Unsticky

by Sarra Manning

  Parts of her face Grace liked, other parts not so much. She liked that her eyes were grey, a dark, school-uniform grey that couldn’t be mistaken for blue or green or hazel, and framed by long lashes so close-edged that she always looked as if she hadn’t taken off her eyeliner the night before. There were freckles, the bane of her teenage years, but which she now hoped made her look younger, and a mouth that drooped downwards, even when she was smiling. Her grandmother had constantly told her to stop pouting when she was little but actually the sulking had paid off in the permanent jut of her lower lip.

  But Grace’s nose was too pronounced to be excused, especially in profile where it looked alarmingly Roman; her forehead wore a deep furrow right between her brows and her chin was in a state of confusion between square and pointed.

  It wasn’t a face that anyone could get lost in. It was a face that needed a splash of red on the lips, a little animation to give it some distinction. Right now, it would have to settle for some light base coverage, more mascara and a dab of berry lip-stain.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said when Grace arrived at his table. She’d been all ready to make a dash for the front door, but there had been another smiling, murmuring woman stationed at the foot of the stairs to guide her into the room behind the big doors Grace had glimpsed before. The promised glass of champagne was waiting for her, along with her bossy abductor. He prodded the cleft in his chin with one long finger as she sat down with her knees tightly pressed together, back straight.

  When she’d dressed this morning, Grace had been delighted with the bold seventies’ floral graphic on her tunic dress. It was the perfect outfit for grubbing around all day in the fashion cupboard before spending the night crawling from one barstool to another. Now it clashed with the orange velvet of her over-stuffed armchair and made Grace feel less like she was working the Pucci revival and more like she’d failed the auditions to become a C-fucking-Beebies presenter.

  ‘I really have to go back to work,’ she muttered, glancing out of the window, almost unable to believe that there was a normal London street outside and not Munchkin Land. His amused smile, as if Grace was a performing seal with a beach ball balanced on her nose, was beginning to grate on her already frayed nerves.

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ he said lightly, as if going back to work was an alien concept. ‘Drink your champagne.’

  Grace decided to stay but only because she didn’t want to struggle out of the sinking embrace of the chair like a demented Jack-in-the-box. Besides, she really did need a drink.

  ‘I’m Grace,’ she said, her voice sounding rusty as if she hadn’t used it for weeks. He gravely shook the hand she was holding out, his fingers warm, brushing against her palm just long enough that she snatched her hand back.

  ‘Vaughn,’ he offered, before turning back to the menu.

  ‘Is that your first name or your last name?’

  He shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

  It didn’t really. Grace raised her glass in silent thanks before taking a sip. The bubbles, light and effervescent, evaporated on her tongue as she took three good swallows.

  ‘I have no idea what fleur de sel or grue nougatine are,’ he remarked conversationally as he looked at a menu. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Fleur de sel is just a fancy kind of sea salt and grue are pieces of roasted cocoa beans - don’t know about the nougatine though. I like baking,’ she added defensively as one of his eyebrows arched up because second male leads always had voluble eyebrows.

  ‘Shall we just have chocolate cake instead? And tea. We should definitely have tea. But not Earl Grey, it’s too watery. Darjeeling?’

  Grace instinctively knew that there was no point in arguing. ‘Darjeeling’s fine,’ she said, picking up her glass again.

  All he had to do was raise a finger, quietly and unobtrusively, to have the waitress breaking the world speed record and start scribbling away his order for four different kinds of chocolate cake.

  Grace crossed her legs as the waitress scurried away. The champagne was fizzing its way down to her empty stomach, making her restless enough to jiggle her ankle and wonder what, exactly, she was doing here making stilted conversation in a polite voice that didn’t sound as if it belonged to her. Her stilted conversation was all used up now anyway, so Grace looked around her.

  They were sitting in a room which seemed to have been imported straight from the kind of crumbling country manor that the BBC used for period dramas. There were mismatched chairs, some upholstered, some hardbacked, gathered around scratched and scarred but deeply polished tables, yet the whole effect shrieked money rather than genteel poverty. Maybe that was down to the clientèle. Grace glanced at the last stragglers from the lunch setting as they lingered over coffee and brandy as if they had all the time in the world and no recession to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all, in fact. Grace’s gaze came to rest on Liam’s crumpled pink envelope lying on the table and she couldn’t help the tiny but heartfelt sigh that leaked out of her mouth.

  ‘I’m glad that you’re not crying any more,’ Vaughn said, with one of those not-quite smiles. ‘If you cry on your birthday then you cry every day for the rest of the year.’

  ‘My grandmother used to tell me that too,’ she confided with a not-quite smile of her own. ‘Also, that it was bad luck to put new shoes on a table.’

  ‘I think our grandmothers must have been related. Mine was quite evangelical about the dangers of chewing too fast.’ It was freaky how he managed to affect such ease while pinning her down with that intent blue stare. ‘So, how old are you today?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  When he smiled properly, Grace got an echo of what he could be. Younger, handsomer; someone that she’d get a totally inappropriate older-man crush on because he smiled as if Grace was the only other person in the world who got the joke. ‘And on the twenty-third of July? That’s very propitious. Did you know the number twenty-three is meant to have mystical qualities? There are twenty-three letters in the Greek alphabet, twenty-three seconds for blood to circulate around the body . . .’

  ‘David Beckham was number twenty-three when he played for Real Madrid.’ Great. Now she was talking utter shite. ‘Not that it ended well for him.’

  ‘Twenty-three is a good number,’ Vaughn said emphatically, as a teapot and delicate doll-sized cups and saucers were reverently placed in front of them. ‘This is going to be a very interesting year for you, I can tell.’

  ‘Was twenty-three an interesting year for you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said shortly. ‘Will you pour? Milk, two sugars.’

  Grace lifted the teapot and tested its heft before she carefully poured tea, added milk to the exact colour of a pair of American tan tights and dropped in two spoonfuls of sugar. ‘Do people always do what you tell them to?’ she asked, before her courage exited stage left. ‘People never do what I tell them to.’

  Vaughn peered critically at the cup she pushed towards him, then obviously decided that it met his exacting standards. ‘By people, you mean your ex?’

  She considered the question. ‘Not just Liam. Everyone. People just push right past me like I’m not even there.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not usually like this. I mean, I’m not so mopey. I guess I’ve got a bad case of the birthday blues.’

  ‘You just haven’t learned how to make people take you seriously yet,’ Vaughn said lightly, leaning forward. ‘I find not saying please or thank you helps.’

  ‘I’m genetically programmed to say please and thank you even when I’m not pleased or thankful.’ And not to rest her elbows on the table or put the milk in first or any of the other life lessons she’d had drummed into her under the pain of death of her grandmother’s most disapproving look. No weapon forged could defeat that. ‘So, do you make a habit of abducting young women from department stores?’

  ‘I was wondering when you were going to ask me that.’

  ‘Well, I should probably have asked during the abduction but I
was too freaked out,’ Grace said just a little snottily, so Vaughn would know that she had some backbone.

  ‘Anyway, I wonder if I could ask you for a small favour?’

  The way he cut right across anything Grace said was annoying. Not as annoying as the sudden lightbulb moment that this . . . the being taken for tea and cakes and awkward chit-chat . . . had some sinister ulterior motive, which probably involved schoolgirl outfits, whips, and possibly a wife with lesbian tendencies while he filmed the whole shebang.

  Grace dragged herself out of the voluminous depths of the chair as their cakes arrived. Which was a pity because the milk-chocolate tart looked deadly. ‘I’m going,’ she announced icily. Well, it had sounded icy in her head; the reality was a little more sullen. ‘I know exactly what kind of favour you’re talking about and the answer’s no. A world of no.’

  Vaughn flashed her a smile, which was bordering on a smirk. Grace was starting to dislike him in the way that she disliked Kiki, her boss, and Mrs Beattie, her landlord, and Dan, Liam’s best friend, and a whole cavalcade of other people who looked at her with that same blend of sneering condescension. ‘Be a good girl and sit down,’ he said calmly. ‘Haven’t you caused enough scenes for one day?’

  ‘Just who do you think you—’

  ‘I saw you in Liberty’s and decided that you were the sort of person who’d know her way around a French cuff.’ He was already pulling a small, dark purple box out of his pocket as Grace snapped her mouth shut so quickly that she bit her tongue. ‘I lost one of my favourite cufflinks this morning, popped out to buy some new ones and I think the least you can do after I’ve bought you a glass of champagne is help me attach them.’

  Grace sank back down in an ungainly sprawl. ‘How did you fix your cufflinks this morning then?’ she asked suspiciously, because there was probably still a wife lurking.

  ‘Ineptly,’ Vaughn explained, holding up one hand so she could see an untethered shirtcuff. ‘I’d be for ever in your debt.’

  Grace risked an eye roll as she snatched up the Liberty’s box and made a vague gesture in the direction of his arm. Vaughn lowered his eyes contritely, which Grace didn’t find remotely convincing, as she slipped the pair of Paul Smith cufflinks, which were the same blue as her favourite denim mini she’d lost at Glastonbury the year before, neatly out of the box. Then she took his hand.

  It was a strangely intimate moment. Grace scraped her chair forwards and awkwardly patted her knee so Vaughn could rest his hand on it while she gathered up the excess sleeve. She’d done things, countless things with countless boys under cover of darkness, then conveniently forgotten about them the next morning, but now, with her head lowered, Vaughn’s pulse thudding steadily against her fingers, she could feel a blush staining her cheeks.

  She did not have a father fixation. Or a thing for older men. Or the need for a strong paternal signifier. She was not that sad kind of cliché. No, she was just a girl having a bad day who’d drunk a glass of champagne on an empty stomach.

  ‘All done,’ Grace said crisply, pushing Vaughn’s other hand away. He had beautiful hands - long-boned and elegant as if they spent most of their time conducting symphonies with lots of complicated arpeggios in them or performing delicate surgery on previously no-go parts of the brain. Though he had very knobbly wrists. ‘I really have to get back to work,’ she told him now, ‘or they’ll think I’ve been kidnapped.’

  ‘Would you like a cake to take back with you?’

  She really, really would. But . . . ‘No, thank you,’ she said primly, standing up.

  Cutting her nose off to spite her face was a vocation with Grace. And she suspected that Vaughn knew it too, by the wry twist of his lips as he paused to admire his gleaming cufflinks. ‘Well, I hope you enjoy what’s left of your birthday,’ he said, like he really couldn’t care one way or another.

  And now, Grace wasn’t walking away but hanging back, the hem of her tunic catching against the arm of his chair. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you,’ she blurted out. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Another reason why people take me seriously is because I never apologise even when - no, especially when I should,’ he told her coolly. ‘No pleases, thank yous or sorries - remember that and you might have that interesting year I was talking about.’

  It seemed like the right time for a brisk handshake, but when Grace extended her hand, Vaughn bent his head and kissed it. It was a proper kiss, brief and warm, that made her pull her hand away with a grunted goodbye.

  Grace took her bag, hurried through the room and down the long, red corridor until she was out on the street. She stood there for a moment to get her bearings. If she could feel the pavement under her feet and smell the exhaust fumes, then she wasn’t dreaming. Through the big picture window, she could see Vaughn’s tufty head bent over his plate of chocolate cakes. She hoped that he fell into a fatal sugar coma right there.

  Vaughn suddenly looked up to catch her staring at him. He held her gaze until Grace felt the need to raise her hand in a limp wave. Vaughn didn’t wave back, but kept on looking at her as if he was taking an inventory until it suddenly occurred to Grace that she could simply walk away.

  Though she tried to ignore it, the place where his lips had touched tingled for the rest of the afternoon.

  chapter two

  The offices of Skirt magazine were on the seventh floor of a high-rise block at the southernmost end of Oxford Street, which looked like it should house a branch of the Civil Service circa some time in the seventies. Their distinctly shabby building was a source of much irritation to the staff of Skirt, who lived and breathed the magazine’s mantra of ‘Fabulous is a right, not a privilege’. Not only did they have to share lift space with the other magazines of Magnum Media’s empire, a motley collection of teen mags and downmarket weeklies, they were also on the wrong side of Oxford Street to pretend they worked in Mayfair.

  ‘Oh, we’re just round the corner from Selfridges,’ was a phrase heard in Skirt’s huge open-plan office at least twenty times a day, but in reality Selfridges was a couple of blocks away and they were actually just round the corner from one of the largest KFCs in the country. It was a sorry blot sullying the view from the office windows but Grace didn’t really care as she sat in the Skirt conference room. She was deciding that, if she had a superpower, it wouldn’t be anything useful like the ability to turn people into stone for crimes against fashion, or the possession of a highly tuned spider sense to weed out boys with severe emotional problems. No, her superpower would be a telepathic gift to sense that she’d got stuck with the rickety swivel chair again and was nanoseconds away from hurtling floorwards.

  Face flushing, she picked herself up off the floor and ignored the hissed, ‘What a dis-Grace,’ comments that the other members of the Skirt fashion team never tired of, even after two years.

  ‘Did you have a good weekend?’ asked Courtney, the bookings editor, who obviously wanted something done in the way of filing because normally she didn’t much care whether Grace had had a good anything.

  ‘It was OK.’ Grace pulled a bruised banana out of her bag as Courtney delicately picked her way through a twenty-pound box of sushi from the Japanese place next door. The truth was that she’d spent every waking hour since her birthday last Thursday either drunk or hungover. In fact, for one brief, unpleasant hour on Saturday afternoon, she’d been both. ‘I went to this club and—’

  ‘Sounds wonderful.’ Courtney didn’t even pretend to pay attention, but shook back her shiny blond hair. ‘Do you notice anything different about me?’

  Grace stared blankly at Courtney’s face, which was the same as it ever was: all cheekbones and expensive dental work. ‘Collagen filler?’ she ventured timidly.

  ‘No! I went to this amazing spa . . .’ Ten minutes later, Courtney came to the end of her spiel about the freebie spa weekend that she’d won in a raffle at some charity ball, and gave Grace a rueful smile.

  ‘Sorry, I bet you had an awesome weekend too,�
�� she said, and looked thoughtfully at Grace’s Primark blouse. ‘That hard-times chic thing is so adorable.’ Grace suspected that was taking the piss but it was hard to tell with Courtney. She was an ex-pat American who didn’t see anything morally reprehensible about voting Republican. Or telling people that she voted Republican. Or saying that she was ‘post-humour’.

  ‘Well, I did a test shoot on Saturday with a photographer’s assistant and some Polish model.’ Courtney didn’t need to know that Sam and the model had got intimately acquainted in a toilet cubicle while Grace had been throwing up in a fire bucket. ‘Then I went to this club in Hackney, where you could hook up your iPod to the sound system and they had this dance-off with the best tracks.’ Again, Grace decided to gloss over the fact that she was the only person in the Western world who didn’t have an iPod. ‘And I got free tickets to the fashion exhibit at the V and A on Sunday and did some sketches of the Worth gowns.’