Here's Looking at You Read Online Free PDF

building had that lovely old-fashioned carpety smell and yellow light from large round pendant lamps, as if you were living inside a warm memory.
    Anna pushed her office door open with her back, pleased that no one had spied her. She’d feel self-conscious at any cries of
ooh let’s see it on then
.
    Anna might’ve lost her schoolgirl weight and become a perfectly standard dress size, but it didn’t mean she thought and acted like the person she now was. She retained an intense dislike of clothes shops. The advent of online shopping had been a revelation. She would much, much rather use her office as a dressing room.
    So when she realised the reunion needed a dress – no, not merely a dress but something truly flash, that would raise two fingers to them all in the form of fabric – she’d gone straight to an expensive designer website and spent the cost of a nice weekend away.
    She dislodged the lid, rustling through the layers of tissue paper. There the exorbitant dress lay. Not a lot of material for … well, she wasn’t going to dwell on it.
    Anna laid it carefully over a chair and checked the office door was locked, then wriggled out of her shapeless Zara smock, swapping it for the evening gown. She twisted it into place with forefingers and thumbs very carefully, as if it was gossamer, and pulled up a reassuringly chunky zip, with only a little breathing in.
    Hmmm. She turned this way and that in front of the mirror. Not
quite
the transformation she’d hoped for. A black dress is a black dress. She flapped her arms up and down and watched the diaphanous chiffon sleeves waft in the breeze. She heard ‘The Birdie Song’ in her head.
    On the website’s mannequin, with its blank white Isaac Asimov robot face, the black Prada shift had looked ‘Rita Hayworth during Happy Hour at the Waldorf Astoria’ chic. Now it was on her, Anna wondered if it was in fact rather blowsy. Like a cruise ship singer who would launch into ‘Unbreak My Heart’ while everyone enjoyed their main of breadcrumbed veal with sautéed potatoes.
    Inevitably, as she stared at herself, she remembered that other day, that other dress. And that other girl.
    Eventually she picked up her phone.
    ‘Michelle. I’m not going to the reunion. It’s rank madness and the dress makes me look like Professor Snape.’
    ‘Yes you are. After you’ve been, you’ll experience an incredible sense of lightness. Like a colon cleanse. Barry! Prep that squid and stop playing
Fingermouse
with it! Sorry, that last bit wasn’t for you.’
    ‘I can’t, Michelle. What if they all laugh at me?’
    ‘They won’t. But even if they did – doesn’t part of you want a chance to live that moment again, but this time, you tell them all to go to hell?’
    Anna didn’t want to admit what she was thinking. What if she crumbled, cried and had to face that she was still Aureliana? Aureliana, holding more exam certificates and carrying less weight.
    ‘Do I look alright in this dress you can’t see?’
    ‘Is it the Prada one you sent me the link to? BARRY! Get that off that sausage! Do you think you’re working for Aardman fucking Animations? There’s no way you won’t look good. Your problem is going to be you’ll look so good no one will be looking at anyone else.’
    ‘Knock knock! Permission to enter the bat cave!’ Patrick sing-songed through the door.
    ‘Michelle, I’ve got to go.’
    ‘You’re right. You have
got to go
.’
    Anna half laughed, half groaned.
    ‘Come in!’ Anna called. Cave was a reasonable adjective for Anna’s sinfully messy space on the second floor.
    As a lecturer, expert in the Byzantine period, she was allowed some stereotypical nutty professor licence. When it came to housekeeping, she took it. Books were piled on folders piled on more books. The disarray was an insult to a lovely room though, and Anna felt some guilt about it.
    Patrick lived down the hall, teaching the wool trade in the Tudor period. They’d started at UCL