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Adam

Seven months after Alice and Mark were married, after Saul and Thea had formed a couple, Adam came into the world. Until then, Alice had hailed her wedding as marking the zenith of her creative and organizational talent. But Adam surpassed all of that. Adam was Alice’s baby. Her true love. Her life’s work. Her future ambition. Her past achievement, her present success. Her key to larger offices two floors above.

Just before her first wedding anniversary, Alice won Launch of the Year for Adam at a prestigious industry awards ceremony. The trophy, a rather dramatic slash of perspex in a gravity-defying swoop into a lump of softwood, shared pride of shelf-space in her executive office two floors up, alongside a framed first issue of Adam – the one with Clint Eastwood on the cover.

‘Our project name was Quentin,’ Alice told a packed Grosvenor House ballroom at that awards night, ‘but as we kept having to stress “as in Tarantino, not Crisp” we needed something synonymous with Alpha Male. So our magazine became Adam. Biblical connotations end with the title – as we all know, publishing is no Garden of Eden, it’s a men’s mag jungle out there. However, with our spectacular circulation figures – and now with this major award – Adam reigns supreme.’

As she returned to her table, carried on a cushion of generous applause, the trophy pleasingly heavy, a reassuring ache in her arches from her Jimmy Choos, Alice believed the moment to mark the apotheosis of her career. Unfortunately, there was no Mark to the moment – he was in Hong Kong and she couldn’t even phone him because of the time difference. With no husband to cuddle up to, Alice intended to get justifiably drunk on the company credit card and stay out ridiculously late.

‘Mr Mundy,’ she said whilst leaning around their round table topping up her team’s glasses, ‘Mr Mundy, you are a dickhead.’

‘Thank you, Miss Heggarty,’ Saul acquiesced, chinking glasses and sharing a raised eyebrow with the fashion editor and advertising manager.

‘I mean,’ Alice qualified, ‘if you’d only come off your freelance high horse and join the mag as staff, you’d be up there awarded Editor of the Year.’ The fashion editor and ad manager nodded earnestly.

‘That’s kind of you,’ Saul said, pausing to applaud a woman on stage receiving her jag of perspex for being Specialist Editor of the Year, ‘but I’ve told you, I don’t want to trade my freedom – my access to variety – for commuting, office politics and a lump of plastic.’

‘It’s perspex!’ Alice retorted. ‘It’s sculpture!’

‘Sure,’ said Saul, ‘but if I did Adam full-time I’d have to relinquish all my other work. And I’m a loyal bastard.’ He clapped with everyone though he had no idea of the award just won.

‘But me pay top dollar,’ Alice said in a peculiar Japanese accent.

‘Your dollars can’t buy my desire for diversity, Alice,’ Saul said, tonguing the words theatrically. ‘I spend more time on Adam than on any of my other commitments. But I like my tutti-frutti life. I like dipping my finger in a fair few pies. ES mag versus the Observer, T3 versus GQ. MotorMonth versus Get Gadget. I need variety.’

Another award was won, this time by a former colleague of Alice’s so she wolf-whistled through her fingers – a raucous skill amusingly at odds with her sartorial grace and sleek deportment. ‘Desire for diversity?’ she balked, turning again to Saul. ‘finger-dipping?’ Alice wagged her finger at him. ‘Your need for variety better not go beyond your professional life, Mr Mundy.’

Saul laughed. ‘I may flirt my working way around publishing circles – but at play I’m working on being all Thea’s. In my mind, in my heart,’ he said, ‘I’m all hers.’

‘Promiscuous by pen is fine, promiscuous by penis – not!’ Alice declared, rather pleased with that and wondering if she could regurgitate it in print. Not for Adam, obviously. Lush, perhaps.

‘Has it escaped you that your first wedding anniversary also marks my first year with Thea?’ Saul said defensively.

They chinked glasses.

‘To Thea,’ Saul drank, ‘I couldn’t love her more.’

‘I love my husband, I love my job, I love my posh house, I love the plants I can’t pronounce in my garden,’ Alice proclaimed with regular sips, ‘I love Adam. I love Thea. I love you!’

‘This isn’t the Oscars,’ Saul laughed.

‘It’s the champagne,’ Alice rued, ‘it makes me emotional.’

‘Switch to water,’ Saul suggested.

‘Bugger off!’ Alice retorted, topping up everyone’s glasses.

Mark flew back from the Far East and was immensely proud of Alice’s Launch of the Year award, so much so that he persuaded her to bring it back home from the office at weekends. Until one weekend when he was abroad on business and Alice didn’t bother. His excessive travelling and deal-mongering paid dividends in the form of a large and timely bonus. He whisked Alice off to Prague for their first anniversary and replaced Alice’s shopping-channel paste earrings with genuine diamonds. Only larger. And set in platinum. She’d bought him a papier mâché globe because the girls on Dream Weddings reminded her that the first anniversary is paper. Alice was overwhelmed by Mark’s gift. In fact, she was a little taken aback.

‘I feel too young for such fuck-off rocks,’ she confided to Thea, ‘like I’ve sneaked my mum’s for dressing up. Only my mum doesn’t have diamonds even half this size. I have to keep them in a safe when I’m not wearing them or else they’re not insured.’

‘They’re stunning,’ Thea marvelled, privately thinking that, despite their dazzle, they were almost too big to be attractive or actually look real.

‘They’re serious,’ Alice assessed. ‘The fun of the fakes was that they were cheap tat. A joke where I had the last laugh. Do you want them?’

‘Sure!’ Thea said. ‘Which ones?’ she added.

‘Where can I take you?’ Saul asked Thea, a few days before their first anniversary. ‘Cartier? TopShop?’

‘Memory Lane,’ Thea answered decisively.

‘Is that some spa in Barbados?’ Saul half joked.

‘Primrose Hill,’ Thea laughed. ‘I want to retrace our steps.’

‘Christ, you’re soppy,’ Saul said.

‘I just want to walk hand in hand on Primrose Hill!’ Thea protested.

‘And if it’s raining?’

‘We’ll get wet.’

‘Can’t I whisk you off to Babington House or somewhere, in a top-of-the-range Jag?’ Saul all but pleaded.

‘You don’t have a car,’ Thea reminded him patiently, ‘you have a scooter.’

‘Actually, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve been given said Jag for the weekend – to take for a spin and assess for MotorMonth.’

‘What colour is it?’ Thea asked, slightly tempted.

‘Racing green,’ Saul shrugged, ‘cream leather.’

‘But I want to go to Primrose Hill to our bench,’ Thea said with a petulant pout Saul couldn’t resist.

So they compromised. They drove the mile or so to Primrose Hill and paid-and-displayed for two hours at great expense. At the top of the hill, Saul pulled out a roll of Refreshers and a family-size pack of Opal Fruits though it said Starburst on the packet. For Thea, the gesture was far more romantic than a country hideaway accessed by sports car. As an expression of her gratitude, she took off her jumper, and with no bra beneath her T-shirt, her nipples stood to Saul’s attention, reminding him instantly of a year ago, when she was up there, all cold and hungover. He stroked her arms, giving her far stronger goose bumps than the November air.

Thea gazed at him, marvelling to herself that she hadn’t noticed the slate-grey flecks to his irises. ‘I love you, Saul Mundy,’ she said.

‘Happy First Whatever,’ he grinned, ‘Happy Us.’

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 any more,’ said Alice.

‘Jesus, how many remote controls does a girl need?’ Thea despaired, fiddling with another one.

‘You’d think just the one,’ said Alice.

Thea had been in love previously, but prior to Saul, love had lacked balance. It was only now, through the equilibrium and reciprocation achieved between the two of them, that she could see this. In the past, she had invested far more affection and trust, loyalty and generosity, than was ever returned to her. She’d attributed virtues and qualities not present to past boyfriends, in the deluded hope that if she believed they were faithful, loyal and as in love with her as she was with them, then perhaps they would be. Her dogged veneration of the concept of Romantic Love saw her turn a blind eye even when transgressions had leered back at her directly. Though her heart had been hurt, she had never let the pain harden her; she never questioned her belief that true love makes the world go round, she’d never lost hope that love could conquer all.

Before she met Saul, Thea had believed that the deeper the love the more wrought with complexity it ought to be. However, she also thought that great art was only born of angst until Saul took her to a Matisse exhibition at Tate Modern. And so it was with Saul that Thea discovered to her amazement that love could be the simplest thing in one’s life. Being in love with Saul introduced her to the balance necessary for longevity. With this heaped magnificently on one side of the scale, Thea found all the other elements and concerns of life were invested with correct weight and proportions on the other. She was in love with Saul and he was just as in love with her and the plain fact was enough to keep a steady equilibrium in her life. All the love she gave him, he gave right back to her.

She loved Saul’s spontaneous visits to the Being Well armed with orange juice or the new issue of Heat; how he’d pop in for a kiss en route to a meeting, drop off a raisin-and-biscuit Yorkie on his way back from an editorial brainstorming session. She loved how he would occasionally materialize behind her in the lunchtime queue at Pret a Manger, murmuring ‘they say that banana cake is an aphrodisiac’ or ‘gissa bite of your baguette, love’. His text messages arrived at all hours and she never knew whether they’d be chatty, romantic or downright dirty. Sometimes he’d make love to her with great tenderness, taking time to stroke her, absorbed in just looking at her, watching the effect that altering the angle or a subtle variation in pace could have on the flush to her cheeks or the dilation of her pupils. And sometimes he’d fuck her most carnally, his eyes screwed shut as he screwed her, clenching his teeth as he grabbed her buttocks and bucked forcefully into her until he came. Sometimes, he was as sated purely through cunnilingus as she was; though she’d sleepily offer to return the favour, he’d hush her with a goodnight kiss, turn out the light and spoon tenderly against her. Thea didn’t mind that he was grumpy when he woke up, that his farts were noxious and that he could snore for Britain. It didn’t bother her that his timekeeping was lousy, that he’d snap at her if she talked during films, that their taste in music had few overlaps, that sometimes he bolted his food. She was glad to love him enough to allow him his personality. She had no higher ideal to project onto him. ‘Rounded with rough edges,’ she defined to Alice, ‘he’s not perfect and so he’s ideal.’ At last, Thea had fallen in love with someone she had no inclination, no need, to deify. Alice’s wish for Thea had only ever been that someone would find her who deserved the depth of the love she had to give.

Thea and Saul could have frantic late nights gallivanting around the bars of Soho, or they could plunder Villandry and go home for extravagant carpet picnics. They could be the loved-up couple at dinners hosted by friends, or they could arrive together at parties but socialize separately, with the occasional grin or wink over to each other. They’d have backgammon tournaments which became quite tense, Scrabble sessions that were downright serious or raucous evenings watching DVDs of Spinal Tap or the Blues Brothers, aided by shots of home-made Mars Bar vodka. Then there were the evenings when they were so engrossed in their own thing that they hardly knew the other was there; the Saturdays when Thea ironed for most of the day and Saul tapped away at his laptop in her bedroom; the Sundays spent in affable silence over the newspapers. There were also Saul’s evenings at the Swallow with Ian or Richard that Thea had no intention of gatecrashing. And evenings when Saul smiled at the thought of Thea all by herself, unplugging her phone so she could watch ER uninterrupted.

Thea read everything Saul wrote, but only once it was in print.

‘Shall I start putting you in my columns?’ Saul mused.

‘What – Michael Winner style?’ Thea looked up from the Sunday Times. ‘Christ!’

Saul laughed. ‘I was thinking more à la A. A. Gill, hon.’

But he didn’t. Barefaced Bloke’s readers had heard no more about the Gorgeous Thief since that article published the day they first kissed. Saul Mundy had a public voice and a private side. And when he finished writing an article with laddish overtones for one mag, or a column infused with sarcasm for another, or a review so cleverly barbed it was downright spiky, what he found most satisfying was to log off, look up and see Thea. Engrossed in a book, or quietly sipping a cup of tea, or embroiled in a text-messaging marathon with Alice, or simply daydreaming.

‘She’s my mate,’ Saul qualified one evening to Ian, ‘in every sense of the word. Soulmate, best mate, bed mate.’

‘Flatmate?’ Ian posed.

Saul sipped thoughtfully at his pint. ‘Not yet,’ he said cautiously, ‘but there again, we’ve only been together a year.’