Here’s Looking At You

For Helen

A school friend who’s more like a sister

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Rise Park Comprehensive, East London, 1997

The last day of term

‘Ladies and gentlemen. Mr Elton John!’

Gavin Jukes, in huge pipe-cleaner spectacles and a duck costume, strode out to deafening cheers. Well, strode out as well you can in canary yellow foam feet: a jaunty waddle. He sat down at the keyboard – with some difficulty due to the padded tail – and started bashing noiselessly at a keyboard, carolling along with ‘Are You Ready For Love’.

Standing in the stage wings, Aureliana adjusted the sash on her 1970s peach polyester maternity gown with knife-pleat skirt, and touched a hand to her hair-sprayed bouffant.

She took a deep, shaky breath, inhaling that school sports hall odour of tennis shoe rubber, Impulse body spray and ripe adolescent hormones.

The leavers’ Mock Rock was a simple but wildly successful formula: dress up as a pop star, the sillier the outfit the better, and mime along to an old hit.

And thank God, the crowd loved Gavin.

According to all witless graffiti that tackled the topic of Gavin Jukes, he was ‘a massive gayer’. And yet he’d fearlessly chosen to impersonate a flamboyant homosexual singer, to this rapturous reception?

Perhaps Aureliana Alessi, the weirdo who ate whiffy lasagne in Tupperware for lunch instead of Mighty White sandwiches, might also finally be laughed with, rather than at.

It was as if school had been a pantomime, with everyone merely playing roles, and villains and heroes alike came on to take their bows together at the end.

Even Lindsay and Cara, Aureliana’s most committed antagonists, dressed in minis and platform boots as Agnetha and Anni-Frid from ABBA, had studiously left her alone today.

Their coven members were swigging contraband ‘Minkoff’ brand vodka from bottles of Happy Shopper cola and watching her with their heavily Rimmelled eyes, but keeping their distance. Aureliana wouldn’t have minded a nip of something herself.

Maybe the Mock Rock magic came from the fact that popular older kids were already like rock stars to the younger. Apart from James Fraser. He was like a rock star to everyone. Aureliana glanced over at him and told herself again that this would be fine because she’d be on stage with James Fraser.

James Fraser. The mere music of saying his name made her stomach lining dissolve.

She’d been skiving PE in the library a week ago, re-reading a Sweet Valley High book, when he’d approached her.

‘Hi Aureliana. Aren’t you meant to be in PE?’

It was the most extraordinary moment.

James Fraser, God of Rise Park, was for the first time speaking to her. To her.

He knew her name. Not just the ‘Italian Galleon’ or ‘Pavagrotty’ ones.

He knew her timetable?

He smiled a lazy smile. Aureliana had never seen him this close up before.

It was like meeting your idol – all those hours spent obsessing over their every detail and suddenly confronted with them in the walking, talking flesh. And what flesh. That incredible white lit-from-within skin, like a church candle flame burning low and glowing through the wax. The oil-spill shiny black hair and the purple-blue eyes.

She’d actually tried to draw him in her Forever Friends diary once, using felt tips. It didn’t work, he ended up a ringer for Shakin’ Stevens. She reverted back to the usual hearts and flowers doodles, and the legend ‘AA 4 JF 4EVA’.

‘Don’t blame you. PE’s such crap.’

Aureliana made a sort of disbelieving honk noise and nodded vigorously. Sporty James secretly hated PE too?! This was proof. They were meant to be.

‘I was wondering, the Mock Rock. I thought doing Freddie Mercury and the opera singer could be funny? A duet, me and you? Fancy it?’

Aureliana nodded. He’d used the phrase ‘me and you’. Fantasies had become reality. Right then he could’ve said I’m planning on jumping out of that window. Doesn’t look a long way down, me and you, fancy it? and she’d have followed.

It was only in the days after that she pondered the wisdom of going on stage as one of Rise Park’s most fat, foreign and bullied, next to its sex god pin-up. What if all the worst bitches crucified her for it? But, she’d reasoned she’d never see any of them again after today, and they wouldn’t wreck James Fraser’s big moment.

She thought James might want to rehearse but he’d never suggested it, and she didn’t want to look pushy. He knew what he was doing, he always did.

Perhaps they should’ve conferred on wardrobe though. Aureliana thought the deal was that they went all out. She’d backcombed her hair into something approximating a soprano’s coif and plastered her face with pan stick. James, from what she could see, had only drawn on a cad’s pencil moustache. But then she didn’t know what she expected – he was unlikely to do a frontless leotard and stick-on chest wig.

Gavin was taking his bows. Oh, God. This was it. Here goes. James ambled over to her side and she’d never felt more important or special.

The Mock Rock’s MC, Mr Towers, cued the music. Dry ice gushed out with a soft hiss, and the opening bars of the ‘Barcelona’ track swelled.

They walked onto the stage to deafening cheers and applause. Aureliana gazed at the gallery of delighted faces, getting an exhilarating glimpse into what it was like to be James Fraser. To feel that much excitement and goodwill reflected back at the very sight of you.

She turned to him, to exchange a nervous grin of solidarity before the singing started, but James was giving her a funny smirk and backing away into the wings again.

It was a green Praline Triangle that got her first, glancing off her cheek and arcing onto the stage floor. She felt a small pain in her stomach as another missile hit its target, like a rubber band being snapped against her body. A purple one with the hazelnut sailed past her head and she ducked out of the way, only to catch a toffee penny on the chin.

And then came a hurricane of Quality Street, as the air filled with a blizzard of shiny, multi-coloured shrapnel. Mr Towers turned the music off and started shouting to try to restore order, but all in vain.

Aureliana looked over in desperation at James. He was bent nearly double with laughter. His friend Laurence had one arm slung round his best mate’s head, the other arm busy with a fist-pumping triumphal gesture.

Lindsay and Cara had tears of mirth streaming down their maquillaged faces, holding on to each other for support.

It took a moment for Aureliana to accept what was happening.

That this had been planned from the start. That someone had gone to the trouble of buying dozens of those big tins of sweets and handed them round the audience. That they had been given a cue to start lobbing them, and for everyone else, this was the extra helping of mock in the grand finale.

Slowly, it dawned on her that her crush might not have been as secret as she thought. This she found even more humiliating than being at the centre of the confectionery tornado.

She could see Gavin trying to remonstrate with them all from underneath his duck bill hat.

James Fraser was clapping and he uttered a three-syllable, single word, as he looked at her, enunciating clearly. Elephant.

Aureliana had long ago steeled herself not to cry under pressure. Not only did she not want to give her tormentors the satisfaction, she’d figured out the less reaction you gave bullies, the faster they lost interest. She saw no reason to break that rule now and start weeping in front of a vast and hostile audience.

Unfortunately, at that moment of dignified resolve, she was hit with a Coconut Éclair in the left eye, and they both started streaming anyway.

1

Anna stepped out of the stark autumn chill and squeezed into the steamy warmth of the restaurant. It was buzzing with conversations and pounding music, set at the weekend has started pitch.

‘Table for two please!’ Anna bellowed, feeling that flutter of nerves and anticipation, tinged with scepticism. When it came to crap dates, she had her proficiency badge.

Thanks to practice, Anna knew to choose lively and not-overtly-romantic venues to take the pressure off. And the trend for sharer plates that arrived at different times was a gift. With the traditional three courses, there was nothing worse than a date going badly, and knowing you were locked in the deadening back-and-forth of really and where are you from originally until the just an espresso for me, please.

Of course, you could simply go for a drink and cut out the dining. However, Anna vetoed alcohol and no food since an incident where she woke up at the end of the Central Line with only a patchy memory of how she got there, holding a plastic pineapple ice-bucket and a phone bearing eleven texts of increasing incoherence and pornography.

The intimidatingly young and cool waitress took her name and ushered her down into the dark basement.

Anna stood in the three-deep crush at the bar among the mouthy straight-from-work suits, wondering if tonight would be the night.

By ‘the night’, she meant the one she fantasised would be mentioned in the best man’s speech in the splendour of The Old Rectory, as he stood in a shaft of sunshine splintered through mullioned windows.

For those of you that don’t know, Neil met Anna on an internet date. I’m told he was attracted to her sparkling sense of humour and the fact she’d got him a drink without being asked. (Pause for weak laughter.)

She eventually part-screeched and part-semaphored an order for herself and her date, and found a corner to loiter in.

Honestly, she remonstrated with herself, an internet date is basically an interview for a shag. Isn’t that pressure enough without mentally spooling forward to imaginary nuptials? Anna wasn’t at all obsessed with getting married, per se; she was simply keen to find the person who mattered. She was thirty-two and the bastard was taking his time. So much so that she suspected he’d got lost en route and accidentally married someone else.

She scanned the throng for a ghostly echo of the face she’d seen in the pictures. Not only was it dark, but Anna was used to a disconnect between the profile photographs and reality. In her online profile, she’d tried to balance out a few flattering snaps against a realistic sample to avoid the horrific prospect of her date’s face dropping when she arrived. Men, she guessed, thought more pragmatically: once they had you in the room, their charisma could take over.

‘Hello, are you Anna?’

She managed to turn ninety degrees to see a cheerful, inoffensive-looking man with thinning brown hair grinning at her delightedly in the murk. He was wearing a Berghaus jacket. Fell-walking wear on someone who wasn’t fell walking. Hmmm.

On first impressions, Anna wasn’t too sure about Neil’s dress sense. I’m pleased to say she chose his outfit today, or he’d probably have said his vows in Gore-Tex …

He looked approachable and trustworthy, however, smiling his gap-toothed smile. Not a problem for her; Anna was not the slightest bit fussed about pretty boys. In fact, she was positively suspicious of them.

‘I’m Neil,’ he said, shaking her hand and going for a peck on the cheek.

Anna proffered the spare Negroni she was holding.

‘What’s that?’ Neil said.

‘It’s gin and Campari. A favourite drink from my homeland.’

‘I’m a beer man, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh,’ Anna withdrew it and felt foolish.

Chrissake, wouldn’t you drink it to be polite? she thought. Then: maybe this is something we’ll laugh about eventually.

Apparently Anna was shocked to discover Neil didn’t drink cocktails and he made a great first impression by disappearing off in pursuit of a beer. Start as you mean to go on eh, Neil? (Pause for more weak laughter.)

Anna knocked back her Negroni and quickly made inroads with the second. At that moment, as ’80s Madonna hammered in her ears, she was Singlehood In London, distilled. It was all too familiar a feeling for her, experiencing intense loneliness in a room so crowded it must be nearing a fire regulation risk, feeling as if life was happening elsewhere. Right when she was supposedly in the beating heart at the centre of everything.

No! Positive thinking. Anna repeated the mantra she’d rehearsed a thousand times: how many happy couples trot out a dinner party origins tale about how they didn’t fancy each other at first? Or even like each other?

She didn’t want to be that woman bearing a checklist, always finding that suitors fell short in some respect or another. As if you were measuring space for a new fridge and moaning about the compromise in the dimensions of the ice-box.

Plus, it hadn’t taken her many internet dates to realise that the There You Are thunderbolt she’d so craved simply didn’t exist. As her mum always said, you have to rub the sticks to get the spark.

‘Sorry, a few of those and I’d be out for the count. Falling-down juice,’ Neil said, returning with his Birra Moretti. Anna wanted him to be nice and this to be fun with every fibre of her being.

‘Yes, I’ll probably wish I’d followed your example tomorrow,’ Anna shouted, over the music, and Neil smiled, making Anna feel she could make this work through sheer force of will.

Neil was a writer for a business and technology magazine and seemed, as per their previous communications, the kind of decent, personable and reliable sort who you’d fully expect to have a wife, kids and a shed.

They’d spoken only briefly online. Anna had banned the prolonged woo-by-electronic-billet-doux since the hugely painful disappointment of Scottish Tom the author, whose wit, charm and literary allusions she fell hard for, over a course of months. She’d started to live for the ping of the new message alert. She was halfway to in love by the time they finally planned to meet up, when he apologetically disclosed a) a spell in Rampton Secure Hospital and b) a ‘sort of wife’. After that, Anna changed her sort of Gmail address.

As the alcohol took effect, she found herself laughing at Neil’s tales about the ‘rubber chicken’ speaker circuit and shyster make-a-million industry gurus.

By the time they got to the table and over-ordered soak-up-the-booze-mattresses like meatballs, calamari and pizza, Anna was telling herself that maybe Neil was exactly the kind of solidly plausible candidate she needed to take a chance on.

‘Anna isn’t a very Italian name?’ Neil asked, as they both prodded battered hoops of squid and dragged them through a small pot of aioli.

‘It’s short for Aureliana. I changed it after school. Too … flowery, I suppose,’ she said, cupping a hand underneath her fork as the squid made a late bid to get back to the sea. ‘I’m not very flowery really.’

‘Hah no. I can see that,’ Neil said, which seemed a trifle presumptuous.

Her free hand involuntarily moved to her hair, which was in the usual messy knot. Perhaps she should’ve done more with it. And added make-up beyond reddish tinted lip balm, applied in haste while on the Tube. Start as you mean to go on, she always reasoned. No point pretending to be a dolly-bird type and disappointing him later.

‘The pork and fennel meatballs are the best variety, by the way,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve tried them all and can confirm.’

‘Have you been here a lot?’ Neil said mildly, and Anna squirmed a little.

‘A fair amount. With friends as well as dates.’

‘It’s OK. We’re in our thirties. You don’t need to pretend to be the blushing ingénue with me,’ he said, and Anna found something rather dislikeable in his pointing out her discomfort. Although maybe it was merely a slightly inept attempt to put her at ease.

Conversation stalled amid a loud Prince track, one of the ones where he went squeaky and frantic about wanting to filth a lady.

‘I’m actually poly,’ Neil said.

He’s actually Polly?! ‘Sorry?’ Anna leaned in sharply against the noise, fork in mid-air.

‘As in polyamorous. Multiple partners who all know about each other,’ he added.

‘Ah yes. I see!’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘Of course not!’ Anna said, perhaps too enthusiastically, fussing with what was left on her plate, thinking: I don’t know.

‘I don’t believe monogamy is our natural state but I realise that’s what a lot of people are looking for. I’m willing to give it a try for the right person though,’ he smiled.

‘Ah.’ Good of you.

‘And perhaps I should say that I’m into mild sub and dom. All hetero, but I’m not vanilla.’

Anna gave a grimace-smile and debated whether to say: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t speak kink.’

What was she supposed to do with this information? Blind dating fast-tracked the personal stuff, that was for sure.

‘I mean, I’m not that out there in the scene,’ Neil continued. ‘I’ve tried figging. But we’re not in the realms of the Shaved Gorilla though, hahaha.’

He was invoking shaving and animals in the boudoir. And figs, if that was what figging involved. Anna wasn’t disappointed anymore. Disappointment was a motorway junction ago. She was passing through into severe bewilderment and at this rate she was likely to take the next exit into a Welcome Break.

‘You?’ Neil said.

‘What?’

‘Anything your “thing”?’

Anna opened her mouth to reply and faltered. She’d usually go with ‘none of your business’, but they were on a date and it putatively was his business. ‘Uh … uhm. Usual sex.’

‘Usual sex.’ Oh God. She was underprepared and over-refreshed. This was like that temp job in a cinema one summer where, during the fun selection process, she’d been asked: ‘If your personality was a sandwich filling, which would it be?’ She got brain-blankness and said: ‘Cheese.’ ‘Just cheese?’ ‘Just cheese.’ ‘Because …?’ ‘It’s normal.’ Normal cheese and usual sex. She shouldn’t even be on the internet.

Neil surveyed her over the rim of his water glass.

‘Oh. OK. From your profile I thought you presented as heteronormative but might be genderqueer, for some reason.’

Anna didn’t want to admit she didn’t know what the key parts of that sentence meant.

‘Sorry if this is quite confronting,’ Neil continued. ‘I’m a big believer in honesty. I think most relationships fail because of lying and hypocrisy and pretending to be something you’re not. Much better to say This Is Who I Am and be completely open than for you to say on our fourth date, woah.’ Neil held his hands up and beamed reassuringly, ‘You like piss play?’

So ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to charge your glasses and raise a toast to the happy couple, Neil and Anna. And to the blushing bride, bottoms-up. You’ll want a full bladder for later. (Applause.)

2

‘Right, I’ve got Inspector Google on this Shaved Gorilla bullshit,’ Michelle said, squinting at her iPhone screen, Marlboro Light aloft in the other hand, smoke curling upwards in the empty dining room.

Anna couldn’t have coped with so many bad dates without the prospect of her friends to flee to at the end of the evening. Fortunately they worked hours that made them ideally suited to nightcaps rather than nights out.

Michelle’s ‘traditional British cooking with a twist’ was served at The Pantry, just off Upper Street in Islington. It was Grade II listed, with antique chandeliers, potted palms and buttercream wooden panelling. The kind of place where you have wartime affairs with men called Freddy in BBC dramas, and use phrases like ‘it was a horrid business’.

Daniel, Michelle’s long-standing front of house, was one of those semi-famous maître d’s who got mentioned in Time Out for being a ‘character’. The word character could be a euphemism for ‘tiresome git’, but Daniel had genuine charm and authentic eccentricity.

It was partly his appearance: a sweep of thick sandy hair, a bushy beard and high-magnification glasses which gave him cartoon eyes. He looked like a Looney Tunes lion crossed with an Open University professor. He dressed like Toad of Toad Hall in vintage tweed suits and spoke with an arch, old-fashioned cadence, like a junior Alan Bennett.

The three of them often met for drinks once Michelle had closed up, draped across the waiting area sofas, as the stubby candles guttered on the tables. Michelle was businesslike in her chef’s whites and kitchen-only Crocs. Her short, shiny bob, dyed exactly the same red you found in curry houses on tandoori chicken, was worn tucked behind her ears. She had ginormous hazelnut-coloured eyes, a generous painterly mouth, and a statuesque figure that flowed from a prow of a bosom. A supermodel, but out of time. She was instead stuck in an era where people would call her a beauty but a ‘big girl’.

‘Maybe it’s not deviant,’ Daniel said from across the room, where he was sweeping up. ‘Maybe everyone else but us is doing the shaved gorilla and the funky chicken and the … jugged hare.’