Grace eyed her warily. She knew that the explosion was going to happen really soon, she just didn’t know what the number four had to do with, well, anything really. ‘Never thought about it.’
‘Because when I add two and two together, I keep coming up with at least double figures.’ Kiki smirked at her own cleverness. ‘Care to fill in the blanks?’
Oh, where to begin? ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about,’ Grace hedged.
‘I’ve had Maggie in here, which is always a pain, insisting that I have you court-martialled by HR while the entire office waits to see if little Lily miscarries due to the stress of finding out her best friend is a high-class call girl who’d rather entertain clients than attend her wedding. So, it’s not really a surprise that you’ve got a pair of Fendi shearling boots, though I’m dying to know how you got fast-tracked up the wait list.’
Grace gulped and exhaled at the same time, which immediately led to a choking fit. She was going to fucking
kill
Lily. She couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t involve grisly details of just how she’d bring about Lily’s demise, so she settled for answering the last question. ‘I was in Miami this weekend and the Fendi there had a pair delivered by accident. And actually they were bought for me by a friend. A girl. Not a girlfriend. A friend who’s a girl . . . fucking hell!’
‘Oh Gracie, what mess have you managed to get yourself into now?’ Kiki asked, and it still wasn’t the whipcrack bark she’d been waiting for. It was amused, maybe even a little concerned, which completely spun Grace off her axis.
‘I . . . it’s hard to explain . . .’ Grace spluttered, and typically, predictably, the tears began to punctuate what she couldn’t even begin to explain. Not
again
. It was much easier to cover her face with her hands and give in to sobs that felt like they were being torn out of her.
It was humiliating to cry in front of Kiki, but every time Grace tried to stop, a fresh wave of tears began to spurt out. Then she felt a hand pat her head and looked up through tear-spiked lashes to see Kiki perched on the desk in front of her.
‘Stop it right now,’ she ordered brusquely. ‘Everyone will know you’ve been crying and you don’t want to give them that satisfaction, do you?’
Grace really didn’t. She took a series of shuddering deep breaths, finished off with a couple of hiccups and blinked in surprise as Kiki pulled a bottle of champagne out of the mini-fridge under her desk and popped the cork.
‘I don’t have any brandy and you look like you could do with a drink,’ she said, carefully pouring some champagne into a mug. ‘Now what you say in this office stays in this office - unless you’ve done anything to bring the
Skirt
name into disrepute, in which case I’ll have to fire you.’
Grace took the mug and knocked back the champagne in one long gulp. ‘I am not a hooker. Or a whore. Or a fucking slag, as Lily put it,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m just seeing this guy . . .’
Getting it off her chest took half an hour and the whole bottle of Taittinger. Grace stuck to the facts. That girl met rich, older man.
There was mutual attraction and a Marc Jacobs bag. Which led to spending time together exclusively, designer dresses and very swank parties on both sides of the Atlantic, which were fantastic networking opportunities for a lowly fashion assistant.
‘It’s just a simple arrangement,’ she said, though really it was anything but simple. ‘And the places we go, well, I couldn’t exactly turn up in a New Look dress, and he takes up a lot of my free time, which he reimburses me for. It doesn’t mean that I’m a prostitute!’
‘Hardly,’ Kiki drawled, leaning back with a look of disappointment as she realised that Grace had reached the end and that further details wouldn’t be forthcoming. ‘Charles’s main attraction was the large mutual fund that he manages, so what does that make me?’
‘But you’re married to Charles!’
‘Well, that’s neither here nor there,’ Kiki said. ‘And I wouldn’t even have had one date with Charles if he hadn’t sent me a single Christian Louboutin shoe with a note telling me I wouldn’t get the other one until I had dinner with him.’
That sounded better than a tear-stained Marc Jacobs bag. Not better, but romantic. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that Charles would do something like that,’ Grace said carefully because she’d met Charles only once and he’d been stodgy of build and personality.
‘He has to - he’s ugly but rich.’ Kiki laughed. It wasn’t her usual cackle but something warmer, more affectionate. She was full of surprises this afternoon. ‘Come on, Gracie, you know exactly what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Grace said indignantly. ‘Vaughn isn’t ugly at all. He’s actually pretty OK looking. Kinda handsome, actually.’
‘Rich and kinda handsome? Well, you’ve either hit the jackpot or you’re in for a world of trouble.’
It was exactly half and half, Grace thought to herself. ‘Well, let’s say that one makes up for the other.’ And it was the sort of clever thing that she never thought of to say very often and she could tell Kiki was impressed because she did her secret, amused smile that she usually only pulled out when she’d been sent something fabulous like a pair of Prada skis.
‘Well, you weren’t lying when you said you were working evenings and weekends. So, as a matter of interest, how much are you getting?’ she asked without preamble, not even blinking or blushing though Grace imagined that the Botox had probably paralysed her blood vessels.
‘He doesn’t pay me to be his girlfriend,’ Grace protested. ‘Why does no one believe me? He gives me a monthly allowance and something on the top for clothing because he takes me to lots of parties and I need to dress the part and—’
‘Yeah, yeah. How much?’
It was impossible to remain tight-lipped when Kiki’s eyes had to say everything that her facial muscles couldn’t. Her eyes were currently saying, ‘Tell me, or I’ll have you filling in Customs forms until you’re ready for retirement.’
‘Five thousand for the allowance, two thousand for clothes and I have membership to this spa. It’s why I’ve been taking lunch-breaks - you wouldn’t believe how much personal grooming I need,’ Grace added rashly, because Kiki was giving her the oddest, most unnerving look. Like she was trying to circumnavigate the frozen face to show surprise. ‘I know it’s a lot of money. Like probably too much money, but—’
‘And I imagine that at least twice a month you have to go to a gala or a ball and you need the kind of dress that you’re not going to find in TopShop - formal, floor-length, ready-to-wear though you could get away with couture. And obviously you can’t wear the same dress twice. Then there’s cocktail dresses, day dresses, at least two pairs of designer jeans, bags, shoes, really good costume jewellery and a new coat every month. Coats are very important. They’re all about that first impression . . .’ It seemed as if Kiki was lost in her own private daydream, she’d even shut her eyes, but then she opened them again so she could fix them on Grace. ‘I bet you have to use all of that monthly allowance too. In fact, how the hell are you managing on just seven thousand a month? Even fifteen grand would be a stretch.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Grace asked incredulously. ‘It’s a huge amount of money! It’s like I was earning an extra eighty grand a year.’
‘So, you’ve got money left over to spend on wool and sweeties every month, have you?’
‘Well, no . . .’
‘And just how rich is he anyway?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I guess he’s really rich,’ Grace said helplessly, because talking about Vaughn’s money and how much of it he had felt so tacky. The Business-Class travel, chauffeur-driven cars and fancy hotel suites were testament enough to Vaughn’s riches, but once when she was waiting for him to finish a call so they could go out to dinner, she’d heard him say, ‘Push him up to twenty-five if you can, but I won’t go under twenty-three.’
Grace had thought he was talking thousands, until she’d glanced at the pad Vaughn was doodling on, counted up the noughts and realised he was talking millions. So even if his commission was only ten per cent, he’d cleared over two million just on one phone call. ‘Really, really rich,’ she amended.
‘Then he’s undercutting you,’ Kiki said flatly and God, she was loving this, Grace could tell.
‘He’s not. He’s been very generous.’
‘Oh, he’s been
very
generous and I bet he’s got a nice bridge he could sell you too,’ Kiki said, and this time she did cackle. ‘Please tell me you at least tried to negotiate with him, Gracie.’
‘Of course I didn’t! He’s giving me more money every month, in cash, than I’ve ever seen and he’s taken me to Paris and Miami and we’re going to Whistler for Christmas.’ And the thought of that made Grace remember why she was having this bizarre heart-to-heart with Kiki in the first place. ‘I get that Lily’s upset, but I don’t know how she could say all that stuff about me,’ she burst out.
‘She’s a lovely girl but rather stupid,’ Kiki announced. ‘But really, Grace, why didn’t you just tell people you’d bagged a rich boyfriend, instead of being so secretive?’
It was another freaky aspect to an exceedingly freakish day: Kiki being nice and understanding and making complete sense.
‘Do you think Maggie will go to HR?’ Grace asked anxiously. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘That you and Lily were both silly, self-dramatising girls and we should leave you to sort it out between the two of you,’ Kiki recalled with relish. ‘You know, Grace, this is the first bit of initiative you’ve shown. Of course, we all noticed that your hair no longer looked as if it had fallen on your head from a great height and Courtney said you were spending a lot of time in the cupboard on a BlackBerry, but we all thought you were looking for another job.’
Grace raised her eyebrows. She’d imagined that her day-to-day doings were not worthy of speculation. ‘I’m not,’ she assured Kiki. ‘I love
Skirt
, you know that, right?’
‘Don’t think for one moment that just because I approve of your expedient relationship, you can start angling for a raise. Or a promotion, for that matter,’ Kiki snapped - and it was almost comforting that she’d put her bitch back on.
‘I didn’t tell anyone because I thought they’d judge me,’ Grace explained, and her shoulders sagged a little. ‘Bit late for that now though.’
‘They can judge you all they like, but there aren’t many options for girls like us who are expected to maintain a certain lifestyle and don’t have huge trust funds,’ Kiki said bitterly. ‘When I met Charles I was living on spaghetti hoops and fashion party canapés. I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich, and rich wins out every time. So don’t you dare let any of those girls look down on you when they’re being bankrolled by their families.’
Grace had never heard Kiki sound so passionate about anything that wasn’t fashion-related. She knew her real name was Kimberley and Kimberleys didn’t usually have huge, unearned incomes, so maybe Kiki did know where she was coming from because they came from exactly the same place.
‘It’s really hard sometimes when everyone runs out to get twenty-pound boxes of sushi and they think I shop at Primark as some kind of fashion statement,’ Grace said.
Kiki leaned back in her chair and looked at Grace thoughtfully. ‘Your problem is that you have to overcomplicate everything. Your outfits, your copy, your styling, your faux relationships - you’re always adding too many embellishments, when you should just keep it simple. Simple is always better. As I just said, if you’d told people you’d bagged a filthy rich boyfriend from the start, then none of this would have happened.’
It was the first piece of really constructive criticism that Grace had ever had from Kiki. ‘I suppose I should have,’ she agreed. ‘It would have made everything so much easier.’
‘Well, “rich boyfriend” has a more respectable ring than “sugar daddy”. I’m sure they’ll all get over the shock eventually.’ Kiki looked pointedly at Grace, then at the door. ‘Go on, shoo!’
Grace got up, grabbed the boots, which Kiki was pointing at with an imperious finger and steeled herself for what lay behind the office door.
It was obvious they’d all been talking about her because as Grace emerged, the chatter stopped and everyone appeared to be typing industriously. Which wasn’t something that happened very often in the
Skirt
office.
Grace sat down at her desk, aware that the entire fashion department and most of features were half-expecting George, the security officer, to appear and escort her from the premises. She made an extravagant show of pulling out her BlackBerry and hit no 1.