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Thea grinned, ‘it’s fun. It’s cosy. It’s sexy. It’s everything I want. And everything I need.’

      ‘You mean it’s love,’ Sally deduced.

      ‘Yes,’ Thea confirmed, ‘yes, it is.’

      ‘Six months after I started seeing Richard, we were already engaged,’ Sally recalled. ‘Mind you, six months after you started seeing Mark you were practically married, Ms Heggarty.’

      ‘Mrs Sinclair to you,’ Alice retorted. ‘Actually, the craziest thing about it all was that I didn’t even start seeing Mark until we were engaged. Chaste is an understatement.’

      ‘Chaste is overrated,’ Sally said with a wink, confessing she’d bought Richard, for their anniversary, some peculiar-looking love beads which apparently he was to use on her – if they could figure out how and where.

      ‘Did you go into a sex shop on your own?’ Alice asked, slightly unnerved by an image of petite Sally unchaperoned amongst stacks of gadgets and racks of hardcore.

      ‘Mail order,’ Sally giggled.

      ‘Of course, Saul and I have absolutely no need for gizmos on account of his stupendous natural equipment and our exceptionally resourceful technique,’ Thea began primly. ‘But actually,’ she added in a sly whisper, ‘we have a particularly well-stocked toy chest as well.’

      ‘Dirty girl,’ Alice marvelled.

      ‘That was one kinky shopping trip,’ Thea reminisced. ‘I happened to make just a passing remark I’d never been in a sex shop. A week or so later, we were heading back to Saul’s from a restaurant in Soho when he suddenly bundled me through a doorway. Slap bang into this den of iniquity and plastic things.’

      ‘You never told me!’ Alice objected.

      ‘Well, it was hardly Joseph or Whistles,’ Thea reasoned. ‘Actually, it was a peculiar experience. Down a really seedy side street yet inside it was all bright lights and the most normal-looking customers imaginable. Though I seem to recall the sales assistant being quite alarmingly tattooed.’

      ‘Did you giggle like mad?’ Sally asked.

      ‘At first,’ Thea admitted, ‘but actually, everyone was browsing the wares so casually that I soon found myself assessing the merits of one dildo against another as I would ready-meals at Tesco. Saul spent a fortune. We couldn’t wait to get back to his to try things in.’

      ‘On,’ the editor in Alice corrected automatically.

      ‘No,’ Thea laughed, ‘I really do mean in!’

      ‘Do you have any of these bead things?’ Sally asked, now regarding Thea as the doyenne of kinky paraphernalia.

      Thea went through a lengthy, though obviously mostly fabricated, inventory. ‘No,’ she apologized at length, ‘no beads. My advice would be, if it fits, wear it out.’

      ‘Mark doesn’t know I have a vibrator,’ Alice confessed, half wondering whether he ought, yet unable to predict how he’d react. ‘In fact, I can’t imagine using toys with him. The thing is, our sex is admittedly pretty straightforward but actually all the more satisfying for it. I had boyfriends who couldn’t get it up unless they could get something battery-operated up first. God, sometimes I used to crave simple, quick missionary in the dark.’

      ‘I guess I bought these plastic things to sustain the spice,’ Sally said, ‘not because our sex life is lacking or uninspired. I like surprising Richie – though nowadays I sometimes have to remind myself to – because I know he loves it. The day I can’t be bothered is the day to worry.’

      ‘Keeping the marriage alive?’ Thea asked.

      ‘No, it’s not that,’ Sally declared, ‘no need to – all is dreamy. I just like to envisage Richard thinking to himself that he’s a lucky boy. I like to think of him all distracted and hot under the collar at work by knowing what’s under my pillow.’

      ‘It’s funny,’ Alice mused, ‘how you and I have actually contrived our relationships. You ensure that you maintain the allure of a vamp all these years into your marriage. I eschew my previous incarnation as feisty temptress to secure the stability and fidelity that defines Mark. I guess you could say I’m in an arranged marriage which I arranged.’

      ‘Richard proposed out of the blue, when we were still at the height of our heady falling-in-love phase,’ Sally reminisced. ‘Me being ludicrously dramatic, I ran away from him to hide in the wilds of Scotland, broke my bloody leg and he then turned up and wrote “will you?” on my plaster cast.’

      ‘It’s such a great story,’ Thea laughed.

      ‘God, my proposal is mundane in comparison,’ Alice admitted. ‘I asked Mark to marry me with a carrot in my mouth.’

      ‘I bet it wasn’t mundane to him,’ Sally said.

      ‘Funnily enough, it’s the mundanity that I love now,’ Alice defined. ‘Christ, when I think of all that passion I used to put myself through.’ She paused to privately recall it. ‘It was so damned draining; replete with suspicions. Now I am loved unconditionally. I can just be myself and I’m adored for it. It’s such a relief that my worries are now confined solely to work or to trivial things like whether we made a mistake using Cath Kidston florals in the bedroom with the rest of the house so minimalist.’

      ‘How is your new house?’ Sally asked Alice.

      ‘Gorgeous,’ Thea enthused on Alice’s behalf, ‘it’s so grown-up!’

      ‘It really is gorgeous,’ Alice agreed. ‘I’m very lucky.’

      ‘I love being married,’ Sally enthused with no smugness. ‘Richard is my best friend, my best shag, my confidant.’

      ‘I love it that to the outside world there’s this normal bloke called Saul – but in my eyes I see this knight in shining armour,’ Thea said proudly, ‘a man I burn for. I lavish my love and lust on him and it’s reciprocated. That’s the best thing – finally with Saul it’s this gorgeous two-way rally. Like a ball caught between flingers in a pinball machine – affection, lust, empathy, friendship, love ricocheting between the two of us.’

      ‘You’re a hopeless romantic,’ Alice said fondly, ‘the first person to compare love to a pinball machine, that’s for sure. And how many times do I have to tell you there’s no magic or mystique in your feeling of “burning” for a man – it’s just sudden surges of adrenalin and dopamine released in your brain.’

      ‘Oh shut up, Alice,’ Thea laughed.

      ‘Let the girl enjoy her chemical reaction!’ Sally said.

      The food arrived and they picked at the salad and polished off the chips. Alice raised her glass and lowered her voice. ‘Look at that gaggle over there at that table.’ Thea and Sally glanced surreptitiously to a table of three women much like themselves. ‘Short of actually eavesdropping or lip-reading, I’ll bet you anything they’re bemoaning all men are sods and stuff. They look miserable. Down in the doldrums, drowning their discontent.’ Alice replenished their glasses and raised hers, chinking it against Sally’s and Thea’s. ‘We’re bloody lucky, us three. We each have what we want and life ticks along happily because we’re blessed with precisely what makes us tick.’

Girls and Boys

      Alice sat up in bed; coddled by cloud-plump pillows and finest goose down, bedecked tastefully with Cath Kidston roses, in a waft around her. Her hair tumbled in a breeze-soft fan over her shoulders, glints of spun gold splaying over the creaminess of her skin. She looked like something out of a Merchant Ivory film, Mark thought to himself. Actually, Alice felt playful and horny and was surreptitiously fingering herself lightly as she watched Mark undress. She smiled at how particular his routine was. The order in which

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