Here's Looking at You (26 page)

Laurence and James. At the Mock Rock, who was the worse out of the two of them? James. It was James who’d lured her onstage.

And hadn’t Michelle – and even James himself – said she’d been wasting her time by only going on internet dates with ‘Mr Safe Bet But Dull’?

So Anna had said, ‘OK, Laurence. Why not?’

James was Monday morning revving-the-engine dossing, emailing his sister, and started in guilty surprise when he realised he had someone right at his shoulder.

It was only Lexie, phew. She was messy on Friday, and poor girl, she still looked mole-eyed and papery-skinned today. It was possible she went out over the weekend too, of course – she wasn’t an old git like James. Somehow he pictured her staying in. Lexie was a pink Blossom Hill wine, Thorntons dusted truffles, furry monster-claw slippers type of girl.

‘Will you say thanks to Anna for getting me home?’ she said. ‘I’m so embarrassed.’

‘Course, no worries. We’ve all got hammered when the boss is buying the drinks before, don’t worry about it.’

‘Did I ruin your night?’

‘
My
night?’

‘Yes …?’

Ohhhh. Anna took her home by herself, didn’t she? He’d been relying on Lexie having a memory gap, but she obviously recalled that much.
Erk.

‘No it was fine, honestly,’ he blathered. ‘Did you feel a bit shabby on Saturday morning?’

‘I was so sick. Like
Exorcist
head spin sick,’ Lexie said. ‘I was sick before we left the bowling. Anna was so kind. I wanted to stay and we were in the ladies and she heard me and said,
I know that at this moment you think you want to stay out, but if you go home now I promise you’ll have nothing to regret
.
If you stay any longer you’ll have that blackout where you can’t remember what you said or did, which is the worst
. It was such a girl power thing, like something only your bestie would do.’

Yeah, Lexie definitely had a white four-poster draped in Liberty fabric bunting from Etsy, flowers in old-fashioned watering cans and the whole
True Blood
collectors’ box set.

‘Ah, that’s nice. Yeah Anna’s thoughtful, isn’t she? I will let her know, Lex.’

Posh Charles had been listening in, and turned in his seat.

‘If you don’t mind me saying, I think she’s a real catch. I didn’t really get to know your ex-wife, but Anna’s very … approachable. Lovely girl. And she was telling me about her work, she must be a serious bright spark.’

‘Yes,’ Lexie nodded, sombrely. ‘Anna is so nice, definitely.’

‘I never undah-stood how you und Eva ticked,’ said Christabel from Germany who did the accounts and occasionally discussed her sex life in a way so matter-of-factly explicit it made James sweat. ‘She voz a bit of an ice queen. You always seemed more serious around her, not ze witty James we know.’

It seemed odd to James they’d presume the ‘real’ James was the one at work, not the one with his wife.

‘You’ve upgraded to the 2.0 version,’ Parker said. ‘Ironed out the glitches. More useability.’

Parker never meant to be a git, yet he did often achieve it.

James grimaced. This was odd. He’d always thought because Eva looked the part, everyone had been impressed. He hadn’t thought they’d be much fussed with ‘nice’. He felt a little ashamed, even chastened. He thought the Parlez people were trivial, yet here was proof how shallow he could be. He had hidden shallows.

‘Yes, you’re well rid of that last one,’ Harris said, seizing eagerly on the chance to say something negative, as if ‘that last one’ was a respectful way to speak of a human you’d recently thought worthy of pledging your troth to. He’d hate to be bereaved around Harris.
You haven’t lost a relative, you’ve pruned your card list.

There was a chorus of muttered agreement that his chemistry with Eva was far inferior to that which he’d feigned with Anna and it left James in some discomfort.

So his successful lying left it open for them all to say what they really thought of the wife he was still in love with? And if and when they got back together, would that announcement now creak with awkwardness?

James turned to his screen, looked blankly at the amusing email to Grace, and clicked ‘save to drafts’. He didn’t feel very perky anymore. What was that maxim?
Cheats never prosper
.

Or, do they? An email arrived from Laurence. James didn’t have the testicular fortitude to deal with him face-to-face, or on FaceTime, and had sent him a pretty blunt missive telling him he was a wanker for saying what he did to Anna.

There was something disquieting about that episode. He knew Laurence was a ruthless bastard when in hot pursuit, but James didn’t usually get run over as an innocent bystander.
Maybe that’s because you’ve never been in the way before
, a voice whispered.

James thought about the times he’d laughed with Laurence at the latest hysterical voicemail from a scorned woman, or covered for him when he’d left a venue by a fire door.

Despite being utterly useless at every sport and nearly every physical activity bar ‘pottering’, Anna was reasonable at ice-skating. Her dad used to take her to the local rink when she was a little girl, to avoid shopping excursions with his wife and younger daughter. He’d read a book and obligingly wave at Anna every time she completed a full circuit.

The trick was willing the belief you could do it, slicing forward and pushing your feet out in graceful swooping motions. It helped that as an amateur you didn’t need to be especially lithe, you only needed balance.

Once Anna and Laurence had collected their boots from the building adjacent to Somerset House, laced them blood vessel-constrictingly tight and wobbled out onto the rink like newborn foals, she half-expected Laurence to start pulling figures of eight, screeching to a halt with showers of snow spurting behind his heels.

Instead, Laurence seemed authentically terrified, and his high centre of gravity made him particularly ungainly. He spent a lot of time gripping the rail, grim-faced. Anna couldn’t work out if he knew this incompetence would be endearing or if he’d simply messed up the planning, to his advantage. He’d never been less self-assured, and Anna had never liked him more. After he waved her on, she did a few laps of the rink solo.

‘You might’ve warned me you were good,’ Laurence said, on her third pass, when he was making agonisingly slow progress behind a flotilla of tiny schoolgirls wearing
Hello Kitty
rucksacks.

‘Haha, I’m not good! I’ve not been for years. You need to get your confidence up, is all.’

‘You’re one of those walk-on-water, effortlessly brilliant at everything people, aren’t you? Or rather, whoosh about on frozen water.’

‘I promise you I am definitely not.’

Anna adjusted her homemade chunky black scarf (the one Atelier of Judy Alessi production she still wore) over her chin, and felt girlishly pleased at the compliment, however misapplied. Wait. She was having fun, on a date? Amazing. With Laurence? Even more amazing. A man who James said was the very shit-devil in Hugo Boss. Was any sort of relationship, even a fling, even remotely possible?

Physically, Laurence’s cock-of-the-walk style wasn’t really Anna’s bag, but she could imagine those who fancied him, fancied him hard.

When he wasn’t ice-skating, he had that innate male louche ‘comfortable in his own skin’ appeal, the kind of confidence you hoped would rub off on you by rubbing against him. And that expressive, asymmetric face was, in its way, more compellingly attractive than perfection. Things you took a little longer to like, you liked longer, Anna had observed before.

‘Do you want to hold on to me?’ she asked, curious to see how Laurence’s alpha masculinity would take this offer.

‘Won’t I drag you down?’

‘I’ll take the risk.’

Laurence gingerly accepted the crook of her arm and let go of the railing. He wasn’t skating so much as trying to walk in ice skates. His weight tugged on her elbow.

‘Push forward,’ she demonstrated with her feet. ‘Think you’re not going to wobble and you won’t wobble.’

Laurence tried a slightly more fluid movement.

‘See!’ Anna said, guiding him out of the path of a gang of students, towards the centre of the rink. Being further from the comfort zone of the railing had a bad psychological effect and Laurence’s weight on Anna’s arm increased.

‘You’re OK,’ she soothed. ‘Skate …’

‘
Skate
, like if you can say it, do it,’ Laurence said, mock irritated.

‘Sorry, true,’ Anna laughed. ‘
Just ski
probably wouldn’t help me.’

A few moments passed when she thought he was getting the hang of it, then she felt a sharp tug on her arm.

‘Wait, wha-wha-wha WHOOOARGH.’ Without warning, Laurence lurched back and forth and did a funny running on the spot move, before tumbling, yanking Anna to the ground with him.

Anna landed on her backside, while Laurence did the full body sprawl, frightening some elderly Japanese tourist spectators, who started taking photos as soon as they’d got over the shock.

Anna scrambled to his side.

‘Oh no, are you OK? Laurence! Did you hit your head?’

He stayed lying down and stared up at her.

‘Am I dead? Have I gone to heaven?’

Panic over, but adrenaline still coursing, Anna found herself laughing: proper, stomach spasm hysterics. She should’ve known it’d take more than that to dent Laurence’s deadpanning skills.

‘From all I’ve heard you’re not going to heaven,’ she choked out.

‘Are you sure? You look like an angel.’

‘Do you ever take a moment off from the patter?’

Laurence hauled himself to his feet, wincing.

‘Let’s consider this enough skating for a beginners’ session,’ Anna said, holding his arm, grateful no one had been near enough to skate over the fingers of Laurence’s outstretched hands.

‘Thank the Lord.’

‘Why choose ice-skating if you don’t like it?’

‘I thought it would be memorable,’ Laurence said. ‘Honestly, putting knives on your feet on a slippy surface anyway, it’s madness.’

They respectively limped and clumped back to change back to their shoes.

As evening fell, the ice rink made more sense as a date location. The glittering mammoth-scale Christmas tree, blue-green glow of the ice and the artfully up-lit majestic building made Anna feel as if she was in a scene in a romantic comedy, complete with slapstick incident. When they were settled in one of the booths overlooking the skaters, the combination of cold air and hot cider was soulful. If you were going to fall in love, the conditions were conducive.

Shame then that she was with someone doing his repertoire of honed funny anecdotes, peppered with casual references to his professional success, other females carefully airbrushed out. Eventually Anna wearied of the routine, of the sense of being an audience rather than an equal.

‘Laurence,’ she said, gently. ‘I don’t need a version of who you think I want to meet. I’d rather spend time with you. Forget I’m female for a while.’

‘Not so easy,’ Laurence said, with a wink. ‘I’m doing it again, aren’t I?’ and they laughed. ‘No, I do overdo it a bit when I’m nervous, you’re right.’

‘Nervous,’ Anna said, sceptically, raising her eyebrows.

There was a short silence.

‘I assume your joke about me not being headed for heaven comes from James Fraser intel?’ Laurence said.

‘And my own observations.’

‘James is not always the easiest best mate.’

‘Come on now, I don’t think I can referee much more scrapping,’ Anna said, with an eye roll.

‘No, I don’t mean because of anything he does. It’s the way he is. Women flock to him. It was the same at school.’

Anna adjusted her position on her seat and chugged back the last of her drink.

‘It’s an assault on the ego to be stood next to Superman in his Clark Kent disguise, sometimes. You’re invisible, or you’re everyone’s second choice to talk to. Maybe I’ve done the “larger than life” best friend thing to over-compensate. Know what I mean? You think, OK, I can’t be that, so I’ll have to be this.’

‘Yes,’ Anna said, ‘I do.’

‘Same again?’ Laurence said, looking at her glass, and Anna nodded. While Laurence was at the bar, her phone buzzed with a text.

If Anna didn’t know this to be impossible in every respect, she’d say James was coming off as slightly jealous.

Laurence returned with the drinks, setting them down.

‘Have you romanced tons of women with these tales, then, Laurence?’ Anna said, after a first sip.

He grinned.

‘Not
tons
. I’ve never met anyone special or I wouldn’t be here.’

‘See, you’re so funny,’ Anna said. ‘If I was male you’d brag about hundreds. But I’m female, and you think I want to hear about how
they didn’t mean anything, darling
.’