Unsticky

by Sarra Manning

  She might have to live cheap, but that didn’t mean that she was cheap, which was what Vaughn obviously thought. Grace sighed so heavily that the two teenage girls sitting behind her burst into giggles, even when she turned and gave them the evil eye. But she couldn’t help sighing again because it had all been too good to be true; there really was no way a man like Vaughn would be interested in her without there being an ulterior motive. If she’d just sent him a polite little thank you note for the Marc Jacobs bag, then none of this would have ever happened.

  Grace tugged her foot free from the gooey blob of chewing gum that was stuck to the bottom of her flip-flops and closed her eyes.

  chapter nine

  Lily was back in the office the next day, her skin sun-kissed to the exact shade of toasted almonds because she even tanned perfectly. Grace didn’t think she’d ever been so pleased to see anyone. Lily was going to have to cancel all her social plans for the rest of the week so they could properly do justice to the whole Vaughn débâcle.

  ‘I missed you so much and I’ve got so much to tell you!’ Grace exclaimed when Lily walked into the fashion cupboard, and Grace hurled herself at her friend. It was a moot point which one of them was most surprised, as they had a standing joke that Grace had cuddle deficiency syndrome. Now that Lily was hugging her, Grace wasn’t sure what to do; Lily always felt so fragile but she patted her back enthusiastically before wriggling free. ‘Did you have a nice time?’

  ‘It was the best holiday of my life,’ Lily beamed, and even without the tan, she would still have looked radiant and glowy. ‘And I’ve got something to tell you too. Well, something to ask you.’

  ‘Ask me what?’

  Lily took Grace’s hands and assumed a serious expression, which made Grace both intrigued and nervous. Lily only did serious in the most extenuating of circumstances, like the time she’d wanted Grace to let her cousin stay in her flat while she was in Worthing for the weekend.

  ‘You’re my absolute best friend, Gracie,’ Lily began nervously, then stopped for a swift intake of breath.

  ‘Lily, just spit it out. The suspense is killing me! Is your cous—’

  ‘I want you to be my maid of honour. Look!’ Lily started waving her left hand around like she was trying to put out a fire.

  ‘Is that . . . ?’ Grace squinted at the ring on Lily’s third finger and the little stone that might possibly have once slept next to a diamond. ‘Are you engaged? To Dan?’

  ‘Who else would I be engaged to?’ Lily said, as she held up the ring for closer inspection. ‘It was so romantic, Gracie. We’d been smoking spliffs on the beach in the moonlight and Dan asked me to roll another one and he’d put the ring in the bag of weed.’

  ‘Totally romantic,’ she agreed, painting on a smile that drooped a little at the corners because her best friend was going to marry a guy that she really didn’t like and who really didn’t like her right back. She and Dan just weren’t mixy, like stripes and polka dots. It wasn’t anything that Dan had done in particular, apart from the fact that Grace thought that Lily could do much better and when Grace had started going out with Liam, Dan had told him that he could do a lot better. About the only thing that Grace and Dan agreed on was that Lily didn’t need to know about their mutual antipathy because it violated all sorts of boyfriend and best friend codes of behaviour. So Grace put her game face on.

  ‘I’m so happy for you,’ she added with a lot more feeling, and gave Lily another hug. ‘Wow, you’re going to get married! You know you’re going to be a proper grown-up now and you’ll have to get a pension and at least three sets of bedlinen.’

  ‘I know. I can’t believe it,’ Lily grinned. ‘And you’re not just maid of honour, you’re also my wedding-dress consultant. We’ll have to go to Browns Bride so my mum doesn’t force me into a meringue.’

  This time, Grace’s smile was one hundred per cent genuine. ‘I promise your wedding will be a meringue-free zone,’ she said solemnly.

  ‘I’m counting on you.’ Lily whirled around so the light caught her ring. ‘I’m thinking of a spring wedding but Dan says that he wants to do it really quickly so I don’t fall in love with anyone else. He’s so sweet! Oh, but hey, so what were you going to tell me?’

  Grace was sure that there was a scarlet letter branded on her, Hester Prynne style. A big H for Ho. But apparently it was invisible to the rest of the world. So she was just on the verge of launching forth with a million words a minute about drinks with Vaughn and dinner with Vaughn and being propositioned by Vaughn. She even opened her mouth to unleash them - but then she paused and shut her mouth.

  It suddenly occurred to her that this was Lily’s moment in the sun and it wasn’t right to tarnish it with her tawdry tale. Today was and should be all about Lily. Grace looked at her friend, who was gazing down at her engagement ring with a look of wonder like she couldn’t quite grasp how it had got there, and felt that unwelcome pang of envy she sometimes got when she thought about how different she and Lily were. Like, Dan wanted Lily to marry him because he thought she was priceless, whereas Vaughn had asked Grace to be his mistress because he thought she had a price.

  ‘Gracie?’ Lily prompted, tearing her eyes away from her third finger, left hand. ‘Give me gossip. Now, please.’

  Grace placed her finger on her chin so she could strike a thoughtful pose because she knew it would make Lily giggle. ‘Where do I start? Kiki inflicted GBH with a Kenneth J Lane necklace when we were in New York,’ she said breezily. ‘I saw Ethan Hawke walking his dog. Also, fried shrimp and dirty martinis are a really bad combination, when you’re throwing up three hours later. And Posy’s single again but I think she’s been doing stuff with Martyn from Subs in the wheelchair toilet.’

  And that was how the last few weeks had been. Apart from the other stuff that Grace wasn’t going to share with Lily right now. She’d wait until the excitement over the engagement had died down a little and find the right moment.

  ‘Are you OK, Gracie?’ Lily wanted to know. ‘I’m not going to become a bridezilla or anything, if you’re worried about that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let you,’ Grace assured her, tucking her arm into Lily’s then wishing she hadn’t because she was never normally this touchyfeely and Lily was bound to realise that something was well and truly up. ‘I was just thinking that we should do something to celebrate. I could ring up the Hat and Fan and see if they’d let us have the back room this Saturday, if you like?’

  ‘I like! I’m sure my dad would stick some money behind the bar for drinks,’ Lily cried happily. ‘Oh, that’s so sweet of you. Could you help me set up one of those event things on Facebook?’

  Organising an impromptu engagement party was just what Grace needed to take her mind off things. Her grandmother was a great advocate of keeping busy in times of crisis, and if Grace was faffing about with Facebook invites and having tense negotiations with the landlord of the Hat and Fan, then she didn’t have time to obsess about Vaughn.

  Obsessing about Vaughn was a strictly post-work, unable-to-sleep activity as Grace replayed the scene in his office over and over again and tried to sift through all the different feelings it raked up. Mostly, there was the feeling of rejection because Vaughn didn’t want her for good, simple reasons like thinking about kissing her made him feel all shivery. But he had wanted her enough to pay her to slide between his sheets. It went round and round in Grace’s head until each night she gave up trying to sleep and sat on the windowsill drinking mugs of tea and smoking cigarettes and trying really hard not to play ‘what I would do with £5,000 a month’.

  The next Saturday morning, Grace would have liked nothing more than a monster lie-in to try to pay off some of her sleep debt, but instead she was standing on a ladder pinning up Tord Boontjeinspired paper streamers in the back room of Lily’s favourite pub. If only she could translate her completely random life skills into cold, hard cash, she thought to herself for the gazillionth time.

  Once again, Grace mourned t
he loss of that sweet, tax-free £5,000. She kept seeing a fat wad of cash with little arms and legs that did a lopsided soft-shoe shuffle when she thought about it. Which she did - all the sodding time, though she kept telling herself not to. £5,000 would mean no more brown envelopes, no more harassment from loan companies and the really snippy woman who kept phoning from her bank. Three lots of £5,000 would be enough to put down a deposit on a little flat. And the clothing allowance would buy the kind of designer dresses that she normally only came into contact with when she was putting them on skinny models or ambling through Liberty’s . . .

  ‘Christ, you must have been here for hours!’

  Grace glanced over her shoulder as Lily and Dan walked in, almost buried under a weight of Tupperware containers. She’d spent Friday evening using their oven to bake hundreds of cupcakes.

  ‘Hey,’ she said through a mouthful of drawing pins. ‘You can put them in one of the big fridges in the kitchen.’ Dan walked back out again, muttering under his breath as he did so.

  ‘Oh, it looks so pretty in here!’ Lily exclaimed, turning slowly so she could see the Chinese lanterns and fairy lights that Grace had already placed around the room. ‘It’s adorable!’

  ‘You’re sure it’s not too cheesy?’

  ‘No, it’s lovely,’ Lily said, and she sounded close to tears. ‘I can’t believe you did all this in four days.’

  ‘I learned from the best. My gran can organise a sit-down dinner for twelve at twenty-four hours’ notice,’ Grace said lightly. ‘It was no biggie.’

  ‘Thank you so—’

  Grace held up her hand because she didn’t really deserve Lily’s effusive thanks. It wasn’t as if she’d done the party planning entirely out of the goodness of her heart; it was more about trying to wipe out that hour in Vaughn’s office by being so busy she couldn’t think straight.

  ‘You don’t have to do the big speech,’ she said. ‘I was happy to do it.’

  ‘God, Gracie, when will you learn to take a compliment?’ Lily looked up at her in exasperation, which just made Grace feel more guilty. ‘Can you come down from there, because I want to talk to you.’

  Grace jumped down the last step and stood with hands planted firmly on her hips. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘You. You’ve been in the dark place all week,’ Lily said, plonking herself down on a chair. ‘I know something’s bothering you.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Grace said automatically, then amended it because Lily always got understandably touchy when she said that. ‘I just have some stuff on my mind. Really, it’s too boring to even talk about. Work, money, the usual.’

  ‘Oh Gracie, I wish you could be as happy as I am. I really do,’ Lily said fervently, and her kindness always killed Grace a little bit. Of course, it was easy to be sweet and understanding when nothing bad had ever really happened to you. What Grace knew, and what Lily couldn’t ever fathom, was that suffering didn’t improve you; it just made you miserable and gave you a really bitter outlook on life.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she assured Lily. ‘You know what I’m like when I go to the dark place. Give me a couple of hours to get over myself and if that doesn’t work, just give me a good slap.’

  ‘I would never resort to physical violence,’ Lily mock-sniffed, and Grace could tell she was relieved that Grace had hauled herself back from the brink enough to crack a joke. ‘Well, actually I might pull your hair a little.’

  Thankfully, Lily didn’t have time to probe any further because at that moment Dan came back into the room, giving a long, low whistle as he took stock of Grace’s DIY party decorations. ‘Nice,’ he stated. ‘Very nice, Gracie.’

  ‘Dan, you could be more wordy with the thanks,’ Lily pouted. ‘Grace has been slogging her guts out all week.’

  ‘Yeah, but then Grace would do that passive-aggressive thing she does when she won’t let anyone say nice things to her.’

  ‘I don’t!’

  Lily threw her hands up in the air; even her bountiful supply of good cheer wasn’t infinite. ‘Why is everyone being so scratchy today? Dan, say something nice to Grace and Gracie, for God’s sake let Dan say something nice to you.’

  Grace raised her chin in a challenge that made Dan’s eyes flash but then he grinned. ‘How about I don’t say something nice and I give you some champagne instead?’ he asked, pulling two bottles of Moët out from behind him. ‘It’s just our way - well, Lily’s dad’s way ’cause he’s paying for it - of saying thank you.’

  Champagne she could handle. Grace grinned right back and for a few scant seconds she and Dan were in perfect accord. ‘Yes, yes. Champagne. Now, please.’

  Lily was back to sunny smiles and hair flicks. Dan still wasn’t good enough for her and never would be, but was there any better sound in the world than a champagne cork popping? Hell, no.

  Grace held the bottle to her mouth and took a long swig before she brandished it at the happy couple. ‘Come on, let’s start the toasts early.’

  Grace was a genius. She was stardust. She was one carbon in a billion. She was a Martha Stewart for her generation, with the witty fish-fingers-and-oven-chips hot buffet, and her intricate Dutch streamers. She’d even told the DJ to only play songs with ‘love’ in the title.

  If the knitted accessories range didn’t pan out, then she could easily be a party planner. People were happy. People were having a good time and it was because Grace totally rocked when it came to creating the perfect party vibe. Well, that and the free bar.

  Grace was startled out of her reverie and aimless swaying to ‘Peace, Love and Understanding’ when Liam looped an arm round her shoulder. ‘Can we have a chat?’

  She was in that mellow, toasty drunken state that wrapped her up in a cocoon, unplagued by negative thoughts about her cupcakes being trodden underfoot or treacherous ex-boyfriends.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ she slurred, letting Liam lead her out of the room and into the little backyard outside. ‘What gives?’

  Liam perched on one of the metal beer barrels. ‘Is Lily knocked up?’

  ‘Well, if she is she shouldn’t have been drinking since eleven thirty this morning,’ Grace frowned. ‘No, she’d have told me.’

  ‘So why are they getting married?’ Liam asked. He was sober, which was a novelty but he spent Saturdays working on a bootleg DVD stall at Camden Market and he needed to be able to count change. ‘Like, if they don’t need to.’

  Grace hauled herself on to a neighbouring barrel. ‘Well, they’re in love and neither of them are very bright. Is this the wrong moment to let slip that Lily wants you to play a medley of Burt Bacharach hits at the wedding reception?’

  ‘Jesus, kill me now!’

  ‘Could be worse, baby. Lily has a couple of Boyzone CDs tucked away!’ Grace tried to give Liam a friendly punch on the arm and nearly fell off her perch. She settled for groping in her bag for fags and lighter. She’d started smoking again in earnest this week.

  ‘Are you pissed, Gracie?’

  ‘Beyond pissed and verging on paralytic,’ Grace announced proudly, as she managed to light her cigarette on the fifth attempt. Then in a fit of alcohol-soaked cunning, she realised that she had a Get Out of Jail Free card to say whatever she liked. Tomorrow she could just pretend that she didn’t remember. In fact, tomorrow she probably wouldn’t be able to remember. ‘So, who are you with tonight? Some barely legal Trustafarian, I’ll bet.’ Grace exhaled smoke with what she hoped was haughty disdain.

  ‘You jealous?’ Liam asked with a hint of that smirky grin that had used to make her come over all unnecessary. He’d also washed his hair in the last twenty-four hours, which was a huge deal and not to be taken lightly.

  ‘Hardly, but, like a month to get over an ex is standard. You could have pretended that you were a bit cut up about it.’ All the hurt was welling up again and it was almost a relief to think about something that hadn’t occurred in Vaughn’s office.

  ‘Look, I was upset,’ Liam said, leaning closer so Grace could see the deep hol
lows under his eyes which she’d used to stroke with her thumbs when they were in bed. ‘You have to know that those first few weeks that we were together, I was so into you.’

  It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. ‘Then why did you stop?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘Don’t know. It’s what we keep coming back to, isn’t it? Something wasn’t right.’

  ‘You mean I wasn’t right?’