Mhairi McFarlane - Here’s Looking At You

Eva shook her head and sniffled.

Wait. Finn. Life modelling. She’d talked about him. She’d met him at a launch, with her restaurant PR friend, Hatty. He’d offered to model for her students and she’d said they couldn’t afford him.

Then a few weeks later there’d been a giggly, supposedly disparaging tale about how this ‘Abercrombie & Fitch type’ had swaggered into school to pose, dropping his robe and flirting with the blushing A-level students.

James remembered saying, ‘What, flirted while flopped out? I have to admire his confidence.’

Eva had demurred with talk of strategically placed towels, and said something about how he was an up-and-coming who was signed with a major modelling agency.

James realised now that cocky Finn had made rather a big gesture in working pro bono.

Eva had gaily wondered which of her sixth formers might have a fling with him. James now detected the sleight of hand, with hindsight: it was Eva he’d met, before he posed. It was a gesture to impress her.

‘How old is he, Eva?’

‘Twenty-three.’

James put a hand over his forehead. ‘Twenty-three? What the—? You’re into kids now? Harold and Maude ?’

‘Oh that’s right, start running him down and making your James jokes. Let’s not discuss this in a mature way.’

‘How do you expect me to behave? Did you think I’d be calm and reasonable in the face of finding out you’re sleeping with someone else?’

He nearly said how would you feel if the situation was reversed , then realised that question might not do him any favours.

She shook her head in a patronising way, as if it was James who had something to be ashamed of.

It was at this point that Luther decided to interrupt, the treacherous scruff-sack making distressed yowling sounds at Eva’s feet. She scooped him up and made extravagantly soothing noises, as if it was James breaking up happy homes and cat’s hearts.

‘I’m not having sex with him,’ Eva said, without much conviction, over Luther’s giant feather duster of a squirrelly tail.

He shook his head in disbelief.

‘Put that thing down, will you.’

Eva bent and dropped him.

‘We meet for coffee. I’ve only been to his flat once. To pose for him. He’s interested in art.’

‘What the …? I’m supposed to believe that you then put your thong back on and shared Muller Corners? And by the way, tell him not to give up the day job. You look like Richard Branson in that sketch.’

‘Posing is not a big deal for me. That’s a British hang-up, sexualising nudity.’

‘And Finn’s Scandinavian is he? No? British and male and heterosexual? Ah right. So you’re telling me nothing happened after that?’

‘Not … I told you.’

Her hesitation about how to categorise their activities was worse for James than an outright confession of Biblical knowledge. She might as well take a knife, slice a flap in his stomach, and tuck in with a chilled spoon.

‘If you’ve done things with him that would get you arrested if you did them in public, Eva, you’re sleeping with him. Sorry to be so old-fashioned. It’s just with me being your husband, I get terribly hung up on the detail.’

There was a pause where Eva didn’t demur.

‘Is it serious?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘All this for “I don’t know.”’ James put his hands on his head. ‘I’d prefer it if you said yeah, he’s the love of my life, it had to be done.’

He wouldn’t. James was picturing this Finn’s eyes, hands and possibly tongue on Eva and trying not to cry, vomit or punch a wall.

‘Maybe your inability to comprehend that this isn’t about someone else is the kind of attitude that put a distance between us.’

‘What the fuck’s that meant to mean?’

‘It means that the fact I could feel anything for Finn shows something wasn’t right with us.’

James swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple had apparently swollen. ‘I think you’ve got this back to front,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘The whole point of being married is you resist the temptation of other people.’

Eva picked up her bag, eyes downcast.

‘Since we got married, things haven’t been the same. More routine, perhaps. I can’t explain it.’

‘There will be some routine in a marriage, that’s how it works. We have a home, and jobs.’

Eva looked at him contemptuously, as if to say is that it? That’s all you got?

‘Am I supposed to wait this out, while you decide if you’re gone for good or not?’ James said, though with less fire than before.

‘I’m not asking you to do anything, James.’

She was composed now, contrition over. That was Eva. Maddening, supremely self-assured Eva, who he was inconveniently hopelessly in love with.

James had no idea what more to say, or what to do. Any threats were bluffing. When someone took a shit on your heart like this, they either lost you, or discovered they had all the power.

‘When you’ve calmed down, we can talk.’ She let herself out, and left James slumped on the sofa.

Was it true? Had he trapped Eva like a schoolboy with a butterfly in a jam jar, and watched her wither? No, bollocks to that. Eva was no fluttering helpless creature, and North London had plenty of oxygen.

She’d spoken as if their life together was something he’d designed, and sealed her inside. They both wanted this, didn’t they? Looking at the house, it was Eva-ish in every detail, bar his PlayStation 4.

But he was boring. Life with him was boring. How did you fix that? How did you make your essence interesting to someone again? He did want to fix it.

Whilst he hated Eva right now, and she was making him utterly miserable, he felt more addicted to her than ever.

When James was eight and his parents had sat him down and told him they were separating, he’d not understood why his dad couldn’t be around for some of the time. Surely to go from living together to nothing at all made no sense? Stay for weekends, he’d said. Or Wednesdays. Wednesdays were good, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was on and they had pasta bow-ties with the red sauce.

They’d both smiled sadly and indulgently. Now here he was with his own marriage falling apart, and although he now understood why they couldn’t be saved by scaling back their hours, he wasn’t sure he understood them any better either.

And yet again, Eva hadn’t mentioned the ‘D’ word. Knowing her, she’d probably stick it on a text. ‘ Got Luther something 4 his tickly cough. PS Decree Nisi on way 2 U.’

James tried to push the bad thought away, the worst thought, even worse than her being scuttled by some idiot with a Smurf hat and no belt in his jeans . If she does come back, how are you ever going to feel sure of her again?

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Luther was in front of him on the rug, staring at James with an accusatory menace, breathing like Darth Vader.

‘C’mere, you grumpy git.’

James picked the cat up and held him to his face, letting his thick fur absorb the tears as he sobbed. Luther smelt of her perfume.

When she was eight years old, on a trip to see the Italian family, Anna’s dad had taken her to see the Ravenna mosaics. While her mother, with a trainee consumerist in Aggy, had done the rounds of the boutiques, Anna was stood with cricked neck in the saintly hush of the Basilica of San Vitale. Her father told a sketchy outline of the story of Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his consort Theodora.

It was enough to get her hooked. She was utterly lost in the story of the daughter of the bear-keeper of Constantinople’s hippodrome who became an actress, prostitute – her dad had gone with ‘she made money from her adventures’ but Anna wasn’t stupid – and Empress of the Roman Empire. She stared at the regal beauty depicted in those tiny glittering tiles and felt as if those lamp-like dark eyes were staring directly into her own, communicating across the distance of centuries.