The area by the till was now a bar, with one of Michelle’s staff serving the free drink on arrival: a ginger cordial and Prosecco creation of Aggy’s she called a Ginger Stepchild. Anna was dubious about her sister’s mixology skills, but it tasted great.
The hen herself was in a fearsomely tight, short, ruby tutu dress, a sash and a tiara. As Anna surveyed the room, she realised that Aggy’s friends were like seeing flamingos up close: improbable legs and wild colours. The Pantry was awash with rivers of glossed hair, tiny dresses, St Tropez bronzed limbs and four-inch platform stilettos, caught in a cloud of Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb.
‘Aggy! AGGY! Look, lol!’ Aggy’s curly-haired, hyperactive best friend Marianne squealed, producing handfuls of penis-shaped confetti from her pockets and strewing them around the table.
‘Uh oh …’ Anna said, looking to Michelle, who merely waved.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘No doubt they’ll turn up in a sugar bowl when we have the Michelin inspectors in.’
‘Hahahaha!’ Marianne squealed, dumping a load of pink penis-shaped straws on the table and getting a blow-up inflatable penis out. When full size, it was roughly the size of a sausage dog. They started taking camera phone photos of each other astride it, shouting ‘ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross’,
Anna was sincerely glad to have Michelle there.
‘Do you ever understand the penis motif?’ Anna said to Michelle. ‘It’s not as if many people getting married nowadays are about to sleep with their partner for the first time. Why all the “woo hoo, willies” like we’re eight years old again?’
‘Especially as willies, plural, is what you’re giving up.’
‘Thanks so much for this, Michelle,’ Aggy said, tottering across to give Michelle a hug.
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re enjoying.’
‘Such a good suggestion of James’s,’ Aggy said absently, sucking on her penis straw in a flute glass, and waving at her friend across the room. ‘So was Italy. And he bought me my dress. I’ve invited him later by the way. Oh my God, tunnnnnnneeeee!’
Aggy was all ready to hit the dance floor, causing Anna to grab her arm to stall her.
‘James got you your what?’ Anna asked. ‘And he’s invited tonight?’
‘Oh. Yeah. I said I couldn’t afford it until my bonus. So he lent me the rest of the money I needed for my dress.’ She put her head on one side. ‘He’s soooo sweet. I know you think he’s a general helmet, but he’s not anymore, I don’t think.’
‘Aggy,’ Anna barked. ‘You took money from James Fraser?’
‘Argh, only for two months! For my dream dress!’ she said, with an expression that said she knew she couldn’t be too badly told off at her own hen party.
Aggy cantered off to do some obscene back-to-back ass-grinding. While Michelle went to the ladies, Anna whipped her phone out and fired off a question.
Her phone obligingly rippled with light a moment later.
Ah. Aggy wasn’t supposed to tell you about that. Yeah I lent her some money, no big. Though she did use you as security on the loan. If she defaults, you’re helping Parlez design the campaign for the Turkfurter account. They’re turkey frankfurters. ‘Nom’. Jx
Why was I not meant to know? Hen is good, apart from recurring penis motif. Ax
Can’t beat a recurring penis motif. Because I prefer to perform my heroics anonymously, like Batman. You only know me in my Bruce Wayne playboy mode, it’s just a clever facade. Jx
Anna laughed in disbelief. He’d put the phone down on her that evening that Aggy had disappeared, gone out, found them and sorted it. At considerable cost, both literal and metaphorical, it sounded like. He’d come up with the idea of The Pantry, and Italy? Anna had been startled at the speed of her sister’s recovery from the loss of the Langham, and it looked as though James was responsible for it.
Why had he done all this? Her heart whispered that he had done it for her.
Anna tried not to be too effusive, but the combination of the gratitude, alcohol and sheer surprise tipped her into gushing a thank you to him, and on behalf of her family, who, she pointed out, didn’t know they owed James their younger daughter’s salvation.
Aw! My pleasure to help with the planning, Alessi. Spoiler warning -> The police investigating a complaint about a disturbance will be strippers. Unless real police also respond to a complaint about a disturbance. Don’t grab any nightsticks till you’re sure. X
‘He is joking about the strippers, isn’t he? Didn’t Marianne promise you there wouldn’t be any?’ Anna said, showing a passing Aggy her phone.
‘Lol yes,’ she said. ‘We’re being classy.’
Anna’s eyes drifted to someone playing air guitar with an inflatable penis, and back down to her phone again.
Michelle studied her.
‘Oh, hello.’
‘What?’
‘You’re gazing at your texts with the expression of a mother looking at her newborn baby in an incubator. Who’s the message from …?’
‘James.’
‘A-HAH.’
‘What?’
‘The artist formerly known as evil James Fraser?’
Anna had felt duty-bound to sketch in something of the UCL bloodletting to Michelle and Daniel. She’d managed to balance exoneration of James without going into fine detail. Something about the nature of that day made her want to keep it between the two of them. They had a high regard for Anna’s opinion and were willing to accept that if she said he wasn’t who he once was, he wasn’t.
‘We’re friends now.’
‘Friends who go for romantic meals with champagne and vibrating chocolate.’
‘It wasn’t romantic! And it wasn’t actually vibrating.’
‘And he’s coming to a hen do? Which man comes to a hen do who isn’t being paid by the hour?’ Michelle asked.
Anna smiled. She didn’t particularly want to stop Michelle.
‘Alright, I’m blue skying this bullshit now,’ Michelle said, topping Anna up from a bottle of Prosecco. ‘He’s hot. You’re hot. You’re both single. Where’s the harm in some fumbling? It seems to me he’s given you the signs you need to proceed to Commencement of Physical Phase.’
Anna shrugged, not knowing what her answer was.
‘I’m not saying that special person who’s perfectly right for you and makes sense of everything isn’t going to turn up. But why not enjoy yourself until then?’
‘Maybe I don’t do casual very well,’ Anna said. ‘I’m too serious when it comes to relationships.’
‘You don’t want to turn an opportunity with a seriously fit man down and regret it. When I got to thirty, it hit me, this is going to end very soon. Imagine being in one of those shopping centre wheelchairs, burgundy legs swollen like balloon whisks, Scottie dog on your lap, thinking: all that nobbing I could’ve done?’
Anna laughed. James’s rehabilitation was still recent. And she didn’t like him in that way. Did she? He was gorgeous, sure. Did he like her in that way? Maybe this changed everything.
‘What I’m saying is, don’t save yourself for a rainy day. Unwrap your presents. Mix your drinks. Shag him and have some fun, for God’s sake. Arancini ball?’
Anna smiled and accepted one from the heaped plate.
‘Even if I did decide I wanted to do this, how the hell am I supposed to go about it?’ she said, with a mouthful of fried risotto rice. ‘I’m a useless flirt.’
‘Oh it’s easy. Be a bit tarty. Brazen it up. The secret of seduction is, ninety-seven per cent of it’s done in holding eye contact. The male ego will do the rest. Trust me, you can practically see the moment when it dawns on them that they’re going to get some action. Clunk.’
Anna remembered James’s advice at the British Museum launch with Tim and it dawned that of course he was no novice.
How did you flirt subtly? Though from what Michelle said, subtlety wasn’t the aim.
Anna felt a burst of interior su
nshine at the prospect of seeing James. It was as if her back got a little straighter, her wits sharper, around him. She hoped the red dress she’d worn looked acceptable. Or even, better than acceptable.
She tapped a foot to the music and wondered if Michelle was right, if there was a chance she and James would be going home together. The idea intimidated her beyond words and yet, made her feel other things too. She wasn’t going to say no. Michelle was right. It was time to start living.
65
When James slipped through the door he was nicely soundtracked by the opening bars of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’, as if he brought his own music with him.
He put a palm up in greeting to Anna and she responded in turn as Aggy squealed, assailed him and chattered, arms around his waist.
James listened and politely tolerated the slightly over-familiar embrace. He was in a black cardigan and a thin, pale blue shirt that needed more attentive ironing to stop the collar curling up. He looked even more Clark Kent-ish than usual. Although, Anna couldn’t help but wonder at seeing another James Fraser cardigan. How many did the man have?
The room’s predatory mammals smelled man-blood, and soon he was surrounded by new friends, making surreptitious mock-panicked eyes to Anna.
She supposed she could grow to like the cardigan thing. Now that she cared about the person inside it. She had an urge to take Aggy’s place and slide her arms around him and hold him very tightly. She tested thinking lascivious thoughts about unbuttoning cardigans, which didn’t seem quite right. Like a seduction scene involving unclasping dungarees, or rolling surgical stockings down. And then as he talked and made her sister laugh and the disco ball cast light-swirls of patterns across them, she realised her feelings went beyond wanting to take the clothes off.
She wanted to get under his skin. She wanted him to give her his heart.
‘I’m going to say hello to your sister,’ she heard James saying.
As he walked towards her, it felt as if her own heart turned inside out.
‘Evening,’ he said. He leaned to one side of her, then the other, checking her outfit. ‘I see no recurring penis motifs. Or t-shirts saying Aggy’s Slag Squad. Entirely tasteful. Well done, you churlish old bluestocking.’
Over his shoulder, Anna saw Michelle do two thumbs up at her. She tried to remember how she was with him before she’d felt this way.
She defaulted to further thanks for help with the Aggy crisis. As James talked about severing ties with Laurence, Anna noticed that having waited thirty-two years for the thunderbolt, she didn’t feel the way she expected. She thought it’d feel like safety: knowing you were home, where you were meant to be. In fact it was more like being strapped to a chair and tipped at an angle over the edge of a cliff. Precipitous.
‘You know, we never watched the Tim documentary,’ James said, accepting a glass. ‘Did you see it?’
‘No …’ Anna had been so keen to see it too. However, she had associated it with their curtailed evening and hadn’t worked up the courage to watch it yet. ‘We could try again? Minus Mills & Boons, cosmetic surgery brochures and massive fights.’
Wait, Anna thought. Was this a flirting opportunity?
‘That was when you offered to give me an independent norks assessment to reassure me it wasn’t necessary,’ Anna said.
‘Did I?’ James said. ‘Past James was a rascally sod. Past James, I hardly knew ye.’
She laughed. This was flirting, this was good. This was the whole ‘get him to imagine you naked’ thing they talked about, right?
‘I’m going to take you up on it,’ Anna laughed. ‘You can hold up a gold scorecard paddle with a number.’
‘Oh God,’ James rubbed an eye. ‘Nooooo!’
‘No? Don’t boys usually like baps?’ Anna said.
‘Yeah, but. You’re my friend. It’d be like seeing my sister.’
Ouch. Ouch. Anna felt the dulled impact while drunk, like being punched through a pillow. It’d hurt like hell when she remembered in the morning though. She realised she should come up with some distracting chatter but she couldn’t muster any. Like a sister? She was a disaster at reading men, at romantic situations. She was too gutted to respond.
‘Anna. Anna?’ she heard James saying.
‘Mmmm,’ she said, pretending there was something going on in her glass that had momentarily fascinated her.
‘Anna.’
He put his hand on her chin and tipped her face towards him.
‘I didn’t mean that. I was being flippant and trying to not sound like a letch. I don’t want to because I’d feel giddy and unusual and improper towards you.’
‘That’s what I was hoping,’ Anna said. The words had formed in her brain and left her mouth before she had consciously decided they’d be a good idea. Boom. Done. She’d said it. She’d said the thing.
James stared back at her with lips slightly parted as the music pounded and Anna tried to work out a way to amend or modify their meaning. None occurred to her. They teetered on the brink, with James’s reply now defining everything between them from here on in. Anna felt like a gambler who’d pushed all their chips onto red, and was waiting for the roulette wheel to stop spinning. Were they going to kiss? Did she imagine James moved closer, their heads inclining …?
‘I’m back with Eva,’ he said, pulling back with a tone of slight shock, as if he hadn’t known until this moment either.
Anna felt that dull punch again. But this time by someone who’d put more driving force into the elbow action. Despite the noise and hubbub around them, the silence between them in the ensuing seconds hung thick and heavy.
‘Oh,’ Anna said. She could hear the winded emptiness in her voice, even in that one syllable.
‘Early days,’ James cleared his throat. ‘She came round yesterday. We’re taking it slowly. She’s not moved back in yet.’
‘Right,’ Anna said, dully.
‘You can still come round?’ James said.
Anna had experienced some moments of feeling small and stupid in her life. This was up with the best of them.
‘Hah. No, I don’t think so,’ she said, shaking her head with a thin smile.
‘Of course you can,’ James said, not sounding as if he’d convinced himself. He looked perplexed, turning things over, wanting to ask more things of both Anna and himself that he couldn’t find the right words for.
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘When things have sorted themselves out, then,’ he said, hopefully. She knew he wasn’t listening to what he was saying.
‘No …’
‘You’re always welcome …’
He made her sound like a maiden aunt who they’d get the Fox’s Classic tin out for.
Anna smiled and summoned what little courage she had left.
‘James. Please stop saying I can still come round. We both know I can’t. I hope it goes well. Thanks again for all you’ve done for Aggy, I can’t thank you enough. I’m going to get another drink.’
Anna went to the bar, in a decisive manner.
‘James is leaving!’ Aggy called, minutes later, and she saw him shrugging on his coat and waving.
Anna waved back with a broad smile and enough vigour to excuse her not crossing the room. She had no idea what she’d say to him. He must’ve understood she wouldn’t want to because he slipped away quickly, no mean feat when a drunk Aggy was clinging to him like a koala bear.
‘Nothing doing?’ Michelle said, nearby, having witnessed his departure.
‘Nah,’ Anna said, with a leaden fake-lightness.
Michelle answered, ‘Hmmm, this one’s a puzzler.’
Anna could’ve solved the puzzle, but she wasn’t ready yet. She needed to assimilate it in private first. She was glad the night was drawing to a close, as she no longer felt remotely partyish. Hah. For some mad reason, her old diary doodles floated back to her: JF 4EVA. For Eva. She’d even predicted it.
When she got in the door of her flat, her phone bleeped with
a text.
I’m sorry. Jx
It took her half an hour to agonise over a reply that was also only two words long.
It’s OK. Ax
66
He’d found her sheltering in the porch, the downpour having turned her longer hair into damp ropes and her eye make-up into punky, soot-sparkled smudges. Her duckling blondeness always looked darker when wet.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ he asked.
‘It was spontaneous. I didn’t want to make an appointment,’ Eva said, and James knew what she was here to say.
She disappeared upstairs and came back down with her top half clad in only a bra and one of his cardigans, the material nearly wrapping twice round her slender hips.
They’d talked for an hour and a half, the rain beating a tattoo on the ground outside.
Eva had always been a wild free spirit before meeting James, she explained. She’d travelled and done things on a whim, and in the haze of being madly in love, she’d committed to things too fast. It had caused a kind of jet lag that outlasted the literal type from their honeymoon in Sri Lanka.
She’d never told him, but she’d had something like a panic attack the night before the wedding, going faint, heart palpitations. James would have thought she was having doubts about him, but that definitely wasn’t it. It had just all been so fast, making the lifelong commitment. But maybe with hindsight she shouldn’t have suppressed it, and told him. She wiped Man Ray-like perfect fat tears away at the memory.
James said: ‘So what’s changed?’
‘I missed you too much. I missed us.’ She curled her legs in tighter, looking tiny and vulnerable on the vastness of the giant pink couch.
Hmmm. Nice and vague. It couldn’t be that he’d started getting flirtatious comments on Facebook from female friends, colleagues and even exes, could it? Or that the estate agent’s photos had gone up and viewing requests had started? No. He told himself it couldn’t be that.
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