Mhairi McFarlane - Here’s Looking At You

‘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 .’

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.