Saving Grace

by Jane Green

  She is still in tears an hour later when Lydia walks in, with tea.

  Lydia says nothing, plants the tea softly on the table, then sits next to Grace, slowly rubbing her back until Grace’s sobs become hiccups, then exhausted, shuddering inhales, before finally ceasing.

  ‘I just miss him,’ Grace says, her voice breaking as the sobs threaten to return. ‘I miss Ted. He’s my husband and I can’t believe what’s happening to my life. I can’t believe it’s all gone so horribly wrong. He’s obsessed with this Beth, this evil, Machiavellian girl. He’s even based the character in his new book on her, or at least on who he imagines her to be. This is obsession, and when Ted is obsessed, there’s no room for anything, or anyone, else. She has her claws firmly into him and she isn’t going to let go, even if he wanted to get out, which I can tell quite clearly he doesn’t.’

  ‘You still love him?’

  ‘Of course I still love him! He’s my husband!’

  How, she thinks, could everything go so wrong?

  FRENCH ONION SOUP

  (Serves 4)

  INGREDIENTS

  55g butter

  4 onions, thinly sliced.

  1 litre beef stock

  1 tablespoon of brown sugar

  240ml red wine (or brandy, cognac, sherry, or white wine)

  Salt and pepper for seasoning

  Dash of Worcestershire sauce

  Thyme

  Grated Gruyere cheese

  Grated Parmesan cheese

  1 baguette

  Olive oil

  Melt the butter in a large heavy pan (I use a Le Creuset, which is perfect) and add the onions, stirring constantly on a low heat until they are soft and caramelizing – around 20 minutes.

  Add brown sugar. Stir. Add stock, wine and seasoning. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for half an hour to 1 hour. Add Worcestershire sauce.

  When ready to serve, slice baguette and toast it. Ladle soup into bowls, and cover each with thick handful of Gruyere. Top with slice of toast, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with Parmesan, then run under the grill to melt and brown.

  Twenty-nine

  It has been three months since Grace landed in a safe place, three months since she came home to Lydia. She is settling into the quiet rhythm of Lydia’s life, hours spent reading, recovering, cooking, and finally, now that she is clean of all medications, she is beginning to feel like herself.

  Lydia walks into the kitchen where Grace is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading The Times. ‘Grace? I spoke to Patrick yesterday. He’s coming to London next week and I told him you were here. He’d love to see you.’

  Grace looks up and groans. ‘I’m not sure I want anyone to see me looking like this.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You’re gorgeous, and didn’t you tell me yesterday you’d already lost twelve pounds.’

  ‘Yes, but I think that was all bloat. I have to go shopping, though. I love that you’re lending me all your clothes, but Lydia, if I have to wear another floral maxiskirt I think I might scream.’

  Lydia barks with laughter. ‘And here I was thinking how beautifully everything suited you. Why on earth didn’t you say earlier that you didn’t like my clothes?’

  ‘I didn’t want to buy anything new in this size. I was hoping your clothes would tide me over until I got back to my normal size, or if not a small, at least a medium, but I give up. Three months of floral skirts and I’m about ready to slit my wrists.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s go into Sherborne today. Do you need money?’

  Grace nods. ‘Only temporarily. I’ll be able to pay you back in a couple of days. Sybil is wiring me money, thank God, so I’m going to be fine.’

  ‘And Patrick?’ says Lydia. ‘What do you think? He wants to come down for lunch on Sunday. He begged me to do a lunch like I used to do.’

  ‘Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding!’ Grace smiles at the memory. ‘I don’t know, Lydia. The last time I saw him was admittedly years ago, at David’s funeral, but Patrick seemed a little . . . smug. I’m sorry. I know you love him and he’s wonderful, but he had an arrogance about him I’d never seen before, and frankly, I didn’t really enjoy his company. I don’t know that I’m up to Patrick just yet.’

  Lydia nods. ‘I remember that well. It’s what I came to call first film syndrome. He’d just made his first film and it was a huge success and all these offers from America came flooding in, which went straight to his head. You’re quite right, he was utterly unbearable. His head grew so big I’m still astonished he managed to make it through these doorways. You’ll be happy to hear, he has gone back to his normal self. His second film was big, but the third was a disaster. The most viciously terrible reviews I’d ever read. One called him single-handedly responsible for the death of the British film industry. Thankfully, as hard as it was to hear, it brought him crashing back to earth where he has remained ever since.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief to hear, however hard it must have been. And how are things with the lovely Lisa?’

  ‘She left him. I can’t say I was ever terribly impressed with her. She always struck me as a crazy actress type and, it seems, I was right. She had a passionate affair with . . .’ Lydia whispers the name of a very famous, very married movie star, furtively looking around as if the kitchen walls might be listening, going back to normal tones as Grace hoots with laughter. ‘So Patrick is busy playing the field.’

  ‘And he lives in LA permanently?’

  ‘He seems to divide his time fairly evenly between LA and London. It would be lovely to see the two of you together again – you always had such a lovely, teasing friendship.’

  Grace smiles at the memory. ‘He really was the annoying brother I never had. Okay.’ She nods. ‘Let’s do it. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sunday. And I’ll make the trifle, although,’ she pats her stomach, ‘I won’t be eating any of it myself. Speaking of which, how much weight do you think it’s possible to lose in four days?’

  ‘Is there any reason why you care so much?’ says Lydia, a small smile playing on her lips.

  ‘Just that I don’t particularly want Patrick to look at me and think I’m a fat blob,’ says Grace ruefully.

  ‘He won’t, because you’re not,’ says Lydia. ‘And please, Grace. Please stop being so hard on yourself. I understand you are carrying this . . . shame, about your body, but this is the size you are meant to be right now, and you have to have some measure of acceptance or you won’t ever be happy. It will help, you’re right, to have clothes that fit and which you have chosen. How about shopping this afternoon?’

  ‘You’re on,’ says Grace, thinking how lovely it is to have something in life to look forward to once again.

  Grace’s shopping trip is extravagant. After months and months in yoga trousers, she is deliberate in her choices – they must be comfortable and flattering, but they must be proper clothes. No more stretchy Lycra and oversized sweaters for her.

  She buys jeans – jeans! – in a size her mind refuses to compute, yet when she puts them on, tight, stretchy, with a tunic top that hides the worst of her thighs, she has to admit she looks good. In fact, she turns around in the mirror, admiring the newly acquired curve of her ample rear, and thinks she looks pretty damn sexy.

  Boots with a heel low enough to walk comfortably in, high enough to further enhance this new feeling of sexiness are bought, with a selection of tops and the thinnest of alpaca scarves in assorted colours.

  A lightweight jacket, trainers, and by the time they hit Boots for makeup, Grace is feeling more like herself than she has in months.

  ‘Rimmel!’ She plucks a brown eyeliner from the shelf, laughing in delight. ‘I feel sixteen again!’

  ‘You seem sixteen again.’ Lydia smiles. ‘Or at least young. You seem like Grace again. This is the Grace I’ve always known and loved. You’re alive again, not the husk that arrived after a night sleeping rough three months ago.’

  ‘Was I really that bad?’ Grace turns
to Lydia, no longer smiling.

  ‘Yes. And I was really terribly worried. You seemed like an empty shell. I was terrified we had lost you completely. It was almost impossible to reconcile this depressed, flat creature with my bubbly Grace. That first night you arrived, after you went to bed, I almost wept for you.’

  Grace reaches out a hand and squeezes Lydia’s.

  ‘But you’re back,’ says Lydia.

  ‘Yes. Only more so.’ Grace gestures to her now-shrinking stomach.

  ‘Stop, Grace. Enough with the berating yourself for putting on weight. You’re off the drugs and healthy again. Your body will go back to its natural weight, but it will take time.’

  ‘And in the meantime,’ Grace turns and grabs a No. 7 lip gloss, examining the colour, which is remarkably similar to the Chanel she always wore, ‘Boots can help me cover up a multitude of sins.’

  Thirty

  Getting ready for Patrick’s visit has to be one of Grace’s most nerve-racking days of late. The last time Patrick saw her, at his father’s funeral, she was, she remembers, in a tiny black jersey dress that showed off her small waist and long legs. In those days, she never gave her body a second thought, took it completely for granted that she could go into any shop and try on anything she liked and buy it if she loved it, rather than because it flattered, or fit.

  She chooses not to wear the jeans she has barely taken off since she brought them home a few days ago. Instead, she opts for a long navy skirt, the tan boots, a thin navy sweater with one of Lydia’s belts loosely around her hips.

  I don’t look too bad, she thinks, looking at her reflection, not believing it, but hoping if she says it enough times out loud it will start to be true.

  Why am I so nervous? she wonders. It is only Patrick, after all. If Robert were to suddenly show up, that would be a different thing entirely. They had paid little attention to each other at the funeral, but why would they? Robert may have been grief-stricken, but he had put it aside to focus on his wild children, used to running amok in their grand house near the Firth of Forth.

  Robert was just as handsome, she had thought, while feeling nothing at all. He had seemed stuffy. Uptight. Exactly as, she realized, he had always been. How much nicer he would be, she thought, if he were able to let loose a little, to be the boy she had only once had a glimpse of, the afternoon of the picnic and kiss.

  If Robert were coming she would need to look good, would need him to look at her with some regret over what he never pursued after the day they arrived home to find Emily’s car in the driveway.

  As for Patrick? Could it be as self-serving as Grace needing him to still like her, needing to feel admired by the one man she had always been able to rely on? She is loathe to admit to having such a shallow, self-absorbed thought, at the same time as knowing it is true.

  She applies all her new makeup, thinking of her makeup drawer, in the vanity in her bathroom at Sneden’s. All the labels she uses – Chanel, Laura Mercier, Bobbi Brown, Trish McEvoy – and how she is making do with good old Boots. When finished, she looks approvingly at her reflection before going to the sink and washing it off. She never wears much makeup, and why should today be any exception?

  In the end, she sweeps a luminescent blusher over her cheekbones, a tiny bit of eyeshadow, mascara, and the lip gloss that is almost, almost as good as her Chanel, jumping when she hears the familiar crunch of the gravel, instantly wishing she didn’t have to go downstairs.

  Patrick has never been quiet, she thinks, smiling now as she hears him barrel into the house, whooping as he greets his mother.

  ‘Where is she?’ he says. ‘Is she hiding from me?’

  ‘Yes!’ Grace calls, taking a deep breath and emerging from her bedroom. ‘I am hiding from you because the last time I saw you your arrogance was terrifying.’

  ‘Oh. That.’ He grins up at her from below. ‘Everyone told me I had become a little shit. Luckily I got humbled pretty shortly afterwards and now,’ he extends his hands innocently, ‘I am just the sweet, handsome boy you have always known and loved.’

  ‘Hi.’ Grace stands in front of him, looking into his eyes as he smiles, and her own fill with tears.

  ‘Hi, you,’ he says and holds out his arms as Grace falls into them, her throat choking up.

  She can’t explain why she is choked up. She isn’t entirely sure, other than the sweetness of Patrick’s familiarity, an aching nostalgia for her youth, a reminder of all that is good, and solid, and stable. All that she once had. All that she has lost.

  Patrick has grown into a big man. Solid. Imposing. His embrace is all-enveloping, tight, stable. Like being held by a bear.

  Safe, she thinks.

  I am safe.

  And almost immediately after: I have come home.

  ‘You can’t not have trifle.’ Patrick gets up from the table, grabs a plate from the dresser, and brings it back to the table. ‘It’s against the law. Sunday lunch means trifle. If there’s no trifle, it isn’t Sunday lunch, and I’ve come all the bloody way from LA to have Sunday lunch, so if you ruin it, I’m blaming you.’

  ‘Patrick, I can’t. Look at me! I have to lose this weight and trifle, delicious as it is, is not the way to do it.’

  ‘Why do you have to lose the weight? I think you look fantastically sexy. Plus, if you lost weight, you’d lose those magnificent boobs, and that would be a terrible shame.’

  ‘Patrick!’ admonishes Grace, instantly turning scarlet.

  ‘Look!’ Patrick’s eyes widen in delight. ‘Grace is blushing! Grace! I had forgotten how red you go! Look, Mum! Grace is burning up!’

  ‘Oh, stop,’ Lydia says. ‘Leave the poor girl alone. And do you really have to be so crude?’

  ‘They’re boobs, Mum. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Particularly when they are so spectacular. Terrible thing about LA,’ he muses, almost to himself, ‘is that everyone has giant boobs, but they’re all as hard as melons. All fake. It’s the single most disappointing thing about being single. I dream of sinking my head into soft pillows and instead it’s like being hit with a matching pair of footballs. Dreadful.’

  ‘So, are you a huge man about town?’ Grace asks, her face now back to its usual colour.

  ‘I am.’ Patrick nods enthusiastically. ‘I will say that I did rather love being married, although I didn’t much love who I was married to. No, let me say that again. If Alicia had been who she’d pretended to be during our courtship, after we were married, I would have been very happy indeed. Sadly, I fell for the perfect cliché – the actress who seduced her director intending to get the leading role in all his films.’

  ‘And now you’re the perfect cliché of the single movie producer in Hollywood.’

  ‘It’s a tough job,’ he sighs, ‘but someone has to do it. So many women . . .’

  ‘So little time,’ Grace finishes off for him, as Patrick hands her a spoon and, unable to resist, she digs in.

  ‘We should go for a walk after lunch.’ Patrick sizes Grace up a little while later. ‘Particularly after you ate all that trifle. Jesus, woman. Anyone would think you’d been in the desert for a year.’

  ‘Oh, go away.’ Grace smacks him on the arm. ‘You can’t win with you.’

  ‘No,’ he agrees. ‘No one ever can. Shall we go and see if we can find some baby lambs?’

  Grace grins in delight at the memory. ‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she says.

  ‘No. Only the ones I really, really like.’

  ‘You really haven’t changed.’

  ‘Neither have you,’ he says, and this time, instead of pointing out that she is twice the woman she once was, Grace keeps her mouth firmly shut.

  ‘So, I do sort of have the skinny from Mum,’ he says when they have climbed over the stile and into the field, the very field she once walked in with Robert, all those years ago. ‘She did tell me all about your adventures in the world of psychopharmaceuticals, and how you were now off everything. And obviously, she told me about your marria
ge and stuff. You seem like you’ve really been through the mill.’

  ‘That’s the funny thing about going through the mill,’ says Grace. ‘Even when you’re in it, it doesn’t really feel like anything other than just your life. An outsider looks at it and is horrified, but you just keep plodding along, putting one foot in front of the other because that’s all you know how to do. Hell becomes normal. Hell definitely became my new normal.

  ‘So how are things with Ted? Are you in contact with him?’

  ‘Barely,’ says Grace. ‘And only then by email. Usually logistics. Where are the keys to the barn? That sort of thing.’

  ‘Are you going to try and patch things up?’

  ‘I want to. But I can’t do anything until he’s got this woman out of his system. I tried to call twice and both times she answered the phone, so I just put it down. I don’t even want to email him because she’ll answer it. I did write to him, care of his agent, and asked him to give the letter to Ted directly, not to Beth, but I have no idea whether he got it.’

  ‘God, Grace. What a horrible story. And you’re definitely sure he’s with her?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I know my husband, and he can never resist flattery, particularly from a younger woman. I am quite certain this was all premeditated, that she had a plan, from the very beginning, to replace me.’ Grace sighs. ‘We know so little about her. I just took her on because I was desperate.’

  ‘But you got references for her?’

  ‘I couldn’t get hold of anyone by phone, the numbers were out of service, but she gave me their email and the references were glowing. Of course, now I have to wonder if she was behind it.’