Unsticky

by Sarra Manning

  Grace had decided to stay out of it because Vaughn was more than capable of taking care of himself, but she couldn’t help the horrified, ‘Gran! We’re not having children. We’re not even thinking of buying a house plant together, so just stop it.’

  Vaughn patted Grace’s hand, while her grandmother assessed the gesture to see if it was just a crafty trick to set her mind at ease.

  ‘Someone has to say these things,’ she insisted icily.

  ‘No, they don’t, Gran.’

  This time Vaughn kept his hand on Grace’s, the warmth of his fingers resting against hers a reminder that this time she wasn’t defenceless in the face of her grandmother’s most vociferous disapproval.

  ‘Grace is a lovely girl and I don’t see anything wrong in us being involved without having a five-year plan,’ he said firmly.

  Their puddings arrived just then, but her grandmother only gave her apple and rhubarb pie the most cursory of glances. ‘A five-week plan would be something,’ she said crisply. ‘Grace is a lovely girl but she’s very young and, quite frankly, she’s always finding herself in these silly pickles and getting hurt. I don’t want someone taking advantage of her.’

  ‘Maybe she’s taking advantage of me,’ Vaughn suggested, and Grace had barely recovered from her grandmother’s pithy summing-up of her failings before she was hurt and panicked all over again, because if Vaughn went where she thought he was going, then it was game over. ‘I could be the one who gets hurt when she decides that she’d rather be with someone who’s less likely to have a heart attack while he’s running for the bus.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely.’ At least her grandmother was smiling now, even if it was a pretty thin-lipped smile. ‘You don’t seem like the sort of man who takes buses.’

  ‘He really doesn’t,’ Grace muttered, face pink because it was a sweet thing for Vaughn to say even though it was utter bullshit. ‘Honestly, we’re good and everything’s fine and you don’t need to worry about me.’

  Her grandmother patted the hand that Vaughn wasn’t holding. ‘Someone has to worry about you, darling.’ She paused as she came to a decision about something. ‘I don’t think we need to tell Grandy about this. Quite frankly, I can’t see it lasting that long,’ she said, plunging her spoon into the thick pastry crust.

  After Vaughn had paid the bill, he insisted on taking her grandmother back to Victoria Station and seeing her on to the platform safely. Grace was sure it was for her sake rather than her grandmother’s. He stood over to one side, as Grace hugged her gran goodbye. ‘Call me when you get home, OK?’ she said.

  Her grandmother stroked her cheek. ‘You look well, Grace, but please have a little common sense. You wouldn’t be the first girl to be taken in by a silver-tongued devil with a bulging wallet.’

  It was a little too close to home for Grace to laugh it off. ‘I know what I’m doing, Gran. Vaughn can seem a bit standoffish when you don’t know him, but he’s not like that at all. He can be really nice.’

  ‘Nice is as nice does,’ she said obliquely, checking her handbag was closed and looking down the platform. ‘Well, I’d best be going. I don’t want to leave it to the last minute and have to sit with my back facing the engine.’

  She marched off, a sturdy but diminutive figure in the tweed coat that she’d had for years. Grace watched her until she got smaller and smaller, then turned and waved before she finally climbed on board.

  ‘Grace, there’s no need to look so upset,’ Vaughn sighed when she trailed back to where he was waiting. ‘I think the lunch went as well as it could. Honestly, did your grandmother say anything that came as a surprise?’

  As they started walking in the direction of the taxi rank, Grace put her hands in her pockets and let her shoulders slump because there was no one to tell her off about it. ‘Of course not. All that crap about five-year plans and our future children leaving for university while you wave them off from a bath-chair didn’t bother me.’ She came to a halt because she couldn’t move her feet and try to articulate at the same time. ‘As far as she knows, this is a proper relationship and we might really be in love, so it’s very hurtful that she thinks it’s just another mess that I’ve got myself into.’

  Vaughn moved Grace out of the way of a family of tourists, and kept his hand on her arm. ‘She’s just being protective. You’re her granddaughter so you’ll always be a little girl to her.’ He frowned. ‘All your grandmother will ever see is an age gap.’

  Grace made a tiny exasperated noise. ‘And all I ever do is lie to her, and it cuts me up, but not enough to actually stop lying.’

  ‘Secrets aren’t the same as lying,’ Vaughn commented, because they both had the muddiest of ethics, which was an odd thing to have in common. ‘Look, it’s done. We got lunch out of the way and we emerged fairly unscathed.’ He walked with Grace through the narrow arch that led outside. ‘As long as we’re both happy with things, then there’s nothing to worry about. You are happy, aren’t you?’

  Grace didn’t have to hesitate. ‘Of course I am!’

  ‘Then it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Now - shall we go home? I’m sure I remember you promising me a whole afternoon in bed as payback.’ Vaughn slid his hand down Grace’s back and let it rest on the curve of her bottom for one meaningful second.

  ‘I can’t,’ Grace sighed regretfully, as his hand tightened then moved away. ‘I promised Piers we’d lock down the menu and then have a final look at the guest-list. Oh, don’t frown at me like that, Vaughn. It will only take a couple of hours.’

  He was definitely pouting. Or as close to pouting as he could get. ‘Couldn’t Piers do it on his own?’

  ‘No! Everything has to be perfect and Piers is lovely but he doesn’t get my whole low-rent Shoreditch vibe. He keeps trying to add lobster rolls to the menu when he thinks I won’t notice.’ Grace stood on tiptoe so she could kiss Vaughn’s pursed mouth. ‘Two hours, I promise, then I’m all yours.’

  Grace had felt Vaughn smiling against her mouth but when she pulled away he was still sulking. ‘Two hours and then I’m sending a search-party.’

  ‘Two hours,’ Grace repeated, clambering into the back of a taxi, which had just stopped in front of them. She looked out of the window at Vaughn standing there in his suit, appearing so proper and stiff if you didn’t know him like she did. He caught her eye as the driver pulled away and smiled at her. One of those smiles that she didn’t even know Vaughn had in his repertoire until a few weeks ago. Grace raised her hand and waggled her fingers and for the first time, Vaughn waved back.

  chapter thirty

  The Shoreditch party finally came to fruition on a cold, damp night at the beginning of March. Grace was still anxiously making additions to the guest-list at 8.30 p.m. and trying to pretend she wasn’t bothered that the doors had opened half an hour earlier and that Vaughn, Piers and the gallery staff were still the only people there.

  ‘How many people RSVP-ed?’ Vaughn asked.

  ‘We sent out Facebook invites,’ Grace told him for the hundredth time - or it felt like the hundredth time. ‘Nobody RSVPs on Facebook and no one ever turns up on time.’

  Piers nodded. ‘They really don’t.’ He came to a halt as Vaughn glared at him. ‘I’m just going to make sure the bar’s all set up.’

  As soon as Piers scurried off, Vaughn turned to Grace. ‘I knew it wasn’t a good idea to have it on a Thursday evening. I told you that.’

  ‘Thursday night is the new Friday night! Jesus, Vaughn, will you just stop? It’s going to be fine. I know it all seems a bit chaotic compared to your usual parties, but everything’s under control. People will come.’

  Grace tried to smile comfortingly, but it felt more as if she was baring her teeth. She and Vaughn were both on edge, what with the party and the fact that she’d been on a lemon juice and cayenne pepper fast all week so she could fit into her new PPQ dress, but Vaughn really needed to lose the glower.

  ‘Madeleine offered to help and you insi
sted that—’

  Grace was saved by Skirt’s fashion and beauty departments, minus Kiki, breezing through the door, still clutching the goodie bags from their previous engagement. The gallery was on three floors, all connected by a pretzel-like spiral staircase painted gold. The basement had been designated as a chill-out area, the ground floor had the free bar and the art, and the first floor was where people were meant to mill about, eating sausage and mash, while enjoying the pretentious black and white short films being projected on to the walls while they formed a new Zeitgeisty scene. It wasn’t what the Skirt fashionistas were used to, and Grace could see the stragglers at the back hesitating on the threshold.

  ‘Is there food? I’m starving,’ Lucie announced, looking around suspiciously. She hated straying too far from West London.

  There was a flurry of activity, people dumping coats behind the reception desk, snatching glasses of vodka and pomegranate juice and asking Grace, ‘So where’s the rich, older boyfriend, then?’ like it was the only reason they’d come. Actually it probably was.

  Vaughn had momentarily vanished, which Grace was grateful for as she saw Lily and Dan bringing up the rear.

  ‘Oh hey, you made it,’ she babbled, checking herself before she lunged forward to give Lily a hug, and froze herself when Dan put his arms around her and kissed her cheek. It was more affection than he’d ever shown her.

  ‘Hello, stranger. Wow, you look really good,’ he said. ‘Very glossy.’

  Grace ran a hand through her newly highlighted hair and grimaced. ‘It’s just smoke and mirrors,’ she demurred. ‘I’m so glad you both came. It’s been ages . . .’

  Dan grinned. ‘Yeah, I can’t remember the last time I saw you.’

  ‘It was just before she bailed out on our wedding at the last moment,’ Lily reminded him as she unbuttoned her coat to reveal her medium-sized baby bump. ‘I need to pee,’ she decided and wandered off.

  ‘Is she ever going to stop hating me?’ Grace asked Dan, who looked like he was over the whole bailing out on the wedding thing.

  ‘You really hurt her feelings and she’s got all these hormones making everything worse. Talking of which . . .’ Dan whipped out a photo and proudly showed Grace a 3D ultrasound scan of something he called ‘the peanut’.

  ‘That’s the heartbeat and you can just make out a leg,’ he said, while Grace squinted at an amorphous blob.

  ‘Grace doesn’t want to see that,’ Lily hissed, coming up behind them.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Grace insisted, rubbing her hands together nervously as Vaughn ventured out of the back office. He saw Grace, half-waved and started moving in her direction.

  There was nothing Grace could do to stop the inevitable meeting between Lily and Vaughn. It was going to be like matter and antimatter colliding, and the whole gallery would suddenly explode, leaving nothing behind but a lone flat cap worn by one of the DJ’s mates.

  ‘See? I knew people would turn up eventually,’ Vaughn said, ruffling Grace’s hair, though he hadn’t known any such thing and she’d told him a million times to leave her hair alone. ‘Isn’t that your French friend Laetitia at the bar?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Grace muttered distractedly because Lily was scrutinising Vaughn with frightening intensity, like she’d had her eyes replaced with a bar-code reader. ‘Do you want to go over and say hello?’

  ‘In a minute.’ Vaughn extended a hand. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, Grace?’

  ‘Lily, Dan, this is Vaughn. Vaughn, this is Lily and Dan,’ Grace said limply, and she could see the light bulb pinging above Vaughn’s head and Lily was opening her mouth and Grace knew exactly what she was going to say.

  ‘You ruined my special day!’ Lily pointedly rubbed her bump because it was the best prop ever for establishing the moral high ground.

  ‘I did?’ Vaughn looked more bemused than anything.

  ‘Well, indirectly. Lily and Dan got married on Christmas Eve, when we were in Whistler.’

  ‘Because you’d rather go skiing with him than stick around to see me get married!’

  ‘Lils, you really need to start getting over it,’ Dan said in a long-suffering way, like they’d discussed the Grace situation many times between them. ‘Though to be fair, Gracie, we had to substitute Lily’s inbred cousin and it really fucked up the group photos.’

  ‘Oh yeah, and there was the wedding planner you had to fork out for instead of getting me to do it for free,’ Grace said hotly, ‘and by the way, Lily, what you said to me—’

  Lily was squaring up to Grace, safe in the knowledge that she could probably throw a punch because Grace couldn’t smack a woman in her condition, but Vaughn was clearing his throat.

  ‘Well, I am somewhat responsible,’ he said, though actually he was completely responsible. ‘I booked our holiday as a surprise for Grace, because I wanted our first Christmas together to be memorable.’

  Grace wanted to tell Vaughn that he needn’t have bothered, because Lily knew about the arrangement. Knew about it, and thought it was sordid and tacky and one step up from selling her arse in King’s Cross.

  ‘But I’m her best friend and I was getting married,’ Lily argued. ‘I should have had first refusal.’

  Vaughn put an arm around Grace, so he could pull her stiff body closer and brush her cheek with his lips, while Lily watched in disbelief. ‘I’m sure Grace has already told you she was bedridden for most of Christmas with the most awful flu. Wasn’t Christmas Eve the day you collapsed, darling?’

  Grace almost missed her cue. ‘Yup. How long was I out for? Maybe ten minutes. Right in front of Robert Simmons. Beyond embarrassing.’

  Lily was practically vibrating, bump and all. ‘Well, you never told me! And I had to find out from Beth in Features that you met Robert Simmons.’

  ‘Lily, you were the one who wasn’t talking to me. You can’t have it both ways,’ Grace said crossly.

  ‘And she looked dreadful, if that’s any consolation,’ Vaughn continued, biting out the words as if he was relishing every moment of exacting revenge on Grace for making him eat salad all week. ‘So even if Grace had been in the country, I don’t think she’d have been able to make your wedding - and she’d have ruined the photos.’

  ‘A grey complexion would have clashed with the dress,’ Lily conceded, and Vaughn saw his advantage and pressed it home.

  ‘But let’s not rehash all this when I should be offering you congratulations. You must have been a very beautiful bride.’

  Lily wasn’t as impervious to Vaughn’s charm as Grace’s grandmother had been. She gave him one of those smiles that knocked most men into the middle of next week. To his credit, Vaughn didn’t show any signs of being instantly smitten. ‘Well, I looked OK in the photos.’

  ‘You looked gorgeous, babe,’ Dan insisted, stepping between Lily and Vaughn so he could mark his territory. ‘You know, Grace used to go out with my friend, Liam. Great guy.’

  Vaughn’s work was done. ‘Really?’ he asked without much interest. ‘There are some sofas downstairs if you want to sit down.’ He took hold of Grace’s hand. ‘Will you excuse us?’

  Grace had never been more pleased to be excused. The gallery had really filled out while Vaughn had been trying to broker the peace deal. There was a crush at the bar and even though she’d told the DJ that she wanted background music, Grace could hear Northern Soul booming down from the first floor so loudly that the bass made the walls vibrate. Some of the models Grace had invited from Nadja’s agency were even dancing, gawky limbs flailing like wraiths caught in a stiff breeze. ‘Well, at least people turned up.’

  ‘Is Noah here? Did he say he was coming?’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Well, he’d better,’ Vaughn muttered darkly and strode off.

  At ten thirty there was another swell of arrivals and Grace decided that she might as well call the party a success. The sausage and mash had run out, but there was still plenty of vodka and the upstairs space had become
the unofficial dance floor. If nothing else, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and had merged into a seamless, heaving throng that might possibly cause a Zeitgeist. Fortunately, Piers had invited some proper grown-ups so Vaughn had people to talk to, but Grace could see him frowning as he failed to spot Noah.

  Grace had officially given up on Noah, but as she came back from the loo, she was corralled by two of the gallery staff because someone on the guest-list had arrived with eleven people in tow. As Grace got nearer, she could hear Noah saying belligerently, ‘Listen, sweetheart, I’m on the fucking list.’ He looked up, saw Grace rushing over and waited with arms folded.

  ‘It’s OK, you can let him in,’ Grace assured the girl on the door. ‘He’s on the list.’ She lowered her voice so Noah wouldn’t hear. ‘He’s Mr Vaughn’s special guest.’