Unsticky (42 page)
Authors: Sarah Manning
‘You have brought proper cold weather gear with, haven’t you?’ Vaughn asked, giving Grace’s Burberry coat a disapproving look.
She had. For London cold weather, which now seemed like a tropical heatwave compared to the icy hinterlands of British Columbia. As they cleared the airport, all Grace could see out of the window was pitch-black night and white snow heaped as far as the horizon. ‘I have lots of stuff I can layer,’ she improvised. ‘And I can hire a ski suit.’
Grace was saved from the inevitable lecture by Vaughn’s BlackBerry. He spent the rest of the two-hour drive to Whistler on the phone, getting increasingly ratty as he tried to track down a painting that had last been seen in a packing crate in Berlin airport.
By the time they got to the hotel - yet another modernist, upscale boutique - his face was set in a painful-looking grimace. Even the unctuous reception they got from the hotel manager only managed to downgrade it to a scowl.
‘This will do,’ he remarked tersely, when the door shut behind a kow-towing porter and they were alone in a two-bedroom loft suite. He was already unzipping his laptop bag and checking the wi-fi access.
Absolutely no idea of priorities, Grace thought as she found the tea bags she’d stashed in a Ziploc and put the kettle on in the fully fitted kitchen. She walked back into the lounge and shuddered. The fire was roaring away but simply looking at the glittering white view from the big picture windows set her shivering.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ she asked Vaughn and got a nod in reply.
There was milk in the fridge but not much in the way of food. Grace tore open a carton of raisins, gave Vaughn his tea and began to unpack.
She was just hanging up the last dress, when she felt Vaughn’s hands around her waist. ‘Dinner in or shall we go out?’ he asked, kissing her ear.
Grace could feel the beginnings of a really promising hard-on against her buttocks and Vaughn’s hands were already creeping up to cup her breasts. For once, she wasn’t turning into a puddle of formerly Grace-shaped gloop because the mere thought of getting naked and exposing her body to the elements made her shiver again.
Vaughn mistook the shiver for incipient lust and gently but firmly turned her around. Grace knew that she had to stop behaving like the soggiest of blankets just because her mother issues were still unresolved and it was a bit nippy outside. ‘I don’t mind ordering in,’ she husked, though that was less about sounding seductive and more that her throat was still dry.
‘Good girl,’ Vaughn murmured, and it was the nicest thing he’d said to her in days so Grace leaned up for a kiss.
The moment that his tongue slid between her lips, Grace’s head started to swim. Not in the usual swoony way that meant her insides were getting ready to melt but more like fainting was a possibility. All of a sudden, Vaughn’s arms were holding her up rather than holding her tight as Grace slumped against him.
‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded sharply, touching a warm hand to her forehead which, if it was anything like the rest of her, felt cold and clammy.
‘Nothing, I’m OK,’ Grace said quickly, as the world came back into focus. ‘I’m probably just hungry from missing dinner on the plane.’ She punctuated the sentence with a sneeze that morphed into a cough, which did nothing to ease the tickle in her throat.
‘Are you going down with something?’ Vaughn asked suspiciously, as if Grace was feeling peaky out of sheer wilfulness.
‘I’m fine, really,’ Grace assured him, swallowing down another cough. ‘It’s just the change in climate and sleeping too long. Get a hot meal inside me and I’ll be back to my usual chipper self.’
‘You’re many things, Grace, but chipper has never been one of them.’ Vaughn took her arm and led her back into the lounge as if she was an elderly relative who might keel over and break a hip if left unattended.
After a gourmet pizza that had shaved parmesan on it instead of the unidentifiable stringy cheese that Grace was used to, she went to bed.
Grace could have sworn that she didn’t sleep at all. She spent the night on a constant repeat cycle of burning sweats, then convulsions as too hot suddenly became so cold that it felt like her blood had been replaced with liquid nitrogen. She must have dropped into a fitful doze at some stage, because she woke when suddenly the drapes were wrenched back, throwing beams of blinding sunlight across the bed. It felt like a million pointy implements stabbing at her cranium.
‘Go away,’ she croaked in a voice that was barely audible.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Vaughn was already dressed in an immaculate YSL charcoal suit, which made Grace feel even more like something that had been chewed up and spat out. She sat up, despite the painful protest of her aching muscles and pushed a lank lock of hair out of her eyes.
‘I’m dying!’ She flopped back and put her hands over her eyes to block out the light. ‘Seriously, I think I’ve got flu.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Vaughn crisply. ‘Probably just a head cold. You’ll feel much better once you’ve had a shower.’
That was obviously meant to be Grace’s cue to shake a leg but she curled up under the duvet. ‘I can’t.’
But she could for the simple reason that Vaughn pulled back the quilt, yanked a hand under her arm and hauled her up on to her own very unsteady feet. ‘I don’t need this today of all days. I let you have a lie-in. Now you’ve got two hours to get ready for this lunch. I don’t need to tell you how important it is.’
Because he’d already spent hours doing just that - in mind-numbing detail. Vaughn made an impatient sound in the back of his throat as Grace stumbled to the bathroom, clinging to pieces of furniture as she went.
Grace sat on the floor of the walk-in shower as she washed and conditioned her hair and figured that her body was clean enough from the shampoo to skip the soap part and move on to levering herself to the vertical position and slathering on moisturiser.
‘What’s taking so long?’ Vaughn called, rapping sharply on the door. ‘I want to go over some notes with you.’
‘Go away,’ Grace hissed to herself. ‘Why can’t you just leave me alone?’ She tucked a towel around her and shuffled back into the bedroom to find Vaughn rifling through her wardrobe.
‘Maybe this,’ he decided, tossing her beloved Marc Jacobs frock on the bed with scant regard for its designer status. ‘Or maybe this.’ A purple Uniqlo sweater dress followed it.
Grace sank down on the nearest chair and huddled deeper into her towel. ‘Vaughn, will you listen to me?’ she said in a raspy whisper. ‘I’m ill. Something is very, very wrong with me.’
Finally her words penetrated. Vaughn strode over, face squinched up like he thought she was faking and pressed a hand to her forehead. ‘You’re very cold,’ he announced. He peered at her curiously. To show willing, Grace stuck out her tongue and croaked out an ‘Aaaahhh,’ that sounded like someone trying to kickstart a motorbike.
‘When did you last have a flu jab?’
‘Um, sometime like never.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Vaughn whipped out his BlackBerry, stabbed at a couple of buttons and waited to be connected. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you sort out Grace’s flu jab?’ Grace looked on in amazement as he proceeded to give Madeleine Jones a vitriolic tongue-lashing, the likes of which even Kiki had never been able to achieve.
‘Vaughn! It’s Christmas Eve. Stop shouting at her.’ Grace paused to cough - a wet phlgemy rattle that didn’t stop even when Vaughn held his phone to her face.
‘Can you hear that?’ he ranted. ‘Does that sound like a little chill? I want a doctor here in ten minutes or you can start the New Year by looking for a new job.’
Vaughn was done ranting. Grace threw off her towel as the hot flush started and watched him cause havoc in her drawers as he rummaged through her underwear. She had a horrible feeling that she knew where this was going.
‘Put these on!’ he ordered, throwing bra and knickers at her, followed by a pair of tights. ‘Where’s your hair dryer?’
‘I can’t go,’ she protested weakly, even as she hooked an ankle into her Coco Ribbon panties.
‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Vaughn snapped, crouching down to help her. Desperation was not a good look on him. And he was much, much better at getting Grace out of her clothes, than into them. She was leaning against him as he pulled the sweater dress over her head when they heard a knock on the door.
‘Doctor,’ Vaughn said eagerly, rushing to answer the summons, as Grace tugged at purple wool that was going to slowly boil her insides. She collapsed back in the chair, strangely calm now because Vaughn would have to listen to a trained medical professional.
The doctor looked too young to be a trained medical anything. Grace suspected that he mostly strapped sprained ankles and referred more serious skiing injuries to the nearest hospital. Still, he shoved a thermometer in Grace’s mouth, shone a light in her eyes and ears and throat and passed judgement. ‘Flu,’ he diagnosed succinctly. ‘I’ll prescribe you an anti-inflammatory but really you need bed rest and lots of fluid. Guess you won’t be skiing this vacation.’
Grace smiled wanly and gave up a silent Hallelujah. ‘Guess not.’
‘But she’s well enough to attend a little lunch-party,’ Vaughn insisted forcefully. ‘It’s flu. It’s not as if she has pneumonia.’
‘Well, flu can be pretty serious . . .’ the doctor, and Grace’s current favourite person in the world, started to say, when Vaughn put a heavy hand on his shoulder.
‘Can I have a word in private?’ he asked in that silky smooth voice he always used when he was trying to persuade Grace to do something she wasn’t sure about, whether it was ordering dessert or letting him bind her wrists to his bedposts.
Grace decided to dry her hair while the doctor told Vaughn in no uncertain terms that whatever he was proposing was against the Hippocratic Oath.
Vaughn returned on his own and with cheeks so flushed that Grace wondered if his own flu jab was up to date. ‘You look much better,’ he insisted, like if he said it then it had to be true. ‘Now, let’s get some war paint on.’
‘What’s the point? I’m not allowed to go, the doctor said.’ It was really hard to sound authoritative when you had to choke at the end of each sentence.
Vaughn crouched down again to take her hands in his as he gazed at her so unwaveringly that Grace didn’t even dare to blink. ‘I’ve booked a car so you’ll only be outside for a matter of seconds and when we come back here, I’ll hire you a nurse, find you Lemsip - anything you want. But I need you to do this one thing for me, Grace.’ He gave her hands a gentle shake as she tried to protest. ‘You’re going to be fine. The doctor left a little something to make you feel better. But put some make-up on first.’
‘What is it?’ Grace asked warily, but she knew that she was going to lunch, probably with some black market flu remedy in her, because Vaughn’s force was far greater than her resistance. Besides, she didn’t have any fight left in her. It took all her last reserves of strength to dab on a little highlighter and some lipgloss. The finished effect screamed crack whore.
‘I suppose you’ll have to do,’ Vaughn sighed, surreptitiously producing what looked like a yellow pen from his breast-pocket. ‘This will only hurt for a second,’ he added, as he flicked off the top and grabbed Grace’s leg in a tight grip.
‘What wi . . . Fuck! What did you just do to me?’ Grace gasped as she gave a sudden jolt, just like Uma in
Pulp Fiction
. She could feel her heart flipping over several times as the blood surged through her veins.
Pulp Fiction
. She could feel her heart flipping over several times as the blood surged through her veins.
Vaughn didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed as he threw the empty syringe at the wastepaper basket. It missed. ‘Just an adrenalin shot,’ he murmured. ‘It will give you some pep.’
Grace felt like she was having a heart attack - it was all she could do to take in huge gulps of air and listen to the faint gurgle of the central heating and stare at the patterns in the deep pile of the carpet, because as an added side-effect she had surround sound and extra-sensory vision now. It felt a lot like her one and only foray into acid and that hadn’t ended at all well.
But then she could move, picking up her handbag and stuffing some tissues in it, grabbing lipstick and lozenges, and the effort no longer made her want to puke.
‘See? You’re feeling better already,’ Vaughn looked out of the window. ‘I think that’s our car.’
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