‘He wasn’t sincere?’ Anna said, with a smile.
‘He sincerely wants to shag you, just as he has sincerely wanted to shag lots of people.’
‘Does it matter that he’s shagged lots of people, if he didn’t carry on doing it if we got together?’
James pushed damp hair out of his eyes and smirked.
‘Oh dear. You think you’re going to be the woman who finally makes him settle down?’
‘No!’ Anna said, with such force she spilled a bit of her drink on an oblivious Luther. ‘I’m not into Laurence at all but I’m interested in why you think your best mate is such a terrible prospect because he’s been around. It’s not 1951.’
‘His numbers aren’t the issue as such, sure. You’re not buying a car.’
‘Yes. I mean,’ Anna began – James got the impression Anna was chattering slightly nervously – ‘Sleeping with tons of people isn’t morally wrong?’
‘It’s not. In theory. But massive career shaggers like Loz are usually conniving liars. Or male ones are at least. In practice, nobbing about is pretty much impossible to accomplish without dispensing with concern for other people’s feelings and manipulating to get what you want. The truth is the first casualty and all that.’
‘Laurence seems pretty upfront about it though?’
‘Yeah he will be, to a point,’ James sipped his drink. ‘This is male brain advanced lying for expert liars. He does the he’s “been a bit of a boy” spiel, but without enough gory detail to put you off. And you think, oh he’s admitting to me what he didn’t tell all the others. I must mean something more. He gives you the “maybe this time it’ll be different” love-struck eyes, the definite sense that his interest in you is more than carnal. He’s not actually told you any lies. But his whole method of approach has made you feel he’s let his guard down. That you won’t suddenly get the dropped calls after a couple of months of being hard at it in upscale, handily central hotels he found on last minute dot com. That he’s not seeing anyone else, and you both might be falling in love. Wrong, wrong and at least fifty per cent wrong. And like all good cons, by the time you realise it was one, he’ll have got what he wants and be long gone.’
James hoped Anna wasn’t taking any of this to mean she was a fool to think Laurence could be interested in her. Loz would be knocking it out of the park if he pulled Anna, obviously. He didn’t deserve to, nor did he appreciate her, beyond the physical. James wasn’t about to let him exploit Anna’s innate decency. The trouble with good people meeting bad people is they lacked the roadmap for this foreign country. James had at least visited and got a few landmarks.
‘That’s quite a vivid picture.’
‘It’s a timeless formula. So no, of course, there’s nothing wrong with boffing him if you know what’s what. I didn’t want you to fall for anything. I’ve been the recipient of a few “I can’t get hold of Laurence” calls from women in my time. I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and see it happen and say nothing, this time.’
She wondered at the ‘this time’. Because James knew Anna?
‘He said he was scarred by the effect of a lifetime living in your shadow,’ she offered.
‘Hahaha! He didn’t? It’s my fault! Oh, Laurence. Amazing scenes. This is my secret inner pain, I feel so vulnerable admitting it. Stroke the pain away, Anna. No, a bit lower, just there, that’s right.’
James and Anna laughed and James fiddled with the turn-up on his jeans.
‘And yet he’s your best mate,’ Anna said.
‘I don’t know about best. The friend I see the most of. The problem with male groups in general is the biggest bastard wins. Your friends are much more of a credit to you, I’m sure,’ James said. ‘More … quirky.’
‘Quirky?! They’re not pity choices!’
‘No!’
The combination of wine and good company was giving James a small stomach-based glow.
‘And my sister’s an idiot?’ Anna said.
‘Oh, come on, I’ve said sorry for that,’ James said. ‘And I followed her back on Twitter.’
‘What greater gesture exists? The three wise men brought gold, incense, myrrh and said unto Baby Jesus, we are Team Follow Back.’
James laughed, really laughed, from the pit of his gently glowing stomach. Anna was witty.
‘Look, Aggy works in events PR …’
‘Which is less sensible than what you do?’
‘Oof. It’s organising parties, let’s be honest. She has “general funster” in her Twitter bio. It takes a lot to make me see past things like that and be the bigger man, but I’m trying. If I find out she likes The Hoosiers or something I will roll with the punch.’
Anna rolled her eyes and smiled, without any real ire.
‘Shall we watch Tim, then?’ he said.
Anna pressed the remote control buttons according to James’s instructions, but all that appeared onscreen was monochrome snowstorm. He huffed and puffed about her being useless, only to discover when he took over that the DVD player did indeed appear to be broken.
‘The problem with this streamlined modern technology is if the remote goes, you’re screwed,’ he tapped it on the sofa arm. ‘Rubbish.’
‘I think my brother-in-law has this model. There’s a button if you look …’ Anna crawled across the carpet and sat in front of it on her knees.
James gazed at the bundled black-brown plain chocolate shades of her wavy hair and the smaller tighter curls at the nape of her neck.
‘Yeah, you need to come out of there, that’s the languages menu,’ he said, absently.
‘Thanks for that, I was trying to select Greek because Theodora was Cypriot.’
‘It’s buggered. I concede defeat,’ Anna said, eventually, after some ineffectual jabbing with a forefinger and pointing of remote.
‘We could watch it on a laptop but it wouldn’t be the same. What about you? Have you got a telly and DVD?’
‘I’ve got two tellies and a DVD. I’m a general funster.’
James checked the clock.
‘Plenty of time to cab it to yours. If you don’t mind?’
Anna looked undecided.
‘Has the toilet been unblocked?’ James asked, doing weighing hands.
‘My U-bend was always clear, as was my diary. I was insulting you.’
‘Do you know, I THOUGHT so.’
48
Wine was a helluva drug. If Anna hadn’t scoffed it down so fast she might well have thought better of this. Her discomfort during the taxi journey rose by steady increments. Having James Fraser in her flat wasn’t a good idea at the best of times, but given they’d come straight from his Elle Décor home? And she’d not even had a chance to tidy up?
Even when it was organised, her place wasn’t designed to be viewed. It was a messy jumble of things she needed and things she loved. It was her heart on a plate. Could she allow him over the threshold?
‘Right, my flat is a tip, unlike Casa Croosh Und,’ she said, with mock-posh voice, pushing her key in the flaking door.
‘I’ve lived in lads’ houses at uni and beyond, you can’t shock me,’ James said. ‘Unless you too have rugby jockstraps drying on the radiator.’
Nevertheless, she was conscious of how cramped her hallway was, how low the ceiling felt, and how chucked together and haphazard all her furniture was by comparison.
‘This is nice,’ James said, pleasantly, once she’d hustled him to the sun-faded red sofa-bed and pushed wine at him.
‘Haha, you kid.’
‘No I don’t! It’s homely.’
The front room had ‘cottage cheese’ Artex walls and was lined with cheapo black lacquer wood bookshelves. There was a Habitat-framed print of the original Art Deco Great Gatsby cover over a small enamel period fireplace, and Anna lit the tea-lights in the grate whilst hoping that the gesture didn’t look at all suggestive. Everything would look better lower lit, she figured.
‘I might move to Stokey if I sell up. Can’t af
ford Casa Crouch End on my wage alone,’ James said, and they made polite chat about the merits of various postcodes.
It quickly became obvious that they were several shades too inebriated to concentrate on a history documentary. Anna’s flat might be grubbier and more squeezed than James’s, but it also made for a more relaxed mood.
She put Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on after James got up and examined her one row of CDs and deemed them ‘the selection of a middle-aged depressed empty nester who got most of them free with the Mail on Sunday’. His barbs probably should offend her, she thought, but she didn’t detect any ill will behind his teasing. When James delivered a jibe, or laughed at her retorts, she detected only genuine delight in a shared wavelength.
‘I can’t begin to imagine how unbelievably pseudy and poser your CDs on show are,’ Anna said.
‘I don’t have CDs anymore, chucked them out along with the mangle for the washing. Favourite track?’ he asked, studying the album case.
‘“You Make Loving Fun”. It’s so hopeful.’
‘It is hopeful. It’s about Christine McVie having an affair with a lighting engineer with a big Burt-Reynolds-in-Playgirl moustache. Not the miracle I’d choose to believe in if I was going to start believing in miracles.’
‘Hmph. Thank you for ruining it for me,’ Anna said, sitting back down.
‘Am I allowed?’ James said, as he continued his perusal of the shelves, like a dinner party guest looking for conversation openers.
‘I have nothing to be ashamed of!’ Anna said. ‘Well I do, but I’m too pished to be ashamed of it.’
‘No way – Mills & Boon?’ James said, spotting a row of slim scarlet spines in her bookcase, at eye level.
‘I love Mills & Boon,’ Anna said. ‘And I refuse to call them a guilty pleasure.’
‘Yeah, more a guilty pain,’ James said.
He selected a title and turned it over in his free hand.
‘Lover to the Laird. He could take her to bed but she would never take his name! Oof. Fucking Nora.’
‘These are the Historical ones. Fucking Nora is in the more risqué Mills & Boon “Heat” series.’
‘Haha. See, I don’t get it. You’re clever and funny. And these books are very not clever.’
‘Very funny though,’ Anna said.
James pulled a sceptical face. He replaced Lover to the Laird, put his wine glass down on the mantelpiece and plucked another out. He flicked through the pages and read aloud.
‘“Lord Haselmere’s cruel eyes raked over Tara’s quivering nubile form like a rake with hot coals.” Two rakes, who edits this stuff? “She played the coquette but she was nothing more than a sorceress! He wanted to carry her away, like a marauding Viking with his loot. But this loot was a lady, a lady whom he could never make his wife. No matter. He must do what any red-blooded man would do when faced with such treasure, and the pressure of his noble title and vast inheritance” – vast inheritance, oh aye – “be damned. He was still a man, with a man’s needs.” I thought that said a man’s knees for a second. “‘Take off your blouse, he husked …’” Husked, hahaha. How does one husk? I’ll try that again. “Take off your blouse!”’
James said it again in a pervert’s guttural mutter and Anna laughed so hard tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes.
‘OK, that is funny. I’ll give you that,’ James said. ‘The joke for me would wear out long before the end though. What is it with women and romances? Eva never liked flowers and chocolates and all that jazz but when she was pre-menstrual she used to watch those dreadful films where some guy chases after a Greyhound bus in a sunset to tell a woman she makes him his better self or whatever. What’s the appeal?’
‘Is that a genuine question or rhetorical?’
‘Genuine. I want to understand. And then it’s possible I want to get you help.’
‘If you’re not going to deride …’ Anna pulled a saggy, stained velvet cushion onto her lap and hugged it to her. ‘It’s the climax – no, don’t be cheap – of the big gesture scene. That’s the romance money shot. In ordinary life, no one ever declares their passion. You get a few signals, get pissed, end up in bed, it becomes a habit. I love the hero saying all the things to a woman you want to hear but no one ever says.’
James nodded.
‘“Hold me, it’s raining, you can’t!” That sort of thing?’
‘Yes. Or, you know. Something that makes sense. It has to be about why she’s so remarkably special to him and she finally finds out all her feelings of obsession are reciprocated.’
Anna couldn’t add that this desire in her probably stemmed from no one even wanting to be seen giving her the time of day, once upon a time.
‘Then after this speech he enfolds her in his manly arms, kisses her, and carries her back to his castle for a proper drubbing.’
‘I think the castle’s a very key element in these fantasies,’ James said. ‘You all want Bernie Ecclestone via Heat’s “Torso of the Week”. I don’t see any titles here called Penised by a Pauper.’
‘Third in from the right hand side,’ Anna said, pointing to the shelf. ‘Yes this gender-conditioning sickness is probably why I’ve never met anyone,’ Anna continued, slightly morose. ‘I have too high expectations.’
‘Nah. The reason you haven’t met anyone is that most men are dicks. I’d hate to be a woman or gay … That was meant to be the most New Man moment ever and it sounds really bad.’
They both giggled in drunkenness. Anna wondered if she had any food in the fridge fit for presentation.
‘Er …?’
James pulled out the bookmark at the back of the Mills & Boon he was holding, a cosmetic surgery leaflet. Lest any doubt remain that it signified intent, Anna saw she’d helpfully scrawled a time and date on it. A consultation she’d later cancelled.
‘Oh no! Don’t look at that,’ Anna barked. This should be the motherlode and fatherlode of all embarrassments, and yet Anna was twenty-five per cent embarrassed, seventy-five per cent amused at how hilariously pitiful it was. It helped that she was drunk.
James put it back in the flyleaf.
‘Funny weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?’
They both burst out laughing again.
‘I’m bemoaning why I don’t have a boyfriend and I have a Mills & Boon with a Transform leaflet as bookmark. Oh God …’ Anna shook with weak laughter and put the cushion over her mouth. ‘Next, you glimpse a bed with eleven teddy bears on it.’
‘Did you get busted and need a new face to hide from the Feds?’
‘I was thinking of getting a birthmark removed. A port wine stain in the shape of the words, “Sod Off James You Nosy Git”.’
‘Sounds like a talking point. I’d sell it to Chat magazine, make some money. My very specific birthmark frightened lovers away.’
Anna wiped under her eyes and sighed.
‘If you must know, and now sadly you sort of do, I had a low moment a year ago and considered a … chest lift.’
James wrinkled his nose. A nose that would be permanently ‘sold out’ if it could be ordered from cosmetic surgery brochures.
‘Why would you do that? I’m sure you’re fine as you are.’
‘Oh, dunno, hangover ennui. That arsehole boyfriend at uni said a few nasty things. But he said nasty things about most of me so it’s not a solid rationale.’
Anna knew her childhood experiences made her highly vulnerable to dumping her insecurities into her appearance, and tried not to do it. She suspected her scruffiness was partly due to a reluctance to pay it too much attention. Yet her bust was the only part of her that hadn’t emerged unscathed from being larger. When she lost weight, it deflated. Viewed side on, she worried her cans were what Aggy called ‘envelope flaps’.
There was a pause.
‘So you’re not going to do it?’ James said.
‘Doubtful.’
‘Good. It’s completely unnecessary.’
‘How do you know?’
‘If you had ones like icing piping bags or whatever, you could get it sorted for free on the NHS. The fact you’re paying is an admission it’s vanity.’
James Fraser was criticising her for vanity? Life’s journey took some very strange turns, sometimes.
‘And if it’s because you think men will care,’ he continued, ‘other than your arsehole ex, who’s both an arsehole and an ex, then trust me, they don’t.’
‘That’s sexist, assuming it’s all for the male gaze. Maybe it’s for me.’
‘Yeah, it’s not though is it? If Ryan Gosling approved them, as chairman of the board, you wouldn’t bother. Hence you’re doing it to suit the tastes of imaginary men in the future. And there’s no need. They’re definitely imaginary.’
‘Oh bloody hell, thanks!’
‘No! That was badly put. I mean their preferences are imaginary. Men are very binary. We either fancy you or we don’t. It’s not approval pending, like a Facebook friend request, until we’ve scored the bits and pieces out of ten.’
‘Who died and made Ryan Gosling boob arbiter general?’
‘Tell you what, show me instead then.’
‘You’re not serious?’
James nodded, rubbing his eyes. He folded his arms and leaned back.
‘Nice try!’ Anna squeal-giggled.
‘Hey, this is a win-win. You either get a compliment or a cast-iron unbiased opinion from a disinterested party that surgery’s the way to go. And before you say it, no, people you’re paying five grand to carve them up are not unbiased.’
‘Unbelievable!’ Hmmm. Disinterested. Unbiased. He didn’t have to hammer the binary lack of attraction element quite so hard.
‘You’d be getting them out for a bunch of strangers at a clinic. I don’t see this is so different.’
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