Free Here's Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane Page B

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