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End right now?
Serenade outside her Gothick tower?
Rapunzel, Rapunzel – I have something to say.
Did David Bowie say anything on the matter? Hang on, I’ll just do a Google search to find out.
But what will she say?
What will she say?
And will she say yes?
It’s raining. It’s pouring. It’s bucketing down cats, dogs and hailstones on a day when really it shouldn’t. It is the first day of spring and it also happens to be Juliette Celia Stonehill’s baby blessing. Her daddy is pissed off because he hired an awning, paid caterers, organized everything impeccably but forgot to even hope the weather would be fine. Her mummy is in a bit of a flap because she doesn’t know quite how to position sixty people on the ground floor of a Highgate terrace house.
‘Sally!’ Thea pipes up. ‘Brainwave – you, Richard and Baby Ju stand on the landing at the top of the stairs, godparents on the steps below, then close family for the few steps down and then we’ll all shove and scrum around the lower steps or out in the hallway.’
‘Genius!’ Sally exclaims. ‘But – oh.’
‘What?’
‘Come with me a sec – you stand at the bottom there. Now, look up at me standing at the top from different angles and check you can’t see up my skirt.’
‘Great knees, Sally – but that’s all you’re giving me.’
‘Cool, great. But – oh. Do you think it’s rude to ask everyone to take their shoes off – the carpets are new?’
‘Yes – but no one would put it past you to.’
‘OK, everyone! Everyone. We’re having the ceremony on the stairs and can you all take your shoes off, please. Pass it on. Pass it on, Thea – can you spread the word?’
When Saul Mundy had split from Emma all those years ago, one of the things that upset her most was the fact that he didn’t cry. One of the things that made the ordeal easier for Saul was an inkling at the time that Emma was actually charging her waterworks with a torrent not entirely commensurate with her distress. He’d since written a couple of pieces as Barefaced Bloke on the whole subject of men and tears. He’d focused on the tears shed and embraces shared by grown men when Spurs lost to Arsenal in the last minute. Another time, he claimed that contrary to popular belief, heterosexual blokes cry frequently and easily. The perfect trigger of Bruce Springsteen songs, for example. Whisky, in certain amounts. Raging Bull and Chariots of Fire. Wrestling with IKEA shelving. Getting pubic hair caught in a zip – not necessarily one’s own. Zip, that is.
Saul himself did not subscribe to stiff-upper-lipness yet he did not cry often. Recently, Springsteen had got to him. And Spurs losing, of course. But that day, the first day of spring, in his socks at the Stonehills’ house in Highgate, he did. It was as if all the most cherished components that made up his world were colliding – yet on impact they were cloaking him in cloud-soft warmth and affirmation.
Life is really, really good. I am thirty-five years old and that baby girl is so tiny and beautiful. And her very existence makes sense of all the things we take for granted and don’t bother to think about or don’t treasure and acknowledge enough. Sex is fun but baby making is what it’s all about. And my friend Richard made that little Juliette. And he wasn’t a friend until I met him through the woman I love. And I met him because she’d given him the jacket I’d lent her up on Primrose Hill one November afternoon that seems an age ago.
‘Saul?’ Thea whispers. ‘You OK?’ He turns to look at her and nods and grins with eyes that are bloodshot from the pressure of welling tears; his nose crackling with snot. Thea looks simultaneously embarrassed but moved. ‘Shh!’ she hushes because Saul’s sniff makes heads turn away from the action on the stairs. She hands him a tissue, which Alice has passed her with a nudge and a raised eyebrow.
‘Soft git!’ Alice whispers carefully to Thea. Thea giggles.
‘Saul,’ Thea finds him knocking back champagne as though it’s lemonade, ‘you OK?’
‘Fine!’ he declares. ‘Thirsty.’
‘Were you OK?’ Thea asks him tenderly, putting her arms around him. ‘Back there?’
‘Back there?’ Saul frowns, feigning confusion.
Thea tips her head to one side and regards him quizzically.
‘Champagne?’ he offers.
‘Piss off!’ Thea retorts. ‘You know champagne and I don’t mix. Evil stuff.’
‘You would think that after a lifetime as a hack, he could take his drink by now,’ Thea apologized to Sally an hour later while Saul swayed around the hallway, peering at framed photos unsteadily.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Sally laughed, ‘take him home and put him to bed with a bucket nearby.’
‘Thanks,’ said Thea, rolling her eyes, ‘Mark and Alice are giving us a lift.’
‘Thea, is everything OK there?’ Sally lowered her voice. ‘Alice seems a little – I don’t know. Distant? Preoccupied?’
Thea thought for a moment. ‘She’s fine,’ she said, ‘she’s Alice. Mark’s been abroad a lot and she’s feeling a little – needy.’
‘We need to make tracks,’ Alice said, her coat already on, ‘Mark’s got to go into the sodding office.’
‘You could stay? Cab it home later?’ Thea suggested.
‘I think I’ll just catch up on a little work myself,’ Alice said flatly. ‘If you two still want a lift, we’re going now.’
‘Bye Alice, bye Mark, bye Thea,’ Sally kissed them all and waved them off from her doorstep. ‘Bye Saul. Oops – easy there, tiger. Christ, is he all right?’
‘Fuck bollocks, my knee. Ouch. Wank,’ Saul fulminated in a stagger towards Mark’s very nice Lexus.
Although Thea focused on Saul for the journey over to Crouch End, noting with alarm a green-tinged pallor permeate his face by the top of Coolhurst Road, she was also able to observe her best friend gazing out of the window in a quiet world of her own, a downward sigh to her shoulders. Just then, she wished she was sitting with her arms around Alice, rather than serving as a buttress to the slumping Saul. Thea also noticed that Mark drove with deliberate attentiveness to the route and road sense, thereby counteracting any chance for chat.
He’s probably just worried Saul will throw up on the cream leather, Thea told herself, or thinking about the hassles awaiting him at the office, perhaps.
Thea put Saul in her bed with a bucket at the side and a jug of water and a packet of Nurofen on the bedside table.
‘I love you, Thea,’ he slurred while she bustled around him, undressing him and plumping pillows, ‘I really love you and want to get you for ever.’
‘Now, let’s go and have a pee, yes?’ she said in a matronly manner. ‘Come along.’
‘I don’t want to have a pee,’ he mumbled petulantly.
‘Come on,’ she said as she hauled him through to the bathroom and pulled down his boxers, ‘have a nice pee.’
‘I don’t want to have a pee,’ said Saul sulkily while it gushed out with Thea’s guidance.
‘Now let’s get you into bed.’
‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ Saul