by Freya North
‘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 what I publish.’
The girls skimmed through the relevant article. Neither of them thought that Number 1 Time for a New You – Go for a Funky New Hairdo!! was the answer. Nor was Number 2 Flirt with Your Best Mate's Brother!! a remotely feasible idea. Thea's older brother was a densely bearded academic who rather unnerved both girls. Numbers 3 and 4 dealt predictably with Take Time and Make Time for Me Time!!!! and Rebound Repercussions – A Quick Shag is Not a Long-Term Fix!!!
‘Number 5 is interesting, though,’ Thea remarked, ‘It's Not Who You Love It's How You Love!!!’
‘I detest exclamation marks,’ Alice said. ‘I'll have to have a word with editorial.’
‘Change What's on Your Wish List!!!’ Thea read out Number 6. ‘Perhaps there is some sense in rejigging your requirements, Alice?’
‘What about you?’ Alice retorted. ‘Why do I have to do all this personality-dissection, inner-feeling workshopping?’
‘Because I'm happy being celibate while true love eludes me.’
‘You must have the Rolls Royce of vibrators,’ Alice murmured.
‘Well, you'd know,’ Thea countered brightly, ‘you bought it me.’
‘Got it free,’ Alice stuck her tongue out.
‘Should've kept it for yourself then,’ Thea gurned back.
‘Number 7,’ Alice returned to the article, ‘Blink!!! He Might be Standing There, Staring You in the Face!!!!’
‘The postman!’ Thea gasped with mock eagerness.
‘That guy from the ad agency we use,’ said Alice, with genuine enthusiasm. Thea regarded Alice sternly, but Alice licked her lips and winked. And then, like a mist descending, anxiety dulled her eyes and turned her mouth downwards. It was just a magazine article anyway, with too many exclamation marks and a target market half a decade younger than them. ‘I'll finish it with Bill tonight,’ Alice said, quietly but decisively, ‘I bet he won't even care.’
‘I think he does care about you,’ Thea said, ‘but I think you're doing the right thing. I'd better go, I have a client in five minutes and I mustn't have cold hands.’
‘Will you be around later?’ Alice said, her face fragile and her voice wavering. ‘In case I need you?’
‘Of course,’ Thea shrugged, as if it was the daftest question to even think of asking your closest friend.
So it turned out that Mark Sinclair was right. He was so right that, for some time, he would quietly wonder if something must be wrong. Alice Heggarty was to be married, just as he predicted, by the time she was thirty. Actually, she would turn thirty-one on honeymoon because her meticulous attention to detail and aversion to compromise meant the wedding was shunted to accommodate seamstress, florist, venue and cake-maker. Though, normally, she liked to have her birthday planned to perfection too, she didn't actually know where she would be when she turned thirty-one. That was up to the groom and she had relinquished some responsibility to him in return for assurances of untold luxury. After all, she was not so secretly dreaming of the Caribbean.
All that Mark had wrong was her choice of groom. Alice wasn't going to marry Bill. In all other respects, though, Mark had been absolutely right. It turned out that if
you are good, you can indeed earn yourself a happy-ever-after. Obviously, Mark Sinclair must have been very very good. Because Alice Heggarty was going to marry him.
Thea Luckmore
Thea Luckmore's twelve-o'clock client, a fit man in his mid-thirties, groaned under her. She kept the pressure steady and insistent until she could feel him yield, sense the tautness of his body ebb away, the grimace on his face ease into an expression of relief. She rolled his flesh between her fingers. Under her hands, he now felt as soft as his appreciative sigh. She lightened her touch and changed rhythm and direction as a wind-down. Finally, she placed both palms on his bare back, between his shoulder blades, and inhaled deeply. She closed her eyes, feeling warmth interchange between them. She exhaled quietly but deeply and opened her eyes.
‘OK,’ she said softly, lifting her hands away very slowly, ‘there you go.’ She wondered if he had fallen asleep.
‘Can't move,’ he muffled, his face buried in the bed, ‘amazing.’
‘I'll leave you to rest and get dressed,’ said Thea as she closed the door quietly behind her and went to wash her hands. She ran her damp fingers through her hair, giving her short, gamine crop what her mother termed ‘an Audrey Hepburn nonchalance, darling – if Audrey had been mouse-brown’. Thea hadn't had hair long enough for a pony-tail since Headfuck Boy of her student days.
‘God, that was good,’ her client grinned, handing over £50 though he would gladly have doubled it. ‘Can I have you again next week?’
The session had drained Thea; her bones felt soft and her joints felt stiff. Often, the clients for whom her treatment had the most extreme results were those whose negative energy she absorbed in the process. Which is why they felt so energized and she felt so sapped. She flicked her hands as if trying to fling something away, shook her arms and legs and splashed cold water on her face. She could climb on the bed and sleep for an hour, which was tempting, or she could pull herself together and step out into a gorgeous spring day. Thea Luckmore always tried to do what she felt was right, even if it wasn't quite what she felt like. So she opened the sash window to air the room and went out for a brisk walk. With an extravagantly stuffed sandwich from Pret a Manger, she strolled to Paddington Street Gardens and had an impromptu picnic with a copy of Heat magazine for company and light relief.
Her phone showed two missed calls from Giles. And a voicemail message. Thea felt burdened. Giles was nice enough. ‘But not nice enough,’ Thea explained to a pigeon who was bobbing at a respectful distance within pecking reach of any crumb she might dispense. ‘I've tried telling him that I value our friendship too much to jeopardize it by taking it further, but he saw that as a challenge rather than a gentle let-down.’ Filling from her sandwich dropped to the ground. The pigeon, it seemed, didn't care for avocado. Patiently, it continued to bob and coo. ‘I like him but I don't fizz for him. No spark – no point.’ A slice of tomato was tried and rejected so Thea gave the pigeon more bread. ‘I'm just going to have to be blunt with him. Tell him he's simply not my type. Not that I really have a type.’ She watched the pigeon wrestle with her chewy granary crust, fending off the pestering of other birds. ‘Just a feeling.’
Thea wasn't expecting her six o'clock to come early – she'd expected him to be at least ten minutes late. She'd developed a theory, based on ample evidence over the years, that her clients tended to be early in the winter months, when inclement weather and darkness by teatime saw them jump in cabs to arrive early yet apologetic, as if sitting quietly in the waiting room, thawing out, was somehow taking a liberty. Come the spring, her clients would stroll to her, or jump off the bus a couple of stops early. They were simply not in so much of a rush to be indoors from outside. With this March being one of the warmest on record, Thea's clients were not turning up on time. Apart from this one. It was unexpected. But not half as unexpected as seeing Alice in reception too. Alice and the client were standing side by side awkwardly, both fixing her with a beseeching gaze like puppies in a pet shop competing for her attention. Thea mouthed ‘one minute’ to her client and with a tilt of her head, she beckoned Alice through to the kitchenette. Maintaining the mime, she raised one eyebrow to invite an explanation from Alice who thought, just then, that her best friend would make a very good headmistress. Indeed, Alice suddenly felt a little bashful, turning up and surprising Thea while her six o'clock loitered. She proffered a clutch of magazines. ‘Here,’ she said in a contrived, sheepish voice and a don't-beat-me look on her face, ‘these are for your waiting room.’
‘Are you all right?’ Thea enquired in a discreet whisper.
‘Fine,’ Alice tried to whisper back but found that her smile of prodigious proportions caused her voice to squeak. ‘I have something to tell you.’
‘I'll be an hour,’ Thea told her, glancing at the clock and seeing it was now six, ‘perhaps quicker. He may not need the full session today.’
Alice waited in the kitchenette while Thea led her client upstairs, small talk accompanying their footsteps. Then she returned to the waiting room and removed magazines by any rival publisher, arranging her copies of BoyRacer, HotSpots, GoodGolfing, FilmNow, YachtUK, and Vitesse. Something to cater for all of Thea's clients, she hoped. She sat and waited, fidgeting with her hair, twisting her pony-tail up into a chignon, then French plaiting it, letting it fall in billows around her shoulders. She smiled, remembering how, when they were young and horse mad, Thea would marvel that Alice's flaxen hair really was like a pony's tail.
‘It's so thick and amazing!’ Thea would say.
‘It's a bother,’ Alice would rue, ‘I'd prefer your soft silky hair.’ Thea would brush Alice's hair smooth, utilizing a technique they'd been taught at the riding school – holding the bunch in one hand whilst softly, gradually, rhythmically, sweeping strands away. Finally, she'd take the bunch in one hand and spin it before letting it fall, wafting down into a tangle-free fan.
‘If we were ponies, you'd be a palomino and I'd just be a boring old roan,’ Thea had said, without rancour.
‘Then pull out any dark hairs!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘Apparently, palominos can't have more than twelve dark hairs in their tail.’
Even now, Thea automatically searched Alice's hair. Though, if there were any rogue dark hairs to pluck, Alice gave her West End colourist an earful. She was still flaxen, but the glint and shine of her pre-teen hair now required strips of tinfoil and banter with the colourist about holidays and soap operas, for two hours and a small fortune every two months.
Thea's six o'clock all but floated down the stairs at ten to seven and paid cash for the Cloud Nine privilege. Alice waited behind a copy of BoyRacer until Thea came to her.
‘Ready?’ she asked.
‘Nearly,’ Thea replied, ‘I just have to tidy my room.’
‘Shall I come?’ Alice suggested. ‘Help?’
‘If you want!’ Thea laughed.
Thea's room, at the top of the building, though small in terms of square footage, appeared airy and more spacious because of the oddly angled walls and Velux windows. It was also painted a very matt white which appeared to obscure the precise surface of the walls and gave the small room a sense of space. Underfoot was a pale beech laminate floor. A simple white small melamine desk with two plain chairs in white frosted plastic were positioned under an eave. The bed was in the centre of the room. Shelves had been built in the alcove and they were piled with white towels. Three baskets, lined in calico, were placed on the bottom shelf and filled with potions and lotions in gorgeous dark blue glass bottles.
‘It's lovely since it's been redone,’ Alice said. ‘Did all the rooms get the same makeover?’
Thea nodded. ‘New beds too. It's a great space to work in – our client base has soared.’
Alice pressed down onto the bed as if testing it. Then she looked beseechingly at Thea. ‘Go on, then,’ Thea sighed, raising her eyebrows in mock exasperation, ‘just a quickie.’
‘Is that what you say to your clients?’ Alice retorted. ‘Serio
usly,’ she whispered, ‘do they never get the wrong idea?’
‘What?’ Thea balked. ‘And ask for “extras”?’
‘Most of your clients seem to be gorgeous sporty blokes,’ Alice commented.
‘Fuck off!’ Thea objected. ‘I'm a masseuse, I specialize in sports injuries, I barely notice what clients look like – all I'm interested in is the body under my hands and how I can help to put it right. Anyway, sporty beefy isn't my type.’
‘Yes, yes – you don't have a type,’ Alice said, ‘just a feeling.’ She and Thea caught eyes and laughed. ‘Well, I tell you, I wouldn't mind copping a feel of some of your clients.’
‘Well, you're a filthy cow,’ Thea said, ‘and I'm a professional with standards.’
‘Have you let Giles into your pants yet?’ Alice asked, taking off her top.
‘No way,’ said Thea, ‘not my type.’
‘You'll be a virgin again soon,’ Alice remarked as she silently slipped her shoes off and unzipped her skirt. She eased herself onto the bed, lying on her stomach. She placed her face into the hole of the padded doughnut-ring at the head end.
‘OK,’ Thea said softly, ‘let's have a feel of you.’ She placed her hands lightly on Alice and then began to work. Within moments, it felt to Alice as though a troupe of fairies was travelling all over her back, lifting her shoulder blades and dusting underneath, doing synchronized roly-polys down her spine, breathing relief in between her vertebrae, unfurling the muscles around her neck, marching over her biceps, soothing her scapulae, giving her hip-joints a good spring clean. She hadn't had a massage from Thea in ages. Guiltily, she recalled how dismissive she had been when Thea had announced years ago that despite her first-class geography degree, she was going to train as a masseuse.
‘Pilates has had a really positive effect on your back,’ Thea declared, bringing Alice back to the present, ‘but you should check the ergonomics of your desk, chair and screen at work.’
