Freya North 3-Book Collection: Love Rules, Home Truths, Pillow Talk. Freya North

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      When did you stop qualifying your age with and a quarter, or and a half, or and three-quarters? Thea continued until she hit her teens. In her mid-twenties, Alice was still in the habit of saying ‘next year I’ll be …’ which, according to the time of year, enabled her to add up to two years onto her current age. However, the precise notch in the scale of their thirties soon seemed of little concern to others, it was the age of their relationships which generated interest now. Though both Alice and Thea had loved their first year with Mark and Saul, they were impatient for their first anniversaries to give their relationships status. As soon as Alice had passed the six-months mark, she took to saying she’d been married ‘almost a year’. Thea spoke in terms of seasons rather than months. She’d say she and Saul had been together ‘since last autumn’ – which, by the following summer, seemed a distant time indeed. Thea did theorize to herself that November probably qualified as winter, but last November – their November – really had been mild. On average. According to meteorologists. According to high-street retailers. Hadn’t ornithologists been concerned that certain birds hadn’t yet flown south?

      By the close of their first year, Thea was deeply in love with Saul and Alice loved being married very much. Alice rejoiced in believing that she knew everything there was to know about Mark. That there were no surprises was a blessing. She didn’t envy Thea always learning something new about Saul, be it grey flecks to his eyes, or his expulsion at fifteen from boarding school, or his threesome with two Danish girls in his twenties on his first press trip. No, Alice was happy to embrace predictability at the expense of thrills. Thrills, her experience had taught her, were far too costly. If her head was now not for turning, it followed that her heart could not be for breaking.

      Mark continued to be all she’d had a feeling he’d be – that hunch on the back of which she had proposed in his kitchen through a mouthful of carrot. He was a husband perfect for her. Loving, straight and responsible. And, now that she’d managed subtly to supervise his entire wardrobe, dapper too. Nice even brown eyes, unblemished education and career history, no deviations from the sexual norm. They didn’t argue, there was nothing to fall out about. Tolerance was a key quality of Mark’s and it sat well with his belief in the attraction of opposites. He never reacted when Alice over-reacted, he gladly sprang to his duty to calm and cool her down. Anyway, such times usually transpired only when work interfered. And it flattered and touched Mark that Alice should care so much and need him so. Best of all, he loved the baby-voiced, doleful-eyed ways she had of pleading with him not to stay late at work, not to fly to Hong Bloody Kong again.

      Though Alice herself adored her job and was as ambitious and committed to her career as Mark, it seemed the pressures of Mark’s job were actually more challenging to Alice than to him. No matter how demanding his day, how fraught the financial world, how difficult the deal, he always came home with an easy smile, eager and energized by his role as husband. The frequent travel he undertook was strenuous for him, yet it appeared to be far tougher on Alice. He just had jet lag to contend with, the vagaries of business etiquette around the world, the precarious threads that deals hung by, the tedium of chain hotels no matter how luxurious; his timetable was so full there was rarely an opportunity to think, let alone relax. Alice, however, was left with only half her home; all the trimmings of marriage but with no husband. It wasn’t that she actually moped for Mark, nor that she felt forsaken. It simply wasn’t much fun playing home alone.

      Their house in Hampstead, with all its gadgets and gorgeousness, was meant to be their Wonderland. However, Alice didn’t feel in Wonderland when she was on her own; she felt she shrank in the house, as though she had downed some Carrollian Drink-Me potion. Her luxury kitchen suddenly seemed stage-set oversized with its echoey French limestone floor, cavernous American fridge, catering-standard range cooker and abundant bespoke units. Had she not sourced the designer bath precisely on account of its curves and capaciousness being calibrated for two, not one? The surround-sound system connected to the vast plasma screen in the sitting room was too technical for her. Their bed was so enormous it seemed downright daft to sleep in it alone when Mark was away, so Alice would take to her old double bed, now in the smaller of their two other bedrooms. Consequently, she usually ate heartily at lunchtime on the days when Mark wouldn’t be home, having just a packet of crisps or a KitKat or two in the evening, curling up on his lounger watching a DVD on the Mac in his study until she was too sleepy to take a bath which would have taken too long to run anyway.

      Alice did not like it when Mark travelled. She didn’t like it when he travelled because she didn’t like living alone. She also didn’t like it when he travelled because she didn’t like it when he returned. She didn’t like it when he travelled because she didn’t like it when he returned because she couldn’t prevent herself from being snappish and ungracious. She didn’t like it when he returned because, though he was the one justified in being scuppered by jet lag and drained by the pressure of transatlantic deals done or lost, he was always calm and delighted to see her. She was the one who was inexcusably ratty. She’d sullenly turn down dinner, in or out, claiming no appetite. She’d yawn that she was too tired to talk on any of his thoughtfully chosen topics. She’d go to bed early and pretend to be asleep; feign headaches and exhaustion when he deserved a soothing back rub or craved an affirming blow-job. She’d pretend to be too deeply asleep even to acknowledge, never mind reciprocate, his affectionate kiss goodnight.

      Mark always brought her something – from fabulous Hong Kong kitsch (a luminous limited-edition Hello Kitty digital watch) to trinkets from Barney’s, New York; from gorgeous toiletries brazenly swiped from the housekeeping trolley at Hotel Costes in Paris, to the catalogue from a Paul Klee exhibition just opened in Chicago. Invariably, Alice initially accepted the gifts with a startling lack of grace, ignoring her conscience until the next day when she’d phone or email or text Mark to say she loved him and that she was wishing away the hours on her Hello Kitty watch until home time. And then she’d prepare a gorgeous supper and have Mark in stitches with anecdotes from work. She’d run a bath for two with Costes bath foam and have candles lit in the bedroom. She’d lavish attention on his body, faking her own orgasm if necessary, ensuring Mark went to sleep with an exhausted smile on his face.

      One of the mags Alice published ran an article defining Reverse Punishment Syndrome – ‘he’s trying to be nice but you’re just nasty’. Perhaps that’s me, she thought. But the piece went to repetitive lengths (she’d scold the features editor) to tell her not to bollock her bloke for having a few beers down the pub with the boys, not to punish her fella for playing footie with the lads every single Sunday, not to hassle her man for inviting his mates round for Xbox marathons. Mark, however, didn’t play football, didn’t own an Xbox, pubs weren’t his thing and he preferred a good burgundy to beer. She could never accuse him of choosing over her. She never had cause to doubt that she was absolutely the love of his life, the axis around which his world revolved.

      ‘Is it that you don’t like being on your own? Do you resent his job? Because you often work long hours too. Or is it that you simply miss him when he’s not around? They’re interlinked, undoubtedly, but fundamentally separate issues,’ Thea asked, whilst wrestling with the home-cinema system one night when Mark was in Chicago.

      ‘You actually choose to have nights off from Saul, don’t you?’ Alice digressed. ‘You choose to spend time apart.’

      ‘I like my flat. I saved for ages. I like to escape into my own little slice of Lewis Carroll Living,’ Thea qualified, ‘and you’ve avoided a direct answer. Look, do you really no longer have anything as dependable and old-fashioned as a video?’

      ‘Not СКАЧАТЬ