Here's Looking at You Read online

  13

  ‘Welcome to Sleeping Beauty. I am Sue and I can make your fairytale dreams come true!’ the boutique owner chirruped, which Anna thought was a fairly mental claim. Wasn’t Sleeping Beauty in a persistent vegetative state for a century?

  Sue looked like a backbench MP in a skirt suit and pearls and Anna guessed her sales techniques would be brisk, despite all the wispy pouffiness around them.

  Aggy and their mother’s eyes shone at her words, and Anna knew she was a lone cynic in the realm of true believers. It was an enchanted grotto for those who wanted to walk down the aisle looking like a Best Actress Oscar nominee.

  The salon was softly lit by peachy bulbs. It had a deep, spotless cream shag pile and lavender wallpaper with a dragonfly print, and rococo oval dressing-room mirrors – the sort wicked queens consulted.

  The air was heavy with a sweet freesia scent, like some kind of sedative love gas. Michael Bublé crooned from hidden speakers, no doubt using subliminal hypnosis techniques.

  Promise me your heart, give me your hand … and the long number on the front … now the expiry date, yeah baby.

  There were racks of giant gowns, stiff and sticky-outy with net and bustles and laced corsets and an ‘aristocrat before the French Revolution’ attitude to making a bit of a show of yourself.

  Sleeping Beauty could have been called Go Big Or Go Home. It was one big Pavlovian memory-trigger to Disney fantasies, in a world where the magic wand tap was the swipe of the Visa card.

  Brides-to-be disappeared into a changing room through a crystal beaded curtain, to reappear transformed. Anna tried to imagine uttering the words ‘something simple’ in here, and failed.

  ‘You must be my bride,’ Sue said to Aggy. ‘I can tell you’re going to suit everything. Some fresh-faced young women simply make natural brides. And a sample size ten; the world’s your oyster when it comes to choosing a style.’

  Anna itched to say: ‘What happens to the old broiler chickens then? Do you not flog them stuff?’

  Aggy near-gurgled at the flattery. Physically, Aggy was a more angular, shorter version of her sister, but what she lacked in height and width she made up for in noise.

  Aggy worked in PR, specialising in event management, and she was superbly suited to the job. She’d been organising things to her liking since she was very small, and her wheedle power was second to none. You wouldn’t mistake Aggy for an academic: today she was in a puffa coat, high-heeled boots and carrying a Mulberry Alexa. She lived life in caps lock. GETTING MARRIED LOL!

  There were two years between the sisters, and in some ways, a chasm of difference.

  ‘This must be the beautiful mother of the beautiful bride,’ Sue said, speaking to their mum as if she was serving her a soft-boiled egg in an assisted living facility. ‘And this is the gorgeous sister and chief bridesmaid.’

  ‘Judy’ and ‘Anna’, they said in turn, as Sue clasped their hands and gazed at them with expression set to ‘purest bliss’.

  Aggy had booked an hour-long private appointment, and whilst Anna hated a stalking sales presence, Aggy revelled in the attention.

  Anna shrugged her grey duffle coat off. Her family characterised her as a tomboy in contrast to her sister’s girly-girliness, but she felt it was a simplification. She liked some girly things. Romance – in art if not in life, so far – and dresses and shoes and fizzy wine.

  She just didn’t like the full range of girly things that Aggy did. Such as nights spent on the sofa with Vogue, toe separators, Essie polish, spoon wedged in Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Me Up, white iPhone welded to her ear on the gossip grapevine. Instead of Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, Aggy travelled in a Fiat 500 with rubber eyelashes on the headlamps and a bumper sticker revealing the worrying news for Saudi oil barons that it was Powered by Fairy Dust.

  Anna was glad she liked Aggy’s intended. Aggy was capable of marrying lots of men Anna wouldn’t like, but luckily it was the affable, laddish Chris, a painter-decorator from Hornsey. He sincerely loved her sister and also knew when to say, ‘That’s henshit, Ags.’

  They were tying the knot in the splendour of the Langham Hilton ballroom this Christmas.

  Since the family dinner where Aggy arrived wearing a diamond solitaire the size of a glass brick and her sister and her mum did lots of squealing, Anna had felt the tiniest bit nervous.

  The one thing Aggy couldn’t successfully manage was her own expectations. Anna was pretty sure the way the wedding was being organised was thus: Aggy choosing exactly what she fancied (which was usually at the top price point), and finding a way to pay for it afterwards.

  Chris looked increasingly hangdog each time Anna saw him. Chris would’ve been happy with an Iceland party platters buffet at the Fox & Grapes, driving them to the venue in his company van, furry trapper’s hat sat on head, ear flaps flapping, singing along very loudly to Smooth Radio.

  At this rate, Anna feared her sister might end up adjusting her priorities too late to save causing damage to sanity, relationship and credit rating.

  ‘Bubbles before we start!’ Sue said, pointing to a silver tray with three flutes and a bottle on the marble-topped coffee table, next to a pile of glossy bridal magazines and a bowl of water with floating lotus flower candles.

  Aggy was only a mouthful through hers when Sue cried, ‘Let’s get you into the first dress!’

  Aggy and Sue disappeared through the beaded curtain and Anna and her mother exchanged smiles and tapped their feet.

  ‘Do you think Aggy’s in for the long haul here?’ Anna said eventually, scanning the scores of lampshade skirts.

  ‘Of course she is, Aureliana! It’s till death do you part.’

  ‘No, I meant …’

  ‘Dum dum de dum!’ Sue sing-songed, holding the beads back for Aggy to re-enter, unsteady on cream satin bridal shop stilettos. She was in a halterneck gown with a simple A-line skirt and lots of Swarovski sparkle.

  ‘Oh, lovely!’ Judy said.

  ‘Anna?’ Aggy asked, uncertain.

  ‘Your collarbones look nice. I’m not sure about the cowgirl rhinestones though. Could be worse. I give it three enchanted slippers out of five,’ Anna said. ‘It’s … cut quite revealingly around your ta-ta’s, too.’

  ‘The modern way is to show slightly more skin,’ Sue said, through a taut smile. Then reassuringly to their mum: ‘Nothing tacky. Merely a hint of what lies beneath.’

  Anna tipped her head to one side. ‘Hmmm. I’m getting significant side boob, with the promise of full udder swing if she leans down to kiss a flower girl.’

  ‘Ah no way, I don’t want some rancid randy vicar being all “to have and to hold”.’ Aggy did a Rocky Horror pelvic thrust.

  ‘Agata, the vicar will not be randy!’ Judy exclaimed. ‘Stop this!’

  ‘We can tighten it,’ said Sue, shooting Anna a look that suggested Sue was already doing some tightening of her own.

  ‘Er mer GERD.’ This was Aggy’s latest expression. ‘Did I ever tell you what happened to Clare from work? Strapless dress, bridesmaid trod on the train walking down the aisle, pulled it right down,’ Aggy indicated waist level. ‘But Clare said she didn’t mind because she’d dropped five grand on saline implants in the Czech Republic. She was like,’ Aggy pointed at her chest with both her index fingers, ‘Feast your eyes, it’s a banquet.’

  ‘Surely a properly fitted dress couldn’t be pulled down that far?’ Judy said. ‘That’s a failure of the boning.’

  Anna and Aggy exchanged a look.

  ‘Maybe like Aggy said, she was an exhibitionist. Maybe she’d booby-trapped it,’ Anna said, making a ‘winding a handle’ movement and a whirring noise.

  ‘Possible, she was quite a rowdy skanger when she got a drink in her. Marianne said Clare with wine was like a Gremlin with water,’ Aggy said. ‘She used to show clients her bikini-line tattoo that said mama is forever in Sanskrit and our boss had to tell her to stop because the older ones haven’t heard of vajazzling yet and she could ups
et them.’

  ‘What does mama is forever mean?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Her mum died of an aneurysm in Bluewater. It was a tribute.’

  ‘A tribute in the form of writing on her fanny? Who wants that? Mum, would you like me to get RIP JUDY down there?’ said Anna.

  ‘I can’t say how I’d feel if I’d died,’ her mum said. ‘I think I’d rather have a memorial fig tree at St Andrew’s.’

  ‘So that’s a pass to this one?’ Sue interjected, desperately.

  Anna felt a whisper of remorse that Judy wasn’t sitting next to someone who’d do firework show gasps of ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at the gowns, but to some extent you played the role that fell to you in a family. There was no question Anna had pulled the voice of reason straw in hers.

  People often reacted with disbelief that Judy was their mother, firstly because she was youthful-looking and expensively blonde-streaked for her fifty-something years. And secondly, what with coming from Surbiton, entirely un-Italian looking. She was inordinately proud of her daughters’ continental heritage and made a point of using their full names. Their father, funnily enough, was less of a fan, pronouncing Aureliana and Agata as ‘not traditional’.

  ‘Your mother goes and registers these fooling names behind my back, saying it was her hormones! She does this twice! Can you believe it?’

  Anna certainly could believe it. It was also very like her dad to let her mum have her way.

  ‘Mum. How is Aggy paying for all of this?’ Anna said in a low voice.

  ‘She has a good salary. And savings. And Chris has money.’

  ‘Not that much money. Do you not think this might be getting out of hand?’

  ‘You only do it once. I know it’s not your sort of thing, but it’s her special day.’

  Anna bit her tongue. She’d have a quiet word with her dad instead. The family had two distinct factions: Anna and her father’s more sober self-containment, and her mother and Aggy’s silliness. As Aggy changed again, Anna feared Sleeping Beauty was the start of a very long hike around London’s upscale dress shops.

  There was a loud shriek from the changing rooms.

  ‘Has her false leg fallen off?’ Anna said.

  Sue appeared, only her head poking through the brothel curtain, wreathed in stagy drama.

  ‘We’ve got something rather special here,’ which Anna took to mean, I think she’s about to buy this, so stay on bloody message, bitches.

  Aggy walked out wearing a sheepish smile and what was obviously The Dress. It had a full Tinkerbell skirt in glistening layers of raggy tulle and a strapless, thimble-sized bodice, which Anna wouldn’t have been able to wrestle her ribcage inside. Aggy looked like she should be onstage in a ballet, and rather wonderful.

  ‘Oh Agata!’ Judy said, bursting into tears and jumping up to hug her.

  ‘S’amazing, Mum,’ Aggy sniffled. ‘I feel like a princess.’

  Anna stayed put and let her mum’s raptures subside while she poured the last dregs of the cava into her glass.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ Aggy called to Anna.

  ‘I do. I’m toasting a job well done. You look like you’re really getting married in that. And only the second dress. Good going. Honestly, you look beautiful. It’s “big wedding” but it’s tasteful.’

  Aggy twirled and pinched at layers of the skirt, letting them drift back down. ‘You know how they say when you meet The One, you know? I’ve just met the one.’

  After sufficient cooing, sighing and ogling had taken place, and an elated Sue had dashed off to find the paperwork, Anna asked how much it was.

  ‘Three,’ Aggy said.

  Anna’s mouth made an ‘O’.

  ‘And a half,’ Aggy added. ‘And another 250. It’s £3,750. Veil not included.’

  ‘Gordon’s alive, Aggy! Four grand on something you’re going to wear once?’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ Aggy pouted.

  ‘I think you look amazing, I think you could look amazing for half that though. A large proportion of the amazing is you. Like Sue said, you’d look lovely in most things.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Aggy twirled again. ‘Mum?’

  ‘You look like Audrey Hepburn! Or Darcey Bussell in The Nutcracker!’

  ‘Soon you’ll need to be a safe cracker.’

  Aggy giggled.

  Anna was in a bind. If she counselled against the expense of this dress any further, they’d simply question her motives. She’d be accused of letting bitter spinster wrath wreck Aggy’s happiness. Nevertheless, Anna genuinely felt no unsisterly envy. She’d need to want to marry someone before she could seriously covet a wedding. She couldn’t put the gown before the groom.

  ‘I’m going to make sure single men come to the wedding. For you,’ Aggy said, as if her mind was running along similar lines.

  ‘Yes. You should get out and see people, Aureliana,’ their mum said, as if this was the moment to finally address her elder daughter’s agoraphobia.

  ‘I meet people!’ Anna said.

  Aggy was twisting her hair into a chignon and pouting, angled towards a mirror. Judy bustled off for a confab with Sue.

  ‘I went to a school reunion,’ Anna said.

  ‘Did you?!’ Aggy said, hand slipping from hair and jaw falling open, reflection momentarily forgotten. ‘Why?’

  ‘Thought I’d face my fear. It was pointless, as it turns out that fear didn’t know my face. Seriously Ags, not one of them twigged who I was. I don’t know whether to be pleased or not. Michelle says it’s proof I’ve left it behind for good.’

  ‘Did you see … any of them?’ Aggy said.

  ‘Er … oh. James Fraser?’ Anna said, with a hollow little laugh.

  ‘James Fraser?! What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing. He didn’t know who I was either. Still so far up himself it’s unbelievable. I felt like saying to him, you know you were only a hero when you were sixteen? Now you’re nobody.’ Anna surprised herself with the vehemence in her voice.

  ‘Real talk. Is he still totes bangable?’

  ‘Depends on whether you like cardigans and cancer of the personality.’

  ‘Aw, does he look like Elmer Fudd now? No way!’ Aggy placed a hand on her hip and turned, with difficulty in the fantasy dress.

  Anna smiled.

  ‘He remains vile and arrogant but also still good-looking, which is all that matters, obviously.’

  ‘I simply need to take a deposit!’ Sue said, emerging again, triumphant, their mother in tow. Aggy demanded their mum bring her Alexa handbag.

  They left, showered in Sue’s love, with Anna feeling distinct unease at her sister’s spendthriftery.

  After hasty goodbyes outside in the miserable weather, with their mum having to rush to catch her bus to Barking, Anna tried to reason with Aggy.

  ‘You can get a dressmaker to recreate that design for loads less, you know.’

  ‘Marianne did that, and it never looks as good, honestly. You spend the whole day thinking about the other dress.’

  ‘If you spend the whole day thinking about a dress, something has gone wrong anyway.’

  Aggy tuned out remarks like that.

  ‘Your dress next, Anna! We’ll make a day of it, go for lunch.’

  ‘OK. Nothing ridiculous, promise me.’

  ‘Ridick! You’re going to look the best you’ve ever looked in your whole life.’

  ‘Setting the bar quite low,’ Anna grinned.

  Aggy looked as if she was hesitating about saying something, which was rare.

  ‘I never knew what they were going to do, you know. At the Mock Rock. I was telling them to stop.’

  ‘Oh God, I know. Don’t worry about it.’ Anna felt a familiar and severe twinge of pain and shame. No matter how many times she reassured Aggy she didn’t blame her for being in the audience, this always came up.

  Aggy’s eyes welled and Anna patted her shoulder. It was typical Aggy that in trying to console Anna, Anna ended up consoling her.

  �
��And when Mr Towers made us clean up the Quality Street,’ she said, tears coming in a stream, ‘I didn’t eat any on principle.’

  14

  An hour before Eva was due to arrive at the home they once shared, James showered and got into his running gear. He wanted to show her he was active, virile and not at all pining or depressed.

  As much as part of him fancied doing the takeaway cartons strewn around, dark-shadowed eyes, whisky-on-the-breath suffering pose, he feared it might be self-defeating. He reasoned that only by showing what a stupid thing it was to pass him up, was he going to win her back. Eva was never one to love a loser.

  It was still a humiliating piece of theatre though and as he laced up his trainers with more force than was necessary, James tried not to think about it too much.

  It was two months since Eva had dropped her bombshell that she was leaving, after only ten months of married life and virtually no signs of discontent that James could pinpoint, other than her seeming slightly distracted. It was like as soon as they finished decorating the house, she ran out of things to keep her occupied.

  Now he was in this mortgaged-up-to-the-eyeballs millstone, deep in Farrow & Ball front-doored, Bugaboo-and-babyccino country, where he’d thought they’d start a family.

  Eva was coming round to ‘pick up a few things’ again. She’d potter about and clank in the cupboards, as if life was normal. As if she hadn’t recently sat him down on a Saturday morning, punched her fist into his chest cavity, taken out his still-beating heart and minced it into something fit for a pouch of Whiskas Senior.

  Speaking of the other inconvenient, costly responsibility he inherited.

  Luther was a Persian Blue, one of those pedigree breeds that looked unreal and toy-like enough to be sold in Hamleys. A football of fag-ash-coloured fluff with spooky little vivid yellow pebbles for eyes and a permanent frown, or a criminal forehead – James couldn’t decide which. Eva had taken the breeder very seriously when they’d said it wasn’t safe to allow him out, so the cat was also captive.

  Luther had been named after their first dance song, Luther Vandross’s ‘Never Too Much.’ Nicely ironic, as it turned out a year would have been too much. Given Luther was entirely an Eva-driven acquisition, James had been astonished – and not a little disgruntled – to find she wanted to leave him behind in the separation. He knows this house, I don’t have the space at Sara’s for now, it would be selfish of me to have him.