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Anna felt a whisper of remorse that Judy wasn’t sitting next to someone who’d do firework show gasps of ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at the gowns, but to some extent you played the role that fell to you in a family. There was no question Anna had pulled the voice of reason straw in hers.
People often reacted with disbelief that Judy was their mother, firstly because she was youthful-looking and expensively blonde-streaked for her fifty-something years. And secondly, what with coming from Surbiton, entirely un-Italian looking. She was inordinately proud of her daughters’ continental heritage and made a point of using their full names. Their father, funnily enough, was less of a fan, pronouncing Aureliana and Agata as ‘not traditional’.
‘Your mother goes and registers these fooling names behind my back, saying it was her hormones! She does this twice! Can you believe it?’
Anna certainly could believe it. It was also very like her dad to let her mum have her way.
‘Mum. How is Aggy paying for all of this?’ Anna said in a low voice.
‘She has a good salary. And savings. And Chris has money.’
‘Not that much money. Do you not think this might be getting out of hand?’
‘You only do it once. I know it’s not your sort of thing, but it’s her special day.’
Anna bit her tongue. She’d have a quiet word with her dad instead. The family had two distinct factions: Anna and her father’s more sober self-containment, and her mother and Aggy’s silliness. As Aggy changed again, Anna feared Sleeping Beauty was the start of a very long hike around London’s upscale dress shops.
There was a loud shriek from the changing rooms.
‘Has her false leg fallen off?’ Anna said.
Sue appeared, only her head poking through the brothel curtain, wreathed in stagy drama.
‘We’ve got something rather special here,’ which Anna took to mean, I think she’s about to buy this, so stay on bloody message, bitches.
Aggy walked out wearing a sheepish smile and what was obviously The Dress. It had a full Tinkerbell skirt in glistening layers of raggy tulle and a strapless, thimble-sized bodice, which Anna wouldn’t have been able to wrestle her ribcage inside. Aggy looked like she should be onstage in a ballet, and rather wonderful.
‘Oh Agata!’ Judy said, bursting into tears and jumping up to hug her.
‘S’amazing, Mum,’ Aggy sniffled. ‘I feel like a princess.’
Anna stayed put and let her mum’s raptures subside while she poured the last dregs of the cava into her glass.
‘Don’t you like it?’ Aggy called to Anna.
‘I do. I’m toasting a job well done. You look like you’re really getting married in that. And only the second dress. Good going. Honestly, you look beautiful. It’s “big wedding” but it’s tasteful.’
Aggy twirled and pinched at layers of the skirt, letting them drift back down. ‘You know how they say when you meet The One, you know? I’ve just met the one.’
After sufficient cooing, sighing and ogling had taken place, and an elated Sue had dashed off to find the paperwork, Anna asked how much it was.
‘Three,’ Aggy said.
Anna’s mouth made an ‘O’.
‘And a half,’ Aggy added. ‘And another 250. It’s £3,750. Veil not included.’
‘Gordon’s alive, Aggy! Four grand on something you’re going to wear once?’
‘Don’t you like it?’ Aggy pouted.
‘I think you look amazing, I think you could look amazing for half that though. A large proportion of the amazing is you. Like Sue said, you’d look lovely in most things.’
‘Hmmm,’ Aggy twirled again. ‘Mum?’
‘You look like Audrey Hepburn! Or Darcey Bussell in The Nutcracker!’
‘Soon you’ll need to be a safe cracker.’
Aggy giggled.
Anna was in a bind. If she counselled against the expense of this dress any further, they’d simply question her motives. She’d be accused of letting bitter spinster wrath wreck Aggy’s happiness. Nevertheless, Anna genuinely felt no unsisterly envy. She’d need to want to marry someone before she could seriously covet a wedding. She couldn’t put the gown before the groom.
‘I’m going to make sure single men come to the wedding. For you,’ Aggy said, as if her mind was running along similar lines.
‘Yes. You should get out and see people, Aureliana,’ their mum said, as if this was the moment to finally address her elder daughter’s agoraphobia.
‘I meet people!’ Anna said.
Aggy was twisting her hair into a chignon and pouting, angled towards a mirror. Judy bustled off for a confab with Sue.
‘I went to a school reunion,’ Anna said.
‘Did you?!’ Aggy said, hand slipping from hair and jaw falling open, reflection momentarily forgotten. ‘Why?’
‘Thought I’d face my fear. It was pointless, as it turns out that fear didn’t know my face. Seriously Ags, not one of them twigged who I was. I don’t know whether to be pleased or not. Michelle says it’s proof I’ve left it behind for good.’
‘Did you see … any of them?’ Aggy said.
‘Er … oh. James Fraser?’ Anna said, with a hollow little laugh.
‘James Fraser?! What did he say?’
‘Nothing. He didn’t know who I was either. Still so far up himself it’s unbelievable. I felt like saying to him, you know you were only a hero when you were sixteen? Now you’re nobody.’ Anna surprised herself with the vehemence in her voice.
‘Real talk. Is he still totes bangable?’
‘Depends on whether you like cardigans and cancer of the personality.’
‘Aw, does he look like Elmer Fudd now? No way!’ Aggy placed a hand on her hip and turned, with difficulty in the fantasy dress.
Anna smiled.
‘He remains vile and arrogant but also still good-looking, which is all that matters, obviously.’
‘I simply need to take a deposit!’ Sue said, emerging again, triumphant, their mother in tow. Aggy demanded their mum bring her Alexa handbag.
They left, showered in Sue’s love, with Anna feeling distinct unease at her sister’s spendthriftery.
After hasty goodbyes outside in the miserable weather, with their mum having to rush to catch her bus to Barking, Anna tried to reason with Aggy.
‘You can get a dressmaker to recreate that design for loads less, you know.’
‘Marianne did that, and it never looks as good, honestly. You spend the whole day thinking about the other dress.’
‘If you spend the whole day thinking about a dress, something has gone wrong anyway.’
Aggy tuned out remarks like that.
‘Your dress next, Anna! We’ll make a day of it, go for lunch.’
‘OK. Nothing ridiculous, promise me.’
‘Ridick! You’re going to look the best you’ve ever looked in your whole life.’
‘Setting the bar quite low,’ Anna grinned.
Aggy looked as if she was hesitating about saying something, which was rare.
‘I never knew what they were going to do, you know. At the Mock Rock. I was telling them to stop.’
‘Oh God, I know. Don’t worry about it.’ Anna felt a familiar and severe twinge of pain and shame. No matter how many times she reassured Aggy she didn’t blame her for being in the audience, this always came up.
Aggy’s eyes welled and Anna patted her shoulder. It was typical Aggy that in trying to console Anna, Anna ended up consoling her.
‘And when Mr Towers made us clean up the Quality Street,’ she said, tears coming in a stream, ‘I didn’t eat any on principle.’
14 (#ulink_26461f5f-5aea-59b5-b656-0ae5eb649efb)
An hour before Eva was due to arrive at the home they once shared, James showered and got into his running gear. He wanted to show her he was active, virile and not at all pining or depressed.
As much as part of him fancied doing the takeaway cartons strewn around, dark-shadowed eyes, whisky-on-the-breath suffering pose, he feared it might be self-defeating. He reasoned that only by showing what a stupid thing it was to pass him up, was he going to win her back. Eva was never one to love a loser.
It was still a humiliating piece of theatre though and as he laced up his trainers with more force than was necessary, James tried not to think about it too much.
It was two months since Eva had dropped her bombshell that she was leaving, after only ten months of married life and virtually no signs of discontent that James could pinpoint, other than her seeming slightly distracted. It was like as soon as they finished decorating the house, she ran out of things to keep her occupied.
Now he was in this mortgaged-up-to-the-eyeballs millstone, deep in Farrow & Ball front-doored, Bugaboo-and-babyccino country, where he’d thought they’d start a family.
Eva was coming round to ‘pick up a few things’ again. She’d potter about and clank in the cupboards, as if life was normal. As if she hadn’t recently sat him down on a Saturday morning, punched her fist into his chest cavity, taken out his still-beating heart and minced it into something fit for a pouch of Whiskas Senior.
Speaking of the other inconvenient, costly responsibility he inherited.
Luther was a Persian Blue, one of those pedigree breeds that looked unreal and toy-like enough to be sold in Hamleys. A football of fag-ash-coloured fluff with spooky little vivid yellow pebbles for eyes and a permanent frown, or a criminal forehead – James couldn’t decide which. Eva had taken the breeder very seriously when they’d said it wasn’t safe to allow him out, so the cat was also captive.
Luther had been named after their first dance song, Luther Vandross’s ‘Never Too Much.’ Nicely ironic, as it turned out a year would have been too much. Given Luther was entirely an Eva-driven acquisition, James had been astonished – and not a little disgruntled – to find she wanted to leave him behind in the separation. He knows this house, I don’t have the space at Sara’s for now, it would be selfish of me to have him.
But then, if Eva could abandon a husband, he guessed a cat was small beer.
The doorbell sounded. James tried to greet Eva with an expression that wasn’t set into cement-like hostility, but wasn’t a fake smile either.
He didn’t know how Eva could still do this to him – three years now since they first met – but every time he saw her, he was struck by how breathtaking she was in the flesh. It was as if the full impact of her beauty simply had to be seen to be believed. It was a physical sensation as much as an intellectual appreciation of proportion and symmetry.
That heart-shaped face, and generous mouth that he’d initially thought might be too wide, and seconds later, realised was the best mouth he’d ever seen. Her slanted eyes, dimples and her hair; naturally dazzling Timotei white-blonde.
If she wanted something and turned on the charm, she’d let her hair fall across her face, then delicately pick a strand between forefinger and thumb and draw it back carefully across her ear while keeping her gaze fixed on you, lips slightly apart.
Early on in their courtship, James thought she had no idea how madly seductive this was. Then, on a mini-break, they’d inadvertently landed themselves with a gigantic restaurant bill in Paris. The prices were already set at dialysis levels and they’d bungled the conversion to sterling with the wine list. James had nearly fainted at the final figure.
‘I’ll explain,’ Eva said, summoning the head waiter, speaking in halting pidgin French – even though she was fluent – and using that look, while James watched his then-girlfriend’s machinations in awe.
With pinwheel eyes, this man, a snobby Parisian no less, had fallen into a trance and for no reason other than he was being asked to, agreed to halve the cost of a dusty bottle of Château D’Oh My Christ I Missed the Last Zero.
If Eva hadn’t been an art teacher, then hostage negotiator or shampoo model could’ve been equally plausible options.
Standing at the door now, she looked daisy-fresh, sylph-like and about twenty-five in a dove-grey belted cape coat and skinny indigo jeans. Resentful as he was, James ached, just ached, for her to say ‘What on earth was that all about? I’m such an idiot!’ – and fall back into his arms.
‘Hi. Are you about to go out?’
James looked down at his clothes, forgetting what he’d put on.
‘Oh, no. Well, yeah. Once you’re gone.’
‘You can leave me alone in here, James, I’m not going to steal your DVD player. Is that a beard? Is it staying?’
James’s hand went to his chin. ‘Maybe. Why?’
He was ready to be snappish about this – it’sno longer any of your business – but he’d already lost her attention.
‘Oooh! Hello you!’
Great. Wild excitement at seeing a sullen in-bred feline, after a greeting with her husband that could be measured with a spirit level.
Eva danced round James to the spot where Luther was hovering on the stairs, picking him up and nuzzling his blankly uncomprehending, angry-looking face.
‘Aw! How’s my best happy hair baby?’
James was starting to really hate the happy hair baby. ‘Happy’? How could you tell, when you’re dealing with something that looked like a tubby dictator in a mohair onesie?
‘And how’ve you been?’ she asked, as an afterthought.
He hated Eva asking this. She knew full well the honest answer was more than his pride could take, and the alternatives let her off the hook.
‘Same. You?’
‘Good, thanks. This year’s intake seem a cute bunch. They really behave for me.’
‘No doubt.’
