She swallowed hard to dispel the sob that was rising up her throat. But the next one and the one after that were all cued up and Grace’s frantic gulps made her start coughing and spluttering and—
‘Stop crying,’ someone behind her said sharply. ‘You’ll make everything worse.’ The voice had an arm, which curved around Grace’s shoulders and ushered her towards the exit. Both his tone and grip left no room for resistance. ‘Let’s get out of here before they have you tried for crimes against expensive handbags.’
There were feet too, in highly polished brown brogues. Still coughing, Grace watched them walk alongside her scuffed ballet flats as she was steered past the flower stall and towards Regent Street. Her bag was banging against her hip with every step and this was just ridiculous - letting herself be frogmarched out of Liberty’s, eyes watering now rather than tearing, by some nameless, faceless man who was cutting a swathe through the jostling crowds as if he was going into battle. Grace slowed down as a prelude to dodging into the oncoming traffic to escape but was propelled forward by a decisive hand.
As he delivered her safely to the other side of Regent Street, Grace ground to a halt and tugged on his sleeve. ‘I’m all right now, thank you,’ she said, sniffing to get rid of the snot - she’d never felt so gross and disgusting as she did at that moment.
She glanced up then, because curiosity trumped tear-streaked vanity every time. He had a thin, clever face that was all angles, blue eyes creasing up against the glare of the sun slanting between the buildings; lips quirked in something that wasn’t quite a smile. Dark-blond hair peaked into little tufts that rippled in the slight breeze. It was easier to focus on his suit: cream, summer-weight wool by Dries Van Noten if Grace wasn’t mistaken. And Grace never was when it came to matters of fashion.
‘You don’t look all right,’ he noted crisply in etched-glass, public-school English. ‘You look as if you need a drink.’
He was old-fashioned looking, Grace decided. Not just the suit, which made him look as though he should be taking the air in one of those fifties movies set on the French Riviera, but as if he was the second male lead in one of those same films. Not matinee-idol handsome enough to get the girl, but good enough to be the best friend of the one who got the girl. Or the arch nemesis of the one who got the girl, who had his comeuppance ten minutes before the end credits began to roll.
Also, he was old. Or
older
. Late thirties, early forties, which made this whole situation even weirder than it already was.
‘Look, I’m really sorry about causing a scene and thank you for getting me out of there, but I’m OK now. Really.’
‘Where shall we go?’ he mused, looking around. ‘Which street are we on?’
‘Conduit, and I can’t—’ But she could - for the simple reason that his arm was back around her shoulders and he was setting off with a long-limbed stride so she had to scurry to keep up or get dragged underfoot. ‘I have to get back to work,’ she panted. ‘My boss gets really pissy if I take longer than an hour for lunch.’
‘Really? He sounds very tiresome.’
‘He’s a she,’ Grace corrected him as she struggled to keep up with his long-limbed stride. She was being abducted, not to mention manhandled, in broad daylight, and wasn’t fighting or flighting. In fact, she was even glancing in the window of Moschino as she hurried past, but obviously the shock of being dumped and now being kidnapped had made her cognitive thought processes misfire.
‘Come on, chop chop,’ the man said, pulling Grace round one corner and then another until he came to a halt outside an unmarked black door and started tapping a security code into the keypad. The fight or flight part of Grace’s brain was finally firing up and telling her to run screaming for the hills or to the nearest police station. She took a tentative step to the right but his hand, which was still on her shoulder, tightened. ‘Through here,’ he said.
There was a buzzing sound and the man slowly pushed the door open and Grace was ushered over the threshold into a dark space, walls painted a rich ruby red, polished wood under her feet and a large set of doors slightly ajar to the right. No way was she going any further than right here where she stood, unless it was back out the way she’d come in.
Someone was walking towards her, a smiling woman in a ruffly black dress and pinny, which brought to mind Laura Ashley - if she’d ever had a Goth period. ‘Good to see you again, sir,’ she said to the man standing behind Grace. ‘Are you here for lunch?’
‘Just drinks, I think. Maybe afternoon tea,’ he said, finally taking his hand off Grace’s shoulder and stepping forward. His sleeve brushed Grace’s arm and she flinched.
The front door finally shut with a soft but decisive thud so she had the sensation that she was cocooned in this dark red place, where people only talked in low, soothing tones as if anything louder wouldn’t be tolerated. It was strangely comforting and suddenly, inexplicably, Grace started to cry again.
Or cry properly, because the tears in Liberty’s had just been the warm-up act and this was the main event. Being abducted had been a great diversion, but it was still her birthday and she’d still just been dumped and her life was still sucking beyond all measure. Grace felt her chest shuddering, and then the sobs that she’d managed to mute down ten minutes before were back for their encore presentation. They sounded like death rattles as they ricocheted off the walls.
‘Oh dear,’ the man said softly, cupping Grace’s elbow and steering her carefully down the corridor, the black-clad, ruffly woman bringing up the rear. ‘I’m sure he’s not worth crying over. Magda will take you somewhere to get your tear ducts under control, while I order you a glass of champagne.’
Grace shrugged, or would have, if her shoulders weren’t heaving, and let herself be led through a small side door and up a narrow, curving staircase. The place was like a very red, very twisty rabbit warren. ‘Bathroom’s through there,’ she was told in that same modulated murmur.
Diving for the nearest stall, Grace sank down on the loo so she could finally, properly, get her weep on.
The attendant averted her eyes as Grace emerged, as if she hadn’t heard the muffled howling coming from the cubicle, and dabbed furiously at the shiny chrome taps as Grace washed her hands and stared despondently at her reflection in the mirror. There were dirty grey rivulets running down her cheeks, which she scrubbed away before evaluating the raw material carefully, a tube of tinted moisturiser poised and at the ready.
Parts of her face Grace liked, other parts not so much. She liked that her eyes were grey, a dark, school-uniform grey that couldn’t be mistaken for blue or green or hazel, and framed by long lashes so close-edged that she always looked as if she hadn’t taken off her eyeliner the night before. There were freckles, the bane of her teenage years, but which she now hoped made her look younger, and a mouth that drooped downwards, even when she was smiling. Her grandmother had constantly told her to stop pouting when she was little but actually the sulking had paid off in the permanent jut of her lower lip.
But Grace’s nose was too pronounced to be excused, especially in profile where it looked alarmingly Roman; her forehead wore a deep furrow right between her brows and her chin was in a state of confusion between square and pointed.
It wasn’t a face that anyone could get lost in. It was a face that needed a splash of red on the lips, a little animation to give it some distinction. Right now, it would have to settle for some light base coverage, more mascara and a dab of berry lip-stain.
‘That’s better,’ he said when Grace arrived at his table. She’d been all ready to make a dash for the front door, but there had been another smiling, murmuring woman stationed at the foot of the stairs to guide her into the room behind the big doors Grace had glimpsed before. The promised glass of champagne was waiting for her, along with her bossy abductor. He prodded the cleft in his chin with one long finger as she sat down with her knees tightly pressed together, back straight.
When she’d dressed this morning, Grace had been delighted with the bold seventies’ floral graphic on her tunic dress. It was the perfect outfit for grubbing around all day in the fashion cupboard before spending the night crawling from one barstool to another. Now it clashed with the orange velvet of her over-stuffed armchair and made Grace feel less like she was working the Pucci revival and more like she’d failed the auditions to become a C-fucking-Beebies presenter.
‘I really have to go back to work,’ she muttered, glancing out of the window, almost unable to believe that there was a normal London street outside and not Munchkin Land. His amused smile, as if Grace was a performing seal with a beach ball balanced on her nose, was beginning to grate on her already frayed nerves.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ he said lightly, as if going back to work was an alien concept. ‘Drink your champagne.’
Grace decided to stay but only because she didn’t want to struggle out of the sinking embrace of the chair like a demented Jack-in-the-box. Besides, she really did need a drink.
‘I’m Grace,’ she said, her voice sounding rusty as if she hadn’t used it for weeks. He gravely shook the hand she was holding out, his fingers warm, brushing against her palm just long enough that she snatched her hand back.
‘Vaughn,’ he offered, before turning back to the menu.
‘Is that your first name or your last name?’
He shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’
It didn’t really. Grace raised her glass in silent thanks before taking a sip. The bubbles, light and effervescent, evaporated on her tongue as she took three good swallows.
‘I have no idea what
fleur de sel
or
grue nougatine
are,’ he remarked conversationally as he looked at a menu. ‘Do you?’
‘
Fleur de sel
is just a fancy kind of sea salt and
grue
are pieces of roasted cocoa beans - don’t know about the
nougatine
though. I like baking,’ she added defensively as one of his eyebrows arched up because second male leads always had voluble eyebrows.
‘Shall we just have chocolate cake instead? And tea. We should definitely have tea. But not Earl Grey, it’s too watery. Darjeeling?’
Grace instinctively knew that there was no point in arguing. ‘Darjeeling’s fine,’ she said, picking up her glass again.
All he had to do was raise a finger, quietly and unobtrusively, to have the waitress breaking the world speed record and start scribbling away his order for four different kinds of chocolate cake.
Grace crossed her legs as the waitress scurried away. The champagne was fizzing its way down to her empty stomach, making her restless enough to jiggle her ankle and wonder what, exactly, she was doing here making stilted conversation in a polite voice that didn’t sound as if it belonged to her. Her stilted conversation was all used up now anyway, so Grace looked around her.
They were sitting in a room which seemed to have been imported straight from the kind of crumbling country manor that the BBC used for period dramas. There were mismatched chairs, some upholstered, some hardbacked, gathered around scratched and scarred but deeply polished tables, yet the whole effect shrieked money rather than genteel poverty. Maybe that was down to the clientèle. Grace glanced at the last stragglers from the lunch setting as they lingered over coffee and brandy as if they had all the time in the world and no recession to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all, in fact. Grace’s gaze came to rest on Liam’s crumpled pink envelope lying on the table and she couldn’t help the tiny but heartfelt sigh that leaked out of her mouth.
‘I’m glad that you’re not crying any more,’ Vaughn said, with one of those not-quite smiles. ‘If you cry on your birthday then you cry every day for the rest of the year.’
‘My grandmother used to tell me that too,’ she confided with a not-quite smile of her own. ‘Also, that it was bad luck to put new shoes on a table.’
‘I think our grandmothers must have been related. Mine was quite evangelical about the dangers of chewing too fast.’ It was freaky how he managed to affect such ease while pinning her down with that intent blue stare. ‘So, how old are you today?’
‘Twenty-three.’
When he smiled properly, Grace got an echo of what he could be. Younger, handsomer; someone that she’d get a totally inappropriate older-man crush on because he smiled as if Grace was the only other person in the world who got the joke. ‘And on the twenty-third of July? That’s very propitious. Did you know the number twenty-three is meant to have mystical qualities? There are twenty-three letters in the Greek alphabet, twenty-three seconds for blood to circulate around the body . . .’