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      ‘I don’t doubt Saul’s love for me,’ Thea explained, ‘but we never really assess it. Neither of us has a problem with commitment – but we haven’t ever sat down and analysed where we’re at. We just stroll from day to day, ambling along, hand in hand.’

      ‘It sounds idyllic to me,’ said Alice, ‘and anyway, you know how it’s sometimes counterproductive to analyse a relationship – the whole “let’s talk about Us” syndrome.’

      ‘I know. Believe me, from experience, I do know that. But I wouldn’t mind hearing Saul proclaim that I’m the girl for him.’ Thea shrugged at Alice.

      ‘I know what it is,’ Alice said, pouring them both some Cointreau. ‘You have no shadow of doubt that Saul is indeed your knight in shining armour. But what you want is for him to behave like one,’ she declared.

      ‘Rose between his teeth, bended knee – the lot,’ Thea laughed, her fist to the table. ‘God, you know me well – if you weren’t already married, I’d suggest you and I wed.’

      ‘Would you say yes, then, if Saul asked?’ Alice probed.

      ‘I don’t need him to ask me to marry him,’ Thea said, ‘that’s not the point at all.’

      ‘You are funny – funny peculiar,’ Alice said, ‘you’re such a sucker for extreme romance and yet marriage just isn’t on your agenda, is it?’

      ‘But you’re just as funny peculiar,’ Thea sparred, ‘because you can explain the sensation of love in chemical terms yet you marched down the aisle in a traditional frock with a great big grin on your face.’

      ‘Perhaps it’s because my parents set me an excellent example of marriage, but yours didn’t,’ Alice said.

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Thea, ‘but fundamentally, I regard being in love as so intrinsically, mystically sublime that the man-made institution of marriage seems irrelevant. I think the awesome aspect of true love is trivialized by signing a piece of paper.’

      ‘Well, I think marriage is an excellent idea,’ Alice declared. She thought for a moment. ‘I suppose where you don’t see marriage as being the point of love, I don’t see love as being the point of marriage,’ said Alice.

      ‘But you do love Mark,’ Thea cautioned, ‘don’t you?’

      ‘Of course I do!’ said Alice. ‘Will you please stop going on at me about that.’

The Isley Brothers

      ‘You should practise what you preach,’ Alice tells Saul nonchalantly while they pore over contact sheets of a recent shoot with Kate Winslet for a forthcoming cover. She bends over the light box, giving a skilled twist to her hair and fixing it against her head with a Biro to keep it out of the way. She lowers her right eye to the loupe and deftly scans the shots. With a yellow chinagraph pencil, she marks off four or five frames, sits back satisfied and hands the loupe to Saul.

      ‘Can you just remind me what I’ve preached?’ Saul humours her while he inspects the contact sheets even faster than Alice, ultimately agreeing with her preliminary selection.

      ‘Well, the figures coming in for the last issue suggest it was our biggest seller yet,’ Alice informs him, while marking the chosen images of Miss Winslet to be cropped, ‘and I do believe it was your idea to call it the Romance Issue; that you coined the spine quote: “Warmth can be cool – rock on, Valentine”. In a nutshell, the slant on love and all its panoply was your call.’

      ‘Which you tried to overrule!’ Saul quips, with a raised eyebrow. ‘You thought the February issue should have a completely sarcastic and ironic take. Which it then transpired GQ and Arena and FHM all took. Boring.’

      ‘Anyway,’ says Alice, rather primly, ‘you should put your name to it.’

      ‘You’re not still on at me to join your sodding staff, are you?’ Saul sighs, surreptitiously trying to read one of Alice’s memos, albeit upside down.

      ‘Christ no, you’d cost me far too much in annual salary and perks now, Mr Mundy,’ Alice exclaims. She regards him contemplatively, her head tipped to one side, her hair starting to escape anarchically from her improvised Biro clasp. ‘I’m talking about taking your work home.’

      ‘If you are telling me to work from home, you’re hardly practising what you preach,’ Saul says. ‘You give Mark a hard time if he even skims through the Economist after seven p.m.’

      ‘Not in that respect, you noodle,’ Alice says affectionately, ‘I’m simply suggesting that you redirect a little of the focus you laid on romance for February’s Adam, to your home life.’

      ‘Alice,’ Saul says with exaggerated exasperation, ‘what the fuck are you going on about? You’re talking so cryptically I can’t work out if you’re telling me off, telling me to work less from your office or telling me to become a torch-bearer for Romance.’

      ‘Yes!’ Alice exclaims, triumphant, her hair in a sudden swoosh around her shoulders, the Biro on the floor. ‘Romantic hero! That’s precisely what I’m suggesting. With a capital R.’

      Saul frowns and then regards Alice suspiciously. ‘Are you talking about Thea?’

      ‘Sort of,’ Alice confesses, ‘but if you tell her, I’ll bloody kill you and then I’ll sack you.’

      ‘If. I. Tell. Thea. What?’

      ‘It’s just I know that recently, privately, she’s been hoping for some declaration of intent,’ Alice shrugs, ‘and Saul, you’re bright enough to figure out what I’m on about.’

      It was a freakishly balmy late February and Saul eschewed ordering a cab in favour of the bus but soon enough jumped from that at the lights to indulge in a long and cathartic walk home from his meeting with Alice. Figuring out what she was on about was alternately unnerving yet stirring. When the thinking became too onerous, he’d pop into a newsagent to check stock and positioning of the titles he worked for, on occasion phoning the publishers to report his findings. One shop still had their Valentine’s Day display up, but all the cards and trinkets were half price. Saul found himself browsing, tempted to buy a card – not because it was cheap but simply because it had a cheery photo of two amorous tortoises which he thought Thea would like. Actually, Saul had given her a large envelope filled with Loveheart sweets for Valentine’s Day, though he’d painstakingly removed any with inappropriate inscriptions like ‘Big Boy’ or ‘Hunky’. Saul put the rutting tortoises card back. He checked the magazine stock, repositioned Adam to the front of the rack, and walked on. He was a little troubled. Was Thea unhappy? But she hadn’t given him any cause to think so. He was gently perplexed. Had he ever given her reason not to trust him or believe in his commitment and affection for her? He was sure that he hadn’t. What he did acknowledge was that two years and three months into their relationship, he felt so completely comfortable with Thea being an integral part of his life that he really didn’t give the matter much thought any more.

      Perhaps that was the crux of it; the rub for Thea that Alice alluded to. Though he always looked forward to being with her – and a night apart was rare now – just then he accepted that he never actually told her so. It didn’t occur to him to. Wouldn’t it seem contrived? And anyway, wasn’t the proof in the sweet pudding of their combined lives? He had as many clothes at her place as she had at his, their social circle was so fully integrated that he would need to concertedly recall whose friends were whose originally. Thea’s new Hoover was bought by Saul and he’d retiled her bathroom with as much pernickety pride as if it was his own. Often, she changed his linen as a matter of course, stocked his food cupboards and thought nothing of answering his phone, land line or mobile, if he was out of earshot. So many other signs illustrated a love so legible that surely it didn’t need to be spelt out too? Everyone knew Saul and Thea were a team. It was such

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