Here's Looking at You (17 page)

The wooden floorboards were molasses-dark, the Chesterfield sofa covered in rose velvet, the delicate pink of nipples in a Rosetti painting. There were curved, silvered glass lamp stands and stray splashes of colourful shabby chic, like the leather chair. A Venetian mirrored coffee table bounced light at another giant over-mantel mirror, above the original fireplace. All in all, a lot of reflective surfaces.

He didn’t need to tell her they had no kids. She could imagine a toddler running through the scene with a jagged piece of glass like a lightning bolt stuck in its head.

A battered stripped dresser in the dining space displayed a forest of photos with heavy silver frames. As expected, they were a hymn to the beauty of the occupants, and extravagant holidays.

The backdrops ranged from continental cobbled streets, tropical foliage, balconies in Manhattan, to one where the estranged wife was waist-deep in steaming water, clad in a white triangle bikini top. No way would Anna have a behold-my-norks photo on display in a reception room, but then she’d never had a body like hers. Eva was lovely, of course, absurdly so. Spectacular but also toothpaste-wholesome, the kind of woman who made spirits as well as penises rise.

One photo in particular caught her eye and she stepped closer to peer at it. James was gazing into the lens, smiling over a large coffee cup at a bistro pavement table. He looked nice in it. Exceptionally
nice, actually. Not handsome-nice; that was easy if you were born with the right flesh and bones. It was his expression. She’d never seen him look like that: confidential and affectionate and wryly amused. Maybe a bit post-coital.

It was the way you only stared at someone you were mad about, someone who could turn your guts to goo. For a moment, Anna was in the place of the person behind the lens. It gave her a funny pang of memory of youthful infatuation, like a shadow passing over her. She shook the feeling off.

A centrally positioned wedding day portrait showed the newlyweds in a hailstorm of confetti on registry office steps, laughing uproariously about being fabulous and in love.

James was in an ink-blue suit and floral tie, staring down at his feet, smiling, the sculpted planes of his face so photogenic. His wife was looking off to the right, at some unseen well-wisher. Her bridal gown was simple, fitted lace, designed to display narrow shoulders and a swan neck. Her hair was held off her face with a slim jewelled band, her eyes had a flick of liquid eyeliner, and there were pearl studs in her ears. The whole look was ultra-tasteful retro –
Elvis Lives, And Marries Grace Kelly.
They were perfection.

What would a couple like this do if they had an ugly baby? Fire bucket time? Anna winced at her savagery – for all she knew, they’d split up over the children issue.

There was a scratching noise in the kitchen, like mice inside a skirting board. Investigating, Anna found Luther stood beseechingly by the back door.

‘Mwowh!’ He put a tufted paw on the door and batted it several times to make his point. Then he went for an even more baleful: ‘
Mwowh.
’

‘Oh, you want to go out?’ Anna said, feeling glad she could make up for her ungenerous thoughts by performing a small domestic task.

There was a key with a gold tassel hung on a hook above the work surface. Anna pushed it into the lock, turned and the door snapped open.

‘There you go.’

Having bleated to go out, the cat looked unsure, loitering and staring up at her with spacey eyes, whiskers the size of porcupine quills. Anna bent down and gave him a gentle shove. It was like the daft dust ball had never seen its own back garden before.

They were in the middle of leafing through large floppy colour photos, Anna penning notes on the back, Roberts Radio on Classic FM softly in the background, when James did a double take in the direction of the sitting room window.

‘Woah. That’s weird. That cat outside looked like …’ James’s line of sight darted around the floor. ‘Luther! Luther?’

Anna looked up in time to see a flash of grey fur move away from the pane of glass.

‘Can he not get to the front garden from the back one, usually?’

‘What?’ James said, absently, standing up. ‘Luther?’

He bounded over to the bay window and leaned on the window frame, peering out.

‘Ahhh … the cat’s gone. Am I going mad? That looked exactly like him …’

‘Is he OK?’ Anna said, startled by James’s reaction.

James ducked past into the kitchen and returned, looking perturbed. ‘He’s not in there … maybe he’s upstairs. He can’t have got out …’

Anna stood up, as her stomach plummeted to her feet.

‘Uh. I let him out.’

James turned to her, eyes wide. ‘
What?
’

A pause and he turned and darted down the hall, Anna in pursuit.

‘Luther … Luther!’ James called, as they burst through the front door.

‘Can’t he cope with outside?’ Anna said, following James around the front garden, feeling very foolish and more than a little apprehensive.

‘Luther can barely cope with inside,’ James said, rumbling a wheelie bin forward, checking behind it.

‘Why did you let him out?’ he said, restraining the degree of baffled irritation in his voice quite manfully, as he glanced up. ‘He doesn’t go out.’

‘He was scratching at the door. I just assumed … I’m so, so sorry,’ Anna said.

‘The little swine was trying it on. It’s not your fault. Normal cats do go out,’ James said, with far more graciousness than she would’ve expected. At this moment in time he’d have been well within his rights to flame her like a Whopper.

‘Luther!’

James hopped the small wall between his property and his neighbour’s, then having ascertained it was Luther-less, went into the street using their gate.

Anna did another pointless scan of the empty front garden and joined him.

‘It definitely seemed as if he went in this direction,’ James said.

It was rush hour and although it was a residential street, cars were passing at a steady rate.

‘This is a not very nice game of trying to find him before he finds the road.’

‘He wouldn’t know how to cross?’

James threw her a look. ‘He’s never done it before. Did he strike you as a cat with its Green Cross Code? He’s as thick as mince, I’m afraid.’

Anna’s stomach sank even lower at his choice of words. She was about to watch a cat get turned into a hairy frittata under the wheels of a Vauxhall Zafira, and know it was entirely her fault. Oh God, this was awful …

‘If I go this way, will you look that way?’ James asked.

Anna nodded emphatically and struck off in the opposite direction, copying James by ducking to look under parked cars and over hedges, calling Luther’s name as she went.

In the light of this development, her interference with the door seemed less charming initiative, more officious interference.

She considered how she might look through James’s eyes, for the first time. Given he didn’t appear to remember her from school, or know she overheard him disparaging her appeal at the reunion, he was only going by their most recent direct interactions. Judging by those alone, given he’d been polite enough, she guessed she had come across as a pretty snippy bitch. Now she was about to murder his pet.

With a start, she spotted a flash of smoky fluff emerging from behind the back wheels of a parked car opposite. With a sickening inevitability, there was the engine growl of a car approaching to Anna’s left.

‘Luther!’ she called, glancing towards James, hoping to alert him and have him handle this, but he was momentarily out of sight.

The cat seemed as if he was crouching, not sitting – deciding when to make a dash for it, high on the excitement of newfound freedom.

‘Luther, no!’ she called, as if she might turn him into a small, biddable dog, who understood English. Luther shuffled another inch or two into the road, unsure.

Anna’s gorge rose and her mouth went dry. She was no feline behavioural expert but she judged the chances of the animal colliding with this oncoming hatchback were fifty/fifty. It was as if Luther was using his gap of opportunity to weigh up his options, and when the car was right on him,
then
he would move.

Luther waddled forward even further and began to rock back and forth, preparing to pounce. His next movement would take him into the road.

Anna panicked and ran out in front of a car that was only 100 yards or so away, putting both her hands up, palms facing outwards.

‘Stop!’

The middle-aged female driver, eyes wide, slammed the brakes on. It felt as if the car took ages to come to a halt, stopping just short of her.

When Anna looked down for Luther, amazingly, he was a short distance from her feet. Damn, this cat was dumb. Even the squeal of the tyres hadn’t put him off. She bent and grabbed him, no longer tentative in her handling. She’d just had a crash course in cat wrangling, luckily without the crash.

She indicated her thanks to the driver with a wave of her hand, from under Luther’s soft bulk. The driver’s aghast expression dissolved into something more like understanding, and she put a conciliatory palm up in return to communicate:
oh I see. Phew.

As she returned to the safety of the pavement, she saw James a short way down the street, presumably witness to the rescue.

‘Luther,’ Anna said unnecessarily when she reached him, gripping the squirming beast tightly.

‘What in the hell were you doing? You could’ve been run over!’

James had one hand on his head and was noticeably pale. Anna was surprised at the idea that the risk she took might’ve bothered him, beyond the obvious unpleasantness of gore and paperwork.

‘I felt responsible.’

‘
You
felt responsible? My cat … your life. Doesn’t quite equate. God almighty Anna, I thought you were heading for intensive care and I was going to be calling your parents, saying you were dying for the sake of a bad-tempered hot water bottle cover. I don’t know whether to thank you or shout at you,’ James said, moving his hands to his face then moving them away again so he could speak. ‘I didn’t make you feel that bad about letting him out, did I? You weren’t to know.’

‘God no! I didn’t think about it.’ Anna had simply seen a solution and thrown herself at it, literally. It was fairly stupid, with hindsight, to gamble everything on the brake-power in a Nissan Micra.

Anna bundled Luther over, her hand brushing James’s chest briefly as she made sure he had firm hold of him. Luther’s angry little face crumpled and he started quacking with annoyance that his adventure ‘Operation Certain Death’ had been cut short.

‘That’s thanks for you,’ James said, and bent his head slightly towards the animal. Anna sensed he didn’t want to do anything as unmanly as nuzzle him, in front of her.

She felt odd. She was awash with adrenaline, having plucked fuzzy victory from the jaws of defeat. This man she hated was behaving in a human, decent way that made him hard to hate. But he
was
hateful, she reminded herself.

‘Apart from the suicidal element it was cool.
Stop!
’ James held a palm up in imitation of Anna, cradling Luther in the crook of an elbow for a moment. He grinned and adjusted his hold as the cat continued to wriggle in his arms.

‘Come on mate. We’ll put the National Geographic channel on for you. You can pretend you’re trekking through the Andes.’

Anna smiled and they trooped back into the house.

Once an irritated Luther had been becalmed with a saucer of Whiskas milk, James said, ‘He’s got a drink to settle his nerves, the little sod, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have one too. Whisky?’

‘A thousand times yes,’ Anna said, even though she never drank whisky.

‘I think that concludes doing any work,’ James said, glancing at the papers spread out over the dining room table. ‘Why not have a more comfortable seat,’ and gestured to the sofa.

Anna perched on the pristine shell pink Chesterfield. After rootling in a spirits cabinet at the back of the dining room, James returned with a lowball containing an inch of amber liquid. She couldn’t be sure but for a moment, she thought his hand trembled when he passed it over.

‘Laphroaig OK?’

‘Oh is it? I might not bother then, thanks.’

James’s face fell.

‘Kidding!’ Anna said. ‘It could be Irn Bru for all I know about whisky.’

James held the glass back for a moment. ‘Oh? I’m not wasting it, in that case.’

He smiled, handing it over.

They were doing jokes? Crap ones, but still. This was a leap forward.

‘Thank you. Sincerely,’ he said, clinking his glass to hers. Anna mumbled
you’re welcome
. The whisky tasted of peat and fire and made her mouth hot, in quite a nice way.

‘Do you often make death or glory gestures for cats, given you don’t like them?’

‘It was instinct. Just
, nooooo
…’

‘You’ve confirmed to yourself your instincts are incredibly noble and self-sacrificing, if crazy.’

James smiled with real warmth. Anna reminded herself this warmth was springing from the gratitude of not having half a surprised-looking cat in a leaking shoebox and a sticky call to the wife to make right now.

‘Didn’t your wife want to take him with her?’ Anna asked, hoping this wasn’t too prurient a question.

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ James said, dropping into the leather chair. ‘She’s at a friend’s flat at the moment and there’s not much room. I guess when she finds somewhere she’ll come and get him. Or, she won’t. That’s Eva, folks.’

He looked embarrassed at his evident bitterness. ‘Nah, she’s … she’s something else. A force of nature, I think they say. If you marry above yourself, you have to expect some grief.’

‘Is she above you?’ Anna said, carefully.

‘Eva’s one of
those
people. You know, it’s like she breathes different air.’

Odd, Anna thought. That’s how I thought of you, once upon a time.

‘Are you seeing anyone, settled down?’ James asked.

‘I’m single, and internet dating.’ Anna winced.