‘I want the chance to make it up to you, Anna.’
‘You can’t. That’s what you’re not grasping.’
Anna knew she’d finally done enough to make James walk away. It was a battle of wills, him pushing against a door to get into a room that she was determined not to let him into. Somewhere, deep down, it was possible she wanted him to try hard enough. But she was certain he wouldn’t. There was no way he was winning this. In strength of feeling, she had the power of twenty men.
‘I have to get back to work,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’
62
Anna made it a few paces across the grass, bristling with a poisonous sense of triumph, before James tapped her on the shoulder again.
‘You think I’m the last person you want around. What if I‘m precisely the person you need?’
Anna eye-rolled him. ‘Which movie poster did you whip that from?’
‘I’m serious. You need to exorcise Rise Park. You need the person responsible, or one of them, to truly understand what they did. So you can let go of it.’
‘I was living my life fine before you came along, thanks.’
‘Despite you being a much better person than me, I don’t accept we’re as dissimilar as you say. We wouldn’t make each other laugh so much if we were. You don’t think we have anything in common?’
‘No.’
‘You said you liked me at school? You mean you had a crush on me?’
Anna lifted her chin in a terse nod.
‘Why? We never had one conversation, until the Mock Rock.’
‘I knew things about you. You know how it is with the cool kids and the no-marks. We watch from the sidelines while you’re in the spotlight.’
‘But we never interacted. You simply liked the way I looked.’
‘So?’ Anna shifted her weight and made a face that let him know his time was nearly up.
‘You were judging purely on appearances.’
‘Hah. Nice try. But that’s a phony equivalence. It’s hardly like I made your life worse. You didn’t even know I was there.’
‘My point stands. We both judged on appearances. I thought you weren’t worth anything and you thought I was worth something. We were both wrong.’
James took her pause as encouragement.
‘I can’t begin to imagine what it’s been like to be in your shoes, and to then have people treat you so differently once you’re … well, obviously you’re beautiful. It’d make most people deadly cynical. Yet you’re not, and that’s impressive.’
‘You’re beeyoodifull. Oh, please. Not that hot and not your type, was the real assessment, I recall.’
James went red. ‘Come on, I apologised for that. I was trying to discourage Laurence. Of course I think you’re beautiful, everyone does. Take a compliment.’
Anna shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t really feel. ‘So would you want to be my friend if I still looked like Aureliana?’
James looked to the heavens in mock despair and back down.
‘Yep. Nothing in our friendship was about looks. Wouldn’t you agree? It was unusually pure, in that respect.’
‘Mmmm. Are you finished? I do have work to do.’
‘No. I’m not leaving things like this,’ James said. ‘I think your pride won’t let me back in. So tell me what it needs me to do. I will do anything you ask of me to atone for this. But I won’t simply go away. You’ve got to let it out. Punch me or something.’
She knew they were inching closer to her saying the thing she didn’t want to. Her voice became tremulous.
‘James. You have no idea how bad it was. This is not fixable with jokes, or token acts of play-fighting. You don’t know what you’re interfering in, here.’
‘I was there. I have some idea. Tell me.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Put it this way. Why do I deserve to be spared hearing it?’
Anna opened her mouth. Closed it. Checkmate. She had no answer for that.
‘A month after the Mock Rock,’ she said, her voice small and careful, ‘I left a goodbye note on my bed, and took a ton of aspirin …’
James’s mouth opened slightly and his eyes looked shiny. He put a hand to his mouth. Anna felt the stabbing pain in her jaw and the pressure in her ears that meant tears were coming, in a big way. She willed herself to keep speaking.
‘And I tried not to think about who would find me. It was Aggy. She sensed something was up and doubled back and came home from school. My little sister, James. She saved my life. No fourteen-year-old should have to go through what she went through …’
The tears began and she wiped at her face with a freezing cold hand.
‘I felt so, so guilty. But there was nothing about my life that made me want to continue it. Nothing. The Mock Rock proved to me I was simply a joke. A big, flabby, foreign, repulsive joke. I’d finally left that school, but it had broken me. I realised that if adulthood was going to be more of the same, I couldn’t take it. So tell me why I should stand here and make friends with one of the people who almost made sure I wasn’t here?’
She and James stared at each other. Anna’s chest rose and fell, and she knew her face would soon crumple.
‘You did that? After the … what we did. Oh Jesus, Anna …’
James put an arm out and stepped towards her.
‘Oh sure, give me a hug so you don’t have to see me cry,’ she said, half-kidding, with the last speech-noises her larynx could make.
‘It’s so you don’t see me cry, you idiot,’ James muttered thickly, and grabbed her so hard it nearly winded her.
She felt arms around her and a hand on the back of her head as the tears flowed in earnest. He only held more tightly as she cried, making it known that she wasn’t expected to stop. She heard her own sobs as if they were coming from someone else. It was the kind of liberated ugly-crying you usually only allowed yourself as a child.
They stood like that for a while; Anna didn’t know if it was five minutes or fifteen. Gradually, her breathing became more regular, and the weeping turned into weak hiccups.
James shushed her and mumbled something into her hair, a jumble of indistinct sounds she couldn’t immediately form into words. She cried herself out, waterlogging and snotting his no doubt ridiculously expensive coat.
When they finally moved apart again, Anna knew she must look like a seasick Brian May, and she could honestly say she didn’t care. Something had happened. Something had shifted.
‘Don’t feel guilty. You have no reason to feel guilty,’ James said. He helped brush wet strands of her hair from her face. He looked slightly moist of eye himself. ‘You were a victim and you did what you did because you felt you had to. It’s the rest of us who should feel guilt.’
‘I made the decision to take those pills, so I put Aggy through it,’ Anna said, as she wiped at the corners of her eyes with a sleeve.
‘You were forced to it.’
Some students passed them and they both sniffed and looked in opposite directions until they were gone. London’s daytime traffic thundered past, a short distance away. James exhaled, heavily.
‘What you said was right. No apology can possibly be enough for what I did to you. I’m not sure I can claim to be the friend you need. All I can say is that I’ll carry this until I die. Please know that you’re not alone in that anymore.’
‘You were the straw on the camel’s back, to be fair,’ Anna said. ‘You weren’t a long-term tormentor who put the hours in. You can’t steam in at the end of something and take the credit for the results of their hard work …’
Anna gave him a small smile. James shook his head in dismay.
And to her surprise, she found that her anger had left her. Her tears were cried out. James was still here, and she had to accept that he wanted to be here. It wasn’t conscience-cleansing, it wasn’t for show, it wasn’t a whim. He wholeheartedly wanted to make amends. Everyone should be allowed to leave the past behind. Didn’t she know that bet
ter than anyone?
James hoisted his bag back over his body. He looked at her, at a loss for what to say in parting.
‘I should let you get back to work …’ he said, vaguely. ‘If you ever need anything …’
He looked so sorry, genuinely sorry. Beaten up by it, even.
‘I suppose we could try being friends,’ Anna said, slowly. ‘See where it gets us. I’m thinking that if you feel eternally guilty, I’ll probably never have to stand my round.’
James smiled a small smile.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he said. ‘Why would you lose your arm in an off-licence?’
‘Eh?’ Anna said.
‘Lose your arm in a Thresher?’
‘Threshing machine. Good God, you’re a bimbo,’ she smiled at James.
‘Oh, man. I’m going to carry that till the day I die too.’
They stood grinning at each other like a pair of goons.
‘I can’t go back to work looking like this,’ Anna said.
‘Then don’t,’ James said. ‘I’m playing truant. Play truant with me. I’ll buy you lunch anywhere you like.’
‘Why are you playing truant?’
‘Duh. I wanted to come to someone else’s workplace and be told I was an irredeemable dick today. A change is as good as a rest.’ He smoothed her hair over her ear again and Anna felt an inner light switch on, despite herself.
‘What do you say?’
‘If it’s your treat, how can I say no?’
They trudged in comfortable silence to the road, Anna angling her head down in case a student or colleague passed them. Luckily the Baltic temperature meant there were few dawdlers.
‘Think big with lunch,’ James said, as they crunched over the grass. ‘Today is too momentous to waste on a Meatball Marinara sub. Anywhere you like. On me.’
‘Well, in that case, how about Bob Bob Ricard?’ Anna asked.
James blanched.
‘Fucking hell. Are you sure it was that bad at school?’
They laughed. Anna was pleased about the swift resumption of the affectionate teasing. This was normality. She didn’t want to be treated like an invalid.
As James figured out the best route, some words he’d muttered earlier formed a sentence in her head.
I can’t bear to think about it, Anna.
Yet for the first time, she could.
63
If that had been cathartic for Anna, she’d probably never know what it meant to James. There’d been something scratching at the other side of the cellar door for so long, and it turned out it was simply: you can be better than this. She’d helped him understand what it was, at last.
He had prized the wrong things for so long – false things – and wondered why life felt like a sham. Well, duh, he could hear his sister say.
James didn’t know how to tell Anna she’d saved him from a life of all surface, no substance, or if he ever could. He didn’t want her to think she was his street cat named Bob, a cute motor for his redemption.
It didn’t come for free, obviously – thinking about her nearly topping herself, thanks in no small part to him, was abundantly grim.
‘Anna,’ he said, on the walk there, ‘I know we’re having a laugh now, but if you ever want to talk more about the … thing you told me.’
She smiled at him. ‘I did a lot of talking with the counsellor I saw in the year afterwards, don’t worry. I’m all talked out. But thanks.’
It was authentically terrifying to think you could do so much damage to another human being, and then mentally store it away in the attic. Imagine if he’d never met her again? If he ever had kids, they’d have a Don’t Be Mean talk from him that’d involve a PowerPoint presentation.
But now he had a second chance to be the friend to her that she’d so badly needed half a lifetime ago. He could see her, as she used to be, in his mind’s eye, on that stage. Portly in an orange dress, with a mad helmet hairdo, her eyes streaming. He longed for a time machine so he could go back and do it all differently.
Bob Bob Ricard was an excellent choice. On such an unusual day, the restaurant fitted perfectly: stepping through its entrance in the middle of Soho was like entering a portal to an Alice in Wonderland alternate universe. As if a white rabbit might scurry past, checking a pocket watch. The inside of the restaurant resembled an Orient Express car, via a Hollywood Hills bathroom, circa 1961. It was a crackpot opulent riot of golden brass fittings, marble, mirrors and an inlaid patterned tiled floor.
James remarked that the colour of the leather booths, like something from an Edwardian train, were ‘cerulean blue’, only to forget Anna knew much more stuff than him.
‘It’s a little deeper and richer than that. More lapis lazuli?’
James smiled. ‘Airplane toilet flush blue, then?’
‘Poetic.’
There was even a bell to ‘press for champagne’, James prodded it in the spirit of adventure. Two flutes arrived on a tray, carried by a white-gloved waiter in pink waistcoat, inside a minute.
‘It’s like being in an Agatha Christie!’ Anna whispered.
They over-ordered ridiculously rich posh-Russian-meets-American-diner food: blinis and soufflés and lobster macaroni cheese and truffle mash. Then they declared anarchy over who chose what, shared everything and finished nothing.
James was aware that having a three-course lunch in the middle of the day with a woman he wasn’t romantically involved with, could’ve felt deeply uncomfortable. But strangely, given all that had passed, their meal was one of the most comfortable ones he’d ever had. Conversation flowed as freely as the champagne, and would have done so, with or without the booze.
Every ban had been lifted, and there was no taboo left to trip over. James didn’t censor himself, nor did he try to show off. When they touched on school memories, he told Anna about losing his virginity in a series of clumsy and shaming encounters with Rise Park diva Lindsay Bright in her dad’s shed. ‘More of a summer house,’ he insisted. ‘We did do it on a bag of compost though, and a pitchfork up the arse counts as one of the worst coitus interruptuses ever.’ Anna laughed heartily.
‘She was the girl we all wanted to be!’ she sighed, twiddling the chain of her necklace.
‘Wow. Are you kidding? She was bratty and appalling.’
‘You went out with her!’
‘Only in that “arranged marriage” way of school. Don’t look to sixteen-year-old boys for taste and judgement. Don’t look to them for anything until at least twenty-six, in fact.’
Anna insisted as the plates stacked up that they were going Dutch and he said, don’t you dare, you have to let me get this, and she relented. James wouldn’t have told her this but her enchantment at the surroundings was plenty payback.
Looking around, Anna sighed. ‘I’ve always wanted to come here and never found an excuse,’ she said.
‘Couldn’t you do it on one of your millions of dates?’
‘I didn’t want to waste it on a duff one. It had to be special,’ Anna replied. She was too busy filleting about in a venison steak tartare to realise what she’d said.
James beamed at the top of her head. Her sloppy jumper was slipping from the shoulders and he found himself gazing at her collarbones. There was something about a woman’s collarbones, he’d always thought.
There was only one moment the mood dipped and she welled up, when discussing her departed confidante, the corpulent hamster, Chervil. God love her, but who cared about those things? Less a mammal, more a squeaky dog toy with longer batteries. Without even thinking, he put out his hand and gently grazed his knuckles against her cheekbone.
He wasn’t usually the kind of man to go in for paternalistic patting and petting of women he wasn’t seeing, or even those he was.
But she made him feel … there was an old-fashioned word for it. Tender. She made him feel tender towards her.
James couldn’t have staggered on to dessert but Anna insisted on the ‘Signature Chocolate Glory’ t
hat arrived as a gold leaf sphere that looked as if it was going to start vibrating and crack open.
‘This was the best idea you’ve ever had, James Fraser,’ Anna said thickly, through a mouthful of pudding, and suddenly James’s heavy heart felt as light as a feather.
64
‘Is it naughty?’ the girl asked, cake slice poised above a sandy disc of salted caramel torte.
She had an amazing sleek whorl of a blonde bun, like a Danish pastry. It was the sort of do Anna tried to attempt, but had always found her hair too curly and unruly to hold the shape.
‘It’s patisserie, so it has no moral implications, my love,’ Michelle said.
‘Hee hee!’ she said. ‘How many calories though? Per slice, like so?’ She made a ‘V’ with her hands.
Michelle sucked on her e-fag, ruminatively, wearing the expression of Gandalf with his wooden pipe surveying a fool of a Took.
‘212. Point five. 212.5.’
Blonde bun girl put the cake slice down and got her iPhone out, tapping at the keypad with a French-manicured forefinger. ‘My points app says I can!’
She teetered off in her precipitously high salmon-patent heels, grasping forty-five degrees of 212.5 calorie torte daintily in a white paper napkin.
‘Was that true?’ Anna asked Michelle.
Michelle swivelled sarcastic, swoopily eye-linered eyes towards her.
‘Yes, while cooking the food, chilling the grog, sorting the playlist and doing the décor, I had a team of nutritionists analyse the approximate energy value of slices of my puddings, as a handy guide for neurotics,’ Michelle said. ‘Anyway, not as if it’s going to do her any harm. I’ve never seen anyone so thin they make a peplum skirt look like a good idea before.’
‘You’ve done magnificently here, Michelle,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you.’
The Pantry had been henned up for the evening in style. There were tiles of light scattered by a disco ball, more candles than a Baywatch hot tub scene, and an iPod dock as DJ, full of oestrogen-loaded songs on shuffle. The tables had been pushed back to create a dance floor space, with one covered in a white tablecloth, full of platters of food. Michelle had thoughtfully created an Anglo-Italian spread of things that were easy to juggle while holding a drink and dancing.
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