Читать книгу Here’s Looking At You - Mhairi McFarlane, Mhairi McFarlane - Страница 19

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’s no 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.’

Eva worked at a redbrick private school in Bayswater and her miraculous crowd control was not unconnected to her aesthetic appeal.

Every so often, she’d come home with some smitten pupil’s unsubtle daubing of a full-lipped blonde, possibly floating Ophelia-like in water. It was usually a stealthy excuse to paint Miss in the scud. James had been irritated at being expected to look at this febrile fan-fic pinned to the fridge door.

‘Here are the ear drops for Luther,’ she dumped her bag on the table and rummaged for the packet. ‘Twice a day and some brownish discharge is normal.’

‘Fantastic. Looking forward.’

‘I’m going to get some more clothes from the spare room.’

‘Knock yourself out.’

‘There’s no need to speak in such a … diminishing way, all the time.’

James rolled his eyes.

Eva stalked upstairs and Luther padded off to the kitchen, with a flick of his tail to express his disgust at James’s inability to keep a woman.

After she had rifled through it for the ear drops, Eva’s tan shoulder bag gaped open enticingly in front of him. James could see a folded piece of paper and made out a name, ‘Finn Hutchinson, 2013’ with multiple kisses. Pupils were painting her this early in the term? He peered more closely. If he acted like a jealous spurned lover, that’s because he was one.

Listening to her moving about on the floor above, James pulled the drawing out. It was textured, thick cartridge paper, the sort you get in art supply shops.

He unfolded it and stared at a charcoal outline of his naked wife, legs hooked over the arm of a sofa, arms thrown back, staring at him unrepentantly from heavy lidded eyes, hair pooled in serpents behind her head.

This could, of course, be another Eva tribute. Nevertheless, something told James this had been sketched from real life, notably the accuracy of the detail.

For as long as he’d known her, Eva had favoured a bikini wax that left only a vertical, cigar-shaped strip of hair. The small smudgy line between the thighs was a sure sign that the artist was gifted with first-hand knowledge. The smoking gun pubes.

James left the portrait unfolded on the table and leaned against the wall, breathed out, and folded his arms.

Feeling nauseous, deathly cold and yet in control, he measured each minute she remained upstairs as an eternity.