Authors: Sarah Manning

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SARRA MANNING

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www.headline.co.uk

The right of Sarra Manning to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Extract from
Where Angels Fear to Tread
by E.M. Forster © 1905,
reproduced with kind permission from The Provost and Scholars of
King’s College, Cambridge and The Society of Authors as the Literary
Representative of the Estate of E.M. Forster.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may
only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,
with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of
reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued
by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2009

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

eISBN : 978 0 7553 5683 6

This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to reproducing
copyright material. The author and publisher will be glad to rectify any
omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette livre UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

Table of Contents

Dedicated to the memory of Kate Jones,
who mentored both book and author.

thanks

To Gordon and Joanne Shaw, Sarah Bailey and Kate Hodges for all their long-suffering support. My aunt, Lesley Lawson, for shared writerly woes. And Pavel Zoubok of the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York for allowing his brains to be picked.

My agent, Karolina Sutton, Laura Sampson and all at Curtis Brown. Catherine Cobain, Harriet Evans and Sara Porter at Headline.

‘I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it - and I’m sure I can’t tell you whether the fate’s good or evil. I don’t die - I don’t fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I’m just not there.’

Where Angels Fear to Tread,
E. M. Forster

chapter one

‘I just don’t love you,’ he said.

It was the most brutal dumping Grace had ever had. And she’d had a few.

But if Grace was being honest with herself, which didn’t happen often, then it wasn’t a complete surprise. She’d seen the light gradually dim in Liam’s eyes like a torch with dying batteries. He’d begun to look at her in this bemused way, as if the actual dating was a major letdown after the months they’d spent skirting around each other and snogging furiously as they waited for the night bus. He’d even stopped holding her hand when they crossed the street, so Grace didn’t need to be a cartographer to read the signs: being dumped was inevitable.

But she’d never expected it to happen on her birthday. In Liberty’s. Right by the new season’s Marc Jacobs bags.

‘You’re finishing with me?’ Grace clarified, her voice metronome-steady. ‘On my birthday?’

Finally Liam found the balls to look her in the eyes, before his gaze skittered away to rest on the tomato-red, outsized Hobo she’d been admiring before he turned up and crunched the day under his tatty Converses.

Grace should have known better than to arrive at Liberty’s all quivery and expectant that maybe, just maybe, Liam had finally got his shit together and was going to buy her some serious designer real estate as a birthday present. She wasn’t picky; she’d have settled for a key fob or a marked-down hairslide.

‘I wasn’t going to split up with you. Not today, anyway. But then, I don’t know . . . I just saw you standing there and I couldn’t hold it in any longer,’ Liam said heavily, shoulders slumping under his leather jacket. It was too hot for leather jackets even if you were a wannabe indie rock star in your very wildest dreams.

Grace had often wanted to tell Liam that writing whiny mope-rock anthems for teenage boys to listen to in their breaks from wanking and GCSE revision wasn’t something to aspire to, and now she watched with satisfaction as little beads of sweat sprang up on Liam’s pretty face even though it was cool and closeted in Liberty’s. That was one of the reasons why it was Grace’s happy place. There was something civilised and genteel about the thick wood panelling that hushed the merciless, hurrying world outside. Well, that and the rail upon rail of pretty frocks, the spindly shoes that looked too delicate to walk in and the beauty hall where she wanted her ashes scattered when she died. Except Liam had just gone and trashed her happy place as well as ruining her birthday.

‘Why? Why are you splitting up with me? Should I mention that it’s my birthday again, or is that getting boring? Jesus, Liam, what is wrong with you?’ Grace’s voice was slowly edging towards the red end of the dial marked ‘hysterical’, but really - extenuating circumstances.

Liam gingerly touched her arm as he gnawed on his pouty bottom lip because she was making this harder than he’d expected. Generally, Grace was the kind of girl he could leave in a corner and not have to worry too much about.

‘Gracie, c’mon,’ he said helplessly, running a hand through dirty-blond hair, his eyes shutting tight. ‘I was going to wait a few days, but it all just got too much. Things aren’t good between us, y’know?’

‘Is it something I did?’ Grace asked, taking pity on him and scrabbling in her bag for her Miu Miu shades to shield her accusatory glare. ‘What did I do wrong?’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong. We just don’t fit.’ For the greatest undiscovered singer/songwriter of his generation, Liam was being annoyingly vague. Grace could see he was searching wildly for an excuse. ‘Your hair,’ he mumbled finally. ‘I don’t think you should have dyed it black.’

‘You’re splitting up with me because of my
hair
?’

They both knew that it had only five per cent to do with Grace’s hasty decision to go from honey blond to blue black after watching a series of Bettie Page shorts at a Burlesque all-dayer. It was meant to have signalled a new, edgier Grace but it had just made her look peaky and stained her Cath Kidston towels.

‘No,’ Liam prevaricated. ‘Yes - I don’t know. Look, we can still go out tonight and hook up or whatever, but I just don’t think we’re heading anywhere serious, so what’s the point of pretending any more? But I got you a card - here.’ He proffered a creased pink envelope like it was all done and they could just move along because there was nothing to see here. She was good for a ‘hook-up or whatever’, but she was never going to make his heart go pitter-patter.

‘You’re an arsehole,’ she hissed, voice quivering with the threat of tears. ‘You could have picked any other day and cobbled together some lame excuse but instead you do it now,
here
, and you don’t even have the decency to be screwing someone behind my back.’

‘Don’t make a scene, Gracie . . .’ Liam said in a shocked whisper.

‘I’ll make a bloody scene if I want to.’

Liam was shuffling his feet like he was about to bolt but Grace wasn’t done with him yet. Not when she could shove him square in the chest with two puny fists because he really, really deserved it. Liam rocked back on his heels, arms pin-wheeling to keep his balance, and knocked the Marc Jacobs bag off its Perspex plinth.

It tottered for one terrible second before dangling forlornly from its security chain and setting off a shrieking alarm, which would have made Grace clamp her hands over her ears if she wasn’t hunting in her pockets for a ratty tissue. She could feel her mascara slowly descending as tears began to trickle down each cheek.

‘You want a reason for me to break up with you?’ Liam snarled, deigning to lower his head so he could get all up in Grace’s face. ‘
This
is a reason to dump you. You can be so fucking embarrassing.’

After that pithy summing-up, he gave the hapless Marc Jacobs bag a vicious punch before stalking away.

Grace carefully rubbed her thumbs under her sunglasses, not surprised that they came away streaked with black gunk as a bevy of shop assistants hurried over. Usually, Liberty’s staff could be relied upon to be discreet yet friendly. Not like in Harvey Nicks where they called her ‘Madam’ in a condescending manner as she fingered dresses that she couldn’t possibly afford. Mind you, they didn’t seem quite so friendly now.

Grace had already been dumped, seen her boss taking the new, suck-up intern out for coffee and had an email from her mother, all of which added up to make the worst birthday ever. Being barred for life from Liberty’s would put the icing on the cake. A mythical cake though, because no one back in the office had any plans to take her to Patisserie Valerie this afternoon.

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