LITMIR.BIZ

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still pointing, ‘this I like.’

      Thea stood alongside him and slipped her hand into his. ‘I prefer that one behind there, of Portland,’ she said, guiding Saul through with her hands in the back pockets of his jeans. ‘She works a couple of doors down from the Being Well – in that dodgy sauna-massage place!’

      ‘Really?’ Saul said, peering at the Hebrides.

      ‘You’ve probably seen her without realizing it,’ Thea said, ‘en route to visiting me.’

      Saul turned away from Cromarty. ‘Shall we go for that burger now?’ he suggested, putting his arm around Thea’s shoulders and guiding her away from Viking back through to the market.

      ADAM

       December, Issue 19

       Julia Roberts as Christmas Fairy cover

       All we want for Christmas is Julia

       Christmas parties – seasonal snogging, festive favours, misplaced mistletoe

       Christmas bonus – mine’s bigger than yours

       Christmas crap – we sift through the tat so you don’t have to

       Christmas cheer – your round

       Christmas dinner – dos

       Christmas carols – don’ts

       Christmas present – free CD: the year’s hottest sounds

       Christmas past – how to do a great New Year’s Eve

      ‘Do you know, I’ve been married for exactly two years and this is the first time I’ve used this particular Le Creuset casserole,’ Alice declared to Thea, peeling a label from the lid.

      ‘Is that because you’re a ready-meal kind of girl,’ Thea teased her, ‘or because you eat out an inordinate amount?’

      Alice laughed. ‘Actually, it’s because I put one of absolutely every Le Creuset product on the wedding list so I simply have had no need of this dish thus far.’

      ‘I assume this corkscrew was a wedding present too,’ Thea grumbled, ‘it’s so state-of-the-art I haven’t a clue how to use it. In fact, I’m assuming it is a corkscrew, right?’

      Alice gave Thea the onions to peel while she wrestled with the corkscrew. ‘Bloody thing,’ she said at length, ‘I’m sure the regular old one is at the back of a drawer.’

      ‘And which drawer would that be?’ Thea remarked, eyeing the impressive run of them.

      ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Alice sighed. ‘You rummage through those over there and these here, and I’ll wade my way through those and these.’

      ‘Bingo,’ Thea said after a good five minutes’ clattering, fulminating and rediscovering items Alice had thought she’d lost. She uncorked the Rioja and poured two glasses, adding a slosh to the sauce bubbling gently in a small Le Creuset saucepan. ‘When’s Mark back?’

      ‘Friday,’ Alice said.

      ‘Christ, that’s cutting it fine for Christmas shopping, isn’t it?’ Thea declared.

      ‘That’s why he’d better find time to shop in Singapore,’ Alice reasoned, ‘or else I’ll make him suffer for it during the January sales.’

      ‘Did I tell you I’m going to Saul’s folks for Boxing Day?’ Thea said, sitting herself up on one of the many work surfaces while Alice arranged orange slices and cinnamon sticks on top of the chicken. ‘It’s weird, in London, and as I know him, Saul seems so self-contained, so independent, at harmony with his environment – as if he’s always been this age, living in his pad, doing his job.’ She raised her legs so Alice could retrieve a zester from a drawer beneath her. ‘Yet back in Nottingham there are graduation photos and junior-school woodwork examples and tennis trophies belonging to someone called Saul Mundy who I don’t know. And parents. I find them peculiar too – though actually they’re completely normal and really pretty nice. I simply can’t connect Saul to them.’ Thea shifted slightly so that Alice could check the recipe propped up behind her. ‘It’s as if seeing him in his family home rids him of some of the identity I associate with him.’

      ‘Mark hasn’t changed a jot,’ Alice said fondly, shutting the oven door and wiping her hands on her jeans. ‘It’ll be an hour and a half, shall we have some nibbles while we wait?’ Alice and Thea sat and chatted, sipped wine and munched tortilla chips. ‘The bloke in my wedding photograph is identical to the photo on his parents’ mantelpiece of the twelve-year-old collecting his Junior Chess Champion medal from Peter Purves,’ Alice said, stretching out on her sofa and placing her feet on Thea’s lap. ‘Mind you, I suppose I’ve known Mark for almost as many years so there are unlikely to be surprises or skeletons.’ They chinked wineglasses and suddenly she missed him very much. ‘I feel bad,’ she confided. ‘He goes away and I denounce him – yet then I think of his Junior Chess Champion medal or the way he folds everything away every night and I long for him.’

      ‘Friday is only the day after the day after tomorrow,’ Thea soothed.

      ‘I’ll probably be a stroppy cow when he’s back,’ Alice said, resigned, ‘poor old Mark.’

      ‘Mark thinks he’s the luckiest bloke in the world,’ Thea told Alice.

      ‘I think we should do our New Year’s resolutions tonight, you and me,’ Alice declared, ‘because we won’t see each other till next year, after all. I kind of wish Mark hadn’t booked Paris for New Year’s Eve – but there’s no way I can complain, let alone cancel.’

      Over a fabulous Moroccan chicken casserole with saffron rice and roasted butternut squash, and Christmas crackers from Heals, Alice laid out her hopes for the next year.

      ‘I want to win Publisher of the Year,’ she listed, straightening her paper crown, ‘I want Adam to outsell GQ.’

      ‘Those aren’t resolutions,’ Thea told her, testing the plastic whistle that came in her cracker, ‘they’re goals.’

      ‘Top of my wish-list,’ Alice shrugged, reading the cracker joke and deciding swiftly it wasn’t worth repeating out loud.

      ‘What about you and Mark?’ Thea asked.

      ‘I suppose,’ Alice said cautiously, ‘it would be to spend more time together. But then that was my aim last year. I suppose, it’s for me to be less narky with him. And to develop a taste for opera.’

      ‘And thoughts of babies, perhaps?’ Thea suggested.

      ‘I’m going to see Sally tomorrow,’ said Alice, changing track but not the subject. ‘I bought the dearest present for baby Juliette.’

      ‘Well, if you do have any thoughts about babies,’ Thea said, ‘for goodness’ sake tell Sally not to tell you her birth story.’

      ‘Shitting a watermelon?’ Alice asked.

      ‘With spikes on,’ Thea whispered.

      ‘Anyway, I’m not thinking of having babies,’ Alice whispered back.

      ‘But Mark is,’ Thea said quietly.

      Over Marks & Spencer’s Christmas pudding and fresh lychees, Thea divulged her thoughts for the coming year. ‘I’m going to redecorate my flat – a room a month,’ she said, ‘and I’m going to go running every other lunch hour. I’m going to do my tax on time and pay my credit cards off each month.’ She chinked Alice’s wineglass.

      ‘And Saul?’ Alice asked. ‘Where do you see the both of you this time next year? Will you have wed and bred?’

      Thea fell silent. She pressed the back of her fork down hard onto the pudding, squashing it flat. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m hoping for some sense

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