Читать книгу Here’s Looking At You - Mhairi McFarlane, Mhairi McFarlane - Страница 9

‘I mean, where’s the romance and mystery?’ Anna continued, holding up her glass for a refill. ‘Mr Darcy said you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. Not, you must allow me to tell you I’m into this spunk-throwing thing.’

‘We don’t live in the right era for an Anna,’ Michelle agreed. ‘Not much formality and wooing. But, you know. If you lived in Jane Austen time you’d have teeth like Sugar Puffs and seven kids with no pain relief. Swings and roundabouts. What appealed about this Neil’s profile, before you met him?’

‘Uhm. He seemed sane and pleasant enough,’ Anna shrugged.

Michelle flicked her fag into the Illy coffee cup that was performing ashtray duties. She was constantly giving up, then falling off the wagon.

Anna and Michelle had met in their early twenties at WeightWatchers. Anna had passed with flying colours, Michelle had flunked. One day, their bouncy cult leader was barking: ‘Strong minds need healthy bodies!’ and Michelle had said loudly, in her West Country lilt: ‘That’s Stephen Hawking told, by Jet from Gladiators,’ and then, into the shocked silence, ‘Fuck this, I’m off for a boneless bucket.’ That week, Anna missed her weigh-in and made a best mate.

‘“Sane and pleasant enough” is aiming a bit low? I’ve hired staff that had more going for them than that.’

‘I dunno. I just spent an evening with a man who talked about weeing on people as a leisure activity and demanded to know what I like in bed. So in the face of that, I’ll take sane and pleasant. Try internet dating, and your expectations would tumble too.’

Michelle had people she called when she fancied a tumble. She’d had her heart broken by a married man and insisted she was not interested in looking for further disappointment.

‘But you make my point for me, my love. That was someone “safe”, so why not take a risk on Mr Exciting?’

‘Even if they agreed to a date, I don’t want to handle Mr Exciting’s disappointment when he turns up and meets me.’

There was a brief pause while Frank Sinatra bellowed his way through ‘Strangers in the Night’, from the stereo held together with duct tape underneath the till.

‘Are we going to say it?’ Michelle said, looking to Daniel. ‘Fuck it, I’m going to say it. Anna, there’s modesty, which is a lovely quality. Then there’s underrating yourself to a self-harming degree. You are bloody brilliant. What disappointment are you talking about?’

Anna sighed and leaned back against the sofa.

‘Hah, well. I’m not though, am I? Or I wouldn’t have been single forever.’

Anna’s British gran Maude had a dreadful saying about the lonely folly of romantic ideas above your station: ‘She wouldn’t have a walker and the riders didn’t stop’.

It had given eleven-year-old Anna the chills. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Some women think they’re too good for those who want them, but when they’re not good enough for the men they want, they end up alone.’

Maude had been an utter misery-tits about everything. But a misery-tits could be right, several times a day.

‘When did you get this idea you’re in some way not good enough?’ Michelle said.

‘That’d be school.’

A pause. Michelle and Daniel knew the stories of course, right up to the Mock Rock. And they knew about The Thing That Happened After. There was a tense pause, as much as anything could be tense when they were supine with alcohol at knocking one in the morning.

Michelle sensitively turned the focus, for a moment.

‘I’m not sure hanging round with us two does you good. We’re no help. I’m perma-single and Dan’s … settled down.’

There was another pause as Michelle used the phrase ‘settled down’ with some sceptical reluctance.

Daniel had been with the somewhat droopy Penny for nearly a year. She was a singer in fiddle-folk band The Unsaid Things and sufferer of ME. Michelle was deeply sceptical of the ME, and claimed Penny was in fact a sufferer of POOR ME syndrome. Daniel met Penny when she’d waitressed at The Pantry and been sacked for being useless, so Michelle felt she had some rights to an opinion. An unflattering one.

‘You are a help. you’re helping right now,’ Anna said.

‘By the way,’ Michelle waved at a bowl on the table, ‘you’ve heard of Omelette Arnold Bennett. Well these are Homemade Scotch Eggs from Arnold’s buffet. Dig in.’

For all her tough talking, Michelle was kind and generous to a fault, and had supplied food for a former customer’s funeral earlier in the day.

‘I’ve been eyeing them like a wolf for the last hour, but I feel guilty eating a dead man’s eggs,’ Daniel said.

‘They’re from the wake, Daniel,’ Michelle said. ‘No one goes to their own wake. Ergo, they’re not Arnold’s.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Daniel said. ‘Egg-scused. Eggs-culpated.’ He picked up an egg, and started eating it like an apple.

‘Arnold’s brother dropped them off. He told me what Arnold’s last words were. Well, strictly speaking, his penultimate words. His final-final words were not the cloudy lemonade, Ros but that wasn’t as profound. Are you ready? It’s a bit of a choker.’

Anna looked at her with glassy eyes and nodded.

Michelle tapped her cigarette. ‘He said he wished he hadn’t wasted so much time being scared.’

‘Of what?’ Anna said.

Michelle shrugged.

‘Didn’t say. Life terrors, I guess. We’re scared of all sorts of things that won’t kill us, aren’t we? The things we live our lives around avoiding. Then we realise when we get to the end that what we should’ve been afraid of was a life lived by avoiding things.’

‘Fear of fear itself,’ Daniel said, wiping breadcrumbs out of his beard.

Anna thought about this. What was she scared of? Being alone? Not really. It was her natural state, given that she’d been single almost all of her adult life. She was scared of never being in love, she supposed. Hang on, no – that wasn’t fear, exactly. More disappointment, or sadness. So what was the fear she was living around? Hah. As if she didn’t know the answer.

It was the fear of ever being that girl again.

She thought of the email that had dropped into her inbox a week ago, which had coated her in a sheen of unseasonal sweat as soon as she saw it.

‘Some fears are justified,’ Anna said, ‘like my fear of heights.’

‘Or my fear of bald cats,’ Daniel said.

‘How is that rational?’ Michelle said.

‘Cats keep all their secrets in their fur. Don’t trust one with nothing to lose.’

‘Or my fear of going to my school reunion next Thursday,’ Anna said.

‘What?’ Michelle said. ‘That does NOT count. You have to go!’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘To say, screw you all, look at me now. You didn’t break me. You could slay the demon forever, this way. Wouldn’t that feel good?’

‘I don’t care what they think of me now,’ Anna said, with feeling.

‘Actually going proves it.’

‘No it doesn’t. It looks like I’m arsed.’

‘Not true. And look, if he’s there …’

‘He won’t be,’ Anna cut in, feeling a little breathless at the thought. ‘No way would he go. It would be a million miles beneath him.’

‘Then there’s even less reason to avoid it. Do you ever want to be Arnold, wondering what life would’ve been like if you’d not wasted time being scared? This school show, the Glee thing where they were vile. You’ve never seen them since that day, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then it’s a loose end. An unfaced thing. That’s why it’s still got a hold over you.’

‘Great Crom!’ Daniel said, sitting up, looking in the direction of the restaurant’s picture windows.

Anna and Michelle turned in their seats to see a thirty-something man hooting with laughter. His trousers and pants were at half mast, while he looked over his shoulder at people beyond.

‘He’s flashing us!’ Anna said.

‘That’s the king and the privy council,’ Daniel agreed.

They stared some more and saw the lights of a crowd in the distance, the firefly blink of camera phones going off.

‘I think he’s mooning his mates and we’re getting the nasty by-product,’ Michelle said.

The man lost his balance and staggered forwards, landing with a soft but significant thud against the glass.

‘Woah, woah, woah!’ Michelle was fast on her feet and over to him, rapping her knuckles against the glass. ‘These windows cost five grand, mate! Five grand!’

A moment of slapstick comedy followed as a pissed man with his chap hanging out realised that there was a woman on the other side of the window. He screamed and ran away, trying to pull his jeans up as he went.

Anna and Daniel, weakened by alcohol, were left senseless with laughter.

Michelle returned, flopping down on the sofa and clicking at a fresh cigarette with her lighter.

‘Tell these fuckers what you think of them, Anna. Seriously. Show them you’re not scared and they didn’t get the better of you. Why not? If you avoid them, you’re wasting time being scared of nothing. Don’t let fear win.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ Anna said, laughter subsiding. ‘I really don’t think I can.’

‘And that’s exactly why you have to do it.’