Unsticky

by Sarah Manning

  Lucy gave Grace a limpid look from artificially blue eyes, then the foundations of her face began to crumble. ‘No,’ she said, fighting back tears. ‘I’m pretty fucking far from all right. That bastard, I gave him the two best years of my twenties!’

  It wasn’t difficult getting Lucy on side. Though Grace wasn’t sure that’s what she was doing as she stroked the other girl’s surprisingly soft platinum-blond hair and told her not to cry. She was just down with her pain.

  ‘Look, you can do so much better than him,’ she advised when Lucy had come to the end of a long, tear-soaked rant about how Martin’s lawyer had told her that she had to vacate the Bel Air mansion no later than 15 January. ‘You’re gorgeous and he looks like he fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. No offence.’

  Lucy stared at her in amazement. ‘But I love him!’

  Grace stared right back. ‘Really?’

  ‘I know he’s not much to look at, but the handsome ones don’t try so hard. And Martin looked after me. He made me feel safe but now he’s sniffing around some preppy bitch who looks like she came off the WASP assembly line, and siccing his lawyer on me. I can’t believe he’s doing this!’ Lucy finished on an anguished wail that made Grace’s headache feel like a migraine. ‘You should be taking notes, honey. Don’t think this won’t happen to you.’

  It would happen to her, Grace knew that. Probably sooner rather than later, if her performance today was any indication. But, on the other hand, she’d gone into this knowing she had an expiration date because Vaughn had never lied to her. In fact, he’d spelled out just what an objectionable wanker he was in unflinching detail, but Grace had been too distracted by the shiny things she was going to buy, to pay attention to the small print.

  ‘Speaking of Vaughn . . . look, Lucy, he wants me to talk about your . . . your . . . leaving gift. Like, maybe you might want to think about investing in some art?’ She pulled a face, as Lucy’s eyes glazed over, then coughed and said, ‘Fuck art! Where are you going to live?’

  ‘Well, my boyfriend before Martin bought me some property. I have a place I sublet in New York and this sweet little condo in Silverlake but it’s not a Bel Air mansion with a room just for my shoes.’

  Lucy Newton might walk and talk like a Barbie doll, but she knew how to pick her boyfriends. ‘OK, so what are you going to ask Martin for?’

  Diamonds. A limited edition Bugatti sports car designed by Hermès. Part share in a private jet. ‘Oh, and I definitely want a new fur but mostly I want Martin to realise that he’s in love with me.’ Lucy swigged from the bottle of champagne. ‘Fat chance of that, isn’t there?’

  Grace squeezed her hand. Having a front-row seat to Lucy’s pain and humiliation was really taking her mind off her own impending death. ‘Do you think you might be interested in some art though?’ Grace wished she wasn’t sucking quite so badly at the hard sell. ‘I can’t even remember who the good artists are, but Vaughn buys stuff that isn’t worth shit, holds on to it, then flogs it a few years down the line for a gazillion times what he paid for it.’

  The door had opened in the middle of Grace’s speech and Kelly, Anna and the maybe-boyfriend of Robert Simmons trouped in, yapping on about some dude who’d just sabred a bottle of champagne.

  ‘But I don’t know anything about art,’ Lucy protested, as the man sat down with a cup of coffee.

  ‘It’s Grace, isn’t it? I’m Eric,’ he said, turning to Lucy. ‘Sweetie, invest in art. I wouldn’t put a dime into a hedge fund with the economy the way it is, but the art market’s still pretty buoyant. I bought a Basquiat for twenty thousand dollars fifteen years ago and just had it valued at nearly three million. And don’t even ask me how much my Keith Harings are worth.’

  ‘Not diamonds?’ Lucy breathed.

  ‘You get a good uncut stone worth a few carats and your money’s all gone,’ Kelly declared, leaning against the arm of the couch. ‘So, what does Vaughn think the next big thing is?’

  They all turned to look at Grace, who tried to visualise the words on the crib sheet that Vaughn had made her memorise. But she couldn’t remember and it had become cloyingly hot in the room, so she settled for clawing at the neckline of her dress, which felt like it was choking her.

  ‘You should talk to him,’ she croaked. ‘He’s here for the next few days and I know he closed on some big acquisitions before we left London.’ Vaughn was always closing on some big acquisitions and it sounded better than pleading ignorance.

  Anna was already brandishing her phone. ‘Let’s swap digits,’ she commanded. ‘I know Al is after a particular light installation but I’m really into figurative pieces, y’know?’

  Grace didn’t know. Didn’t much care. But she had one phone number.

  ‘Robert’s going to talk to Vaughn about some pieces for the place we just bought in Aix-en-Provence, but I’ll give you my number too.’ Eric sighed. It was conclusive proof that Robert Simmons was a far better actor than Grace could ever have imagined. ‘If I leave it to him, he’ll bring home yet another Jeff Koons.’

  Lucy was definitely wavering. ‘But I already made an appointment to look at a jet,’ she said. ‘It has hand-embroidered leather seats.’

  ‘Give Grace your number,’ Anna snapped. ‘And don’t buy any piece just because you like the colour.’

  Grace tipped her head back and took in tiny sips of air, as the room tilted around her. ‘I’m getting property this year. It’s so cheap at the moment,’ Kelly was saying. ‘I’m just about to close on a sweet little apartment building in Florence, on the good side of the Arno.’

  Grace didn’t think she’d ever felt so out of place as she did right then in her stupid itchy chainstore dress, with no severance package in place for her imminent severing and a head that felt like it had swelled to twice its normal size.

  The waitress came back with fresh coffee. ‘Can I get anybody anything else?’ she asked.

  Water. Or tea with honey and lemon. Anything to lubricate her parched throat. Grace tried to get the girl’s attention and lifted up her arm only to watch it fall back down as it deliberately ignored the messages her brain was sending.

  ‘You’re bright red,’ someone said. ‘Are you OK?’

  Grace had only fainted once before and that was after she’d taken a dodgy E at Glastonbury. That time, the friends she’d been with had left her in the tent to sleep it off. This time she had many, many people whose combined incomes probably added up to the GNP of a small country fussing around her. The restaurant owner was insisting loudly that it couldn’t have been anything that she’d eaten, as Grace lay flat on the sofa, Vaughn holding her hand, while a man in chef’s whites felt her pulse.

  ‘Poor thing,’ Vaughn murmured, brushing Grace’s hair back, and he was only being nice to her because he had an audience, but Grace nuzzled against him. He was the only familiar thing at hand and she needed to keep him close.

  ‘She should probably go to ER,’ the chef said and Vaughn nodded.

  ‘I just want to go home,’ Grace whispered, but home was across an ocean and wasn’t really a home, just a place where she slept.

  But Vaughn seemed to know what she meant. ‘Can you help me get her to the car?’ he asked the chef, who was twice Vaughn’s size and scooped Grace up like she weighed nothing and carried her out.

  It seemed to take ages, and a cast of thousands including their driver, the hotel manager and another doctor who was waiting for them when they got back, before Grace was lying on the sofa in their loft suite.

  There were too many questions being fired at her but Grace just lay quietly trying not to cough because when she did, all she could taste was the consommé she’d had for lunch. She was never going to have onion soup again for as long as she lived.

  Finally the doctor left and Vaughn was the last man standing. ‘Bed,’ he said firmly, and Grace wanted to clean her teeth and have a shower and get out of the bloody dress and burn it but she let him gently tug her towards the downst
airs bedroom.

  He took off her dress and tights, even sponged her down, but all the time Grace could sense something expectant about him. Like, he knew this wasn’t the time or the place, but he just couldn’t help himself.

  Vaughn closed the curtains, put a bottle of water on the nightstand, even tucked the duvet around her, and when there was nothing left to do, he still lingered. ‘Is there anything else you need?’

  Grace took pity on him. He couldn’t help what he was and maybe she was finally starting to understand that. Besides, the sooner he went away, the sooner she could sleep. ‘My phone,’ she whispered hoarsely.

  ‘Your phone? Do you want to speak to your grandparents?’

  ‘There are numbers on it. Lucy’s, one of the blondes’, and the guy - I said you’d call them.’ Talking hurt. Really hurt, but she wasn’t finished. ‘Didn’t even remember the cribs - they talked Lucy round, not me.’

  ‘Grace . . .’ Vaughn’s usually impeccable posture had deserted him and his body hung limp. ‘I . . . I don’t know what to say. You must think—’

  ‘Whatever,’ she sighed, not even having the energy to hit the beat on the second syllable like she usually did. ‘Just promise me that you’ll look out for Lucy and not dump her with some shitty painting you’ve been trying to offload for ages.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Vaughn sounded indignant, which actually was rather comforting. Contrition really didn’t suit him.

  ‘Yeah, you would,’ Grace mumbled, fighting to keep her eyes open for a couple of seconds longer. ‘I know you.’

  Usually when Grace was under the weather she loved to curl up with some DVD boxed sets while doing a languid impersonation of Camille. This time around, there was far too much snot and sweat for that and when she wasn’t sleeping, all she wanted to do was go back to sleep.

  Vaughn popped in at regular intervals to get updates but left the heavy lifting to Blessed, the day nurse he’d hired, a cheerful, middle-aged Jamaican woman who sat by Grace’s bed reading crime novels with really lurid covers and couldn’t make a decent cup of tea.

  It was late afternoon on the third day of Grace’s confinement when she woke up and thought that she might be feeling a little better. The fact that she wasn’t lying in a pool of her own sweat was a good indicator and her head felt like it was almost normal size again.

  Vaughn was on the phone in the living room but he turned round instantly when Grace opened the bedroom door after a slightly shaky shower. ‘I have to go, I’ll speak to you later.’ He blocked Grace’s path to the kitchen where she was hellbent on making a brew so he could cup her face. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Like I just have a cold instead of pleural pneumonia,’ Grace said. ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’ll make it. You go and sit down.’ Vaughn was already brushing past her and Grace was tempted to exploit his guilt for all it was worth, but still . . .

  ‘Please let me make the tea,’ Grace begged him once he’d put the kettle on and was about to add the milk first, which was an offence punishable by death. ‘You won’t dunk the bag enough times.’

  ‘You’re definitely feeling better,’ Vaughn snorted, moving to open the fridge, which was full to bursting with cartons of soup, juice, eggs, bread and fruit. ‘Madeleine faxed the hotel over a list and they got one of the local shops to deliver.’

  ‘So you’re not firing her?’ Grace squeezed the tea bag against the side of the mug with a spoon. ‘Or was that her last duty before she put her belongings in a cardboard box?’

  ‘Madeleine’s put up with much worse from me,’ Vaughn said slowly. He took the mug that Grace pushed towards him. ‘I was rather keyed up on Christmas Eve and you bore the brunt of that. Come on, let’s go and sit down and you can tell me what you’d like to eat.’

  If you squinted really hard, and possibly used a microscope, it was Vaughn saying sorry, without actually saying sorry. ‘You were horrible,’ Grace told him, as she sat down next to him on the couch. ‘A complete bastard, who cares more about earning his commission than anything else. You have severe emotional problems but whatever, I’m over it.’

  Vaughn looked sceptical. ‘You don’t sound as if you’re over it.’

  But she was. Grace had had nothing to do over the last few days but think, and she kept coming back to the same conclusion. ‘I can’t believe you stabbed me with an adrenalin shot,’ she sniffed, because she wanted to see him squirm a little. ‘But y’know, if I had stayed in England and had flu there, Lily would still have forced me into my revolting bridesmaid’s dress and up the aisle. Her mum would probably have held a gun to my head, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘I never asked how that all went,’ Vaughn said casually, and they both knew that he hadn’t asked because the thought hadn’t occurred to him. ‘How did she take it?’

  Lily and Dan had been joined in holy matrimony at about the time that Grace was doing her dying swan act. Actually, having flu had taken her mind off all sorts of things that Grace hadn’t wanted to think about, and now they were leaking back and taking up all sorts of neuron space that could be better used for cataloguing her shoes. ‘Lily went ballistic, which was understandable, but when I told her about you she said a whole bunch of stuff and then I said even worse stuff and she went back to the office and told everyone that I was a prostitute.’ She gave Vaughn a lopsided smile. ‘Well, at least I’m out at work now.’

  ‘You should never let secrets fester,’ Vaughn admonished, but that was easy enough for him to say. There was a small moment of excruciating tension between them and then he traced a line from the tip of Grace’s nose to her chin. ‘You missed Christmas. I could probably persuade someone to rustle up a turkey dinner if you wanted.’

  ‘Rather have scrambled eggs on toast.’ Grace looked at Vaughn from under her lashes. ‘I could make you some too, if you like.’

  Normal service had been resumed. Grace pretended to forgive Vaughn and Vaughn pretended to be penitent and in the gap in between they bickered gently about the correct way to make scrambled eggs so they were moist rather than runny. And later when Grace was the good, mellow kind of drunk from the generous amounts of single malt whisky with which Vaughn kept topping up her hot honey and lemon, they opened their Christmas presents.

  Obviously it was better to receive than to give. Much, much better - but Grace liked the giving too. Maybe buying perfect presents was another one of her superpowers. She had a knack for the quirky and the unusual and the gag gift that didn’t actually make the recipient gag, but Vaughn had been Grace’s hardest challenge yet. She knew all sorts of dark secrets of his: the emphatic little grunt he gave when he came, the sour-sweet smell of his morning breath, the nicotine patch he still wore, but actual facts that could lead to the buying of actual presents was harder. It had been a Herculean task, but she was proud of the little cache of beautifully wrapped presents she placed on the coffee-table. Wrapping gifts was another one of her nascent superpowers.

  Grace suspected that Vaughn’s presents had all been gift-wrapped by shop assistants under Madeleine Jones’s watchful gaze - but she was still secretly thrilled by the sheer size of her haul. Her grandparents had never spent more than fifty pounds total on Christmas and birthdays so she couldn’t help but bounce a little as she unwrapped Agent Provocateur underwear that was maybe a little too coquettish for her tastes, another Marc Jacobs handbag with matching purse and key fob because it had been quickly established that he was her favourite designer, and two boxes from Tiffany’s.

  ‘Open the larger one first,’ Vaughn said, watching her closely as if he didn’t want to miss a second of her reaction.

  Grace didn’t have to fake her sharp gasp. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed, carefully lifting up the delicate necklace of aquamarines, diamonds and pearls randomly strung on a platinum chain. There was a bracelet to match.

  ‘Tiffany’s don’t actually sell tiaras,’ Vaughn informed her. ‘And you have no idea how hard it is to buy jewellery for
someone with grey eyes. Turn round so I can put the necklace on.’

  Grace scooched round and lifted her hair so Vaughn could fasten the clasp. Then he was leaning forward to fasten the bracelet too. Grace allowed herself to rest against Vaughn’s chest because it felt so nice to lean on someone else for a little bit. She still had a slight fever and the necklace and bracelet felt cool against her skin, but not as cool as Vaughn’s fingers, as he encircled her wrists with his hands, and all of a sudden she didn’t feel quite so safe, more like she’d been collared and cuffed.

  She blinked and everything that had been soft focus in the glow of the fire and the haze of the whisky shifted and became sharper. Then Vaughn kissed the nape of her neck - a sweet, unnecessary gesture that made Grace will away the dark thoughts. She lifted her arm and turned it this way and that so she could see how the stones in the bracelet sparkled as they reflected the light.

  ‘I’ve never had so many presents and they’re all so beautiful,’ she said, wriggling out of Vaughn’s hold, so she could turn round and kiss him very gently on the cheek, which made him smile. ‘Thank you so much. Now open mine.’