Here's Looking at You Read online

  HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU

  MHAIRI MCFARLANE

  For Helen

  A school friend who’s more like a sister

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Rise Park Comprehensive, East London, 1997

  The last day of term

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Mr Elton John!’

  Gavin Jukes, in huge pipe-cleaner spectacles and a duck costume, strode out to deafening cheers. Well, strode out as well you can in canary yellow foam feet: a jaunty waddle. He sat down at the keyboard – with some difficulty due to the padded tail – and started bashing noiselessly at a keyboard, carolling along with ‘Are You Ready For Love’.

  Standing in the stage wings, Aureliana adjusted the sash on her 1970s peach polyester maternity gown with knife-pleat skirt, and touched a hand to her hair-sprayed bouffant.

  She took a deep, shaky breath, inhaling that school sports hall odour of tennis shoe rubber, Impulse body spray and ripe adolescent hormones.

  The leavers’ Mock Rock was a simple but wildly successful formula: dress up as a pop star, the sillier the outfit the better, and mime along to an old hit.

  And thank God, the crowd loved Gavin.

  According to all witless graffiti that tackled the topic of Gavin Jukes, he was ‘a massive gayer’. And yet he’d fearlessly chosen to impersonate a flamboyant homosexual singer, to this rapturous reception?

  Perhaps Aureliana Alessi, the weirdo who ate whiffy lasagne in Tupperware for lunch instead of Mighty White sandwiches, might also finally be laughed with, rather than at.

  It was as if school had been a pantomime, with everyone merely playing roles, and villains and heroes alike came on to take their bows together at the end.

  Even Lindsay and Cara, Aureliana’s most committed antagonists, dressed in minis and platform boots as Agnetha and Anni-Frid from ABBA, had studiously left her alone today.

  Their coven members were swigging contraband ‘Minkoff’ brand vodka from bottles of Happy Shopper cola and watching her with their heavily Rimmelled eyes, but keeping their distance. Aureliana wouldn’t have minded a nip of something herself.

  Maybe the Mock Rock magic came from the fact that popular older kids were already like rock stars to the younger. Apart from James Fraser. He was like a rock star to everyone. Aureliana glanced over at him and told herself again that this would be fine because she’d be on stage with James Fraser.

  James Fraser. The mere music of saying his name made her stomach lining dissolve.

  She’d been skiving PE in the library a week ago, re-reading a Sweet Valley High book, when he’d approached her.

  ‘Hi Aureliana. Aren’t you meant to be in PE?’

  It was the most extraordinary moment.

  James Fraser, God of Rise Park, was for the first time speaking to her. To her.

  He knew her name. Not just the ‘Italian Galleon’ or ‘Pavagrotty’ ones.

  He knew her timetable?

  He smiled a lazy smile. Aureliana had never seen him this close up before.

  It was like meeting your idol – all those hours spent obsessing over their every detail and suddenly confronted with them in the walking, talking flesh. And what flesh. That incredible white lit-from-within skin, like a church candle flame burning low and glowing through the wax. The oil-spill shiny black hair and the purple-blue eyes.

  She’d actually tried to draw him in her Forever Friends diary once, using felt tips. It didn’t work, he ended up a ringer for Shakin’ Stevens. She reverted back to the usual hearts and flowers doodles, and the legend ‘AA 4 JF 4EVA’.

  ‘Don’t blame you. PE’s such crap.’

  Aureliana made a sort of disbelieving honk noise and nodded vigorously. Sporty James secretly hated PE too?! This was proof. They were meant to be.

  ‘I was wondering, the Mock Rock. I thought doing Freddie Mercury and the opera singer could be funny? A duet, me and you? Fancy it?’

  Aureliana nodded. He’d used the phrase ‘me and you’. Fantasies had become reality. Right then he could’ve said I’m planning on jumping out of that window. Doesn’t look a long way down, me and you, fancy it? and she’d have followed.

  It was only in the days after that she pondered the wisdom of going on stage as one of Rise Park’s most fat, foreign and bullied, next to its sex god pin-up. What if all the worst bitches crucified her for it? But, she’d reasoned she’d never see any of them again after today, and they wouldn’t wreck James Fraser’s big moment.

  She thought James might want to rehearse but he’d never suggested it, and she didn’t want to look pushy. He knew what he was doing, he always did.

  Perhaps they should’ve conferred on wardrobe though. Aureliana thought the deal was that they went all out. She’d backcombed her hair into something approximating a soprano’s coif and plastered her face with pan stick. James, from what she could see, had only drawn on a cad’s pencil moustache. But then she didn’t know what she expected – he was unlikely to do a frontless leotard and stick-on chest wig.

  Gavin was taking his bows. Oh, God. This was it. Here goes. James ambled over to her side and she’d never felt more important or special.

  The Mock Rock’s MC, Mr Towers, cued the music. Dry ice gushed out with a soft hiss, and the opening bars of the ‘Barcelona’ track swelled.

  They walked onto the stage to deafening cheers and applause. Aureliana gazed at the gallery of delighted faces, getting an exhilarating glimpse into what it was like to be James Fraser. To feel that much excitement and goodwill reflected back at the very sight of you.

  She turned to him, to exchange a nerv
ous grin of solidarity before the singing started, but James was giving her a funny smirk and backing away into the wings again.

  It was a green Praline Triangle that got her first, glancing off her cheek and arcing onto the stage floor. She felt a small pain in her stomach as another missile hit its target, like a rubber band being snapped against her body. A purple one with the hazelnut sailed past her head and she ducked out of the way, only to catch a toffee penny on the chin.

  And then came a hurricane of Quality Street, as the air filled with a blizzard of shiny, multi-coloured shrapnel. Mr Towers turned the music off and started shouting to try to restore order, but all in vain.

  Aureliana looked over in desperation at James. He was bent nearly double with laughter. His friend Laurence had one arm slung round his best mate’s head, the other arm busy with a fist-pumping triumphal gesture.

  Lindsay and Cara had tears of mirth streaming down their maquillaged faces, holding on to each other for support.

  It took a moment for Aureliana to accept what was happening.

  That this had been planned from the start. That someone had gone to the trouble of buying dozens of those big tins of sweets and handed them round the audience. That they had been given a cue to start lobbing them, and for everyone else, this was the extra helping of mock in the grand finale.

  Slowly, it dawned on her that her crush might not have been as secret as she thought. This she found even more humiliating than being at the centre of the confectionery tornado.

  She could see Gavin trying to remonstrate with them all from underneath his duck bill hat.

  James Fraser was clapping and he uttered a three-syllable, single word, as he looked at her, enunciating clearly. Elephant.

  Aureliana had long ago steeled herself not to cry under pressure. Not only did she not want to give her tormentors the satisfaction, she’d figured out the less reaction you gave bullies, the faster they lost interest. She saw no reason to break that rule now and start weeping in front of a vast and hostile audience.

  Unfortunately, at that moment of dignified resolve, she was hit with a Coconut Éclair in the left eye, and they both started streaming anyway.

  1

  Anna stepped out of the stark autumn chill and squeezed into the steamy warmth of the restaurant. It was buzzing with conversations and pounding music, set at the weekend has started pitch.

  ‘Table for two please!’ Anna bellowed, feeling that flutter of nerves and anticipation, tinged with scepticism. When it came to crap dates, she had her proficiency badge.

  Thanks to practice, Anna knew to choose lively and not-overtly-romantic venues to take the pressure off. And the trend for sharer plates that arrived at different times was a gift. With the traditional three courses, there was nothing worse than a date going badly, and knowing you were locked in the deadening back-and-forth of really and where are you from originally until the just an espresso for me, please.

  Of course, you could simply go for a drink and cut out the dining. However, Anna vetoed alcohol and no food since an incident where she woke up at the end of the Central Line with only a patchy memory of how she got there, holding a plastic pineapple ice-bucket and a phone bearing eleven texts of increasing incoherence and pornography.

  The intimidatingly young and cool waitress took her name and ushered her down into the dark basement.

  Anna stood in the three-deep crush at the bar among the mouthy straight-from-work suits, wondering if tonight would be the night.

  By ‘the night’, she meant the one she fantasised would be mentioned in the best man’s speech in the splendour of The Old Rectory, as he stood in a shaft of sunshine splintered through mullioned windows.

  For those of you that don’t know, Neil met Anna on an internet date. I’m told he was attracted to her sparkling sense of humour and the fact she’d got him a drink without being asked. (Pause for weak laughter.)

  She eventually part-screeched and part-semaphored an order for herself and her date, and found a corner to loiter in.

  Honestly, she remonstrated with herself, an internet date is basically an interview for a shag. Isn’t that pressure enough without mentally spooling forward to imaginary nuptials? Anna wasn’t at all obsessed with getting married, per se; she was simply keen to find the person who mattered. She was thirty-two and the bastard was taking his time. So much so that she suspected he’d got lost en route and accidentally married someone else.

  She scanned the throng for a ghostly echo of the face she’d seen in the pictures. Not only was it dark, but Anna was used to a disconnect between the profile photographs and reality. In her online profile, she’d tried to balance out a few flattering snaps against a realistic sample to avoid the horrific prospect of her date’s face dropping when she arrived. Men, she guessed, thought more pragmatically: once they had you in the room, their charisma could take over.

  ‘Hello, are you Anna?’

  She managed to turn ninety degrees to see a cheerful, inoffensive-looking man with thinning brown hair grinning at her delightedly in the murk. He was wearing a Berghaus jacket. Fell-walking wear on someone who wasn’t fell walking. Hmmm.

  On first impressions, Anna wasn’t too sure about Neil’s dress sense. I’m pleased to say she chose his outfit today, or he’d probably have said his vows in Gore-Tex …

  He looked approachable and trustworthy, however, smiling his gap-toothed smile. Not a problem for her; Anna was not the slightest bit fussed about pretty boys. In fact, she was positively suspicious of them.

  ‘I’m Neil,’ he said, shaking her hand and going for a peck on the cheek.

  Anna proffered the spare Negroni she was holding.

  ‘What’s that?’ Neil said.

  ‘It’s gin and Campari. A favourite drink from my homeland.’

  ‘I’m a beer man, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anna withdrew it and felt foolish.

  Chrissake, wouldn’t you drink it to be polite? she thought. Then: maybe this is something we’ll laugh about eventually.

  Apparently Anna was shocked to discover Neil didn’t drink cocktails and he made a great first impression by disappearing off in pursuit of a beer. Start as you mean to go on eh, Neil? (Pause for more weak laughter.)

  Anna knocked back her Negroni and quickly made inroads with the second. At that moment, as ’80s Madonna hammered in her ears, she was Singlehood In London, distilled. It was all too familiar a feeling for her, experiencing intense loneliness in a room so crowded it must be nearing a fire regulation risk, feeling as if life was happening elsewhere. Right when she was supposedly in the beating heart at the centre of everything.

  No! Positive thinking. Anna repeated the mantra she’d rehearsed a thousand times: how many happy couples trot out a dinner party origins tale about how they didn’t fancy each other at first? Or even like each other?

  She didn’t want to be that woman bearing a checklist, always finding that suitors fell short in some respect or another. As if you were measuring space for a new fridge and moaning about the compromise in the dimensions of the ice-box.

  Plus, it hadn’t taken her many internet dates to realise that the There You Are thunderbolt she’d so craved simply didn’t exist. As her mum always said, you have to rub the sticks to get the spark.

  ‘Sorry, a few of those and I’d be out for the count. Falling-down juice,’ Neil said, returning with his Birra Moretti. Anna wanted him to be nice and this to be fun with every fibre of her being.

  ‘Yes, I’ll probably wish I’d followed your example tomorrow,’ Anna shouted, over the music, and Neil smiled, making Anna feel she could make this work through sheer force of will.

  Neil was a writer for a business and technology magazine and seemed, as per their previous communications, the kind of decent, personable and reliable sort who you’d fully expect to have a wife, kids and a shed.

  They’d spoken only briefly online. Anna had banned the prolonged woo-by-electronic-billet-doux since the hugely painful disappointmen
t of Scottish Tom the author, whose wit, charm and literary allusions she fell hard for, over a course of months. She’d started to live for the ping of the new message alert. She was halfway to in love by the time they finally planned to meet up, when he apologetically disclosed a) a spell in Rampton Secure Hospital and b) a ‘sort of wife’. After that, Anna changed her sort of Gmail address.

  As the alcohol took effect, she found herself laughing at Neil’s tales about the ‘rubber chicken’ speaker circuit and shyster make-a-million industry gurus.

  By the time they got to the table and over-ordered soak-up-the-booze-mattresses like meatballs, calamari and pizza, Anna was telling herself that maybe Neil was exactly the kind of solidly plausible candidate she needed to take a chance on.

  ‘Anna isn’t a very Italian name?’ Neil asked, as they both prodded battered hoops of squid and dragged them through a small pot of aioli.

  ‘It’s short for Aureliana. I changed it after school. Too … flowery, I suppose,’ she said, cupping a hand underneath her fork as the squid made a late bid to get back to the sea. ‘I’m not very flowery really.’

  ‘Hah no. I can see that,’ Neil said, which seemed a trifle presumptuous.

  Her free hand involuntarily moved to her hair, which was in the usual messy knot. Perhaps she should’ve done more with it. And added make-up beyond reddish tinted lip balm, applied in haste while on the Tube. Start as you mean to go on, she always reasoned. No point pretending to be a dolly-bird type and disappointing him later.

  ‘The pork and fennel meatballs are the best variety, by the way,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve tried them all and can confirm.’

  ‘Have you been here a lot?’ Neil said mildly, and Anna squirmed a little.

  ‘A fair amount. With friends as well as dates.’

  ‘It’s OK. We’re in our thirties. You don’t need to pretend to be the blushing ingénue with me,’ he said, and Anna found something rather dislikeable in his pointing out her discomfort. Although maybe it was merely a slightly inept attempt to put her at ease.

  Conversation stalled amid a loud Prince track, one of the ones where he went squeaky and frantic about wanting to filth a lady.

  ‘I’m actually poly,’ Neil said.