Unsticky

by Sarah Manning

  ‘They didn’t drive me to despair on a daily basis,’ Vaughn sighed, tipping his head back. ‘I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t talk about our others.’

  ‘I didn’t have anything to talk about, just a succession of creeps who treated me badly,’ Grace said bitterly. ‘Who dumped me within three months - and big whoop! - I made it all the way to seven months with you! I want you to tell me the truth. Tell me the reason you’re dumping me has nothing to do with Noah or Young British Artists or . . .’

  ‘It is what it is. You know I was - I am - attracted to you, but I can’t let that factor into my business decisions.’ Vaughn wouldn’t look at her as he trotted out this statement, like he’d spent hours rehearsing his monotone delivery.

  ‘You utter bastard!’

  ‘I’m getting very bored with this,’ Vaughn said, and Grace didn’t know if that was another reason or if he was talking about her constant swearing. ‘We had a few good months together and now it’s time for us both to move on to new projects.’

  ‘Oh my God, you’ve already got someone else all lined up,’ Grace hissed incredulously, on her feet in an instant so she could loom over Vaughn for a change with her hands on her hips. ‘No way am I sticking it out for another month so you can sweet-talk some other poor bitch into signing one of your contracts.’

  ‘Talking of contracts, Grace,’ Vaughn cut in coldly, ‘you walk out now, I will sue you for breaching yours.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Life isn’t fair,’ Vaughn retorted, and he sounded disturbingly like her grandmother. ‘It’s over when I say it’s over.’ Then he stood up in a jerky, clumsy movement like he couldn’t wait to get away from her. ‘You were happy enough to sign the contract at the time, just remember that. We’ll have any further discussions once you’re done with the hysterics.’

  Vaughn stalked out of the room with an angry toss of his head. If he’d had another X chromosome, it could even have been called a flounce.

  chapter thirty-seven

  Vaughn avoided her all night, which was cool with Grace. If he wanted to sulk, then he could just get on with it. She had plans of her own, things to do, people to see - except Lily was really put out when Grace called her before eight. She was even more put out when Grace said in an urgent voice, ‘You have to meet me for breakfast and you absolutely have to come on your own.’

  Lily was now nearly eight months’ pregnant and didn’t want brunch in some fancy shmancy Highgate café with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and freshly squeezed orange juice. They had to meet at a greasy spoon on Junction Road so she could satisfy her cravings for bacon on a soft white roll smothered in ketchup that came from a red plastic tomato.

  ‘He’s dumping me,’ Grace told Lily as she watched her trying to manoeuvre her hand to her mouth without dripping ketchup everywhere because Lily had the most ergonomically rounded bump Grace had ever seen. It didn’t even look as if she was pregnant, but like she’d shoved a beach ball under her TopShop maternity dress for a laugh.

  ‘Why is he dumping you?’ Lily asked. ‘I thought everything was going really well.’

  ‘He’s a bastard. A conniving, scheming bastard,’ Grace spat, though she didn’t really want to go into any more details and then have to listen to Lily’s variations on the theme of ‘I told you so’.

  ‘What did he do?’ Lily breathed, settling back for some lurid tale to add to the huge volume that was Grace’s Adventures in Dating.

  ‘He’s given me a month’s notice. How fucked up is that? Like, he’s dumping me, but in thirty days’ time and I’m just expected to suck it up and deal or he says he’ll sue me for breach of contract. I mean, what the fuck?’ Even with pretty much everything edited out, it was still a world of wrong.

  ‘Oh, Grace.’ Lily looked up at the ceiling and Grace knew she was trying to come up with a silver lining. ‘I know you said you were into him and the sex was good and, my God, that house, but you knew it wasn’t going to last for ever. You both agreed that it was an arrangement, not a love affair.’

  ‘I know I did. But you can’t live with someone and have little in-jokes and iron their shirts and not feel something for them, and all the time he was just playing me and—’

  ‘You iron his shirts?’ Lily looked appalled.

  ‘Only when we go away. He can’t pack for shit and then he hates unpacking too so everything’s scrunched in his bag for ages and it’s just wasteful to pay the hotel Housekeeping to do it.’ Grace bristled under Lily’s incredulous stare. ‘What? I happen to like ironing.’ She slumped over the table. ‘When he found out about all my debts and paid them off, I thought he’d changed. I thought that we’d changed, but—’

  ‘Hang on! He paid off your debts? All of them?’ Lily wilted slightly as Grace glared at her. ‘Didn’t that make you feel weird? Like you had a “Sold” sticker slapped on you?’

  Grace shrugged. ‘Kind of, but mostly I was just relieved and he was so unbelievably nice about it; he wouldn’t let me say thank you or try to pay him back. So, I started doing little things to show him that I was grateful. I’d cook him dinner and buy him little presents, and I did his bloody ironing, and the whole time he must have been laughing himself sick about how pathetic I was.’

  ‘He was the pathetic one, taking advantage of you like that. Why shouldn’t he pay off your debts? I’ve seen his house; he’s loaded. I bet he only did it so he could lord it over you and make you do stuff you didn’t want to. Sex stuff,’ Lily added furtively.

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. Not the sex stuff,’ Grace mumbled. But now when she thought about it, had Vaughn really changed into a caring person or was it just that she’d been so humbled by gratitude that she’d started toeing the party line and hadn’t given him cause to revert back to his Alpha bastard behaviour? Or maybe it was then that he’d really decided to put the squeeze on Noah and he’d needed Grace on side to make that happen. Grace put her head in her hand and groaned because she didn’t know what to think or to believe any more. All that she knew was that the last four months, the so-called best months of her life, had been the most flimsy of illusions.

  ‘Gracie, everything’s going to be OK. God, if he were here right now, I’d have a thing or two to say to him. What a complete wanker,’ Lily sniffed. Any lingering doubts that Grace had about the state of their friendship were gone. There was no judgement, no lectures on how stupid she’d been - just absolute belief that Grace was the injured party and Vaughn was overdue an arse-kicking. ‘I never liked that bastard, ever since he ruined my special day.’

  ‘He’s not all bad,’ Grace said quietly, because for some unfathomable reason she didn’t want Lily to think quite so badly of Vaughn. ‘He might have spun me a line but he also put up with a lot of my drama.’

  As someone who’d had to put up with a good deal of Grace’s drama in the past, Lily refrained from saying anything. Really, there wasn’t much she could say, apart from the one thing that all good friends were contractually obligated to say in these circumstances. ‘Well, I hope it doesn’t work out as badly as you think it will. And if it does, you have first dibs on the sofa if I haven’t given birth by then.’

  When Grace got back to Hampstead that evening, after thinking up many pointless fashion-related tasks to delay leaving the office, she was relieved that there was no sign of Vaughn. She sped up the stairs for the safety of the guest suite and decided that reorganising her closet and maybe even starting to pack would be a great way to channel some of her restlessness.

  She’d just reached for the first hanger when Vaughn tapped on the door.

  For a moment, Grace contemplated telling him to piss off, but she wanted to see what mood Vaughn was in before she showed her hand.

  ‘You can come in if you want,’ she called out.

  Vaughn didn’t come in, but stuck his head cautiously round the door as if he half-expected to have something heavy thrown at him.

  ‘You’re back?’

&nbs
p; ‘Looks like it,’ Grace agreed, and Vaughn didn’t even flinch at her flippant tone, which obviously meant he wanted to make up.

  ‘I thought we could go to that little Italian on Parkway for dinner. You like it there, don’t you?’

  Situated in Camden Town, it was one of Grace’s favourite places, though Vaughn hated it because it was every Italian restaurant cliché rolled into one, from the candles in Chianti bottles to the winking waiters brandishing alarmingly long pepper grinders.

  ‘That would be nice.’ Grace took a little beaded vintage cardie off its padded hanger and said casually, ‘So, are you taking me out because you’re hoping I won’t scream at you in a public place?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Vaughn conceded with a small smile, stepping into the room. ‘Let me help you.’

  He was there in an instant, taking the cardigan from Grace so he could carefully ease her arms into the sleeves as if she suffered from brittle bones and wasn’t likely to slug him if he made any sudden moves. Then, of course, he turned Grace round so he could do up all the buttons, hands brushing against her breasts, which had to be deliberate because Vaughn knew that when her blood was up, even the most incidental of touches could make her wet.

  ‘We could just stay in?’ Vaughn suggested with the faintest hint of a raised eyebrow. ‘If you’d prefer.’

  Grace deliberately stepped away. She was angry at her body for going into arousal mode because Vaughn had invaded her personal space bubble. And she was really angry at Vaughn for thinking all he had to do was get her naked and horizontal, so she’d pretty much agree to anything he wanted, just to get his hands and mouth on her.

  ‘I could really fancy some cannelloni, how about you?’ she said instead.

  Stuffing Vaughn full of pasta was one of Grace’s better ideas. It meant that she wasn’t his sole focus as he wolfed down a plate of lasagne, so hot it bubbled at the edges. Sometimes Grace wondered why Vaughn was so fixated on money when really his pleasures were simple: food and sex. In that order.

  They talked about Grace’s Dungeness shoot and Gustav’s latest diktat, which involved ankle weights, but though they skilfully avoided mentioning the elephant in the room, it was there, possibly by the dessert trolley wearing a tutu.

  ‘Have you got plans for Friday evening?’ Vaughn asked, when their plates had been cleared. ‘There’s a photography exhibition at Tate Modern that I thought you might enjoy.’

  ‘So, what did you do today after you’d taken off your ankle weights?’ Grace asked, pointedly ignoring Vaughn’s lame attempt to curry favour.

  Vaughn smiled winsomely, which didn’t suit him at all. ‘I spent all day trying to buy you a tiara.’

  Grace couldn’t hold back a snort. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘I did! I knew Tiffany’s was a no go but I tried Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, Asprey’s, even a few dealers but I couldn’t find one. Then I decided it wasn’t the most practical piece of jewellery. Knowing you, you’d get mugged on the way to work.’

  ‘True,’ Grace said, deciding to play along and see where Vaughn was going with this.

  He was going as far as his jacket pocket to pull out a small velvet box. ‘So I got you this instead.’

  Vaughn pushed the box across the table with one finger. Grace could see their waiter approaching, but as he caught sight of the box he stopped in his tracks. It was the kind of restaurant that dimmed the lights so all the waiters could line up to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and force their victim to blow out a candle shoved into a piece of tiramisu. Grace could tell that their server thought an engagement was in the offing, in which case he was going to be sorely disappointed.

  Still, she gasped when she opened the box with fumbling fingers and saw a brooch: a sheaf of flowers, their petals sparkling blue stones, the stems secured with a ribbon picked out in diamonds.

  ‘Art Deco,’ Vaughn said. ‘I thought the aquamarines and platinum would go with the necklace and bracelet I bought you for Christmas.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Grace sighed, stroking it with the tip of one finger. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So are we friends again?’

  ‘No, we’re not - and really, I don’t think we ever were.’ Grace closed the box. ‘You know, you could just say sorry. It would be a lot cheaper.’ Usually receiving expensive gifts made Grace go giddy around the gills, but this time she’d rather have had something else instead of jewellery. Reassurance, for instance.

  ‘I could, but as far as I can remember, I didn’t actually do anything wrong,’ Vaughn said and it was his mildest voice, which always made Grace feel instantly defensive.

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘Everything I said to you in my office that day was the truth. If you’d wanted to know more, you should have asked. And even though I’ve come to care for you - a lot - it doesn’t change the fact that we have an agreement, which has reached a natural end.’

  ‘But you said all those things to me about how happy you were and how good we are together. I didn’t just imagine that - and then, two days later, it’s suddenly just a business arrangement. You gave me thirty days’ notice!’

  ‘You’ve read far more into what I did or didn’t say, than you should,’ Vaughn said softly. ‘The fact is, Grace, you’ve become too emotionally invested. You’ve begun to treat me like a boyfriend - buying me presents . . .’

  Grace’s jaw dropped. ‘You buy me presents all the time!’ she hissed, holding up the brooch and waving it in Vaughn’s face.

  ‘That’s completely different,’ Vaughn said quickly. ‘You’re my mistress, not my girlfriend. We had an agreement, not a relationship, but you kept blurring the lines until I don’t think either of us even knew where the lines were any more.’

  ‘But you called it a relationship first, and even if it isn’t, there was still an us and I can’t believe you would do this to us!’

  ‘You need to grow up,’ Vaughn told her ruthlessly. ‘There’s nothing to be gained from mistaking good sex for something more meaningful.’

  It was so cold that all Grace could do was gape at Vaughn. She felt as if something inside her had just curled up and died. As far as Vaughn was concerned, she’d just been a good lay and she was stupid to believe that he’d felt anything else for her.

  ‘Y’know, every time I think I get you, I realise I don’t. You give me jewellery when I’m really hating on you, and then when I think, Well, maybe I got Vaughn wrong, you open your mouth and ruin everything.’ Grace folded her arms. ‘I’m sick of it.’

  ‘I don’t think my personality stands up to close examination,’ Vaughn said quietly. He waved away the waiter with a casual flick of his hand. ‘Now, can we approach the subject of how we’re going to dissolve our partnership without any temper tantrums?’

  Grace nodded. She didn’t feel as if she had the energy to even raise her voice.

  ‘You’ll keep all the gifts you’ve received and anything you purchased using the allowances or credit card,’ Vaughn began. Grace hadn’t even realised that not keeping them was an option, but apparently it was. She hadn’t realised either that ‘dissolving their partnership’ was Vaughn-speak for negotiating her goodbye gift, though he probably had some fancy name for that as well, like a signing-off bonus or something.

  ‘Vaughn, can we please just not do this?’

  ‘I hadn’t finished,’ he said crisply. ‘You can keep the credit card for one year with a monthly limit of five thousand pounds.’

  So, it wasn’t going to be a clean break then, because Vaughn would be in her life, or his fund manager would, for twelve more months. ‘Oh great,’ Grace said sarcastically. ‘So when you’re between arrangements, does that mean I can expect a visit, as I’m still on the payroll?’

  ‘No,’ Vaughn said so quickly that it would have completely crushed Grace’s ego if he hadn’t done such a thorough job of it five minutes ago. ‘I’m also going to invest in some art for you. Nothing too abstract. How does that sound?’

  Grace knew
this was meant to be a negotiation, but quibbling over the details seemed so tacky and actually she didn’t care about the state of her finances; she cared about the state of them - of her and Vaughn.

  ‘Great,’ she said listlessly.

  ‘You are going to be fine, Grace. You must have known that I’d take care of you so I’m going to buy you your own flat. I was thinking of something near where you used to live, but more towards Dartmouth Park, though obviously you’ll want to make that decision.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Grace breathed. She felt a wave of shock slam into her so she had to clutch the edge of the table. ‘No - it’s too much. You can’t and it’s not—’

  ‘We both know that you’ll accept this . . . this token of my appreciation, so why don’t we simply cut out the next ten minutes of self-flagellation,’ Vaughn said, acid-drop sour. ‘Isn’t it obvious that I’ve always had your best interests in mind?’