Here's Looking at You (21 page)

The next, he was sporting a ten-gallon hat and chambray shirt, chewing on a toothpick. It was captioned:
‘This look is the real me, outdoorsy.’
Yes. Because obviously you do a lot of cattle ranching in Dalston.

What did it all remind him of? It reminded him of Eva. Once when James had said something uxorious about how she was always dressed so well for every occasion, she said she was like an actress. She loved playing roles. James wondered if he’d missed an awful lot of warning signs.

How had this happened? He knew he’d have to fend off rivals with Eva, but he didn’t think he’d lose her while they were still shaking confetti out of their hair.

He suspected the answer lay in the same qualities he’d found so irresistible to begin with, that old cliché about growing to hate what you initially loved. She was like a shark, she could only swim forward. Or the bus in
Speed
that’d blow up if it dropped below fifty mph. He’d found Eva scarily exhilarating. He’d made the mistake of trying to settle down with scary and exhilarating.

Now he was just scared. In a crisis, there didn’t seem to be enough in common between them to find the language to discuss a way out of it.

Was it possible …? Don’t think it, James. Try not to think it.

He gazed at a photo of Finn leaning topless against a motorbike with a greasy rag thrown over his shoulder, fake oil smear on cheek, in baggy denim. ‘
My philosophy of life? I like to be the one to create the “hell yeah!” moments.’

Contemplating these beautiful people, James couldn’t stop the ugly question forming.

Was it possible he was in love with someone he didn’t like?

‘Knock knock! Are you decent, Dr Alessi?’

‘Nearly there, Patrick!’ Anna called, thinking, please don’t picture me in the scud.

Anna nervously did a last check of hair and make-up in her smeary mirror and adjusted the blue wool dress over her stomach.

She’d try to keep her coat on for as long as possible until she had a drink inside her. It wasn’t low cut, but it was clingier than she was used to.

Not being a shopper, she’d left it until the last minute in Hobbs to throw 200 quid at the ‘what to wear to Theodora launch’ problem.

‘Victoria’s going to head over with us,’ Patrick said, with that strained
we’re live on air don’t say fuck or bugger
tone people use when alerting a colleague that a boss was within hearing range.

‘Lovely. Ready!’ Anna said, opening the door. Patrick’s raptures about how nice she looked were curtailed by Victoria glowering behind him.

Victoria Challis wasn’t just a formidable head of department, she was also formidable-looking. She was about five foot nothing, with grey pudding basin hair that somewhat curiously had squared-off sideburns cut in. In case you didn’t get the hint that she wasn’t going for ‘fluffy’, she also wore suit trousers with a man’s shirt and tie. Anna would have admired her flamboyant snook-cocking at society’s sartorial rules, yet she was always too busy being scared of her.

You might stereotypically assume Victoria was same-sex orientated, yet her husband of thirty years, Frank, worked in the maths department.

‘She looks more like her husband than he does,’ as an ungentlemanly colleague put it.

It wasn’t a long walk to the museum from UCL but it was made to feel significantly longer by Victoria firing questions at Anna about the exhibition. The tone was intimidating, even if there was nothing in them that Anna couldn’t handle.

In the style of one of her heroine’s contortionist sex shows, Anna knew Theodora back to front, standing on her head, with barley sprinkled in surprising places. Yet Patrick was clearly worried in case there was something she couldn’t answer, and kept buffeting Victoria with statements like: ‘You said John Herbert was delighted with your work, Anna?’ in an unsubtle manner.

Poison Challis looked increasingly irritated and eventually barked: ‘The woman has vocal cords of her own, Dr Price!’ Talking to Victoria was like opening the door to a blast furnace. This was at the moment they were handing their coats to the coat check staff at the British Museum, making Anna forget to say she’d keep hold of hers.

Patrick openly boggled as Anna’s coat came off. She started regretting her choice of dress. She cherished her platonic rapport with Patrick, and had no wish to disrupt it by parading tightly clad evidence of the fact she was female.

‘Anna, may I say, you look
sensational
,’ Patrick exclaimed, and Victoria rolled her eyes.

Anna was glad the room offered other, far more sensational things for them to look at. The British Museum’s Great Court looked wonderfully dramatic by night. The centrepiece was the cylindrical reading room, its perimeter lit by a ring of bright white lights, and hung with vertical banners advertising the Theodora show. The evening sky above was carved into diamonds by the vaulted roof. Anna felt her heart lift, and a stab of excitement.

There was the echoing hubbub of guests’ conversations in the stone space and waiters carrying trays of champagne flutes and breaded things on cocktail sticks, stands with the exhibition book and places to download the official app, as well as tours running in and out of the exhibition itself … well. As Aggy would say:
er mer gerd
. They were all here for Theodora. If Anna never had any children then she guessed this was the closest she’d come to the sensation of watching them collect their degree or get married.

She took a deep breath and tried what her dad had told her to do, years ago: find a way to hold on to and enjoy a quiet moment, in the middle of a melee. Quite a valuable skill when you lived with Judy and Aggy.

As she breathed deeply, for the second time in recent memory in a busy room she felt eyes on her, and saw that they belonged to James Fraser. He was looking at her with an expression of amused curiosity. Anna thought: I bet he’s thinking a glamorous dress on me is a humorous juxtaposition, like paintings of dogs playing poker. She tilted her head in acknowledgement and James raised his champagne glass.

‘Dr Alessi, welcome welcome! We did the old girl proud, I’d say?’

Anna turned to see the kindly John Herbert twinkling away at her.

‘Oh John, I think this is the best day of my life,’ Anna couldn’t help but gush.

‘Shall we press the flesh and tell everyone about the wonderful work you did?’ he said.

After circulating, chatting, making sure the corporate sponsors’ egos were suitably fluffed, the arts journalists duly briefed, and listening to a speech by the museum director, Anna felt half-cut and wildly proud.

A tap on the shoulder and Parker was stood behind her. Interesting shirt … did the tie dye actually have
bells
hanging off it?

‘What did you think to the app?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you.’

Having been the scourge of Parlez at that meeting, Anna bet she was the only person who had a small weep at her desk when she watched the clip of the actors.

She’d been frightened of seeing Theodora done badly, but the woman with the aquiline nose, serene bearing and eyes the colour of coffee grounds bore a spooky resemblance.

‘You know the bit on the fashions, called
Dressed To Empress
? That was mine.’

Anna smiled. ‘Excellent punning.’

‘So you guys can date openly, now the work’s done?’ Parker said.

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s OK,’ Parker said, quietly. ‘I saw you. I know.’

‘Saw me?’

‘You and James. At the theatre. I know about you two … y’know …’

Parker grinned and made the world’s least dignified mime of a curled fist and inserting and reinserting finger.

A deeply agitated-looking James appeared between them, looking down at Parker’s hands and back at Anna’s puzzled face.

‘Oh no, Parker. What have you done?’

‘I was saying you and Anna don’t need to keep your thing on the downlow anymore! James said you were keeping business and pleasure separate and now you can be all pleasure. Wocka wocka wah wah …’ Parker did a little side-to-side groin shimmy.

James rubbed his eye and looked like he wanted to evaporate.

‘You think we’re dating?’ Anna said to Parker, and James.

‘He said you were?’ Parker said, looking at James.

‘Uh … I. He saw us, and …’ James was visibly sweating and grimacing and Anna found she loved it. Truth be told, she was amazed James hadn’t bellowed:
Her? Ugh! No!
James Fraser, feeling ridiculous in front of her. Sweet dreams are made of this.

‘You weren’t supposed to tell anyone,’ she said.

James’s eyes widened. Long pause. ‘Yeah, sorry.’

‘Honestly. You try to have a highly secret fling. With literally
no one knowing about it
…’ she added, holding James’s gaze.

She was smiling, James was hardly daring to believe.

‘Shouldn’t have gone to Covent Garden,’ Parker said. ‘Should go somewhere shit that no one goes now. Like Shoreditch, hahaha. You’re coming to the fifth birthday do?’

‘Uhm …?’ Anna looked helplessly at James now.

His mouth fell open and he spoke, with some stuttering. ‘Oh, uh … yeah. I probably needed to mention that …?’

‘Look, if you weren’t going to invite me …’ she play-acted coquettish pique to give him a moment to recover. He smiled. A smile that lit up his face with delighted gratitude. Anna melted a little bit. Obviously the effects of being sodden with champagne and goodwill. And … it was also maybe his bone structure. He really should rethink the Captain Haddock beard, though.

‘No, no, no. Totally invited,’ James said.

‘Guys, I’m going to get off,’ Parker said.

‘Yeah, your work here is done,’ James muttered, with a sardonic look to Anna which she found funny and charming, despite herself.

You leave Parker alone for ONE MINUTE … Literally, it couldn’t have been much more, and he slithered off like a snake on rollerskates to Anna’s side. Then of course, he just had to say something. James rued the day. (And why was Parker, having been told this was black tie, dressed in a look James could only summarise as ‘Skeletal Rave Jester’?)

It was especially galling, as James had thought it’d make it easier to reintroduce Eva if his work colleagues had never met the ‘girlfriend’. Although now she’d moved in with Finn, this was possibly a moot point.

‘Go round and hit him,’ was Laurence’s expert analysis about that development. ‘Make sure your Thomas Pink shirt gets torn. Women love a scrap.’

‘Me and a model? That’d be an outbreak of girly slapping.’

‘All the better when it’s two wet blokes. Look at
Bridget Jones
.’

Instead, Parker started talking and James looked the world’s largest prannock and would’ve signed the Dignitas waivers for death’s blessed chemical kiss there and then. And yet – Anna had helicoptered him out of Saigon. That was pretty amazing. She was quite something.

She was in a dark blue dress that revealed she had a nice figure underneath all those schlobby jumpers. Her hair was caught in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her features were emphasised with kohled eyes and dark lipstick.

He’d watched her working the room, men staring in rapt fascination with their index fingers placed on their lips as she spoke, doing academic clever person rapid nodding. He couldn’t help but think
oh, bless you, Anna, you think they’re all gravitating towards you because of your key research role. But no. It’s the rack.

‘I expect you now want one of those fancy explanation and apologies everyone’s so mad about these days,’ he said, taking two champagne flutes from a passing tray. He was going to have to use plutonium-grade charm to mend this. He’d need to leave her
irradiated.

‘As you heard, Parker got the wrong end of the stick when he saw us and thought you were my new girlfriend …’

‘Isn’t the woman you’re actually seeing going to be cheesed off?’

‘I’m not seeing anyone. I told them I was to avoid the horror of being single at the office party and endless attempts to set me up.’

‘Who were you going to take?’

‘I hadn’t got that far.’

‘Right.’

God, there was something about Anna, something in her manner, that drove him to take mad risks with the truth.

‘I was considering saying I’d split up with you.’

Anna’s jaw dropped and for a second James thought he’d finally pushed his luck too far.

‘Just so you didn’t have to go!’ he added, urgently.

‘And you looked the big man! Why couldn’t I have dumped you?’

‘That’s a very good point and more plausible. Only I haven’t told them Eva was the one who left me, so again, I thought I’d try to look less loserish than I am.’

‘Uh-mazing,’ Anna said, into her glass, without rancour.

‘Argh, I know. It makes me think I left school but I’ve never left school, if you know what I mean.’

This time, Anna said nothing.

‘The fifth birthday do is some surprise thing on South Bank, then bowling. Uhm. Given they think you’re going …
would
you like to come with me?’ James surprised himself with his own chutzpah. ‘I completely understand if this sick charade is too much though, so no worries if not. It’s only if you anticipate being exceptionally bored that evening. Which you probably don’t.’

Oh, impressive stuff, James.

Anna sipped her drink and put her head on one side.

‘As in … with you?’

James squirmed. ‘Yeah. I’m not asking you purely to cover for this nonsense. It might seriously brighten it up to have intelligent company. As I said though, feel free to throw your drink in my face. I would if I were you.’

‘So we haven’t “broken up”? I can’t ditch you?’

James winced. ‘Not unless you want to? Or I can come clean completely and confess what a sadsack I am to them.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘And how would I know if you’d done it?’

‘I could ask someone to film it on my phone?’

‘Hah. As if you would.’

‘You hold all the cards,’ James said. ‘I’d do it dressed as a woman if you insisted.’

‘Hmmm. I suppose a sick charade date might be more fun than my proper ones.’