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Table for Four

‘I can’t remember it being this much hassle when I bought my flat five years ago,’ Thea declared with a sorry pout around the table.

‘You were a first-time buyer,’ Mark said soothingly, asking the wine waiter to bring whichever red he’d recommend.

‘But it’s not like I’m in a chain,’ Thea protested, ‘my problem is that my buyer is a bloody lawyer and he’s being exasperatingly finicky. We could be on the verge of exchanging contracts but he’s not going to unless a structural surveyor has checked some minor detail or other.’

‘Has your offer been accepted on the place you like?’ Mark asked Saul.

‘No – we’ve upped it but they’re sitting on it,’ Saul told him, squeezing Thea’s wrist supportively.

‘It’s Sod’s Law – and it’s down to the bloody postcode fiasco. Thea’s trying to sell in a buyer’s market and yet you’re trying to buy in a seller’s market. All in the same city,’ Mark observed. ‘Thea darling, if you sell before you buy, you can always store your stuff at ours.’

‘Thanks,’ said Thea glumly because it was of little consolation just then. ‘They say that moving house is the most stressful thing we encounter after death and divorce.’

‘Better not die then – and keep cohabiting, rather than marrying,’ Mark laughed. He looked over at Alice who was gazing at her lap. ‘Are you OK, darling?’

‘What?’ She looked up and around the table as if she was startled to find herself there with them. ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. Just hassles at work – just had to text one of my editors.’ She brandished her mobile phone and then dropped it into her bag. Thea looked away from Alice’s fleeting smirk. ‘Have you exchanged yet?’ Alice asked her. ‘Wasn’t it meant to be this week?’

Thea groaned, put her head in her hands, looked up and glugged gratefully at the glass of wine. ‘Don’t ask!’ she said hoarsely, and then proceeded to repeat in great detail the stress and minutiae.

‘Did you get my text?’ Alice asked her, as if she’d not heard a word of Thea’s rant.

‘What text?’

‘About my client?’ Alice said.

Thea checked her phone. ‘Oh, it’s here – I hadn’t seen it.’

lover boy’s coming 2 UK nxt wk ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Thea read it and read it again. What on earth was she meant to say? Right then? Right there? In an upmarket restaurant with her best friend’s husband in eyeshot of her mobile phone. ‘Right,’ she faltered, ‘right.’

‘He’d like to see you,’ Alice carried on blithely while Thea prayed that Alice’s expression of triumphant glee was legible to her alone.

‘OK,’ Thea nodded slowly, ‘OK.’

‘Who’s this?’ Mark asked.

‘Paul,’ Alice announced lightly, as if jogging Mark’s memory that he knew him too. ‘I think Thea should assess him.’

‘Paul Who?’ Saul asked.

‘He’s not part of the Adam team,’ Alice replied dismissively, ‘different department.’

‘What’s his problem?’ Mark asked politely.

Thea couldn’t believe it was she who was starting to redden. Surely it should be Alice. But Alice was having great fun with her hidden meanings. ‘I’ve told him to be careful. I’ve told him he’ll be flat on his back by next week – so I really think he’d benefit from Thea’s evaluation.’

Thea’s appetite slumped. Luckily for Alice, Mark and Saul presumed Thea had lost it under the pile of faxes and hassle swamping her from the sale of her property.

‘Alice was in high spirits,’ Saul remarks, peeling off his clothes and slinging them onto the floor.

‘Manic, I’d say,’ Thea asserts, picking up Saul’s clothes and adding them to a pile she’s sorted to be washed.

‘Are things OK with her and Mark?’ Saul asks cautiously.

Thea pretends not to have heard as she heads off with the laundry to the kitchen to load the washing machine, hoping to buy herself some time in which Saul might forget his question. He’s in bed, when she returns, reading FHM.

‘New issue?’ Thea asks.

‘Do they?’ Saul looks up.

‘Pardon?’

‘Issues – you said Alice and Mark had issues.’

Thea laughs unnecessarily. ‘No, no! I asked if that FHM was a new issue!’

Saul looks at the front cover and nods. Thea climbs into bed, faces away from him and yawns exaggeratedly at how tired she is. Saul puts down FHM and spoons up against her back. ‘Don’t tell me you’re turned on by some soft-porn pics in a bloody lads’ mag!’ Thea exclaims, feeling Saul’s hard-on nudging hopefully at the small of her back.

‘Don’t be daft,’ he murmurs, nuzzling her neck, ‘it was the sight of you doing the laundry in the buff. Your gorgeous peach of an arse.’ And he is burrowing under the duvet to the object of his desire, kissing her buttocks and unexpectedly spreading her cheeks for a long lick downwards. Thea is pleased to close her eyes and swim into the physical sensations Saul is crafting; to propel herself away from the stress of selling her flat and the disquiet over her best friend’s behaviour.

Sometimes, Thea likes to be dominant during sex with Saul; she’ll initiate it and call the pace and the positions. At other times, she craves utter synchronicity – that he desires her as much as she does him, that he wants to take her from behind at the exact moment she flips herself over, that she wants to suck his cock without needing to be asked, that their orgasms occur within milliseconds of each other. But there are also times, and just now is one of them, when what she needs is to be made love to. She wants to consciously detect that Saul loves and desires her absolutely, venerates her, to the exclusion of all other thoughts and all other people. And so Thea lies in his arms, being licked and kissed and adored and wanted.

Post-coitally, with Saul on his back panting himself back to a normal heart rate, Thea snuggles against his chest. She cups her hand lightly over his cock still semi-hard and twitching lazily. ‘God, that was good,’ Saul declares. Thea smiles. Good.

‘Saul,’ she says in a quiet, little-girl-lost voice she is not in the habit of using blithely, ‘promise me we won’t ever be like that.’ He twists his head down to look at her and she gazes up at him, with a beguiling bat of her eyelashes. ‘Like Alice and Mark,’ she says very quietly, all wide-eyed and winsome.

‘I thought there was something up,’ Saul declares. ‘What’s going on with those two?’

‘I don’t know,’ Thea evades, ‘nothing, probably. You know Alice. The point is, I never want us to loiter on that plateau of complacency.’

Saul kisses Thea on the forehead. ‘I know what you mean – it was as if Alice was unaware that her husband was dining with us at all. They converse without really communicating – they didn’t really chat to each other. They just made up the numbers for a table for four.’

‘I just want you and me always to stay close – and always truly feel in love,’ Thea declares. She kisses Saul back and turns to fall asleep, feeling a little happier and safer.