Love Rules (8 page)

By the time Molly was safely on her lead, Saul could but watch Thea hurry out of the park. Beyond earshot. With his jacket.

‘That'll teach me to talk to strangers,’ Saul told Molly. ‘I should know to steer clear of hysterical types who drink.’ He decided to think of her no more. Nice jacket, though. That was a shame.

Barefaced Bloke and the Girl with the Scar

Thea went to Alice's flat to prepare it for the newly-weds' imminent return from their fortnight in Caribbean paradise. She took flowers, fresh milk and bread, opened windows, bleached the toilet, changed the linen and stacked the mail. Then she lit a scented candle and sat down with the
Observer
and a Starbucks cappuccino. It was nice to have a Sunday when she felt healthy and clear-headed, with no plans and no need of Primrose Hill. And it was comforting to think of Alice winging her way back. There was something relaxing about reading the papers in someone else's home, no distractions of chores that ought to be done or calls that should be made or fridges that needed restocking or tax returns lurking on the table.

The
Observer
on a Sunday was an institution; familiar, entertaining, non-taxing and sometimes vaguely irritating, like an old friend with whom Thea conversed once a week. She read it in a very particular order; main paper first, ‘Review’ second, then ‘Escape’. ‘Sport’, ‘Business’ and ‘Cash’ were never read but not wasted, kept instead under the kitchen sink to absorb the slow drip from the washing-machine hose. This week, an interview with David Bowie in
the bonus ‘Music Monthly’ magazine was particularly absorbing, rekindling memories of the shrine she and Alice had built in honour of Mr Bowie during their teenage years. Thea pulled out the article and placed it on top of Alice's post. The ‘OM’ magazine was Thea's favourite component, savoured last. The voices within the pages were as familiar to her as those on Radio 4. A restaurant close to where she worked was reviewed favourably so she tore that page out and folded it into her Filofax. The cartoon made her laugh out loud, so she ripped that out too and stuck it to Alice's fridge. Sage advice from Barefoot Doctor made her think. Mariella Frostrup made her murmur in agreement. But Barefaced Bloke's opening line made her swear out loud.

It was meant to be my Sir Walter Ralegh moment.

‘Oh good God!’

Instead, it turned into a Dog Day Afternoon.

Barefaced Bloke was Saul. Saul Mundy. It said so in black and white. And a black-and-white photo confirmed it.

This week I give you the sorry tale of the Barefaced Bloke, the Gorgeous Thief, a Terrorizing Terrier and My Armani Jacket.

‘He thinks I'm a thief!’

Well, you are, Thea. But he also says you're gorgeous.

I'm through with good deeds. I'm done with dog-sitting. I'll bet Sir Walter's jacket wasn't Armani.

‘Sally,’ Thea whispered down the phone, having speed-read the article, ‘look at the
Observer
mag – and tell Richard I need that jacket back.’

At the time of writing, I can't tell you which way the tide will turn. Will Barefaced Bloke turn into Soft Git and clamber up Primrose Hill for the third Sunday running, hopeful but chilly? Or has Barefaced Bloke turned into Sod It Saul and stayed warm indoors with his X Box not giving a 4X?

‘Saul Mundy is a
spunk
!’ Sally declared. ‘I
love
his column
– and he doesn't look half bad either. Saul Bloody Mundy – can you believe it? Aren't you the lucky one!’

‘I don't know whether to feel flattered or used,’ Thea said sanctimoniously, ‘and I'm not sure what to do.’

‘Tell her I'm keeping the bloody jacket,’ Thea could hear Richard in the background.

‘Oh shut up!’ Sally derided to both Thea and her husband.

Thea was actually fizzing with excitement but it seemed both arrogant and fate-tempting to admit it to herself, let alone Sally Stonehill, so she maintained her contrived ambivalence.

‘Yes, but—’ Thea attempted.

‘Gracious Good Lord, girl, you're being flirted with through the pages of a national newspaper. It's possibly the most romantic thing I've ever heard of!’ Sally said impatiently. ‘Away with you to Primrose Hill! It seems to me his balls are in your court.’

Thea paced Alice's flat, then she sat down and reread the article.

I hope she likes the jacket. She looked far better in it than I ever did anyway.

Was he making a pass or taking the piss? Should she read between the lines or disbelieve what she read? Alice hurry home!

Ultimately, what could the Gorgeous Thief do but tramp up Primrose Hill for the third Sunday in a row?

He wasn't there.

What could she have been thinking?

Of course he wasn't there.

‘I made good copy, that's all,’ Thea said with reluctant resignation, having loitered for half an hour. Overhead, a
scruff of crows littered the sky, like flits of charcoal coughed up by a bonfire. Thea found herself wondering if the crows were somehow goading the birds caged in the London Zoo aviary, just down the hill and over the road. Perhaps she'd take herself off to the zoo right now. She hadn't been for years. And it wouldn't make her afternoon seem so wasted. Did people go to the zoo alone? she wondered. Were you let in if you didn't have a child in tow?

‘Where's my sodding jacket, you gorgeous thief?’ a voice behind her halted her meanderings.

Thea did not turn to face him. ‘My friend's husband has now nicked it,’ she replied, her eyes tracing the rise and fall of the aviary.

‘Sod my Sir Walter Ralegh Moment,’ said Saul, now pressing up close, enfolding his arms around her waist, ‘and sod my image – I'm going for full-blown Mills & Boon.’ And with that Saul turned Thea to face him, cupped her head in his hands and kissed her.

‘Champagne, madam?’ the stewardess asked Alice who was pressing all the buttons on her vast First Class seat whilst rummaging in its capacious pockets too.

‘Absolutely!’ said Alice. ‘And can you pop my name down for the massage?’

‘Certainly – would you like a massage too, sir?’

‘No, thanks very much, but no,’ Mark declined.

‘Champagne?’ he was offered.

‘Thanks – but no.’

‘Paper?’

‘Yes,’ said Mark, ‘
Sunday Telegraph
, please.’

‘Madam?’

‘
Observer
, thanks,’ said Alice. ‘
Tory-graph
!’ she teased Mark.

‘Limp lefty!’ he sparred back. Without having to be asked, he handed over his luxury complimentary travel pack for his wife to rifle through. By the time Alice had reached Saul's article, laughing aloud a couple of times, 38,000 feet below, the author of it was scrutinizing her best friend's scars.

‘Fifty-four stitches,’ Thea told him, ‘from a weedy little terrier. The bizarre thing is, at the time, I was far more distressed that the dog was destroyed.’

Thea Luckmore had never before jumped into bed on a first date, let alone slept with a relative stranger. Moreover, she had hitherto guarded her scars as fiercely as her perceived chastity. Yet here she was, naked and post-coitally languid above the covers on Saul Mundy's bed, feeling more than fine while he traced the snaking line of scar that scored her waist and the top of her right thigh. He found the site and sight of her injury disturbing but intriguing. The scar was like a single line of pale pink silk braid laid in a particular route. It was obvious where the dog's jaws had clamped, where the teeth had punctured her, where her flesh had been ripped away and the flap carefully sewn back down. It was almost a cartoon scar, so perfect was the impression of the bite.

‘I was twelve years old,’ Thea continued, ‘and it was Alice's dog. Tiddler. I've been petrified of terriers ever since.’

Saul rolled over and dipped his face down to her stomach. ‘I'm not surprised,’ he murmured, dipping his nose into her navel.

‘I'm not too bad with Rottweilers, oddly enough,’ Thea added while Saul let his lips touch her lightly, so gently that when she closed her eyes she couldn't tell if he was kissing scar or skin. ‘Big dogs tend to lollop, little terriers just go berserk.’

‘Your scar suits you,’ he said. ‘It tells a story – vulnerability behind the feistiness. If that doesn't sound too corny.’

‘Corny?’ Thea smiled. ‘Anyone would think you were trying to get into my knickers. Again.’

‘Horny,’ Saul confessed, ‘again. And anyway, where
are
your knickers?’ he asked, glancing up at her from stroking her bush before returning his gaze and snuffling his nose down.

‘I think you flung them off somewhere in your living room,’ Thea giggled, but Saul was now too preoccupied to reply. He needed his tongue and his lips to explore Thea's sex. And Thea was now rendered speechless by the pleasure of it all. Their easy chatter gave way to gasps and moans and the seductive sound of her own wetness against Saul's mouth. She ran her fingers through Saul's hair, bending her knees up, shifting her hips and tilting her pelvis, rocking and undulating herself against his face. Instinctively, he let her dictate the pace and he didn't change what he was doing. His lips brushed her, his nose nudged her, his tongue flicked over and inside her. She looked down at him and he looked up at her briefly before closing his eyes to focus better. From previous experience, Thea had presumed cunnilingus merely to be a man's way to expedite lubrication and permit swifter entry. But Saul seemed to be enjoying himself very much if his appreciative hums were anything to go by. Thea eased his head away from her crotch to kiss and suck his face. They rolled and romped over his bed, his straining cock pressing hopefully, pressingly, against her. She pushed him onto his back, slithered on top of him, her sex just tantalizingly beyond the reach of his penis, her nipples a few inches away from his desperate mouth. She licked her own lips, then darted her tongue along his.

‘For Christ's sake, fuck me,’ Saul whispered.

‘Condom,’ Thea whispered, hoping he had another.

It occurred to both of them that it wasn't even yet evening. It was Sunday teatime. How decadent. It meant they could do this all night. Quietly, it occurred to both Saul and Thea that, actually, they could indeed do this as long as they liked. They had no commitments, after all. Not that evening. Nor the next. Not to anyone – nor had either for some time. It was all above board, with no complications. Out of the blue, from a chance daft meeting on Primrose Hill, the saga of a lent leather jacket, the fiasco with a lent harmless terrier, Saul Mundy and Thea Luckmore found each other.

Mr and Mrs Sinclair

‘Bye-bye, Mr Sinclair,’ said Alice over a cup of strong coffee, struggling to counteract the light-headed nausea that a night of jet-lagged semi-sleep had caused, ‘hurry home to me, won't you?’

‘Of course, darling,’ said Mark, kissing the top of her head, grabbing a slice of toast, his jacket and his briefcase. ‘I'm horrendously late, I really must go.’

‘Don't!’ Alice implored plaintively. ‘Please bunk off! Go on, I dare you. Phone in sick or something. Please stay. I don't want you to go. You could work from home! I've had you all to myself for a fortnight – I don't want to be alone.’

Mark smiled at his wife, gazing at him all wide-eyed and winsome despite the bags around her eyes and her hair all mussed up. ‘Why don't you go in yourself?’ he asked.

‘Because I don't have to!’ Alice remonstrated. ‘I'm not due in until tomorrow. Anyway, John Lewis are coming with all our wedding-list goodies.’

‘Give Thea a call,’ Mark suggested.

‘Already have – it's her day off but she doesn't seem to be at home,’ Alice said with contrived petulance.

‘Why not go and register with some estate agents?’ Mark
kissed the top of her head again. ‘I must go.’

‘Will you phone me?’ Alice pleaded. ‘Don't you miss me already?’

‘Alice,’ said Mark, happily exasperated, ‘have a shower, get dressed, go to Sainsbury's, track down Thea, sign your flat up for sale with Benham and Reeves and put our wish-list out to all agents covering NW3 and N6. Three bed-rooms, garden, no galley kitchens or PVC windows.’ He blew her a kiss and left. He floated down the escalator at Belsize Park and grinned intermittently while the Northern Line took him and a packed carriage of scowling commuters to Moorgate. How nice to have a wife, a beautiful wife, who clung to his shirt-tails begging him to play hooky from work to stay with her. Alice Heggarty had married him, was sending him to work with a kiss and would be waiting for him to come home later – could life be much sweeter? Mark arrived at the office, answered his PA's misty-eyed questions about his wedding and honeymoon, checked his diary, noted there were 288 emails in his in-box, rescheduled the lunch that was booked, set up two meetings for before lunch and three for the afternoon and called his team to the board-room for an update. His PA made a note to buy him sandwiches because she knew he'd be too busy to remember to eat otherwise.

Alice did as she was told. She had a shower, dressed, went to the supermarket and phoned estate agents. She also continued to call Thea but her mobile phone was off and there was still no answer at her home. It had been warm and welcoming to return to a sweetly scented apartment, fresh linen and neat piles of post, a fridge stocked with necessities, and Alice now longed to see Thea, to thank her at the very least. She was also tiring of her own company. Alice had never been a disciple of the cult of Me-Time though the magazines
she published frequently extolled it as a necessary indulgence. Alice functioned best in company, an audience even. Peace, quiet and solitude were overrated, in Alice's book. If one had time on one's hands, why not spend it wisely in company – the return was far greater than silent navel-gazing home alone. If Thea still wasn't in, maybe she would go into work for the afternoon. She dialled Thea's mobile again.

‘Hullo?’

‘Thea! Where the fuck have you been – I've been trying you for ages! I'm back!’

‘Alice! Alice! Oh my God, how
are
you? How's Mark? I've missed you! Did you get upgraded again?’