Love Rules - Freya North

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Alice, ‘quality breasts. But not on the cover. We’re pitching at a slightly older market – ABC1 men, thirty to fifty. Not too blokey, but not too staid, of course. Men like you. The covers will be icons, not babes. Someone has practically guaranteed us Clint Eastwood for the first issue if we get the go-ahead.’

      Saul raised an eyebrow. ‘Pierce Brosnan had acupuncture with Souki at the Being Well when he was in town.’

      Alice raised her green tea. ‘Pierce can have issue two, then.’

      ‘And David Bowie’s mum and my mum were at school together,’ Saul said.

      ‘David Bowie?’ Alice had to swallow a squeal. ‘Has Thea told you how complete our teenage love was for David darling Bowie?’

      ‘Yes,’ Saul confirmed with an overly compassionate expression and a tone of utter pity, ‘I know all about sending red roses to his dressing room at Wembley; that you both promptly fainted when the show began and spent the entire concert sipping tea with the St John’s Ambulance crew.’

      ‘And the mural,’ Alice laughed, ‘did Thea not tell you about our mural?’

      ‘No,’ Saul said patiently, ‘though she told me you both saved all your pocket money to buy one pair of blue contact lenses to share between you so you could both have Bowie eyes.’ He poked the tip of his chopstick into the lurid green wasabe. The horseradish shot tears into his eyes and fizzed heat through the bridge of his nose. Fantastic.

      ‘We did this incredible mural on my bedroom wall – based on the “Scary Monsters” LP cover,’ Alice reminisced. ‘My mum went berserk. Mind you, we hadn’t even been able to smuggle in the paint pots past Thea’s mum at her house. Anyway, if we had Bowie as cover for issue three, I’d be happy to sweep floors for the rest of my career. But I digress. Project Quentin is our big secret – and potentially the company’s biggest launch to date.’

      ‘What’s the timescale?’ Saul asked.

      Alice cleared her throat. ‘Dummy in six weeks, then into research, and if we get the green light, first issue will be June out May.’

      Saul calculated dates and weeks in his head. ‘Who else knows?’ he asked. ‘Nat Mags? IPC? Because I know that EMAP are developing too, at the moment.’

      ‘Will you tell me?’ Alice asked with a coquettish pout and a beguiling wriggle in her chair. ‘Tell me about silly old EMAP? I promise I won’t tell a soul. I swear on David Bowie’s life. Trust me?’

      ‘Absolutely not!’ Saul laughed, inadvertently shaking a piece of sashimi at her. ‘Like I said – if I’m given a secret, I keep it. No matter how absolute your love for Bowie is. Suffice it to say, I’m not involved.’

      Alice contrived to look sulky and offended but her enthusiasm for her project soon overtook. ‘Initially, I was hoping you’d work on the dummy with us, Saul,’ she said, still in a whisper, ‘basically oversee editorial – it would mean committing three days a week for the next month or so. Take the dummy into research, then head up the launch issue if we get the go-ahead. With, of course, absolutely no guarantee of a staff position at the end.’

      Saul laughed. ‘I know the score,’ he said, ‘and I’d love to be involved.’

      ‘Fan-bloody-tastic,’ Alice beamed.

      ‘Alice, you haven’t eaten a thing,’ Saul observed.

      ‘I can’t eat when I’m excited,’ Alice declared. ‘Great for weight loss, though.’

      Saul thought aren’t girls silly sometimes.

      Apart from Thea, of course. Saul didn’t think her silly at all. Her fear of dogs was understandable, her propensity for weeping during ER or re-runs of Cold Feet he found quite endearing, her belief in drinking only juice until noon each day he thought eccentric. But he didn’t think her silly.

      ‘She’s not a calorie-counting, chardonnay-swilling, Mui-Mui obsessive,’ he quantified to Ian Ashford over a pile of poppadams and a mound of chutney, ‘but then neither is she a drink-your-own-pee, salute-the-sun and wear-hessian-to-Pilates type either.’

      ‘Does she do Pilates?’ Ian asked.

      ‘Yes, with her mates Sally and Alice,’ said Saul, ‘and she has a gorgeous figure because of it. But my point is she may drink only juice until lunchtime but she’s also partial to a Marlboro Light with her vodka-tonics after dark. She makes soup with organic produce – but her preferred lunch is Pret a Manger egg mayo sandwiches and a Coca-Cola.’

      ‘What’s with the juice-till-noon thing?’ Ian asked, wondering whether it might be a good regime for his acid and thinking that the madras he ordered probably wasn’t.

      ‘She simply doesn’t have an appetite until then,’ Saul explained. ‘I bought her a juicer for Christmas because she was spending a fortune on smoothies.’

      ‘What you’re talking about is balance,’ Ian said, spooning pilau rice onto his plate.

      ‘I am,’ said Saul, ‘a girl who balances M&S socks and a top she’s had for ever with an Anya Hindmarsh handbag. Do you know how much those bags cost? But balance, yes – she connects with the yin and yang and whole shebang of meridians and energy flow and shiatsu stuff – but her CD collection is more the White Stripes than whale music.’

      ‘She’s at ease with herself,’ Ian defined, passing the dhal to Saul.

      ‘It’s one of the most attractive things about her,’ Saul nodded, passing the Bombay aloo to Ian.

      ‘Does she keep Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus under her bed?’ Ian asked suspiciously.

      ‘No,’ Saul laughed, ‘Heat magazine.’

      ‘So what’s she like in the sack?’ Ian posed, working his fork dexterously through the curry and rice like a bricklayer trowelling cement.

      ‘She’s great,’ said Saul evenly, ‘for all the same reasons – sometimes it’s deep and meaningful lovemaking. Other times it’s fast and furious shagging. She doesn’t pester me to whisper sweet nothings but she writhes when I talk dirty. She doesn’t sulk to the other end of the bed if all I want to do post-coitally is roll over and snore, and I’m just as likely to wake up to a blow-job as to Radio 4.’

      ‘Sounds like you’ve hit the jackpot, mate,’ said Ian. ‘I’d suggest you snap her up and put your name on her, quick.’

      ‘You know how with some women you end up playing along with them just for peace and quiet,’ Saul mused, ‘and you find yourself apologizing for the bits that make us blokes?’ Ian nodded with the weight of someone most familiar with such a syndrome. ‘You know how some women fulfil one part of our criteria but are so sorely lacking in other aspects?’ Saul continued. ‘Beautiful but boring? Interesting but just not sexy? Horny as hell but dumb as fuck? Well, it seems incredibly simple, but I like all of her a lot.’

      ‘To Thea,’ said Ian, raising his bottle of Kingfisher beer and telling himself he really did not need that last rip of nan bread. He’d do juice until noon the next day, he decided.

      ‘I wasn’t looking,’ Saul mused wistfully, ‘I was just on Primrose Hill and she came into view.’

      ‘Good luck,’ said Ian, presuming the evening to be subliminal payback for the time he’d droned on about Karen.

      ‘It is,’ Saul agreed, ‘it is very good luck.’

      ‘So that’s it then?’ Ian said slyly. ‘Temptation can lead you by the balls and you’ll resist?’

      ‘Thea inspires fidelity.’ Saul paused. ‘In my heart and mind, at least!’

      Ian and Saul looked at each other for a moment and then chuckled into the last of their curry.

      ‘Not on a full stomach – surely not!’ Ian said.

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