Breakfast In Bed

by Eleanor Moran

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

TAKE ONE NEWLY SINGLE WOMAN:
At thirty-one, Amber is being bombarded with wedding invitations just as she's collecting her divorce papers - and her bossy best friend has gone one step further and made her chief bridesmaid. It's high time Amber regained control of her life.
ADD A PASSIONATE AND FIERY CELEBRITY COOK:
Amber's joy at landing herself a coveted role in Oscar Retford's kitchen soon fades as she discovers Oscar is as famous for his furious temper and addiction to firing people as he is for the legendary meals he creates.
TURN UP THE HEAT:
But as passions start to run high, and her past catches up with her, it looks like Amber's cooked up a recipe for disaster . . .

Release date: July 21, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

Waking up is the worst; those first fragmented seconds of consciousness where I try to glue the pieces back together, remember
where I am. I don’t just mean physically – the move from a skanky marital home on the outer reaches of the Central line to
a posh pad in Shoreditch has its compensations. It’s more about where I am with a capital I (and yes, I do realise it’s always got a capital I). I’ve gone from smugly oblivious wife to shell-shocked
single in nine gruesome months and I’m not remotely acclimatised. It’s like I’ve been banished to a galaxy far, far away,
without enough warning to pack so much as a spare pair of knickers and a toothbrush.


Enough. One thing I’m fast learning is that self-pity is fatal and on today of all days, there’s no time for it. I propel
myself out of bed, right foot squashing down on a half-melted Kit Kat I vaguely remember wolfing down when I got back from
work in the wee small hours. I peer at the carpet, but not too hard, fervently hoping it’s not an antique. It’s floral and
musty, and could either be a five-pound bargain from a junk shop or lovingly imported from a palace in seventeenth-century
Siam. The thing about living with Milly is that you never quite know if you’ve got an heirloom on your hands.


I’ve got the interview of interviews today, a shot at a job that might provide some comfort for my personal life gaily nose-diving
off a cliff. If I could win a place in Oscar Retford’s kitchen, it’d make the years of dicing carrots and disembowelling poultry
all worthwhile. I childishly cross my fingers as I stand under the shower, trying to resist the expensive unguents that Milly’s
left in there and stick to my carbolic own-brand skin stripper. I don’t know much, but what I do know is that I want this
job more than anyone else has ever wanted a job in the whole history of job-seeking.


I deliberate hard about my outfit, even though I’ve got another four hours to perfect it. I’ve only been here a few weeks,
and my bedroom already looks like a junk shop, piled high with half a house worth’s of possessions. I yank a mirror out from
behind a leaning tower of boxes and critically examine my first attempt. I wish I knew if it was Oscar himself who’d be giving
me the once-over. I’m not a total ho (if I were, I’d be a very, very unsuccessful one, having slept with the grand total of
one man in a decade) but there’s no escaping the fact that making myself pleasing to the eye would be no bad thing. Whereas
if it’s some spiteful female sous chef who’s eaten her own body weight in pastry, she’s not going to be impressed by the Mad Men-esque black shift I’ve just yanked on. Or maybe she would, I think, grabbing the stray saddlebag of flesh that’s sneakily
welded itself to my left buttock. Surely misery’s meant to turn you waif thin? I’ve never been a beanpole, but the fact I’ve
become an even bigger fan of the midnight feast than the Famous Five is wreaking a terrible revenge on my arse.


But is it just my behind that’s on the slide? I stare critically at my face, wondering if it still actually looks like my
face. You know how some women have those amazing cat-like eyes, all seductive and slitty? I fear that what I’ve got are dog’s
eyes, cocker spaniel ones to be more specific. They’re dark brown and hooded, almost black. I’m happy to say that I don’t
have a wet nose and wagging tail to match. Instead, I’ve got one of those buttony ones – nothing elegant, but it’s not one
of those enormous hooters that leave some people’s faces looking like Stonehenge. I’m not a ravishing Vivien Leigh-style beauty,
but I guess being married left me feeling appreciated enough not to worry too much. Now that I’m alone, my face feels like
a question that’s constantly being posed to me. Is this a face that will inspire love again? If Dom met me now, would he feel
the same traffic-stopping pull he did the first time round, or would I be nothing more than a face in a crowd? It’s when I’m
squashing it right up to the mirror in an attempt to establish if my forehead’s got train tracks bisecting it, that Milly
appears, elegantly clad in a pair of rose-pink pyjamas. They appear to have a corsage pinned to them, like she was expecting
someone to invite her to a tea dance at 3 a.m.


‘What in heaven’s name are you doing?’ she asks, quite reasonably.

‘If you didn’t know how old I was, what’d you say? If we were on 10 Years Younger?’


‘What’s 10 Years Younger?’


Milly grew up being shipped around the globe following her father’s naval postings, an upbringing that’s oddly left her more
unworldly than worldly. Many of her expressions are gleaned from the black-and-white films that her mother would watch, mournfully nostalgic for England, and her knowledge of popular culture is riddled with glaring omissions. Our mums were school
friends and every now and then Milly and her mother would escape to England and come to stay with us. I used to look forward
to it for weeks, making charts of how many sleeps were left until Milly arrived and I’d have a fellow girl to square up to
my two older brothers with. Her parents have since retired to some far-flung corner of Scotland, having made sure to set Milly
up with this amazing flat to make up for their extended absence. I want to resent her trustafarian status, but she’s so generous
and lacking in grandeur that I couldn’t begin to. Besides, a lack of financial necessity always strikes me as a mixed blessing:
it must imbue work with a certain pointlessness, however much you slog. Milly’s a case in point: she’s as bright as a shooting
star, but she’s never found her mojo, professionally speaking. She’s been interning at a series of charities for the last
couple of years, but never seems to get past tea-making and on to something more permanent and rewarding.


‘It’s not on TV any more,’ I say, peeling my sweaty cranium off the mirror. ‘It was about people with yellow, tombstone teeth
getting a new life. Now, what d’you think of this as an interview outfit?’ I ask, striking a pose. ‘Close but no cigar?’


‘No, it’s nice,’ she says, head cocked quizzically, blonde curls bouncing pneumatically around her pretty round face like
a cloud of bubbles. They add to that sense that she’s floating, ungrounded – like a sudden gust of wind might snatch her up
and take her away. Before I lived here and I’d come to visit, she sometimes felt to me like a dice, rattling around this cavernous
space never quite rolling her way to a six.


‘Is it too much?’ I ask, yanking up the saddle bag and letting it drop. I wonder how much it weighs. Perhaps it’ll develop a mind of its own and start directing operations from below my
left hip. ‘I just thought womanly might be the way to go if it’s Oscar in the hot seat. They always pick a bloke, so I’ve
got to work any angle I can come up with.’


‘The dress looks great, it’s just … you don’t look very comfortable in it. It’s a bit like it’s wearing you.’

I demonstrate the lift and drop action again, but Milly waves a dismissive hand.

‘You can most definitely carry it off, there’s no worries on that score,’ she continues. ‘It’s more that you look like you’re
wearing a costume.’


I look again, observing myself from a critical distance. Sometimes my whole life feels like a costume I’m wearing, like I’m
stranded at a creepy Halloween party with a load of swingers and no one will call me a taxi. But it doesn’t end, this party,
there’s no going home.


Stop it, I tell myself sharply, there’s nothing creepy about being with Milly. Dear Milly, I’m eternally grateful she’s taken
me in, that I’ve got her to come home to. Not in a muff-tastic lesbian way, you understand, more that if you work the kind
of hours I do, it’s hard to nourish your friendships. Trying to rattle through the last three months in three hours and three
glasses of wine is more like a party game than a meaningful social interaction, so having the day-to-day contact with Milly
is vital in making me feel there’s a life beyond work. Without that, now there’s no Dom, I’m not sure how I’d remember what
intimacy tastes like.


‘Now, can we have a moment for Oscar Retford?’ Milly asks. ‘He’s criminally manly, is he not?’

‘They’re all manly,’ I say cynically, thinking of the raft of megalomaniacs running kitchens the world over. Like the Park Lane hotel I cooked
in, where the coked-up drunkard in charge would think nothing of aiming a skillet at any poor unfortunate who crossed him.
Or the Michelin-star pretender who branded an underling with a hot knife in a fit of pique about a curdled hollandaise sauce
(or a fish soup – whatever it was it was definitely less important than world peace).


‘No, but he’s seriously handsome. I’m sure there’s a thing about him in a Harper’s Bazaar I’ve got. Research can only be good.’


‘You’re right, but I know all the important stuff. Like the fact that he pretty much got Violet their second star single-handed.’

‘I thought it was an Angus Torrence restaurant?’

‘Yeah it was, but it was all down to Oscar.’

Oscar broke away from his media-whore mentor a year or so ago, a man whose cooking has been dwarfed by his multiple endorsements
and television appearances. Torrence wasn’t up for being dumped, not when he’d set Oscar up as the star attraction in his
latest high-profile opening, so a bitter court battle kicked off, with Oscar eventually winning his freedom. The net result
is Ghusto, which he opened a matter of weeks ago. Right now I’m a sous chef (second-in-command with a fleet of junior chefs
to do my bidding) in a charming, terminally unadventurous bistro in leafy Richmond. Getting in at the ground level on a new
opening as hot as this could really move me up to the big league. I’m so determined that I’m going up for a chef de partie
post, a lowly job I haven’t done for a good three years.


‘There’s no harm in knowing the goss too,’ says Milly.

‘You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right,’ I say, quoting When Harry Met Sally, my all-time favourite film.


‘I’ll go and dig it out,’ she says, then pauses, eyeing the chaos that is my bedroom. ‘Darling, do you want a hand with all
of this? If we blitz it, it’ll be vaguely habitable in no time.’


‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I mutter, ashamed of the squalor. It’s not like me at all: my cooking station is like a laboratory, oils
and spices lined up with scientific precision. I need to start accepting that this is where I live now. ‘I’ll do it, I promise.’


‘I’m not being critical.’

‘No, no, I know you’re not.’

She gives me a sympathetic smile, then heads off to find the magazine. I hope it’s going to be OK going from best friends
to landlady and tenant. It’s not her fault, it’s not like she’s suddenly metamorphosed into Rigsby from Rising Damp, it’s more my own paranoia. I cast a guilty look at the scene of the Kit Kat crime, and then turn my attention to the boxes.
‘Living room’ says one, and I take a reluctant step in its direction. As luck would have it, the first thing I pull out is
a five-year-old holiday photo of Dom and me in an orange pedalo, grinning our stupid, naive heads off. It feels as spiky as
a porcupine and I drop it back in the box so hard that the picture underneath shatters (my dad in a chef’s hat, brandishing
a chicken breast on a skewer), splinters of glass flying off in all directions.


‘Oh, fuck it!’ I shout, way more furious than I should be. Milly comes rushing back in.

‘Darling, what is it?’

I point into the box, trying not to cry, and she gives me the kind of all-enveloping hug that only a best friend can administer.

‘I’m sorry to be such a grumpy self-obsessed old cow,’ I say into her shoulder.


‘Don’t apologise, you’re not made of Teflon! Anyone would be feeling this way right now.’

‘I hate him, Milly.’

‘Do you actually hate him though?’


‘Mostly,’ I say, ‘but not as much as I hate her.’

‘Oh God, we all hate her. I wish it was olden times and we could put her in the stocks and throw rotten tomatoes at her.’

‘Tomatoes are way too good for her, think of the vitamins. Eggs, rotten eggs.’

‘Mmm, lovely,’ giggles Milly. ‘They’d stick to those God-awful highlights.’

I force myself to smile, to pretend it’s just a momentary blip. I know she loves me and that’s why I want to protect her from
the full force of my woe. Milly’s never even had a live-in boyfriend, let alone a husband, and I don’t want to scare her with
the knowledge of quite how hazardous loving deeply can prove to be. That however much you think you know someone, the sky
can still turn from bright blue to pitch black without any kind of extreme weather warning.


‘Forget about her. Look what I found,’ says Milly, producing Harper’s Bazaar with a flourish. ‘And it’s far, far more revealing than we could’ve dreamed of.’


‘Show me,’ I say, grabbing it off her, eager for distraction. I’ve only seen a few grainy internet images of Oscar up to now.

‘Admit it, he’s hot,’ says Milly.

‘I guess,’ I say, scrutinising the image.

Oscar’s been photographed in his kitchen, clad in his chef’s whites, arms folded. His gaze is direct, a challenge and a threat
– he wants you to know that he’s lord of all he surveys. Those piercing eyes are an intense blue, screwed right down deep in
his face, an unexpected contrast with the shock of chestnut hair that springs from his scalp. He doesn’t look much more than
forty, and yet his hair is shot through with a couple of lightning bolts of grey, like he’s standing tall right in the eye
of the storm. His face is angular and sharp, every line of it definitive. This is not a face that wants to pose any kind of
question. As a package it definitely works, and yet it almost repels me. Even flat on the page I feel like he wants to dominate
and control.


‘And there he is en famille,’ adds Milly, pointing to a paparazzi shot of Oscar at what looks like a garden party. He’s flanked by an impossibly groomed
blonde of indeterminate age, plus her teenaged mini-me, who’s brandishing an enormous Chloé handbag like it’s a deadly weapon.


‘Ooh, actually it’s way more complicated than that. Listen.’ Milly begins reading aloud. ‘“His surprise separation two years
ago from his coolly elegant wife of twenty years caused shock waves throughout their close-knit group of culinary movers and
shakers. Not only were the couple said to have one of the most envied relationships in London, but their domestic partnership
extended into the kitchen, with Lydia running front of house for her multi-starred husband. Her move to Ghusto alongside her
estranged spouse only goes to prove the depth of their connection. Some whispers suggest a reunion is something of an inevitability,
not least for the sake of their mutually adored daughter, Tallulah.”’


‘How does anyone do that?’ I ask, utterly nonplussed. ‘How can they possibly stand being around each other? They’ve got to being doing a Burton
and Taylor, haven’t they?’


‘Maybe they really do just still get on, just not in that way.’


A shudder runs through me as I imagine having to see Dom every day. I’m dreading the thought of laying eyes on him again,
even though the idea of never laying eyes on him again feels equally wrong (a usefully unsquarable circle, I’m sure you’ll
agree). We’ve finally got a buyer for our shoebox zoo of a flat, and we’re supposedly only weeks from exchange. Once that’s
gone through, there’ll be nothing left to bind us, no trace of the last ten years bar a few photo albums and the odd present
that I haven’t been able to purge. Like the original 1950s food mixer Dom gave me for our third Christmas together. He always
came up with a genius gift, thoughtful and specific, while I seemed to find myself running round the only shop left open on
Christmas Eve at midnight, having got stranded at work. ‘Merry Christmas, darling. I know there’s nothing you long for more
than a bejewelled festive waistcoat from Shepherd’s Bush market.’


‘But they must’ve been crazy about each other once,’ I say. ‘Surely having some horrible, cheap, knock-off version of what
they once had must be gruesome? Every time you saw the other person, you’d be reminded of what you’d lost.’ My voice has gone
all high-pitched and screechy, and I grab my make-up bag to give myself something to do.


‘Of course you still miss him,’ says Milly quietly.

‘I don’t want to miss him, not after what he did,’ I say, defensive. ‘But you’re right, I do.’ I perch unsteadily on a box,
brandishing a lipstick like a deadly weapon. ‘I miss such stupid, pathetic things …’


‘Like what?’

‘How he’d make me breakfast in bed on Sundays, with proper tea you need a strainer for. Or how he covers Topsy’s ears when
people say Labradors only live for ten years, like she gets it.’


‘Topsy?’

‘His mum’s dog. Ignore me, it’s all nonsense. I’ll be fine. I’m sure Robert Pattinson’s getting bored of that girl’s neck;
it’s only a matter of time before he turns up.’ I give myself a mental shake, force myself to putty my puffy face with foundation.
No one’s giving a cry baby a job in a top-class kitchen, that’s for sure.


‘Amber, feel free to tell me I’m a blithering idiot, but are you sure, are you absolutely sure, it’s dead and buried?’

I refuse to tear my eyes from the mirror, trowelling determinedly instead.

‘Yes,’ I tell her (and me) firmly. ‘How can you ever come back from an affair? Every time … every time he touched me I’d be
thinking about him touching her. Every time he left his phone out I’d be sneaking a look. Once the trust’s gone … Look at
my parents.’


‘But they’re still together!’

‘Yeah, but they had three kids to factor in. And Dad’s a bloody saint.’

I look fondly at the smashed up photo, smiling to myself at Dad’s awful eighties hair. I think it must’ve been taken at a
barbecue for my brother Ralph’s twelfth birthday. I can vaguely remember begging him to let me have a go on the grill, even
though I was barely big enough to see over the top. Dad should’ve been the chef, not me, but he stayed at home looking after
us kids so that Mum could conquer the world (or at least conquer NatWest’s human resources department).


‘Mils, let’s talk about something else. Honestly, I’m boring myself. Are you going on another date with the vet with the dodgy
brown moccasins?’


Three dates have been had so far, and Milly is trying to work out if her antipathy is a knee-jerk response to the shoes, or
evidence of a deeper incompatibility. But before the cost-benefit analysis can begin in earnest, my phone shrills out, an
unfamiliar number flashing up on the screen.


‘Hello?’

‘Is that Amber Price?’ says a clipped female voice.

‘It is,’ I agree, but she’s carried on talking over me.

‘You’re due to see us at two p.m., but something’s come up. Can you get here as soon as is physically possible?’

What would be physically impossible? Flying, I suppose.

‘Um, yes, sure, of course. I’m only twenty minutes away if I scoot … I’ve actually got a scooter,’ I add stupidly, in case
she thinks I’m using it as a verb. Not that it matters. Oh God, this interview’s already a disaster and it hasn’t even begun.
I mime leaving to Milly, spraying a haze of perfume at myself and making myself cough.


‘We look forward to it,’ she replies, briskly replacing the receiver.

I take a last look at my ill-judged dress and jam my helmet on my head, trying not to worry about the potential for looking
like the sixth member of the Jackson Five.


It takes me ages to find a parking spot, so I arrive even more hot and bothered than I started out. I afford myself a five-second
pause, taking a peek through the glass frontage at the restaurant within. It’s like looking onto a stage, the brightly lit
cream room offset by a zinc bar that sweeps across the back wall. The walls are punctuated by the kind of modern art that
is either absurd or genius, depending on your point of view (I’m from Stockport, so take a wild guess which way I’m leaning),
and the glass tables look like they’ve been stolen from a 1920s Parisian salon. My cheap as chips dress feels like it might
disintegrate the second it enters such a temple of chic, but nevertheless I force myself over the threshold. I feel like I’ve
entered a war zone. Waiters are tearing around setting up lunch tables, chefs are hurrying in and out through the double doors
of the kitchen and a cleaner is randomly mopping, threatening to upend the lot of them with every stroke. Of course it’s frantic,
but there’s something more I’m picking up. There’s a top note of fear, a mania about the way they’re working. I approach a
grim-faced waiter and tentatively put a hand on his arm as he races past.


‘I’ve got an interview?’

As he turns towards me, I hear that same cut-glass voice behind me.

‘And you must be Amber.’

Lydia’s every bit as picture perfect as she looked on the page. She’s no natural blonde, but her dye job’s so good that you
instantly forgive it. She’s got that hard-bodied look which screams bi-weekly private Pilates instructor, and is wearing the
kind of ostentatiously bright flowery dress that you can only get away with if there’s nothing to hide (e.g. she has no worries
about looking like a two-seater on discount at DFS). She’s hard to age (late thirties, early forties?), neutrally beautiful
in a way that makes her face seem almost mask-like. I get the sense that she’s got giving nothing away down to an art form.


‘I am, yes,’ I say, thrusting out my hand, praying it’s not too sticky. She looks towards the kitchen, using her turn back
to cast a sweeping look right across me. An illogical spike of shame hits me, a feeling that she can see into my deepest darkest
recesses. How ridiculous is that, particularly because if we’re starting with divorce, it’s a stain we share.


‘I’ll go and retrieve Oscar,’ she says, leaving me marooned in the maelstrom. But before she’s halfway across the floor, he
comes barrelling through the swing doors, whites doused in blood. Maybe they moved up my appointment because he murdered his
11.30? Lydia puts a hand up to stop him, but he ploughs on.


‘Yeah, I can see she’s here,’ he says over his shoulder, extending a calloused hand in my direction. ‘Come on then,’ he says,
jerking his head towards the bar. ‘I haven’t got long.’


He cuts right through the chaos of the restaurant, seemingly oblivious. I try not to scuttle, determined not to seem cringing
and intimidated. You have to have way bigger balls than any man to survive in a place like this. I watch his retreating back
as I speed after him. He’s shorter than his picture implied, compact and muscular. There’s something animalistic about the
way he moves across the space, a jungle confidence that makes sense of the fear I’m smelling around me. I don’t think I like
him very much.


Oscar effortlessly swings himself up onto a bar stool and I try to do the same. Unfortunately I miss, boomeranging off the
side, before sheepishly pulling myself onto it. I would make the world’s worst cowboy.


‘Drink?’ he asks.


‘Um, water would be lovely.’

‘Really pushing the boat out there …’ he looks down at the CV he’s holding, ‘Amber,’ he finishes, giving me an unexpected
half-smile.


‘Can’t see you hiring me if I ask for a tequila shot,’ I say, immediately wondering why I’ve been so cheeky.

‘Tequila I could forgive; bottle of 1974 Petrus and you’d be out on your ear,’ he shoots back, turning those intense blue
eyes on me. And no, I don’t fancy him. I like goofy and shambolic – the kind of men who don’t know they’re sexy. Marmite men,
basically. I feel a little pang, momentarily pricked by the thought of Dom’s tight springy curls. It’s a Jew-fro, there’s
no getting away from it, and it’s not like he’s got an epically handsome face to compensate. I think his gangly awkwardness
has propelled him through life, it’s what made him such a great maître d’. He’s had to use raw charm to get everything he’s
got, me included, and he’s got high from the challenge. Maybe Rachel came along when he needed a fix.


‘At least I know what not to ask for on round two.’

‘It’s lunch service, so you can forget about a second round,’ he says, all twinkle extinguished. ‘So tell me about,’ he looks
down again, ‘Byron’s,’ tone nose-diving at the very prospect of my response.


‘It’s one of the best places in Richmond,’ I say, and he looks at me like it’s an oxymoron. ‘I’ve been there a couple of years
now, and I like to think that I’ve shaken up the kitchen quite a bit.’ Forget the oxymorons, I’m the only moron around here.
He’s actually looking round the room, he’s so bored. ‘I’ve radicalised the rota of suppliers we use, focused on getting the best of the best—’


‘Genius,’ he says. ‘So apart from kicking the supermarkets into touch, what else have you done? What do you actually cook?
Actually scrub that,’ he says, waving a dismissive hand. ‘You probably cook risotto primavera for twats in four-by-fours.’
He leans in, intense. ‘What would you like to cook? If I turned over my kitchen, what would you do? And by the way, I’m not going to,’ he adds, glaring at me.


I look around the room feeling faintly desperate. I so want to unlock him, to prove to him that I’m the person he needs. Why,
I don’t know, considering what an obnoxious arse he is. Still, I can’t bear to be defeated, not ever, but certainly not now.
If only my brain wasn’t pickled in aspic.


‘Um,’ I start, rather brilliantly. He’s staring at me, hawk-like. ‘The thing is, that’s the last thing I’d want you to do.’
He shakes his head in disbelief, but I plunge on. ‘And I’ll tell you why: the whole reason I’m here is to try and get the
chance to learn from you. What you’ve done with all those off-plan cuts of meat is incredible. That pig’s blood ice cream
you’ve got in your book, it should be disgusting, but it’s amazing. You’ve turned offal into an art form. Me and my …’ I breathe
in. ‘I saved up to take my friend to Violet for … her … birthday and it was honestly the best meal I’ve ever eaten. So if
you tried to leave the kitchen, I’d hold on to your ankles and beg you to stay.’


‘Lovely image.’

‘I try.’

He tilts his face and considers me. ‘You’re either a complete bullshit artist or my number-one fan. Not planning on nailing
my feet to the kitchen floor to keep me there, are you?’


‘You’re not a goose!’


‘Sorry?’

‘Isn’t that what they do for foie gras?’ Shut up, Amber.

Lydia sails up before he’s had a chance to form a response to my idiotic remark. I’m going to be sautéing scallops in the
suburbs for the rest of my natural life, I just know it.


‘You need to wrap this up,’ she says, quietly authoritative. ‘The next candidate’s here.’

‘What I need is to get back to the kitchen,’ he replies churlishly.


‘Then you shouldn’t have over-run,’ replies Lydia tartly, casting me a look that makes it abundantly clear who’s to blame.

My eyes flick back and forth, analysing the verbal ping pong. How fascinating is the dynamic between other couples? Human
beings are fundamentall