Here's Looking at You (15 page)

‘What’s yours?’ she asked, scanning down.

James clicked away, muttering: ‘A Lahmacun. It’s like a Turkish pizza.’

‘Yes, I know what it is,’ Anna snapped.

‘You can talk though, you eat omelettes in baps.’

‘It’s not on my profile on UCL’s site. Here’s Anna, she specialises in Byzantine history. She also likes omelettes in baps
.
’

‘Just a bit of fun,’ he snapped. Oh no. He’d used the phrase ‘just a bit of fun’. Epic fail.

‘Different world I guess.’

‘Is it?’ James said, not bothering to hide his exasperation. ‘Everything doesn’t have to be stony serious, does it?’

‘I know. But “favourite food”. Reminds me of old
Smash Hits
interviews. “What’s your favourite colour, Kylie?”’

She smirked, and James felt a twinge of shame and dislike for having been made to look a fool.

‘I hope your colleague Parker, the firm’s Mac and Cheese fan, isn’t going to be doing more Googling on our behalf,’ she said.

James knew what the company man answer was here. An acknowledgement, a self-deprecating joke, a semi-apology. But sod that. She was being so needlessly needling.

‘Parker was speaking off the cuff. We’re here to present the content, not create it,’ James said, voice tight.

‘It doesn’t seem that way when I’m having to argue my case against designers?’

‘You’re being rather touchy.’

‘Maybe it’s that “stony serious” habit of mine again. Shall I tell you my favourite dessert, lighten the mood?’

Right at that moment, James hated everything. He hated his job, he hated this superior woman, he hated himself. He hated omelettes in baps, even though he’d never tried one. He hated that his wife had left him and she was sort-of sleeping with a man called Finn. And he hated that someone was laughing at him for something that wasn’t even his fault.

He puffed his cheeks out.

‘OK, look. Like it or not, we have to work together for weeks on this. I don’t understand why it has to be a nightmare. You don’t give two craps about what I do, fine. I get it. It’s a bunch of digital twattery that didn’t exist five minutes ago and now we sell it to you as essential, because unfortunately for you it is. Because everyone has smart phones and the attention span of Graham Norton after a speedball and a Red Bull, even the ones who go to museums. But this pays my mortgage and I’m alright at it, so it’s what I do. Not everyone has a passion for their work like you. We’re not all that lucky.

‘And you think my colleagues are dicks? Guess what? So do I, with one or two exceptions. And they all seem to have surnames for forenames. But instead of sitting here trying to get a rise out of me every other minute and make it clear how moronic you think it all is, why don’t we get on and work together? Then we can get the job done as painlessly as possible and we’ll soon be out of each other’s sight. And thank God for that.’

Silence. Shock. Mutual shock. James had never spoken in a temper to a client before. And not any old client – he’d told a clever professor woman to stick it in her pigeonhole.

She was going to make an official complaint and he’d be taken off this project. Or worse, Parlez would lose the contract over it. Word would go round other universities, they’d be blacklisted, and he’d be in deep shit.

She looked startled, but said nothing. James equivocated over apologising and reasoned it wouldn’t do him any good now anyway.

Then Anna spoke, without emotion.

‘Do you have enough from me?’

‘More than enough, thanks,’ James said, snapping his laptop shut.

After she’d finished a tutorial in the afternoon, Patrick popped his head round the door.

‘How did it go with your nemesis?’ Patrick asked. ‘Did he prove himself an irretrievable mung bean?’ Patrick had his own lexicon, one that could only be born of watching a lot of
Red Dwarf.
‘I made myself scarce once it was properly up and running, but from what I heard at the start you sounded tremendous.’

‘Ta. It’s weird, but unless he’s hiding it very well, I don’t think he remembers me from school at all. Strange, isn’t it? Yet he loomed so large for me. The big people don’t remember the little people. Even when the little people were very big.’

‘I find it very hard to imagine forgetting you,’ Patrick said. ‘I suspect you’re being hard on yourself and were merely … voluptuous.’

Anna couldn’t help smiling. ‘Oh no trust me, I’m not being coy. I was a proper porker. With a huge nest of Slash from Guns’n’Roses hair and a pinafore dress the size of a wardrobe.’

‘Well, I’m glad there was no aggravation with him.’

‘There was
some
aggro … I made a joke about his company and he had a big rant about me thinking his work was stupid and how he thought it was too. Took me by surprise. Especially with him being the unruffled superior poser type.’

‘Really?’ Patrick’s eyes widened, and he adjusted his weight against the door frame and scratched his chin.

‘But I think, if he doesn’t remember me, I can cope with dealing with him.’

‘I’ll send the file to you as well as this Parlez?’

‘Actually, send it only to them,’ Anna said, in a snap of self-consciousness, ‘I don’t need to see myself yammering away.’

James Fraser would no doubt take the mickey out of it with his too-cool-for-school colleagues. Let him.

Patrick nodded and made his exit, but seconds after the door closed there was a mumbled
oh dear, that’s dreadful
. He knocked again, and reopened the door.

‘I’m afraid someone’s tampered.’

Anna followed Patrick’s eyes to her name card, which had been amended with some crossings-out of letters, and the addition of a word.

‘Dr Nice Ass?’ Anna read out.

‘Appalling that you should be disrespected. Objectified,’ Patrick said, his pale skin turning livid pink at the edges, like a crabstick. ‘Some people still can’t cope with intelligent women. How dare they …
pass comment
,’ Patrick’s ire was funnier than the criminal desecration, ‘on your … on your …’

‘Ass niceness.’

‘I’ll get a replacement sorted,’ Patrick said, pulling the card out.

‘Thanks,’ Anna said. She’d learned to let Patrick carry out his performances of conspicuous gallantry.

‘I’m afraid I have a fair idea who did this,’ Patrick said. ‘A pair of Beavis and Buttheads in the second year who shared their appreciation of your form and asked me if I was—’ Patrick made rabbit ear quote marks in the air, ‘
hitting that
. I mean, really. What contentious terminology.’

Patrick went pinker and Anna started to pinken.

‘It could’ve been worse I suppose. Could’ve changed it to Doctor Anal Messy,’ she said.

There was a pause.

Patrick blinked. ‘I’ll get this changed.’

‘Yep, thanks,’ Anna said, retreating.

She sat down at her desk again, opened her email.

An olive branch. Anna pondered whether she’d grasp it. Being unpleasant to him was attack as form of defence, thinking he’d go on the offensive. If he wasn’t …? Hmmm.

She decided as long as James Fraser wasn’t going to be mentioning the Mock Rock, they could lay down arms. It seemed incredible he still didn’t recognise her. Was it possible he did remember, and was merely playing it straight? Possible, but unlikely. She saw no difference in his manner from when he and Laurence approached her at the reunion.

She’d never forgive, never forget. But given she had no choice but to be in his company, she could tough it out without antagonism. Indifference was all he deserved, anyway.

Another email pinged into her inbox. BDSM Neil again. Oh, fantastic.

Anna hit the reply button with the force of someone playing whack-a-mole.

Anna was five minutes early and tossing a two pound coin into a toothless, hopeless busker’s cap outside Russell Square Tube station when she realised James was also early.

‘Big fan of the xylophone?’ he said, as she joined him.

‘It’s called philanthropy,’ Anna said, shirtily.

‘Oh. I thought it was “Love Me Do”.’

She shot him a foul look before she noticed James was smiling.

They navigated the short walk to the British Museum, making small talk about the Q and A. Once again, Anna was alert for any sign of his recollecting her, but there was nothing. Or he had the poker face of all time.

‘We have to wear these gloves,’ Anna passed James a cotton pair from a blue and white box, once they’d signed in. ‘Or do you know that, if you’ve been here before?’

‘Ah, I haven’t,’ he said, accepting them.

Anna couldn’t help that even in such crappy company, she couldn’t entirely contain the fizz of excitement she felt at being in the British Museum’s store rooms. It was her favourite place in the whole world.

She only asked the gloves question so she could work out how much gushing she could get away with, in the guise of showing James around.

‘It’s like the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, isn’t it?’ she said, as they stood in front of a vast modern warehouse of shelving units, stacked with identical manila boxes, and strewn with half-size stepladders on four wheels.

It smelt papery – the delicate musty evocative perfume of very old things interacting with oxygen. Incredible to think they were right in the middle of the throb and throng of London, in this quiet cave full of priceless treasure.

‘You’ll have to hope you don’t dislodge the lid on the Ark of the Covenant then. Those Nazis’ faces melted right off,’ James said.

‘You’d be OK if you closed your eyes.’

‘Yeah. Never quite got the science there,’ he smiled, thinly.

No, there seemed not the faintest whisper of him recalling her from school. Anna was experiencing the spiritual lightness of escaping something unpleasant. The flood of relief made her relax a little towards him.

‘So, Theodora is over here,’ Anna said, leading their way through the grid.

‘Also reminds me of trying to find the occasional table nest you picked in Ikea,’ James said.

‘More fun than Ikea.’

‘Haha. I’m one of those people who think anything is more fun than hiking round Ikea’s Miserly Landlord furniture ranges, but yes.’

Anna thought it best not to mention how much Ikea furniture she had.

They got to the right aisle and Anna put her gloves on, pulling the first of a set of shallow drawers out, the contents set against a dark fabric lining.

‘These are all earmarked for the exhibition. I’m happy to use any of them. Feel free to dig in, see if there’s anything you’d particularly like and then I can find something interesting to say about it. It’s gorgeous loot.’

James started to pick through the artefacts. There were delicate filigree bracelets, bangles studded with gems, rings, cameos.