Chapter 5
5
I’m still reflecting on my surreal encounter with Rollo’s mum when my phone pings with a message. It’s Alasdair.
Whereabouts in the world are you ATM?
At home, would you believe… Got in from NY this morning. You?
The ticks go blue instantly and I can see he’s typing so, rather than returning to my annotations, I wait for his reply to come in.
Also in London. Fancy celebrating your elevation?
I smile as I type my response.
Sounds good. I have wine in the fridge…
His reply is immediate.
Sod wine. I’ll pick up some champagne on the way. See you in an hour.
I return my attention to the document, and it seems like no time at all has passed before the doorbell sounds to announce his arrival. I mark my place so I know where I’ve got to, and go to open the front door.
‘ La Porsche obligatoire ?’ he asks with a raised eyebrow and a mischievous grin, waving a bottle of Dom Pérignon in the direction of my car. ‘Such a cliché, darling. I never had you down as following the corporate herd mentality.’
‘Sod off,’ I laugh as I stand back to let him in. ‘I didn’t choose it, if you must know.’
‘How did it arrive then? Is it true that they’re delivered by the secret partner Porsche fairy?’
‘My PA organised it while I was in New York. Apparently, I’m too important and expensive to rely on trains now.’
‘Of course you are, your majesty.’ He bows deeply. ‘What’s the view like from the heady heights of Olympus?’
‘Have you come to celebrate or take the piss?’
‘Both, naturally. On a serious note, I couldn’t be happier for you. If anyone deserved to make partner, it’s you.’
‘Thanks. Why didn’t you apply?’
‘I’ve still got a bit of a grey smudge against my name, I reckon.’
‘Surely that’s long forgotten, isn’t it?’
One of the things I’ve always admired about Alasdair is the way his brain can switch from work to play mode in an instant. When we were trainees together, I was regularly in awe of his ability to grasp a concept and run with it, often while the rest of us were still getting our heads around it. But then, come the end of the day, he’d waltz out of the office as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Unfortunately, although his competence was never in doubt, his ability to switch off so easily did cause questions to be asked about his commitment, and his first annual appraisal was, in his words, a bit of a car crash. He was much more careful after that, but the stigma followed him for quite a while.
‘Well, now that you’re the other side of the great divide, maybe you can put in a good word for me.’ He grins to let me know that he’s not serious and waves the bottle again. ‘I think this might have got a bit shaken up on the way over, so shall I stick it in the fridge to calm down a bit before we open it? It’s the good stuff, so it would be a shame to redecorate your hallway with it.’
I return his grin. ‘That sounds like a good idea. How on earth do you plan to entertain me in the meantime though?’
Alasdair and I first had sex the night it was announced that we were the only two from our intake group that Morton Lansdowne wanted to keep on as junior associates. We hit the town to celebrate and, with clichéd inevitability, ended up drunkenly falling into bed together at his rather grotty bedsit. The next morning, I woke with a splitting headache, ready for the usual guilt-ridden recriminations and awkward conversations, but quickly realised to my relief that Alasdair doesn’t work like that. He took me out for breakfast to cure my hangover, we had sex again, and then I went home. Since then, we’ve had a tacit understanding that, although we’re more than friends sexually, we aren’t a ‘thing’. We’re just mates who hook up when the feeling takes us, as it has today.
Sex with Alasdair is very much like the man himself. Honest, joyful and reassuringly straightforward. I’ve never timed it, but I think it would fit pretty neatly into one of the fifteen-minute billing slots that Morton Lansdowne lawyers live and die by. He’s not one of those angsty lovers who spends hours faffing about down there, making you feel inadequate because whatever they’re doing hasn’t reduced you to instant shuddering orgasms. I don’t think I’ve ever had an orgasm during a sexual encounter with a man, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it, and fifteen minutes is plenty long enough in my book. I read an article once about how tantric sex can last for hours and my immediate reaction was ‘Who would want it to?’
Thankfully, Alasdair is as uninterested in tantric sex as I am, and sets to work with typical gusto. Although we don’t see each other very often, our bodies instinctively know the moves and I’ll admit there have been times when I’ve let the whole thing happen on autopilot while I’ve wrestled with a thorny work issue. Alasdair doesn’t generally notice; in fact, I was once able to read and answer an email while he was mid-flow. We were in the missionary position and I’d heard my phone buzz on my bedside table. I’d very carefully lifted it and held it at arm’s length behind him, tapping out my reply with my thumb while keeping up the necessary encouraging noises. I’d been pretty pleased with it as a piece of multitasking, but when I tried it again on another occasion and he caught me, we agreed that sex probably ought to be a phone- and work-free activity.
Although I can always find something work-related to worry about, we’re early enough in the current transaction that I can mentally park it and be in the moment with Alasdair today. Afterwards, he wraps himself in my dressing gown and heads downstairs to fetch the champagne. I lie back in bed, listening to him moving about before I hear the telltale pop as he opens the bottle.
‘Here we go,’ he says when he reappears with two full champagne flutes, handing one to me before he clambers back into bed. ‘Here’s to you, Morton Lansdowne’s newest, most beautiful and certainly most talented partner.’ He raises his glass and chinks it against mine, before taking a big mouthful.
‘Flatterer,’ I chide him as I take a sip, enjoying the dry biscuity flavour and the sensation of the bubbles popping on my tongue. ‘Actually, I could do with your opinion on something. Stay there.’
He’s still wearing my dressing gown, so I slip out of bed and sprint down the stairs in the nude, checking the pavement outside is clear before retrieving my laptop from my study and beating an equally hasty retreat.
‘What do you make of this?’ I ask him as I bring up Janice’s relationship questionnaire and hand him the laptop so he can read it.
‘Is this an HR thing?’ he asks when he’s scanned it.
‘No. Janice, my PA, wants me to fill it in so she knows who to put the frighteners on if my personal life threatens to interfere with my professional one.’
‘You can’t put me on this,’ he says, suddenly looking deadly serious.
‘Why not?’ I ask. ‘If you’re worried that being in a relationship with a partner will be another black mark against you in some way, I can tell you categorically that it wouldn’t. We don’t even work in the same department, so it would be pretty difficult for me to give you preferential treatment, and the relationship started when we were both associates, so nobody could accuse me of coercing you in some kind of quid-pro-quo arrangement.’
‘Oh, I’m not worried about any of that.’ He laughs, obviously delighted to have wound me up. ‘It’s just there isn’t a category for me. Look here where it says “Nature of relationship”. The options are Spouse/Partner, Fiancé(e) or Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Friend and sometime fuck buddy evidently doesn’t count. I’ll give Janice this, though. She’s bloody thorough.’
‘Tell me about it. She’s so into contingency planning that I’m surprised she hasn’t asked for a comprehensive list of physical features and birthmarks in case I get caught in an earthquake somewhere and she has to identify my body. She’s terrifyingly efficient. So, shall I forget about this form then?’
‘I would. We don’t see each other often enough for me to become needy and demanding, do we? Although…’ He stops and looks at me seriously again. ‘There is something I’ve been wanting to tell you. I didn’t mention it before because, well, there are some things you don’t bring up in the throes of passion, aren’t there.’
Oh, shit. Is he going to break the rules of our relationship and drop the L bomb? I’m very fond of Alasdair, but I’ve never seen what we have as any more serious than the fuck buddies he’s just described. One of the things that makes us work is that, being a lawyer himself, he understands the pressures on me and doesn’t try to take more than I have to give him – and vice versa. If he’s going to start declaring that he loves me, that changes the dynamic in a way that I’m not at all comfortable with.
‘What is it?’ I ask him nervously.
He fixes his gaze on mine and leans forward very slowly, brushing my lips with his a few times. Normally, I like the sensation, but he’s making me anxious. Eventually he speaks, his voice no more than a murmur.
‘I’m starving,’ he says. ‘Shall we order in from that Vietnamese place you like? My treat, of course.’
‘You absolute bastard,’ I scold him as I punch him on the shoulder. ‘I thought you were going to say something deep and meaningful.’
‘Oh.’ He feigns surprise. ‘I was saving that for later, but now that you’ve brought it up, I guess you’ve forced my hand. Will you marry me, Thea?’
‘Of course not.’
‘All righty. Vietnamese it is then.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ he asks some time later. We’ve polished off the Vietnamese takeaway with the rest of the champagne, and we’re now sitting on the sofa making good progress through a bottle of wine. My head is in Alasdair’s lap and, for the first time in ages, I’m feeling relaxed and a little bit woozy.
‘Go on,’ I tell him without opening my eyes.
‘Do you think you will get married, one day?’
‘Is that a serious question, or another one of your wind-ups?’
‘It’s a serious question.’
‘I think it’s unlikely.’
‘Because?’
I open my eyes and sit up. ‘Because all sorts of things. When am I going to find time for the kind of relationship that might lead to marriage, for starters? Who’d want to be married to me, anyway? I’m married to my job. You, of all people, ought to understand that.’
‘I do. Don’t you ever think about it though?’
‘What, a little cottage with roses over the door and a white picket fence? Adorable, rosy-cheeked children running wild in the fields while I bake wholesome goodies? A ruggedly handsome husband who chops down trees with his bare hands but is oh so gentle in the bedroom?’
He laughs. ‘It sounds like you’ve given it quite a lot of thought.’
‘Only because it’s my waking-up-in-hell scenario. The reality is that I’d either have to marry another lawyer, because they’re the only people who understand the pressures of the job, but I’d never see them, so what’s the point? Or I marry someone from outside the profession and we spend two years rowing about why I’m never at home before divorcing messily and expensively.’
‘When did you get so jaded?’
‘I’m not jaded, I’m realistic. What about you? Do you think you’ll get married? Do the whole 2.4 children and a Labrador thing?’
He thinks for a long time before answering and I take the opportunity to top up our glasses. I’m not going to admit it, but his question is one I’ve asked myself several times before, and I’ve never found a completely satisfactory answer. Would I like to meet someone to share my life with? Yes. Would I be prepared to give up the career I love in order to do it? No, I think that would destroy me after all the work I’ve put in to get here. Is Alasdair my person? Definitely not, but I hope we’ll always be friends, whatever happens.
‘Do you know,’ he says eventually, startling me out of my uncomfortable train of thought, ‘I reckon I’d happily give up the law for the right person. I think, deep down, I’ve always known that, and maybe that’s why I’m not that fussed about whether I become a partner or not. Don’t tell them at work, will you?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I reply, trying to hide my surprise. ‘Your secret’s quite safe with me. I never had you pegged as such a romantic though.’
‘How can you say that?’ he demands, mock-affronted. ‘I’ve bought you champagne and dinner today.’
‘That you did,’ I admit. ‘Where are the roses though?’
‘Aw, bollocks. I left them in the shop.’
I lean over and give him a kiss. ‘You’ll make someone a very good husband one day, I’m sure. Now, I hate to admit it, but I’m starting to fade. Do you want to stay the night? The only rule is you shut up about marriage.’
‘Yeah, go on then.’