Here's Looking at You Page 31

  ‘How’s Finn taking it?’

  Eva wiped at her nose with the cuff of his cardigan.

  ‘I told him it was never going to work between us, long-term. He understands that.’

  James wondered what she’d told Finn when she moved in with him. When he and Eva started dating, he recalled a friend of hers, Victoria, saying to him in a tone that was aiming for playful and fell slightly short: ‘What you learn with Eva is, there’s what she says and then there’s what she does. If you don’t expect the two to match up, you’ll be fine.’

  He’d told Eva this and she’d snorted that Victoria had a crush on him and she was ‘a bit of a bore’, but James couldn’t recall Eva inviting her to anything after that. It struck James that when you’re most in need of character references for the person you’ve met, everyone goes silent, or risks ex-communication.

  But he mustn’t let what had happened make him cynical. The whole point of learning from his recent experiences was to try to be less so. Eva was his wife and she wanted to try again. He wasn’t Laurence. Love had to be selfless and forgiving sometimes.

  Eva wasn’t moving back in straight away. He’d take the house off the market, she’d stay at Sara’s, and they’d meet and talk until they were ready for a full reconciliation.

  And if she ever, ever messed him around, they would be over. She solemnly understood that. In some ways, James told himself, he was safer than many in terms of his wife cheating. She’d spent that credit already. She wouldn’t dare do it again and imagine he’d take her back a second time.

  Today she’d asked him to go for lunch at the Roebuck in Hampstead. Eva arrived with a bright green Cambridge satchel full of Homes & Gardens, largely ignoring her lunch in favour of rifling through the shiny pages. She was going for an androgynous look lately, with flat lace-up brogues and slim-fit trousers.

  When James asked why the special interest in armoires and Persian rugs, Eva explained she had a budget to buy a piece of furniture from her parents.

  ‘Isn’t it strange to get you a “well done for going back to your husband” gift?’ he said, uncurling a piece of crackling on his pork belly.

  ‘That’s not what it is. They know I’ve been through a rough time.’

  ‘You’ve been through a rough time?’ He screwed his face up.

  ‘We both have. But I’m their little girl.’

  After lunch, they went on to drift round the kind of shudderingly expensive interiors boutique where everything was glass, chalky dove grey or flaky yellowing-white. A phantom world where only items of exquisite paleness existed. It was lucky for Luther that he co-ordinated. But then, that’s why he’d been chosen.

  A small Baby Boden-clad boy in box-fresh Kickers, walking like a wind-up toy, bumbled past James, his Spanish-looking mother in close pursuit. He had her coal-black hair and olive skin. When Anna had kids they’d look Mediterranean. There was no way those Italian genes were buckling to the pasty British colourway.

  Anna.

  There had been so many things he’d wanted to share since he saw her last month. They were friends, weren’t they? He thought: I’m allowed to contact her, surely? His sister was back home for a while and he so wanted her to meet Anna, for Anna to see he had some decent people in his life. And for him to have the satisfaction of seeing Grace hit it off with Anna. The thought made him so sappy he’d even gone as far as to open an email and type it, before hitting discard.

  He almost persuaded himself she didn’t mean the things she’d said at the hen do about it not being OK for them to see each other. She’d had a lot to drink, was grateful to him for helping her sister, and had then impulsively said something suggestive. But she’d never been attracted to him. Had she?

  He didn’t just miss her. He missed the James he became with her.

  ‘Jay,’ Eva said, softly, from across the shop floor. ‘Jay?’ A couple of men who’d been discreetly tracking Eva’s progress glanced over, assessing the partner. James was used to being subjected to greater scrutiny when he was with her. He used to like it. In fact, he used to love it.

  ‘How about this?’ She was pressing a leaflet from the shop against her mouth, lingering in front of a vast mirror.

  ‘It’s huge,’ James said. It was the size of a table football with an ornate crest at the top and a distressed pearly frame, the edges of the glass speckled and puckered with tiny flaws.

  ‘I’d love a floor mirror for the bedroom.’

  ‘Hmmm. I’m not sure I want to see that much of myself in the morning.’

  ‘Naw. You’re looking ripped. The misery regime clearly suited you.’

  James stared at her, stupefied.

  ‘You have to be careful in these places, these days,’ Eva continued under her breath, moving the brochure an inch away from her mouth. ‘I love Gustavian, but the whole shabby chic thing has become so commoditised. Too many repro white French Antiques. You might as well just get Next homeware cushions and those coloured champagne goblets with Mr and Mrs on. For your maple Shaker-style B&Q kitchen.’

  ‘Who cares where you’ve bought your cushions?’ James said. For his answer he looked around the room, at all the smart good-looking polished thirty-something couples, acquiring more elegant clutter for their enviable lives. James fitted in so well.

  ‘Haha, let’s go to Argos and get a mirror with a stainless steel frame, then,’ Eva laughed. ‘And Ikea for a wiggly mirror and twisty bamboo.’

  She turned to face their reflections again, leaning her head on his arm and putting her hand up to his chin.

  ‘Is the beard here to stay? I’ve come round to it.’

  67

  Anna wasn’t prepared for the way the hopeless quasi-adolescent yearning permeated all aspects of her existence. Every song on the radio spoke to her, every thought was two steps away from a connection to James. Every humdrum daily task hummed with reminders he was gone. How could an absence be so noisy? He was everywhere now he was nowhere.

  Whenever her email or phone pinged she longed for it to be him.

  Anna had plenty of time in recent weeks to dwell on the ironies and strangeness of her situation. The monster from her past returned, only to have an effect that was quite magical. Anna wasn’t haunted by school anymore. It still hurt, it always would, but James’s willingness to face up to his crime had performed some sort of vanquishing.

  It sounded strange, but in forgiving him, she forgave herself. She hadn’t realised she had always blamed herself for being bullied – a kind of self-loathing shame. That ex-boyfriend Mark who had continually picked fault with her at university, she realised now Mark hated himself too. That’s why he encouraged hatred in Anna, to make her feel as bad as he did. So it made sense – Anna’s perfect tonic had to be someone who loved himself.

  She so wished she could share this observation with James, hear his peal of laughter, his sarcastic comeback. How would she ever find someone who made her laugh like he did again?

  Only now, when she had no chance of trying to encourage him to fall in love with her, did she consider how well James might’ve suited her. He was intelligent and he was a challenge. They had enough similarities to make things comfortable and enough differences to keep things interesting. He’d made efforts with her friends and family. He knew her whole history. That one fact set him apart from everyone at a stroke.

  And obviously, she coveted him. That part had never really been in doubt, but her brain wouldn’t permit her loins the freedom until now.

  When she looked back over their tumultuous re-acquaintance, she now understood and trusted James’s motives at every stage. He was decent, kind and honest when it mattered. He’d kept these solid basics buried under a lot of self-regard and foolish knitwear. Unlike Laurence, or even Patrick, James had wanted to know, and accepted, the real Anna, with no amorous agenda or wish to bed her. Although in the end, contrarily, she wished he had.

  The pain of imagining him with Eva was almost too much. The thought of them in a frantic reu
nion coupling gave her a sensation like acid reflux. James wasn’t Eva’s kind of person. He seemed like he was, but he was Anna’s kind of person really. Or was he? Had Anna just been an ideological holiday fling from heartless hipster world? If this plane went nose cone first into grey cold ocean, would James shed a tear at news of her death?

  ‘Anna? Anna. Are you in there? Have you got locked-in syndrome?’

  Michelle passed a hand over her face. In the intensity of her reverie, Anna felt as if she was being yanked from the warmth of a womb.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Michelle said. ‘You’ve been a bit spacey, lately. You’ve been staring at cloud bank for a half hour.’

  ‘Well …’ Anna wriggled her spine back up her seat, ‘there’s only cloud out there.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  Michelle returned her hand to her arm rest, which she’d been gripping hard since take off. Michelle was an extremely nervous flier. She’d swallowed fistfuls of Kalms with two double gin and tonics and needed Anna and Daniel holding an arm each getting on, as if she was elderly.

  The wedding party had all but taken over an Easyjet flight from Stansted to Pisa. Daniel had come without Penny in the end, who’d decided she was simply too skint. (‘I half expected him to say that she was coming but he was staying at home,’ Michelle had remarked.)

  The plane bumped up, then down gently, and the fasten seatbelt light came on with a soft ding.

  ‘What’s going on? Why are they telling us to fasten our seatbelts?’ Michelle barked. She’d never unfastened hers.

  ‘We’ve probably hit some turbulence,’ Anna said, as she clipped her belt. The plane dipped again, sharply, then bounced some more.

  ‘Oh what fuckery is this?!’ Michelle wailed. ‘Why isn’t the captain speaking? He’s gone very quiet! And the cabin crew have all disappeared!’

  ‘They have to sit down and strap in during turbulence too,’ Daniel said, holding up a round tin full of icing sugar. ‘Barley twist?’

  ‘I don’t want a bloody barley twist, I might need a cyanide capsule. They’ve all scattered because they don’t want to look us in the dead doomed faces.’

  ‘In that case, I will die sucking a sweet,’ Anna said. She reached across Daniel to claim her barley twist and at that point the plane dropped, juddered and rattled and a few gasps were heard from non-nervous fliers.

  ‘It’s fine, Michelle,’ Anna said, trying to pat her knee reassuringly but the movement in the cabin meant her hand missed.

  ‘We’re going to die, this is it, I knew it. I always knew it and that’s why I wouldn’t get on planes,’ Michelle said, squeezing her eyes shut. ‘I’ll never do all the things I want to. I’ll never see Sydney Opera House, or sleep with Guy.’

  ‘Sleep with who?’ Anna said.

  ‘Guy. The posh bloke from Meat Cute, that new burger van down the road from The Pantry. He asked me out.’ Michelle still didn’t open her eyes.

  ‘And yet I get told off for eating his beef!’ Daniel said, peering at Anna round Michelle.

  ‘Sydney is a long flight,’ Anna added.

  ‘Shutupshutupshutup. And I don’t see why you two are so blasé, you’ve hardly made use of our short time.’

  ‘Oh, here we go,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Anna, you need to stop moping about the past and have sex with all the men,’ Michelle said.

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘And Dan, for God’s sake, get rid of Penny. She’s bloody awful.’

  ‘I thought scared passengers were meant to gabble their own secrets?’ Anna said, embarrassed for Daniel.

  ‘I can’t split up with Penny,’ Daniel said, bracing his palms against the shaking seat in front.

  ‘Yes you can!’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘You can! You think you can’t, that’s fear talking!’

  ‘It’s logic talking. I’ve already split up with her.’

  ‘What?’ Michelle opened her eyes. ‘When?’

  ‘Before we came away.’

  The turbulence abated and Anna said: ‘I hope you’re OK, Dan? I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Are you?’ Daniel said, with a small smile.

  ‘For you,’ she added.

  ‘What happened?’ Michelle asked.

  Anna gave her a surreptitious squeeze to convey do not say too much.

  ‘Remember the gig at the Star & Garter in Putney? She did another song about me.’ Daniel sighed. ‘And I thought, do you know? You’re not kind. You can live without lots of things. You can’t live without that.’

  ‘That’s very wise,’ Anna said.

  The seatbelt light went off with another ding.

  ‘See, Michelle!’ Anna said. ‘We must be through it.’

  She made to unfasten her seatbelt.

  ‘No!’ Michelle said. ‘Don’t trust it. They probably want to grant us the mercy of having free hands for prayers.’

  The tannoy came on.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. You may have noticed we’ve been experiencing a pocket of turbulence …’

  ‘Oh, thanks for nothing!’ Michelle shouted. ‘I’ll give you a pocket of turbulence!’

  Aggy had organised an off-duty school bus to ferry the wedding guests around over the weekend and its first charter was to the walled city of Lucca for dinner and drinks, at the foot of the mountain.

  Lucca was the ideal introduction for those who hadn’t been to the country before – unspoilt and yet still classically, picture postcard Tuscany: medieval architecture, red roofs, olive trees.

  Aggy had booked a charming, inexpensive trattoria for the food, and afterwards they wandered through the square, along cobbled streets in the gathering dusk to a café bar. Anna didn’t know how Italy did shabby chic so well. At home, peeling paint was peeling paint. Here, it was impossibly romantic.

  Every few moments she saw or thought of something she wanted to share with James and touched the smooth oblong of her phone in her pocket. Don’t text him when you’re piddled, she thought.

  The café ceiling was filled with bunches of plastic grapes, the doorways wound with fairy lights. The guests milled around, drinking Aperol Spritzes and picking at plates of crostini. Shabby chic and civilised boozing, yes, they were definitely abroad. Anna’s dad was propping up the bar, relishing the chance to speak his native tongue to the barman. As with all displaced countrymen, his accent had got three times more pronounced as soon as they’d landed at Pisa.

  Anna looked round the room and thought that you’d never know this excursion was a shove-by replacement for a different wedding. She had to hand it to Aggy, she really was an event planner extraordinaire. No wonder her fairly silly sister was paid fairly silly money. If not quite silly enough for Aggy’s liking. She remembered Aggy was in hock to James for thousands and winced. She understood why James had kept it from her. Knowing what he’d done made her feel uncomfortable.

  ‘I’m circulating,’ Aggy said, wafting up to Anna, Michelle and Daniel’s table with a giant glass of red. ‘I’m on holiday with all my family and friends, when am I ever going to do that again? I don’t want to miss a thing. Also, I’m letting you know that Chris and I have a surprise for you all tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh God no,’ Anna groaned. ‘It better not involve audience participation.’

  ‘Wait and see,’ Aggy said, primly, and Anna clapped a palm over her eyes.

  ‘I hate surprises,’ Anna said. ‘I like predictable things.’

  ‘Boo to boring big sister. Now, what were you talking about? Wait—’ Aggy squealed, not waiting for an answer. ‘You didn’t tell me James Fraser had got back with his wife!’

  Anna’s stomach puckered in on itself like a deflated football.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked.

  ‘Selfish of him, don’t you think? Right when we’d earmarked him to give Anna a good seeing to,’ Michelle said.

  ‘I friended him on Facebook. His wife posted some love poem to his wall the other day. Loads o
f people were commenting on it,’ Aggy said. ‘I saw it when I checked my phone was working earlier. I was worried we wouldn’t get a signal up here.’

  ‘I can imagine you standing at the top of the mountain trying to touch a wire coat hanger to lightning if we couldn’t,’ Daniel said.

  Anna writhed at this unexpected confirmation of the renewal of James’s vows. Posted a love poem to his wall. Anna was biased, but Eva sounded a terrible person. She roiled with jealousy and misery like the water in a boiling kettle, fiddling with the stem of her glass.

  ‘The wife’s so gorge. They’re going to have amazing babies.’

  ‘Aggy, stop being such a snoop!’ Anna snapped. ‘You’re not even a proper friend of his!’

  ‘Yes I am!’ she said, stung. ‘I sent James an invite to the wedding but he had a work thing.’

  ‘Aggy!’ Anna squawked, shrilly.

  ‘What? He’s been really nice to me.’

  ‘You should’ve asked me first.’

  ‘Would you have said no?’ Aggy said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  Uhm …

  ‘Because of the wife.’

  ‘Is she that bad?’ Aggy asked. ‘I didn’t think you knew her.’ Michelle was appraising her, curious.

  Anna had an image of herself in a large hole, furiously turfing earth over her shoulder with a shovel. Nobody at the table could quite read Anna’s reaction, but they collectively sensed something was not right. Anna’s instinct was always to absorb and conceal things that hurt her. She didn’t want to do that anymore. They became weights that dragged you down.

  ‘Sorry. It’s not your fault, Aggy. It wouldn’t be wrong. The thing was,’ Anna drew breath, ‘I accidentally, not intending to, sort of unhelpfully … ‘– Anna was going to use a word she’d not tried out loud yet –’ … fell in love with James Fraser. And right when I made a move, I found out he’d got back with Eva.’

  Michelle and Aggy gasped.

  ‘Do you know what, actually I’m not surprised,’ Aggy said.

  ‘You gasped!’ Anna said.