But on Friday Grace no longer felt as if she was drifting. Suddenly the real world was beginning to intrude again. Madeleine had woken her up with a text message telling her that Vaughn would be home that night, and Lily arrived back at work that morning with another perfect suntan and a look of utter disdain each time she glanced Grace’s way. Lily had reached the stage of gestation where she just looked fat, rather than pregnant, which made Grace feel slightly vindicated, but she still wished she hadn’t run to squeeze into the lift just as the doors were closing, and had to share a confined space with Lily for thirty seconds.
‘Look, you have to talk to me eventually,’ Grace sighed in exasperation as the lift doors opened and they both headed out to get some lunch. As soon as she’d seen Lily breeze into the office that morning, she’d realised all the little things that were missing, like swapping bitchy emails and checking the Eat website to see what the Soup of the Day was and how many fat units it had, and the times they’d pretend they had appointments so they could go to the cinema. Grace wasn’t prepared to have a Lily-less existence just yet, even though she was still pissed off with her. ‘We work in the same office and I still have your DAY Birger et Mikkelsen blue tunic.’
It was the one thing guaranteed to force a reaction out of Lily. ‘I’ve been looking for that everywhere!’ she gasped in relief before she remembered that she’d put Grace on no speakers. ‘I want it back and that doesn’t mean you need to talk to me. Not after what you did. Not after what you’ve been doing. With
him
.’
‘Look, we don’t have to talk about
him
.’ Grace touched Lily’s sleeve lightly and tried to avert her eyes from the two bottom buttons on Lily’s coat, which had been left undone because her hips were getting themselves ready for the childbearing. ‘Tell me how the wedding went.’
She’d already heard in mind-numbing detail about the wedding from everyone else in the office. It had been a beautiful day. Lily had looked like Velvets-era Nico. Dan had cried when he’d recited his vows. But Lily seemed to have forgotten all about that. ‘Your dress was way too short on my cousin,’ she said, elbowing Grace out of the way so she could be first through the revolving doors. ‘And why did you get us a stupid espresso machine when you know I can’t drink coffee?’
After that stressful encounter, Grace was relieved to come home to a house that still didn’t have Vaughn in it. She tended to camp out in the upstairs living room that had a massive HDTV mounted on the wall and sofas that you could actually lie on, like she was doing now as she worked her way through a huge plate of shepherd’s pie and watched the
America’s Next Top Model
marathon she’d persuaded Vaughn’s Sky+ box to record.
Grace was snickering gently as Tyra Banks exhorted one of the girls to smile with her eyes, when she caught a movement in the doorway and looked up to see Vaughn standing there.
‘Oh, hey,’ she said, through a mouthful of potato.
‘Hello.’ Vaughn stayed in the doorway as Grace heaved herself up and started straightening the cushions. ‘You don’t need to do that.’
Vaughn thought that the floor and the backs of chairs were where his clothes and accessories lived but she was a guest in his house, so she carried on fussing and primping. ‘I wasn’t sure what time you’d be back. Madeleine said it would be late.’
‘A couple of meetings got cancelled so I pushed up my schedule.’ Vaughn dumped his briefcase, coat and laptop bag on top of a Frank Lloyd Wright sideboard, which was far too old to take their weight. ‘Where are you going?’
Grace was on her feet, dinner tray in her hand. ‘Going to put these in the dishwasher.’ Though actually she was getting out of his hair, which was standing on end like he’d spent the last six days pulling on it.
She wasn’t expecting Vaughn to follow her out of the room, down the stairs and into the kitchen, and she could feel the back of her neck tingling, just from being so close to him, though she wasn’t sure if it was from fear or longing. And in the end she had to turn around.
Vaughn was leaning against the door, like he wasn’t sure if he was welcome in his own kitchen; it was an uncharacteristically humble gesture and Grace let down the defences she’d spent all week building up. ‘You look like you slept in a wind tunnel,’ she said with a strained smile so Vaughn would know she was trying to lighten the mood and not being snarky.
‘I had a very long, very arduous meeting as soon as I got back to the office this afternoon that made me tear my hair out, quite literally,’ Vaughn explained, and there was all this stuff she had to say to him, but Grace didn’t feel as if she could struggle her way through to the finish line. From the way that Vaughn was leaning against the door, he didn’t either.
‘Have you eaten anything?’ she asked.
‘I had something on the plane.’
‘I made this huge shepherd’s pie. There’s tons left, if you want some.’
Vaughn ate two helpings, but refused to drink Grace’s wine. Instead he opened a bottle of Merlot that was probably older than she was and sipped a glass as Grace loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the stove top and the counters and packed what was left of the shepherd’s pie away in a Tupperware container.
‘We need to talk, Grace. Come and sit down.’ Grace had to give him credit for not dragging this unbearable arrangement out any longer. She pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, because it was as good a place as any to start. ‘That you got dragged into all this and I whined on about how it was hard to manage on thousands of pounds every month. I want you to know that I am grateful for all of it and I shouldn’t have thrown it back in your face the way I did.’
Vaughn had looked startled when Grace first began to speak, but now he was steepling his fingers and staring at her over the top of them. ‘Did you agree to this arrangement because you needed the money?’
He wasn’t biting his words out like he usually did when he was mad at her, but Grace still cringed because she knew the truth would make him angry.
‘I just want us to talk,’ Vaughn said, as if he could read her mind. ‘You’ve stuffed me full of carbs so I doubt I could find the strength to start shouting, not that I’m going to. We need to do this, yes?’
Grace nodded slowly and bit her lip until she’d worked out what she wanted to say instead of blurting out the first thing that came into her head. ‘I wouldn’t have become your mistress if I hadn’t been so broke, but you were the one who wanted an agreement. It wasn’t my idea. If you’d just asked me to be your girlfriend with no contract, no allowances, I’d have said yes, because I fancied you. You know I’d have slept with you in New York.’
‘Those allowances were just pin money,’ he said. ‘A little sweetener. It wasn’t meant to be a lifeline.’
‘Pin money? You were giving me more in two months than I make all year!’ Grace exclaimed and once again, there was a table and several worlds between them.
‘I had no idea you were barely earning minimum wage. I assumed you were making at least ten times that, and that you walked out of work every day with armfuls of clothes foisted on you by grateful fashion houses,’ Vaughn protested.
‘Well, they kind of make us give the clothes back once we’ve shot them,’ Grace said wistfully. ‘I have a New Look discount card, but that’s about it.’
‘You should have come to me if you needed more money. You know I’d have given it to you without question.’ He’d promised he wouldn’t get angry, but he was starting to sound a little peeved and Grace realised Vaughn was offended at the implication that he was tight - and of course he wasn’t. He’d been unstintingly generous - but he wielded his generosity like a weapon sometimes. ‘You should have told me about this, confided in me. Why didn’t you?’
There were so many reasons that Grace didn’t know where to begin. She started with the obvious. ‘Because I don’t want to think about it, even though it’s
all
I think about. It’s why everything was tucked away in boxes under my bed. If I talk about it, then it’s real and I have to start dealing with it, and I didn’t want to. And I hardly know you . . .’
‘What do you mean, you hardly know me? You’ve been sleeping with me for the last four months.’
‘That doesn’t mean I know you,’ Grace said. ‘Just like you didn’t really know me until all this exploded in your face on Monday.’
Vaughn’s face tightened and Grace suspected that his promise that this wouldn’t turn into another fight was a case of hope over experience. ‘I told you things in Buenos Aires that I haven’t told anyone,’ he said stiffly.
‘Then you were furious with me because I’d seen you let your guard down. But, God, Vaughn, you’ve seen me make a total idiot of myself so many times. The first day we met, and when you caught me masturbating . . .’ Grace covered her cheeks with her hands, though that memory managed to raise a smile from Vaughn. ‘You’ve seen me dripping with snot, and then last Monday . . . I was so ashamed and you just wouldn’t stop making me look at those pieces of paper and trying to make me tell you things, my dirtiest secrets . . . and you got so angry with me.’
‘Do I frighten you?’ Vaughn asked, and Grace looked at his clenched jaw, his white-knuckled fingers tapping on the table-top, and . . .
‘A little bit,’ she admitted. ‘Not frightened, exactly, but you’re kind of scary sometimes.’
Vaughn stretched out his hands and tried to relax his posture, like a marionette suddenly coming to awkward, jerky life. ‘Surely you know my bark is much worse than my bite.’
But I don’t, Grace thought, and she shrugged helplessly. ‘Look, it was horrible but I’m glad because I couldn’t keep ignoring it. I’ve spent all week trying to straighten it out. Like, I’m going to sell some of my stuff and see a debt specialist because he thinks he could get the loan companies to forget the interest. And I might even move back to Worthing and commute in to save some money, and I’ve left a ton of messages for my bank manager but I think he’s breaking up with me too, but I need my papers back . . .’
‘Just stop. Slow down,’ Vaughn demanded. He scraped his chair back and stood up and walked over to where Grace’s handbag was perched on the worktop. ‘Give me your credit cards.’
Grace looked at him warily. ‘But didn’t you hear what I said? I’m sorting it out and I’m not going to do
that
any more.’
‘So give me your cards then,’ Vaughn replied imperturbably.
Giving Vaughn her cards for safekeeping made perfect sense. That way she wouldn’t be tempted, no matter how low she got, but . . . ‘I need one card, in case I—’
‘All the cards,’ Vaughn repeated, and it worked out really well that she was a little scared of him because Grace took the bag he was holding out to her and started rummaging through it, pulling cards out of her purse and side pockets.
‘My TopShop card has actually got credit on it,’ she protested, almost wincing as she heard her voice getting shriller, but she slapped the cards into Vaughn’s outstretched hand and watched him sift through them.
‘Grace, I said we wouldn’t have an argument, but there are two cards missing,’ he said. ‘You have twelve in all - there’s only ten here.’
With shaking fingers, Grace unzipped an inner pocket and sifted through receipts until she closed her hand around an all too familiar plastic rectangle. Once she gave it to Vaughn, she could feel terror rising in her like bile. Losing the cards was like suddenly being thrown from a plane without a parachute, so she had the sensation that she was freefalling with nothing to cling on to. She could actually feel herself fighting for each breath while Vaughn stood and watched her. He waited until she’d managed to pull herself back from the brink, then said gently, ‘Where’s the last card?’
It took Grace fifteen minutes to sort through the crates, looking for a big cake tin while Vaughn sat on the bed in the guest room. Then she knelt on the floor with the cake tin on her lap and with her nails started slicing through the tape that was sticking down the lid. Inside was another tin, also taped down, and another, and another, and another . . . until she finally got to the last tin - a pretty little Art Deco-inspired box that had once contained some caramel pastilles - and prised it open. ‘It’s my emergency card,’ she told Vaughn defensively as she handed it over, even though everything in her was screaming to snatch it back.
Vaughn fanned the cards out and looked at them. ‘Just pieces of plastic and computer chips,’ he remarked, before he tucked them away in his shirt pocket. ‘You’re practically vibrating - come and sit down.’