Here's Looking at You (40 page)

‘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 of 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.

‘Yeah but it was a kind of “Wow,”’ Aggy mimed a stunned look and then a nod. ‘Not a “whaaaaat?!”’ She put a palm up and shook her head. ‘I totally knew. Once you were friends and had made up, I knew.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Number one, who
wouldn’t
fancy him? I know you’re my stupid sister but you’re not that stupid. Two, you talked about him all the time.’

‘This is true,’ Michelle agreed, nipping the straw in her drink between her teeth. ‘There has always been a lot of Can You Believe What James Said! Terrible, awful, infuriating, unacceptably sexual James.’

‘So you knew before me? I wonder if he did too. God, that’s a grim thought.’

‘Did you tell him?’ Daniel asked.

‘That I was in love with him? Not in so many words. Well, not in any words in fact. I said something overtly flirty at the hen do, he looked mortified and announced he was back with Eva.
Awkward
.’

‘Maybe you should have told him anyway,’ Daniel said.

‘Wouldn’t that have made my humiliation greater, for no reason?’

‘Yeah, but if he doesn’t know, he can’t do anything about it.’

‘I don’t think telling him will make his feelings for his wife go away,’ Anna said.

She recalled their conversation about Eva when they were on the London Eye. He’d seemed evasive about her. At the time, she’d half-thought it might be the words of a vain man, not admitting the strength of his affections in case his bid to win his wife back failed. Now she had every reason to hope he genuinely was undecided about her.

At that moment in time, Anna wished life was like one of Patrick’s video games, with a chance to select an option, get machine-gunned for your stupidity and then reboot and choose another.

‘Anyway, it would never have worked,’ Anna said, in that tone of voice where you pretend to be resigned to something very raw. ‘You all couldn’t stand him.’

‘We didn’t like what he did back then,’ Michelle poked ice cubes with her straw, ‘but by the hen do I liked him. He’d made things right with you. He was a laugh. I could see him as a Mr Anna, sure.’

Aggy nodded.

‘I was mad at him for not saying sorry to you but I could tell when I saw him at The Zetter that he was really sorry. If he’d treat you well now, that’s what matters, and I think he would.’

‘Oh,’ Anna said, not sure whether to be pleased or not.

‘And he has made a total mistake. You two are meant for each other,’ Aggy said. ‘You have the same hair colour. And the wife’s Facebook photos are full of bathroom mirror selfies. Totally up herself. I don’t know what James sees in her.’

‘Apart from the startling looks,’ Anna said.

‘If he’s chosen Eva over you then he wasn’t good enough for you,’ Aggy concluded, staunchly. ‘No one good enough would rather have her than you.’

Anna smiled.

‘Thanks. I can see why he can be good enough
and
pick her though. They’re married, they have a house together, and a history, and a grumpy cat. It was never a fair fight. The weight of gravity is very much on her side.’

Everyone nodded politely and didn’t query the binding nature of a grumpy cat.

‘You know what Aggy’s Facebook thing about posting the poem reminds me of though?’ Anna said.

‘Facebook is to stupid what jam is to wasps?’ Michelle said.

‘You can’t get rid of anyone anymore. We are now in an age of digital eternity. Whenever I have a weak moment, I’ll be able to see what James is doing. His profile picture will change to a sonogram, and then it’ll be him with a kid, then another. I mean, literally, you can stalk people hourly nowadays. It’ll be “James Junior is on the potty lol”.’

‘That’s going to sting,’ Michelle nodded.

Aggy sighed.

‘Well, if this was a film, James would’ve done a dash to the airport to tell you he felt the same way before the plane took off,’ she said.

‘Not helpful, Agata!’ Michelle said. ‘And that airport dash is the bullshittiest of the clichés, I reckon. Most people go straight through passport control to get to the Duty Free, don’t they? So are these loverboys buying a ticket just to make their speech? I do not think so.’

Aggy put her hand on her chin. ‘Yeah …’

Anna wondered: was Daniel right? Should she have told James how she felt? She was ninety-nine per cent sure he was wrong and it would be a futile move. The remaining one per cent was enough to make her act though.

As the chatter continued around her, Anna opened an email. She felt as if she was limbering up for a feat of exertion. She began to type.

Was it too much? In drink, at a distance and in emo-mood, it was so hard to tell. Sod it, she already knew she was going to send it. She clicked and cringed. She checked it was in her sent items. She sighed.

They left the restaurant and climbed on board the coach. As the bus steadily wound up the mountain to Barga, Anna checked her phone about seventeen times.

‘All OK?’ Michelle said, as they bumped up the road, over the volume of Aggy’s singalong to Kelly Clarkson.

Anna admitted what she’d done.

‘I know it doesn’t stop you regretting him, but if he’s thrown himself away on this icy Hitchcock blonde then he wasn’t right for you.’

They rested heads on each other for the rest of the journey.

In the seats behind, Anna could hear Daniel deep in conversation with a PR girl who was explaining ‘friend zoning’ to him. Anna smiled. She was sort of sad, but she was happy-sad. She’d done all she could; whatever would be, would be.

As Anna was turning out the light in their room in the spartan-but-pretty B&B, she accepted the probability that the email had been read was very high, and that meant the chance of a reply was now very low.

She could picture the scene when James received it, far, far away, entwined with the feline Eva on the pink couch, Luther next to them.

‘Who’s that?’ Eva would say.
Oh. No one.

The lack of light pollution meant the room had the kind of thick velvet blackness where you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. Yet she could see James’s face, clear as if he was right in front of her.

As she was falling asleep, her phone pinged with a message alert. She started awake and scrambled for it, the phone casting an eerie moonglow on the nightstand.
Please have said something nice
…
something I can hold on to while I wait for the wanting to go away
.