Playing Grace (22 page)

She shook her head.

‘Anything to eat?’

‘No.’

‘Like a spin in my chair?’

‘Thank you. No. I’m quite comfortable here.’

‘Don’t look comfortable. Look kinda under siege. Want me to take all those rocks and stones and build a wall around you?’

‘Not at all. Nice to have some life around the place.’

‘I’ll get Joe to bring in his electric guitar next time then.’

She did an approximation of a giggle and he watched her and twisted his mouth. It was a movement that made it clear he knew there was nothing real about the sound she’d just made.

He strolled over and perched on the desk, still holding his coffee cup. ‘Sure you don’t want me to build a wall round you?’ He dropped his voice. ‘Keep you safe?’

‘Safe? No, and by the way, it’s lovely, your … installation.’

He grinned. ‘Really? You like it?’

‘It’s … intriguing.

He slapped his leg and hooted with laughter. The genuine kind. ‘Intriguing is good, Gracie. So, whaddya think it means?’

‘Does it have to mean anything?’

He put his cup down. ‘Nope. But in this case it does. It’s kind of a metaphor for our relationship.’

Grace didn’t like the way he was looking at her now. Too much warmth. Too close.

‘I see.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You
see
as in you understand, or you
see
as in “oh no, what’s he gonna say now?”’

She couldn’t stop herself from smiling at that and she received a smile back from him that made some longdormant nerve endings perk up.

‘I should really be getting on with—’

‘These,’ he nodded at the nearest cairn, ‘these little mountains represent an uphill struggle.’

‘Fascinating,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Now, if you’ll just—’

‘’Cos that’s how it feels with you, Gracie. Even having a conversation is an uphill struggle. But maybe it will get better because, see, every now and again, the rocks in these little mountains move of their own accord. Someone slams a door downstairs, a floorboard settles and down come a few more.’

‘That’s very Zen,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘But what happens if someone keeps putting the rocks back on the piles?’

Why had she said the very thing that would make him come forward instead of backing off? Immediately she felt him take her hand.

‘Yeah, I noticed that, Gracie,’ he said, a wry expression making his eyes seem full of light. He rubbed one of her fingers. ‘You’ve been caught red-handed messing with the
artwork. I’m guessing you got gold paint on your fingers and tried to scrub it off.’ He made a regretful little noise. ‘Looks sore. Use the toothbrush in the kitchen?’

‘Nailbrush in my drawer.’ She hadn’t meant to say that.

‘Thorough,’ he said, his mouth curving up into one of those fond smiles that told her that was a compliment.

She was aware of how his thigh was only inches from her other hand and how he might as well have had a sign on his body saying,
Do Not Touch. Danger of Burning
. Or maybe it should read,
Crashing and Burning
.

He was still gently rubbing her fingers, but it was beginning to feel increasingly like a caress and her heart was throwing itself against her ribcage. She wished he’d let her hand go, but seemed unable to move any part of her body to make that happen. Now he was looking at her fingers as if they were the most miraculous things he’d ever seen, and she suddenly became terrified that he might lift her hand to his lips and kiss the sore patches, and she feared if he did that the rocks on those small mountains would all fall at once and possibly the windows would crack and a huge great dark gust of wind would blow into the office, whirling everyone and everything around like a scene out of
The Wizard of Oz
 …

Except none of those things happened because he was lowering her hand and looking towards the door, and as
Grace saw it open, Bebbie appeared carrying in some cups. Grace put both her hands on her keyboard and typed
Tohgjskt hsuddu
and tried not to think of that stabbingly regretful look Tate had given her just before he let her hand go.

The expression on Bebbie’s face suggested she was not happy with Tate sitting on Grace’s desk and not particularly happy that Grace knew how to breathe either.

‘Three more coffees,’ she said to Grace, peevishly plonking the cups down on the desk next to her arm. Bebbie’s hand then went to Tate’s thigh and gave it a rub.

‘Come on, Tate, we’re just discussing the Hockney retrospective. We need you.’

With enough allure lavished on every word to power a small massage parlour, Bebbie’s inference was clear: I
need you Tate and later I’ll show you just how much … so stop wasting time in here and let Miss Boring make the coffee
.

Somehow the coffee cups that had been on Grace’s desk were now on the floor. Grace resisted the urge to rub her elbow.

‘There’s a slight tilt on this desk,’ she said. ‘Should have warned you.’

She was going to stand up, but Tate beat her to it. He held his own cup of coffee out for her to take. ‘Better keep
a grip on that, Gracie, don’t want that sliding about too. First my chair, now the cups.’ She had no choice but to take the cup from him, although it looked as if Bebbie would have fought her for it, and then he was bending down, picking up the ones on the floor.

‘You go on out, Bebbie,’ he said. ‘Just gonna get those coffees.’ He soon had his back to Bebbie again, busy over at the coffee jar.

Grace made an effort at least to look as if she were composing an email in a vain attempt to avoid thinking about what he’d just said and done and what she’d just felt, and how the thing with the cups was exactly what she’d been afraid of – a lapse into her old ways, a flash of rebellion.

Looking at her email also meant she didn’t have to watch the embarrassing sight of Bebbie still loitering in the room. She could hear her, though, advancing on Tate again, picking up his cup, offering to carry one of the other ones. Grace did a quick check despite intending not to. Yes, Bebbie was lavishing all kinds of doe-eyed looks on him.

When they both finally left the room, Grace felt as if a boulder had been lifted off the top of her head. Or a small cairn. She looked at them and grimaced.

She wanted to close the door on all that life in reception, but knew it would appear too antisocial. She thought back
to that awkward scene over the coffee-making and wondered whether this kettle wasn’t turning into some kind of magnet for tension and uncertainty, even if, unlike its predecessor, it didn’t fuse all the lights. She remembered the way she had misunderstood Alistair asking what she thought of it, and her mother watching Tate bending over it. And then, this morning, when she had arrived early to an empty office, she had found it still warm. Which could only mean that Alistair had been in earlier and disappeared out again. Particularly confusing behaviour as when he did appear later, just before Grace set off for her tour, he was chuntering on about how bad the trains had been that morning, that’s why he was late. Lying, locking himself in his office, coming in early, not mentioning it – it all pointed to him doing something underhand.

And Grace was meeting Emma tomorrow with all those suspicions in her mind.

She turned back to her email:

Dear Aurillia, Zin and Serafina,

I am no nearer to finding out what caused Dad to leave home, but Mum popped in earlier in the week. She is planning on setting up a business from home – massage, reflexology, yoga, that kind of thing – and her partner in this business will be Jay Houghton. I gave her some advice regarding loans, etc. Talked to Dad about it and he was not very forthcoming, but did give me the impression that …

Grace hesitated. If she wrote something like
he is afraid Mum is not being objective
, it would elicit a three-pronged lecture from her sisters, who had largely cast objectivity aside to make all their major life decisions based on listening to their inner voice. She settled for
he is afraid Mum is not considering all the implications
and, after adding a few more lines enquiring after Zin’s partners and Serafina’s children, sent it. Out there in California and India and the Philippines, she hoped alarm bells would start to ring without her forcibly having had to press the button. Then again, she might just get the usual deluge of huggy-feely claptrap back. Well, that got you nowhere. Actually it did – it was the kind of thing that made you stumble into situations that ripped your heart out of your chest and turned you into something scummy and flaky until you damaged everything around you, including yourself.

She wrote another quick email asking them to reply as soon as possible because she knew that would annoy them, and jabbed at the ‘Send’ button as if she wished it actual harm.

All of this could have been avoided if Felicity would accept that she was no longer the captivating wild child of her youth but, in fact, a grandmother. Please, God, let this whole thing be a storm in a teacup, one of Felicity’s habitual infatuations that blew itself out after a welter of flirting, inappropriate hugging and not much else. As all four sisters agreed, these things were largely done to reignite their father’s interest. But him being reignited usually took the form of a mini-break in the New Forest, not this latest crisis.

Grace heard the outer door open and close a few times and each time the noise of music and chatter in reception lessened. Soon it had died away altogether. Where was Tate? She went out to find him asleep on the sofa, surrounded by all the mess he had helped create.

She remembered another room with plates of dried-out food balanced on top of tubes of paint. Glasses with the dregs of red wine still in them. Cigarette butts in ashtrays, each tipped with a kiss of that pink lipstick she used to wear. All that mess, and another blond guy right at the centre of it.

‘Penny for them,’ Tate said, still with his eyes closed, and she scuttled back to her office wondering how long he’d been watching her and just what her face had been doing.

Her bottom had only just connected with the seat when, in quick succession, she took a phone call from her father and one from her mother. Her father wanted to know if he could have the Newham Gang round, just for a couple of hours, and did she have any superglue? He’d had a small incident with one of her kitchen chairs but he was optimistic that with a dab of glue it would be as right as rain.

She said yes to the Newham Gang and no to the super-glue.

Her mother wanted to know whom she should talk to at the council about running a business from home, and when Grace said it would probably be the planning officer but shouldn’t Jay be helping with some of this stuff, her mother accused her of being ‘snippy’ and said she was going to send her a crystal which she should put on her forehead at night to redress her negative impulses. Felicity then showed a few of her own by putting the phone down in the middle of Grace trying to tell her she’d emailed her other daughters.

When the phone rang again, Grace snatched it up ready to begin Part II of Grace versus Felicity, only to hear Gilbert’s voice.

‘First thing, dear girl: Vi would like you to come to tea. Yes, I know, bolt from the blue and she’s up to something, but if you could oblige … And second thing, fancy running
away? I’m in the vicinity, haven’t had my lunch yet so was going to go to Acar’s. Come join me, Grace, hmm? I would drop by and scoop you up but Bernice the beast may see me. Come on Grace, what do you say?’

‘Yes to Violet, I’d love to see her, though it’ll have to be after the weekend and … just a minute,’ Grace put down the phone and quietly closed the door before talking to Gilbert again. ‘I think I could slip away to Acar’s too. Fifteen to twenty minutes, I’ll be there. Why not?’

Why not indeed? Hadn’t she just spent her lunch break babysitting Tate and his tour? Now he could look after the office for a while.

She turned on the answering machine and gathered up her coat. She’d need to make it clear to Tate that he couldn’t go out and leave the office unlocked. And remind him that that cabinet might come today. But what if he were fast asleep?

He wasn’t. He wasn’t even there. Neither was any of the mess.

She did a quick check to see if he’d just thrown everything behind the sofa, feeling pretty stupid even while doing it.

‘Tate?’ she said quietly, and then went to Alistair’s room and through to the kitchen. She opened the bin and saw the bags and plates and bits of pastry.

She went back to reception and examined the carpet. It was free of all but the smallest crumbs and the table was wet as if he’d wiped it with a cloth.

How had he done that so quickly and where had he gone now?

She locked up behind her and went down the stairs, leaving the key with Bernice just in case the cabinet arrived while she was out, and as she walked towards Acar’s she gave herself a good talking-to. Tate had just been winding her up with all that stuff about rocks and that hand-holding. Now her father had put superglue in her mind, she made a mental note to buy some after lunch and glue all those ruddy rocks into one great big immovable pile several feet high.

CHAPTER
19

Gilbert was sitting outside at Acar’s, chewing his way robustly through lamb
güveç
when Grace arrived. There was a large glass of red wine in front of him, plus a bottle of lager, half-drunk by the looks of it.

‘Mixing your drinks?’ she said, sitting down and wishing that they could go inside today. She rearranged her scarf so there were no bits of bare neck exposed and thought she might join Gilbert in choosing something hot to eat. She had just picked up the menu when there was a huge guffaw of laughter from one of the other tables and she turned to see a group of men huddled around a backgammon board. Nothing unusual about that, except that Tate was with them and, as she watched, he stood up and rubbed his hand back and forth over his mouth. She caught a glimpse of his smile.

‘Yeah, well done, Ekrem,’ he said, putting his hand in the pockets of his jacket. ‘Cleaned me out again.’ There
was more laughter as Tate dramatically pulled at the linings of his pockets.