happy-ever-after.
Very very privately, he was also relieved that invariably it was they who left her. Looking after Alice with her heart all hurt was actually even more rewarding than being in her company when she was hyper-effervescent with the distractions of love. Though it scorched Mark’s soul to see her distraught, he knew he could make her feel better. It was a job he could do brilliantly. And it augmented his hope. Because when his dream came true, he’d never leave her. Of that she could be as sure as he was.
Whereas Alice rushed headlong into love affairs, Mark merely dabbled in what he believed to be just an interim after all. Now, with Alice in love once more, yet again not with Mark, and given their respective ages, he acknowledged, sensibly, that an interim was a period between two points and that there really was no point in holding out for Alice. Because he loved her, and because he’d been privy to her teenage turmoil and twenties torment, he wanted only peace and fulfilment for her in her thirties and beyond. Even if her joy and contentment meant he’d never have her cry on his shoulder again.
Mark was happy for Alice, but he was not so altruistic not to be sad for himself. He had believed, mistakenly, that if he lived well and worked hard, if he was honourable in his thoughts and actions, his reward would be all he had dreamt of. Reluctantly, he had to accept that good behaviour and a belief in the potential of one’s wishes ultimately might not win the prize. Neither Alice, nor the Man Who Will Marry Her, were at fault or to blame. And, just because he now no longer believed in happy-ever-after didn’t mean the future need be misery-for-evermore.
He was going to moderate his desire without seeing compromise as a tragedy. He’d have to stop letting down gently all those lovely girls after the fourth or fifth date. He’d need to see the wider picture and take a view. There had been two or three he had liked enormously. Previously, when he’d reached the stage of thinking of them fondly, planning holidays, masturbating in their honour, browsing Liberty for trinkets of his affection, an image of Alice glancing at her watch had always sprung to mind. As if she was waiting for him. And though the lovely girls were let down gently, all wished to remain friends. Mark, as Alice once told a girlfriend who was single, was one of life’s great good guys.
Mark was a good person because for twenty years he had always believed that if you are a good boy, all your dreams come true.
Saul Mundy stumbled on his Road to Damascus at roughly the same time that Mark Sinclair stepped resignedly onto his. Saul had been with Emma for three years when he met a pretty and friendly blonde in a bar. They chatted and smiled and flirted lightly. Saul had no true desire for her, no intention of asking for her number or grabbing a furtive snog. Until that night, he had quite enjoyed the occasional, harmless, forgettable flirt because his affection for Emma and monogamy had remained unsullied. That night, however, it wasn’t that he wanted the blonde, it was that he didn’t want Emma.
He blanked the blonde, made hasty excuses to his friends and stumbled out in a daze onto Tottenham Court Road. The sudden clarity of the situation was ugly but he knew he mustn’t look away. If he did, complacency would wheedle in soon enough and honesty would be replaced by betrayal. Saul wouldn’t let that happen. He believed in doing the right thing and he was going home directly to do so. He had to, he was committed. It would be far easier to stay than split, far easier to act fine than confess, to hide than confide, but Saul’s belief in his relationship had gone and the only honourable thing he could do was go too. Waiting for a taxi, he shivered and sheltered in a shop doorway, gazing at the rain-sluiced pavement. It looked polished to perfection, like a meticulously varnished floor. Actually, it was just grey concrete that was wet and grimy. The truth was it was dull, no matter what tried to cover it. Surface details were worthless if the integrity of structure was lacking. Saul couldn’t believe that the last three years of his life amounted to a comparison with London pavement.
That morning, he had left the house to go to work. Now he was returning only to leave home. Had he kissed Emma that morning? He couldn’t remember. Would the offer of just good friendship be a possibility or a cowardly digression? Would she believe him when he said that he was so sorry, that he did love her and felt wretched for hurting her? That it wasn’t her, it was him? Would she believe him that he truly felt she deserved more than he could give? That he didn’t mean to sound exactly like all those articles in the women’s mags she pored over in her long bubble baths and that he browsed through when he’d forgotten to buy an Evening Standard? He doubted it.
He had the taxi drop him off on Upper Street and he walked, reluctant but resigned, towards the house, to Emma blissfully unaware, sitting beside the home-fire she’d kept burning.
‘I don’t burn for you any more,’ Saul whispered, eyes closed, forehead resting against the door frame, ‘and I should. It’s a prerequisite. I can’t compromise.’ He couldn’t even summon a spark of it from the deepest recess of his soul. His heart might be warm for her, and would continue to be, but he was absolutely sure that it wasn’t enough. He wished there was a kinder way of being so seemingly cruel. But to use a cool head to decipher his heart would give the cleanest cut, though he knew that all Emma would read written all over his face was Heartless. Saul put his key in the front door for the last time.
A decade before Mark and Saul had their epiphanies, Thea Luckmore had hers when Joshua Brown ditched her at Alice Heggarty’s eighteenth birthday party. It was irrelevant that he proceeded to snog Rachel Hutton in the kitchen. It didn’t matter that Alice, incensed, had poured Woodpecker cider over his head and told him he was a wanker who should fucking fuck off. It wasn’t even that Joshua no longer wanted her, it was that Thea was still in love with him. She didn’t ask Alice how she could win him back, instead she asked her what she should do with all the feelings of love.
Alice suggested getting off with Joshua’s mate to piss him off.
‘But I don’t feel anything for him,’ Thea had qualified.
‘Exactly, it’ll be easy,’ Alice had encouraged.
‘Alice,’ Thea balked, ‘I can’t kiss someone I don’t feel something for.’
Though Joshua Brown’s friend would have done anything for a snog off Thea, Thea decided then and there that unless she experienced a shudder of desire for someone, unless she could detect potential, unless her heart swelled approvingly, she’d be keeping her kisses. Warmth or revenge were not enough. She realized that it was the love she had for Joshua that was the point. Despite the fact that he was a cad. She’d read enough Austen to know that love was a good thing and, whether it made one feel wonderful or wretched, it was her ultimate requirement for a fulfilled life.
It was the dyed-dark drama student who captured Thea’s heart during her second year at Manchester University. Though she was never quite sure whether he was proclaiming his innermost feelings or reciting his lines, she adored him and was glad to lavish love on him. They smoked dope. They had his-and-hers unkempt pony-tails. They made vast vats of ratatouille. They found deep and meaningful tenets in Joy Division. They rejoiced in the intensity of their world of Us. They went InterRailing together during the summer vacation and slept on beaches, watched sunsets and professed to truly understand e. e. cummings. He fell out of love with Thea just before her finals a year later, citing that love was life’s torment and proclaiming the wring of his feelings was a headfuck.
‘Did he actually say “headfuck”, Thea?’ Alice asked, not sure whether it was interference on the Cambridge–Manchester phone line or Thea’s sobbing.
‘Yes,’ Thea said, ‘but he also said that his love for me was so all consuming—’
