Playing Grace (26 page)

*

Grace took a taxi back from the hotel late on Sunday afternoon, Mark’s goodbye kisses still on her lips. London was spread out around her: a swirl of twinkling lights,
silent parks, snatched views into shops and homes. This was one of those taxi rides where she felt everything was laid on purely for her pleasure – a stage set to entertain her eyes alone. She relaxed back into the seat. Two days seemed to have taken years off her shoulders. She thought of her father in her flat and there was no tightening of her chest. This week she would finally get him and her mother together and make them talk it through.

She thought of Tate. What a boy compared with Mark.

As the taxi headed over Putney Bridge, the Thames dark beneath them, all the things that had been bubbling away, threatening to boil over, seemed unimportant, like shadows on the edge of this glittering evening.

She walked along the path to the front door and opened it; almost felt she was gliding inside. Monday tomorrow – the dental surgery would be open again. She’d have to catch them to explain about the chipped paint, ask them about their holiday. She went through the fire door and up the stairs, a part of her brain telling her that she was smelling paint again and also, this time, something that made her think ‘white spirit’, and as she unlocked her own front door and pushed it open she saw her father running down the stairs towards her with a rag in his hand.

‘Now, Grace, it’s not as bad as it looks,’ he said, while his face suggested it was almost certainly worse. Still in
five-star hotel mode, Grace was slow to register that Nadim was standing further up the stairs with a bottle in his hand and another rag. If possible, the expression on his face was worse than the one on her father’s. She wondered what was in the bottle as Nadim didn’t drink and then the earlier message to her brain about paint and white spirit collided with all the other information with which she was being bombarded and she lowered her eyes to the carpet.

‘Oh my God,’ she said.

‘It’ll come good,’ Nadim assured her, getting down on his knees and rubbing at the carpet, which from the top step to the very bottom one was splashed with green paint, the pile slicked with it in some places and in others, where she presumed white spirit had been applied, rubbed into a wet, green, matted mess. On the buttercream-coloured wallpaper up both sides of the stairs, and on the paintwork, were splashes, dribbles and smears of green.

Her father was jabbering. ‘I knew they’d be back tomorrow, see, the dentists, and I thought I’d just touch up that bit of paint I damaged. Well, couldn’t get the lid off downstairs so I brought it up to get one of the knives in the kitchen to prise it off and …’

He really didn’t need to say any more. Grace guessed he’d dropped the tin on the top step.

‘I’ll pay for everything,’ he added.

‘Be fine, Grace, just need to get it treated before it dries,’ Nadim assured her again. He was still trying to rub the carpet but she could see his heart wasn’t in it. The fumes of the white spirit and the paint were making her eyes water and she wondered how long these two had been breathing it in.

‘I’m going to open some doors and windows, let out these fumes,’ she said, feeling nothing. There was paint on her stairs. They were cleaning it. That was all.

She wedged open her front door and went downstairs to do the same to the others. Her father followed her.

‘Grace—’

‘Please, Dad. Just say nothing.’

Back up in her flat, she picked her way carefully over the ruined carpet and in the kitchen found the work surfaces were not only covered with various sheaves of paper and plans, but dirty plates, glasses and coffee cups.

Her father was behind her again. ‘I was going to get this all cleared up before you came back.’ He made an ineffectual attempt to move things about. ‘Only what with the paint …’

‘The Newham Gang have been round again, have they?’

She didn’t wait for his reply but turned and went back to the top of the stairs.

‘Leave it now, Nadim,’ she called to him. ‘Go on home. Thank you for all you’ve done.’

Nadim didn’t even protest; he was down the stairs and out the door before Grace had reached her sitting room. More chaos. Bathroom? She turned round quickly and retreated. Pointless going to her bedroom, it wasn’t even hers any more.

‘Grace, love … it’ll only take a few minutes to tidy … apart from the carpet. I can—’

The storm started to break in her without her knowing it was coming.

‘Dad, I can’t keep on living like this. You and Mum know I can’t handle chaos and mess, but you keep dragging me back into it. You and Mum – your stubbornness and her stupidity. This has to stop, Dad.’ She turned on him and saw how he was shrinking away from her. ‘Tomorrow, after work, you are coming with me to Newham and we are sorting this out. I don’t care what’s going on … it ends tomorrow and you go back home.’

‘No. Can’t.’ He was shaking his head.

‘You’re not listening to me, Dad. I am losing it here. I have no bedroom. I’m not getting any sleep. I can’t use my own kitchen, it’s so messy. You’re taking over the whole flat. I need peace and quiet at home, I need order – things are very … very … difficult at work.’ Her voice
was getting louder and louder, she pulled it back. ‘This isn’t me asking, this is me telling. You and her, tomorrow. Talking.’

He shook his head again and it made her want to wound him to get him to listen. More disconcertingly, though, she had a craving for the contents of that biscuit tin in the kitchen and that realisation made her even harder on him.

‘Don’t keep saying “no”, shaking your head. We’re getting this sorted. Stand there now and tell me, tell me what she’s done this time that’s so bad you can’t forgive her. Come on.’ She pointed to the stairs. ‘Don’t you think you owe me that?’

No response.

‘Tell me now, Dad, or I’ll get Nadim back to ask him if you can go and stay there. I will throw you out, Dad, honestly I will—’

‘I caught them,’ her father said softly, his head right down. ‘In our bedroom. She had her … her bra off, he was …’ He ground to a halt and suddenly she didn’t want to wound him – she wanted to tell him it was all right, he didn’t have to say any more.

When he looked at her his eyes were brimming with tears. ‘She said he was practising his massage on her but he wasn’t, Grace. She was lying on her back.’ She saw him
swallow. ‘I’ve tried to put a brave face on it, but everyone’s got their tipping point, haven’t they? There’s only so much provocation a person can take.’

CHAPTER
23

Grace found a large note from Tate when she arrived at the office on Monday. It was so large it covered the entire surface of her desk and he’d decorated it with all kinds of curling tendrils and squiggles. It was beautiful, except for the message in large black letters in the middle.
I. O. U, Gracie
, it said,
Big Time
.

‘You been lending Tate money?’ Alistair asked.

Grace felt uneasy, knowing that Tate was going to get her back for the Esther incident, but there were so many other emotions she was experiencing at that moment, uneasy was going to have to take a ticket and join the back of the queue.

Shock at her father’s outburst had been followed by confusion, anger and then weariness. The anger was directed towards her mother; the weariness was a result of sitting for a couple of hours with her father on the sofa last night with her arm round his shoulders. He hadn’t wanted to
talk about it any more and she didn’t want to make him. When he’d limped off to bed, she had stayed up cleaning the flat, although the stairs were a job too far, even for her. She left all the windows open, shut the doors and decided to worry about it later.

Her weekend with Mark now seemed years ago, and apart from the first twinges of what might be cystitis, she had nothing to show for it. All traces of well-being, of having recharged her batteries to be able to withstand what else might come her way, had been replaced by an image of her mother lying naked on a bed with Jay Houghton massaging her breasts.

Grace filled up her cup with hot water from the kettle and thought again of her poor father and how bony his shoulders had felt under her arm last night. She was intending to ring him to see how he was this morning, but she appeared to be ringing her mother.

‘How could you?’ she said as soon as Felicity answered, which wasn’t the non-confrontational start she’d had planned either. ‘How could you do that to Dad? I mean, God knows I never understood you as a couple, but in your own weird way you’ve always worked.’

‘Now look—’

‘No, don’t you speak. Don’t you say anything at all. You just bloody well listen to me. Were you or were you not
lying half-naked on a bed with Jay Houghton and letting him … letting him … ?’

‘Letting him what? Go on, spit out whatever filth that man has told you. Wait till I tell your sisters about—’

‘He’s not
that man
 – he’s my dad and your husband, a husband who has put up with a lot from you over the years, not least your addiction to flirting. But he’s right – this has crossed the line, Mum.’

‘Oh, and he’s been a saint, has he? Haven’t I had to put up with all that crime stuff and those stupid friends of his? Him acting like he’s Gene Hunt and Sherlock Holmes all rolled into one.’

‘Whatever he’s done, it hasn’t involved lying on a bed and letting another man play with his breasts …’

Grace stopped talking, aware that Alistair was back in the office.

‘Uh, I heard shouting,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the phone. ‘It’s not a client, is it?’

Had she been shouting?

‘My mother. It’s a long story, Alistair.’

He nodded as if his life were full of long stories and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

He needn’t have bothered – when Grace held the phone back up to her ear it was silent.

Grace left early to get to the Paddwick Gallery, knowing
she was avoiding Tate and anyone else who might pop into the office. The only person she really wanted to speak to today was hundreds of years old and holding a baby, but when she arrived in front of the icon, there were too many people around. She had to settle for willing her thoughts to transmit themselves from her flesh-and-bone head to the painted one. She started to feel calmer.

She was certainly calmer than Norman, whom she passed on the way back downstairs to meet her group. Sitting by
Lady in a Robe
, he was jouncing his leg up and down as he told her that Ludmilla didn’t like the necklace he’d bought her for her birthday; said it was ‘cheap’.

‘It wasn’t, Grace.’ He looked gutted and filleted. ‘I got it in Bond Street. Well, one of the roads off Bond Street.’

‘I’m sorry, Norman.’

‘S’all right. She’s hard to please. Has high standards. Likes the best of everything.’

Grace regarded the balding Norman in his slightly too tight grey uniform and doubted if that were strictly true. She made her way to the meeting point next to Lilly on the ticket desk.

‘All right, Grace?’ Lilly said looking even more painted than usual. ‘See Norman while you were up there?’ She clicked her tongue. ‘He wants to ditch that wife, get himself a new model.’

Grace was wondering whether Lilly might like to be considered for that role because there always seemed to be a hint of petulance whenever she was discussing Norman’s wife and a lot more appearance primping, but got no further with this reasoning as she had just glimpsed a mop of blond hair through the glass of the door. Her panic subsided as she saw it belonged to the teenage son of the Dutch family she was taking round the gallery today. All five of them towered over her, were polite, ridiculously healthy looking and spoke perfect English. Grace hoisted on her professional persona and set off up the stairs with them, and as she settled into her tour she started to enjoy it, despite her mother, despite Tate, despite her flat-wrecking father. The de Janvers were knowledgeable and interested and nodded in all the right places.

A Bar at the Folies Bergère,’
she said, stopping in front of the painting and falling silent just long enough for them to take stock of it. She turned back to them and what she was going to say next disappeared from her brain. Either the de Janvers now had another blond son or Tate Jefferson had joined them. Today he had on the same pinstriped trousers he’d worn the day Grace first saw him but this time with the addition of a red T-shirt with a silver skull on it.

‘Hi,’ he said to the de Janvers. ‘Don’t mind me. Just
here for training purposes. Keeping an eye on the new girl. Carry on, Gracie,’ he added with a cheerful wave of his hand.

And then he did absolutely nothing. No smart asides, no yawning or wandering about. No examining his finger nails. He just stood there, arms crossed, chin slightly down, watching her. She’d never seen him stay still for so long and it absolutely, utterly, spooked her out.

She fumbled her way through Manet’s motivation, making such a stop–start hash of the whole thing that it would have seemed quite believable to the de Janvers that she was a beginner.

She tried not to look at Tate, but was repeatedly drawn to his eyes. She turned away and could feel his gaze like a hand on her hair, her neck, her back. Her mouth was growing dry. They moved to the next painting and he followed, but this time he tilted his head slightly as he stood and frowned. That tripped her up again, made her wonder what he was thinking when she should have concentrated on what she was saying.

As they moved on again, she hung back and got close to him.

‘Stop it,’ she said.

‘Stop what?’ He shrugged, all innocence. ‘Standing here and listening? What’s the problem? It’s a free country isn’t
it?’ He patted her on the arm. ‘Now, don’t be nervous, you’re doing OK … for a beginner. Isn’t she?’

The last question was aimed at the de Janvers family and they all said ‘yes’, except for one of the sons who did a turning ‘so-so’ motion with his hand.

Tate laughed. ‘There you go. So, what’s next?’

‘You’re going to leave. You’re going to bugger off,’ she said with as much force as she could get into a whisper and went back to stand in front of the group and talk about Van Gogh.