Unsticky

by Sarah Manning

  ‘You could always go back and finish if you wanted,’ Vaughn said carefully, as if he knew he was crunching over eggshells. ‘I have some sway at St Martin’s.’

  Grace shook her head. ‘No, there’s no point. I even got rid of my sewing machine - dumped it on the side of the road and took up knitting instead.’ She wiped her hand across her eyes, not even caring that she was smudging her mascara. ‘God, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I’ve never told anyone before.’

  Vaughn glanced up at her and sighed. ‘I think if you cry at New Year, it’s the same as crying on your birthday. You’ll have bad luck for the whole year.’

  It was sweet, Vaughn trying to jolly her out of her funk, but Grace ignored him. ‘I swear to God, that’s why I got flu. It was being so stressed out about having to breathe the same air as her. Bad shit always happens around my parents. They’re like lightning rods for bad shit.’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. You got flu because you smoke too much and you never button your coat,’ Vaughn said, turning his head so he could press an unexpected but sweet kiss on Grace’s forearm. She ruffled his hair and decided that Vaughn needed to get drunk more often.

  ‘I think I’ve officially overshared,’ Grace said, because the situation needed lightening up before she smashed the bottle and tried to slit her wrists. ‘Try not to judge me too harshly, OK?’

  Vaughn didn’t say anything, just craned his neck at what had to be a very awkward angle so he could have another swig. Then he rested his head back on her thighs with a blissful sigh. ‘I used to be a fat child,’ he announced. ‘A very fat child. I had no friends and I was bullied at school. Hiding my clothes when I was showering after PE, then forcing me to run naked around the Quad, was a very popular pastime.’

  ‘That’s awful!’ And actually explained a hell of a lot, from the faint cobwebbing of silvery stretchmarks across his hips to the machinations when it was time to order dessert.

  ‘I don’t drink very much now because when I hit my growth spurt at the very advanced age of eighteen and slimmed down, I decided to spend what was left of my youth acquiring all sorts of bad habits.’ Vaughn’s lips twisted. ‘I got sent down from Oxford and at twenty-three, I was shipped off to rehab after I’d signed my trust fund over to my drug dealer. Apparently, I have a very addictive personality.’ Vaughn sat up and reached for the last bottle of champagne.

  Grace instinctively placed a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t pet or stroke him but tried to convey what she was feeling: empathy, tenderness and maybe a little pity through her fingertips. ‘C’mon, Vaughn, it’s in the past. You’re a fine, upstanding member of the community and you got over your addictions, didn’t you?’

  Vaughn sat up and popped the cork of the last bottle and drank steadily like a man who was determined to reach oblivion. ‘Now I’m addicted to making money but that’s acceptable.’ He paused to take another swig of champagne. ‘I’m starting to remember what it feels like to be drunk and it’s not as much fun as it used to be.’

  Grace didn’t know what to do. She needed Vaughn to be in control because God knows, she wasn’t capable of being the designated adult. And she couldn’t handle him sitting several feet away from her with this awful lost look on his face that she didn’t know how to wipe away. But she could try at least.

  ‘I do have some funny stories from my teen years,’ she said desperately. ‘Ask me anything about the age of fifteen, when I dyed my hair pillar-box red and my grandmother came into the bathroom and thought I had a head wound, through to nineteen, when I did acid at a party and thought I had multiple personality disorder for six months afterwards.’

  Vaughn turned his head and, yay for her, he was smiling, though Grace could tell that he didn’t want to be cheered up, but he was a heterosexual man and when she pressed him (‘Come on. One-time only offer - ask me anything’), she knew what he’d choose.

  ‘How did you lose your virginity?’ It was dark, but Grace would have bet her new diamonds that Vaughn was blushing because honestly, how predictable.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I was sixteen and it was with Paul Gold because we’d been going out for two weeks and he said he’d dump me if I didn’t.’ Even at sixteen, Grace had had an unerring knack for finding boys who would treat her like crap. ‘We did it in his dad’s Ford Mondeo while it was parked on the drive and, yes, it was a major disappointment. Then the next day his mum was giving their elderly neighbours a lift to Tesco’s and they found the used condom down the back of the seat.’

  Vaughn snorted with laughter just as Grace had intended, which was why she’d glossed over the part where Paul had told all his friends what a crap shag she’d been and how she’d cried at the crucial moment. ‘I don’t think anyone has a good first time,’ he remarked, finally putting down the bottle.

  ‘How did you lose yours then?’ Grace asked. She was starting to feel as if she’d drunk her way to sober.

  Vaughn gave in without a struggle. ‘Well, it was in Saint Tropez, which sounds glamorous, but the venue for my deflowering - can boys be deflowered? - was an abandoned, ant-infested ice-cream hut. I had bites all over me for weeks afterwards.’ He smiled and Grace smiled back though it wasn’t a happy smile. But then, maybe neither of them had many happy stories to share. ‘What else? I was eighteen, a late developer as I said, and she was older than me, the sister of someone I was at school with.’

  ‘See? You did have some friends!’

  ‘He wasn’t my friend. That’s why I fucked his sister.’

  ‘But you were into her for a while, right?’ she asked, because she wanted it to be true. Vaughn could be a bastard, for sure, she knew that better than anyone, but he wasn’t a stone-cold bastard.

  Vaughn shook his head. ‘No, I just fucked her and made sure I told her brother about it afterwards.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘It wasn’t one of my finer moments.’

  They sat there in silence, both steeped in memories of the bad times. Eventually Vaughn closed the distance between them so he could loop his arm around Grace’s shoulders and hold up his watch so she could see the second hand getting closer to the twelve.

  The fireworks started with thirty seconds to spare. There was an avalanche of bangs and the entire sky lit up so one moment it was glowing a ghostly, smudgy pink, the next it was streaked with a rainbow of sparks.

  ‘Five, four, three, two, one.’ When the hand hit the twelve, Vaughn chastely kissed Grace’s cheek. ‘Happy New Year,’ he said flatly.

  Grace didn’t want the year to start on such a despondent note, soured by past regrets. ‘C’mere,’ she slurred, and lifted her face so she could kiss him properly, which involved hair-tugging, tongue and a lot of enthusiasm even if the champagne had completely destroyed her technique. ‘And Happy New Year to you,’ Grace said firmly, when she pulled away. She looked around the empty square and sighed. ‘Argentines really don’t get the whole New Year thing.’

  Vaughn staggered to his feet like a comedy drunk and Grace thought he might topple down the last three steps. ‘I never used to get a headrush.’

  Grace stood up and yes, she was definitely on the way to sober and it didn’t feel that great. She shoved her throbbing feet back into shoes that felt as if they’d been lined with razor blades and limped after Vaughn, who was standing in the middle of the road and trying to flag down a passing police car that he’d mistaken for a taxi.

  After walking for what felt like hours but could only have been a few minutes, they found a cab. Vaughn had recovered from the bad trip down Memory Lane and was attempting to snog Grace, while she tried to make sure that the driver, who had shifty eyes, took them to the Four Seasons and not to a scrub of wasteland where he’d steal their money and leave them for dead.

  As soon as they were in their suite, yet another suite with incredible views and two bathrooms, Vaughn had Grace pressed against the door and his hands up her skirt. His usual finesse was lacking, but he more than made up for it with eagerness. Grace knew from
bitter experience that he’d never get beyond half-hard and wildly optimistic.

  ‘Let’s get more comfortable,’ she suggested, wriggling free and tugging Vaughn towards the bed because if they had sex against the wall he’d probably drop her. She flopped down, Vaughn following so excitedly he almost fell off the bed. ‘OK, how do you want me?’

  Vaughn didn’t answer. He had a deep frown of concentration on his face. Grace prodded him with one finger. ‘Vaughn? Do you want me to go on top this time or . . .’

  ‘Oh, crap!’ Vaughn was already jack-knifing off the bed, one hand clamped over his mouth, as he cannoned off an end table in his rush to get to the bathroom. Grace sat up as she heard the unmistakable sounds of the contents of his stomach being regurgitated. That seafood dinner earlier probably hadn’t been a good idea.

  It seemed to go on for ages. Just when Grace thought Vaughn must be finished, it would start all over again. She knew he’d want his privacy so he could retain maybe, like, a shred of dignity, but she couldn’t ignore his pain. He’d looked after her when she’d had flu. Well, technically he’d made her feel a lot worse by giving her an adrenalin shot, then he’d paid someone else to look after her, but he’d tried.

  Stopping en route to grab a bottle of water from the mini-bar, Grace tentatively knocked on the bathroom door. There were a few more retching sounds by way of a reply. She sent up a silent prayer and pushed open the door.

  Vaughn was on his knees, hugging the toilet. He looked up briefly so Grace got a good view of his red face and streaming eyes, then bent his head again.

  ‘Oh, poor Vaughn,’ Grace cooed, crouching down so she could rub circles on his back. He’d be furious about the baby talk as soon as he’d got all the booze and lobster out of his system, but right now, he could just suck it up. ‘Come on, better out than in.’

  Grace was philosophical about throwing up. First you got pissed, then you puked, then you passed out. But Posy and Liam and Ilonka from the flat upstairs always freaked out, and from his groans and gasps, Vaughn was too.

  Eventually Vaughn was done and leaning against the wall to try and get his breath back. The skin around his eyes was a mottled purple from all the burst blood vessels and he was covered in a fine film of sweat - and definitely off his game because he let Grace run a flannel over his face.

  ‘Are you all right now?’

  Vaughn closed his eyes. ‘No.’

  ‘You should probably brush your teeth, that always makes me feel better. Then I drink as much water as I can so I don’t get such a bad hangover.’ Grace peered at Vaughn’s contorted face.

  ‘Stop hovering,’ he bit out, getting to his feet with all the grace of a day-old elephant. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’

  That would have been Grace’s next suggestion. Vaughn started to unbutton his shirt, then stopped. ‘I don’t need an audience.’

  Grace held up her hands and backed away. ‘OK,’ she said, fighting to keep the hurt out of her voice. ‘Just yell if you need me.’

  Vaughn was already turning away. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’

  chapter twenty-five

  They flew back to a London that was carpeted in a thick drift of snow. Grace stared out of the car window at pavements covered in sludge, sooty banks of ice heaped against the side of the road and pasty-faced people trudging grimly through it with their hoods up and their heads down. After the icy white majesty of Whistler, it was kind of lame.

  ‘So I guess it’s been snowing while we were away.’

  Vaughn didn’t even dignify Grace’s comment with a response. Though he came pretty close to an eyeroll. But then he’d been monosyllabic ever since he’d emerged from the bathroom after his pukeathon.

  He’d woken up the next day with a killer hangover but that had been twenty-four hours ago and he was still treating Grace like it had been her idea for him to fall off a wagon that she didn’t even know he’d been on. On the plane he’d avoided Grace’s first-class pod after the seat-belt sign pinged off and when she’d eventually sought him out, he barely looked up from his laptop. ‘I’m busy,’ he said. ‘Go away.’

  And so they came to the end, not with a bang, but an absolutely deafening silence. This wasn’t how Grace had imagined it. She would have fucked up in some huge, colossal way sooner or later. A fuck-up that would have made all her other fuck-ups seem trivial in comparison. But what had she done that was so terrible, apart from soothing Vaughn’s fevered brow and not once complaining about the stale smell of vomit in the bathroom the next day? It was because the power balance had briefly shifted in her favour for maybe half an hour - and for Vaughn that seemed to be an absolute deal-breaker.

  By the time the car nosed carefully into Montague Terrace, Grace’s lips were sore from all her worried nibbling. ‘You can just let me out here,’ she called to Jimmy, the driver. ‘You’ll never be able to turn the car around.’ If she’d been concentrating instead of angsting, then she’d have made him stop on Junction Road.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. You can’t drag all your luggage through the snow.’ Vaughn wouldn’t speak to her but apparently arguing was a completely different story. ‘What number is it?’

  Grace gave in to the inevitable. She was on the outs - it didn’t really matter if Vaughn saw where she lived. ‘Number seventeen, it’s right at the bottom.’

  Number seventeen was the red-headed stepchild of the street. All the other houses had been gentrified by the assorted Chloes and Jacks who did something at the BBC or the Guardian and had moved in with their antique brass door knockers and job lots of Fired Earth paint so they could restore their mortgaged-to-the-hilt Victorian terraces to middle-class splendour. Whereas Mrs Beattie, the slum landlady of North London, had simply got her octogenarian handyman to come round and paint Grace’s front door a fetching shade of electric blue last year.

  Cringing slightly, Grace was painfully aware that Vaughn was peering over her shoulder. At least the peeling paint, crumbling masonry, and even the mattress, which had been dumped in the front garden long before Grace moved in, was buried under heaps and heaps of lovely snow. It almost looked respectable.

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you,’ Grace said in a voice devoid of hope.

  Vaughn nodded in agreement or dismissal but just as Grace started her usual awkward scramble for the car door, his arm curved around her waist, his intention unmistakable.

  Vaughn’s mouth moved on hers as gently as his hand traced the curve of her cheek. It said all the words he hadn’t spoken to her over the last two days, but most of all it said goodbye. Grace held herself very still until it was over and Vaughn tapped on the window for Jimmy to open the door. ‘Don’t leave anything behind,’ Vaughn said pointedly.

  As she stepped out of the car, the wind tore at Grace’s face, which was the only reason why her eyes watered instantly. It took her two trips to get all her luggage and yank it up the steps, carefully avoiding the middle one which was on the verge of collapse. Grace made sure the car was slowly reversing up the Terrace before she opened the front door and watched her frozen breath curling in the frigid air of the hall. Central heating was for pussies and people who didn’t pay their rent weekly in cash.

  As ever, Eileen had thoughtfully left Grace’s post, the usual teetering pile of envelopes, on the hall table. She scooped them up and stuffed them in her duty-free carrier bag.

  Even that wasn’t enough to send her back to reality with a jolt. That happened when she shouldered open the door to her flat, flicked on the light switch and realised that the electricity had gone out. A quick rummage in her purse and then a frantic search through her collection of fifties china pots netted the grand sum of seventy-two pence - not enough to nip out to the newsy’s and charge up her PowerKey.

  Standing there in her £2,000 coat, Grace wondered for the millionth time why her life was such an abject lesson in irony. Still, she decided wearily, she could manage until tomorrow without electricity. She could light some candles, climb into bed and think
warm thoughts . . .

  But before anything else, like sorting out her laundry and unpacking her presents and railing at the injustice that flavoured every single part of her life, Grace needed a bath. Even travelling in first class didn’t prevent the scent of eau de plane clinging to her.

  Getting undressed was no fun. Each strip of flesh exposed to the air sprang to life with painful goosebumps so her skin looked like an oven-ready chicken.

  Bundled into a thick bathrobe and with woolly socks and Uggs on her feet, Grace stumbled down the stairs on tiptoe because she wasn’t in the mood for Eileen beetling out of her lair to start jabbering on about the binmen, the suspicious comings and goings of Ilonka and Anita on the second floor or, God forbid, her late husband, Alfred.