixed media.’ Saul laughed and unfurled his umbrella to protect them both from a sudden squall. ‘Don't laugh,’ Thea protested, ‘we sewed and stuck and modelled and carved all the stations on the forecast. We spent ages on
it. And though we spelt German Bight incorrectly and treated Lundy Fastnet as a single location – overall, it looked good.’

‘So do those burgers,’ Saul salivated as they walked through Spitalfields, ‘look at the size of them.’

‘Culture first,’ Thea said, ‘then I'll buy you lunch.’

The exhibition was small; just one photo per location, but the space was cleverly subdivided by walls and screens to create a journey for the viewer. This also served to give a sense of private viewing time in front of each image, the chatter of the market merely a muffled background thrum. Saul was leaving Dogger and Thea was approaching Biscay when Kiki moved away from South-east Iceland.

‘Hullo.’

Thea glanced round but the greeting appeared to be directed at Saul. She narrowed her eyes and tipped her head, regarding the girl. She knew her from somewhere. ‘Hullo,’ Thea said.

‘Oh, hi!’ the girl exclaimed, blushing. She bade Saul and Thea goodbye and off she went, with the shy smile that had enabled Thea to place her.

‘It's clicked,’ Thea said to Saul.

‘Sorry?’ Saul said. ‘Great photo, this one of Rockall – look at the quality of the light.’

‘The girl – that girl,’ Thea continued, thinking the photo Saul referred to was actually quite ordinary.

‘What?’ Saul looked confused and was moving over to Bailey.

‘That girl,’ Thea said, ‘just then – who said hullo to you and me.’

Saul pointed to the photo of Malin. ‘Now this,’ he said, still pointing, ‘this I like.’

Thea stood alongside him and slipped her hand into his. ‘I prefer that one behind there, of Portland,’ she said, guiding Saul through with her hands in the back pockets of his jeans.
‘She works a couple of doors down from the Being Well – in that dodgy sauna-massage place!’

‘Really?’ Saul said, peering at the Hebrides.

‘You've probably seen her without realizing it,’ Thea said, ‘en route to visiting me.’

Saul turned away from Cromarty. ‘Shall we go for that burger now?’ he suggested, putting his arm around Thea's shoulders and guiding her away from Viking back through to the market.

ADAM

December, Issue 19

Julia Roberts as Christmas Fairy cover

• All we want for Christmas is Julia
  

• Christmas parties – seasonal snogging, festive favours, misplaced mistletoe Christmas bonus – mine's bigger than yours
  

• Christmas crap – we sift through the tat so you don't have to
  

• Christmas cheer – your round
  

• Christmas dinner – dos
  

• Christmas carols – don'ts
  

• Christmas present – free CD: the year's hottest sounds
  

• Christmas past – how to do a great New Year's Eve
  

‘Do you know, I've been married for exactly two years and this is the first time I've used this particular Le Creuset casserole,’ Alice declared to Thea, peeling a label from the lid.

‘Is that because you're a ready-meal kind of girl,’ Thea teased her, ‘or because you eat out an inordinate amount?’

Alice laughed. ‘Actually, it's because I put one of absolutely every Le Creuset product on the wedding list so I simply have had no need of this dish thus far.’

‘I assume this corkscrew was a wedding present too,’ Thea grumbled, ‘it's so state-of-the-art I haven't a clue how to use it. In fact, I'm assuming it
is
a corkscrew, right?’

Alice gave Thea the onions to peel while she wrestled with the corkscrew. ‘Bloody thing,’ she said at length, ‘I'm sure the regular old one is at the back of a drawer.’

‘And which drawer would that be?’ Thea remarked, eyeing the impressive run of them.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Alice sighed. ‘You rum-mage through those over there and these here, and I'll wade my way through those and these.’

‘Bingo,’ Thea said after a good five minutes' clattering,
fulminating and rediscovering items Alice had thought she'd lost. She uncorked the Rioja and poured two glasses, adding a slosh to the sauce bubbling gently in a small Le Creuset saucepan. ‘When's Mark back?’

‘Friday,’ Alice said.

‘Christ, that's cutting it fine for Christmas shopping, isn't it?’ Thea declared.

‘That's why he'd better find time to shop in Singapore,’ Alice reasoned, ‘or else I'll make him suffer for it during the January sales.’

‘Did I tell you I'm going to Saul's folks for Boxing Day?’ Thea said, sitting herself up on one of the many work surfaces while Alice arranged orange slices and cinnamon sticks on top of the chicken. ‘It's weird, in London, and as I know him, Saul seems so self-contained, so independent, at harmony with his environment – as if he's always been this age, living in his pad, doing his job.’ She raised her legs so Alice could retrieve a zester from a drawer beneath her. ‘Yet back in Nottingham there are graduation photos and junior-school woodwork examples and tennis trophies belonging to someone called Saul Mundy who I don't know. And parents. I find them peculiar too – though actually they're completely normal and really pretty nice. I simply can't connect Saul to them.’ Thea shifted slightly so that Alice could check the recipe propped up behind her. ‘It's as if seeing him in his family home rids him of some of the identity I associate with him.’

‘Mark hasn't changed a jot,’ Alice said fondly, shutting the oven door and wiping her hands on her jeans. ‘It'll be an hour and a half, shall we have some nibbles while we wait?’ Alice and Thea sat and chatted, sipped wine and munched tortilla chips. ‘The bloke in my wedding photograph is identical to the photo on his parents' mantelpiece of the twelve-year-old collecting his Junior Chess Champion
medal from Peter Purves,’ Alice said, stretching out on her sofa and placing her feet on Thea's lap. ‘Mind you, I suppose I've known Mark for almost as many years so there are unlikely to be surprises or skeletons.’ They chinked wineglasses and suddenly she missed him very much. ‘I feel bad,’ she confided. ‘He goes away and I denounce him – yet then I think of his Junior Chess Champion medal or the way he folds everything away every night and I long for him.’

‘Friday is only the day after the day after tomorrow,’ Thea soothed.

‘I'll probably be a stroppy cow when he's back,’ Alice said, resigned, ‘poor old Mark.’

‘Mark thinks he's the luckiest bloke in the world,’ Thea told Alice.

‘I think we should do our New Year's resolutions tonight, you and me,’ Alice declared, ‘because we won't see each other till next year, after all. I kind of wish Mark hadn't booked Paris for New Year's Eve – but there's no way I can complain, let alone cancel.’