into two groups, each single sex, as if they had rewound to pubescent years of the genders not mixing. There were the men, many of whom he recognised, their features softening, melting and slipping. Hair migrating south, from scalps to chins.
James felt a shiver of schadenfreude at still looking more or less the way he did when he was a fifth-former, albeit a good few pounds heavier.
Everyone had given him quick, hard, appraising stares, and he knew why. If he’d gone to seed, it’d be the talk of the evening.
And hah – he’d said hello at the bar, and Lindsay Bright had actually blanked him! She may be an ex-sort-of-girlfriend, but surely she didn’t still have the hump about things that happened seventeen years ago? I mean, they could have a kid doing A-levels by now. Perish the thought.
Returning with two pints of Fosters, Laurence nodded back towards where Lindsay stood.
‘Blimey, she’s not aged like fine wine,’ Laurence muttered. ‘Made of lips and arse now, like a cheap burger. Shame.’
‘So can we go?’ James said, under his breath. Bloody Laurence and his bloody schemes to meet women. These were even women he’d met already. ‘I don’t think there’s anything here for you.’
‘Yeeeaah … No. Wait. Holy moly. Who the hell is that?’
James followed Laurence’s line of sight, towards a woman standing on her own. James realised he’d overlooked her numerous times but it wasn’t because she wasn’t worth looking at. She was dark: black hair, olive skin, black clothes, so much so that she had disappeared into the background like a shadow.
Mysterious Woman was done up to the nines in something that he thought looked a bit ‘Eastenders trattoria owner throws a divorce party’. He could imagine Eva telling him it was doing things the male mind was too crude to appreciate.
She radiated a kind of European art house film or espresso-maker advert beauty. Heavily lashed, vaguely melancholy brown eyes, thick eyebrows like calligraphic sweeps of a fountain pen, big knot of inky hair in an unwinding bundle at the crown of her head. All in all, it wasn’t especially his thing, but he could certainly see the appeal. Particularly in these drab surroundings.
‘Oh, we have got to say hi. I am appalled that she must’ve done an exchange programme and we didn’t introduce her to our country’s customs,’ Laurence said.
‘You realise you’re getting to the age where this is grotesque?’
‘You’re not the slightest bit curious about who she is?’
James glanced over again. Her body language was that of someone desperate to be left alone, the arm holding her glass clamped tight to her body. It was a puzzle who she was, and why she’d come here. If James was on his own, he might approach her, given she was the only point of intrigue in the room. He didn’t want to spectate a Laurence seduction attempt, however.
‘I know who she is, she’s the wife of the guy who’s going to punch you in about fifteen minutes,’ he said, brusquely.
‘Plus one?’ Laurence asked.
‘Of course she’s a plus one.’
James knew without question this woman was an exotic outsider. She hadn’t gone to his school. No way his libidinous adolescent radar wouldn’t have picked up the slightest incoming blip. Obviously some trophy wife, dragged along reluctantly. And the women here clearly didn’t know her, bolstering the theory.
‘Whatever her marital status, she’s gorgeous.’
‘Not that hot and not my type,’ James snapped, hoping to shut Laurence down. As James spoke, she glanced over. Mysterious Woman swigged the last of her drink and shouldered her handbag.
‘Shit no, Penélope Cruz is leaving? I’m going in,’ Laurence said.
In her twenties, Anna had a few fantasies about running into James Fraser again, and constructed elaborate imaginary verbal takedowns. Bitter excoriations in front of his wife and kids and co-workers about what a completely vicious conceited bastard he was, which usually ended with everyone applauding.
Now here he was. Over there. The man himself.
Anna could stride over and say anything she wanted to him. And all she could think was: yuck. I never want to share the same carpet square with you ever again.
He’d kept his looks, she’d give him that. Still the obsidian black hair, now worn artfully mussed, instead of those silly floppy curtains all boys had in the 1990s. And the shaving advert jaw line was hard as ever, no doubt much like his heart. It was a type of ‘stock model in a water filter infomercial’ handsome that didn’t move her in the slightest now.
He was in a very thirty-something trendy combination of plaid shirt, buttoned up to the collar, grey cardigan and desert boots. What was with this thing of dressing like a grandpa, lately? Anna did a young fogey job but she didn’t go around in orthopaedic sandals.
The youthful smirk had been replaced with an ingrained look of distaste. Exactly as she anticipated – he was surveying the company with the expression of a Royal being shown the pig scraps bins at the back of a chippy. Why deign to turn up, if he thought he was so far above the company? Wanted to reassure himself he was still top of the heap, perhaps.
And God, he was still with that lanky Laurence, court jester to James’s king. Laconic Laurence, who once fired off machine-gun-like rounds of quick fire ridicule at her. She felt their eyes move to her. But unlike everyone else’s, their gaze didn’t move on. In fact, when she risked looking back their way, she got the distinct impression she was being discussed.
A self-conscious warmth started creeping up her neck, like a snood of shame. Had they recognised her …?
The thought sparked great comets of stomach acid, making her hands tremble. She suddenly felt as if she was nude in the middle of a crowded space, an anxiety dream made reality.
And at that exact moment, she could perfectly lip-read James Fraser’s words.
‘Not that hot. And not my type.’
Amazing. She’d come all this way, and he still found her wanting. Only this time, he could go to hell.
She chugged her drink and headed to the door. She was intercepted by Laurence, cutting right across her path.
‘Tell me you’re not leaving,’ he said.
‘Er …’ once again, Anna felt her lack of a script. ‘Yes.’
‘Put us out of our agony and at least tell us who you are. My associate and I have been completely foxed.’
Laurence put a caddish emphasis on the last word, making it clear this was a chat-up.
Anna glanced over at James, who didn’t look like he wanted to speak to her at all.
‘Anna,’ she said, dumbly, as she frantically calculated how to play this. She knew what happened next if she answered him honestly. He’d whoop with disbelief, say patronising, oleaginous things about how she was looking fantastic.
Then he’d call others over: Hey everyone, this is Aureliana! Remember her? As if she was so stupid she wouldn’t decode the Bloody hell, how did this happen? And she’d feel like something in a zoo. They always did treat her like a separate species. She should never have come.
‘Anna? Anna …?’ Laurence shook his head and waited for the surname.
Mercifully, magically, letters in Comic Sans came back into her head.
‘… I’m supposed to be at Beth’s leaving do, next door. I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place, I don’t know many of the other guests. I was