Unsticky (54 page)

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Authors: Sarah Manning

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‘Maybe he’s only in it for the art,’ Grace suggested doubtfully. ‘Or else he has a massive unearned income.’
 
‘His family do actually own a huge estate in Devon - can probably trace their lineage back to William the Conqueror.’
 
‘Typical,’ Grace said sourly. ‘I knew that he was just faking that Cockney accent. But if I were interested in Noah in that way, I’d flirt with his mates and give him some serious cold shoulder. That sometimes works.’
 
Vaughn made a non-committal noise, though Grace knew that first thing tomorrow morning he’d get someone to sniff around Noah’s circle to see if they had any discernible talent and didn’t object to being patronised by the Establishment.
 
‘There’s a cab going the other way!’ Grace let go of Vaughn’s hand so she could jump up and down, until the cab driver saw her and did a sharp U-turn.
 
Grace sighed gratefully when they were finally on their way back to North London. She shut her eyes, safe in the knowledge Vaughn would give directions to the driver and not rib her for drooling.
 
‘You’re not interested in Noah though, are you? Objectively speaking?’
 
Grace’s eyes snapped open. ‘No! Not objectively. Or subjectively. I’m so over that whole East London scene.’
 
‘He thinks you’re very attractive; he makes a point of mentioning it every time I see him,’ Vaughn said, with an edge to his voice. ‘And I was sure I interrupted something the night of my party. On the roof.’
 
‘It was nothing.’ Grace nudged Vaughn with her elbow because yes, she had a lot of personality defects but stringing Vaughn along while lusting after Noah wasn’t one of them. ‘He was drunk. Lola wasn’t there. He made a half-hearted pass at me for the sake of it and I politely declined. That was it.’
 
It wasn’t it. ‘He reminds me slightly of that boy I saw you with in Liberty’s the day we met. I just wondered if that was your usual type?’
 
‘Liam? They look nothing like each other!’ Grace frowned. Liam was a standard issue, snake-hipped, messy-haired indie boy who looked like all the other boys in bands who littered the pubs of Camden. Noah was an art boy and they had a whole different vibe. Grace pictured both of them in her head and was forced to admit to herself that maybe both Liam and Noah had the same cocksure swagger and arrogant charm that fooled a girl into thinking they were special. There was a time when Grace had always fallen for those boys with their careless smiles and studied disinterest and God, had they made her work for it.
 
She looked at Vaughn’s clean profile and wondered when she’d stopped thinking of him as only handsome in a certain light. ‘Maybe my type’s changed.’
 
That was definitely a loaded statement and not one Grace was prepared to elaborate on, but Vaughn just patted her knee. ‘If you promise not to dribble, I’ll let you doze on my shoulder,’ he offered magnanimously.
 
chapter twenty-eight
 
Vaughn had taken to calling Grace mid-afternoon if they weren’t going out that evening. It wasn’t a ‘Hi, I was just thinking about you’ call that couples in proper relationships made several times a day - but so they could discuss what Grace was making for dinner. The once-a-week home-made meal now happened every evening that they stayed in, and it was vital that Vaughn knew what was on the menu so he could call Gustav, his trainer, who’d adjust the next morning’s workout accordingly. Then they’d decide on the evening’s entertainment. The Ealing Films boxed set was finished and Grace was resisting all Vaughn’s entreaties for a Wim Wenders retrospective.
 
‘We don’t have to watch a DVD,’ Vaughn opined on the BlackBerry as Grace rooted through a box of costume jewellery at work. ‘If you made it worth my while then I suppose I could see
Wings of Desire
on one of the nights you’re doing something fashion-related. You still haven’t modelled the last present I bought you from Agent Provocateur.’
 
‘I’m not having that kind of conversation in the fashion cupboard,’ Grace informed him primly. ‘So, as I was saying, tonight I’m going to make a lasagne with wholewheat pasta, though it might just be salad if you insist on making me watch some boring black and white German film with subtitles.’
 
‘There’s nothing that would change your mind? I could go down on you because you seem to like that . . .’
 
There was a noise at the door and Grace turned her head to see Lily standing there.
 
‘. . . and you make this adorable breathy noise . . .’
 
‘I have to go now,’ Grace said in her most efficient phone voice, as if Vaughn was some snooty PR giving her grief about the fashion credits.
 
‘Why don’t we take a raincheck and revisit the topic this evening, with a practical demonstration?’
 
‘What
ever
. Send the car for six thirty; I’ll pop to Tesco Metro first.’
 
Lily was still standing there with a martyred look. ‘You’re wanted in Kiki’s office,’ she said, with a put-upon air because pregnant women shouldn’t have to deliver messages when there were non-pregnant interns about.
 
‘OK,’ Grace said equably. She hadn’t made her daily attempt to mend the rift so now seemed as good a time as any. ‘You look really glowy. Everything all right with the—’
 
‘Was that
him
?’
 
‘Yeah.’ Grace searched desperately for something else to say on the subject that wasn’t too controversial. ‘Just for a chat about what I’m cooking for dinner. You remember that Jamie Oliver lasagne that I customised with . . .’
 
‘You go around to his house and cook for
him
?’ Lily rubbed her burgeoning bump anxiously.
 
‘Yeah. Well, I’ve kind of moved in with him. With Vaughn. The bathroom pipes froze and the water in the toilet bowl iced up and someone still peed and turned the ice yellow,’ Grace rambled, as she carefully squeezed past Lily who was motionless in the doorway. ‘It was one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen.’
 
‘Eeew,’ leaked out of Lily’s mouth before she could rein it back in. ‘That’s disgusting.’
 
‘Vaughn has a guest sui—a spare room so I’m staying there for a bit. Hey, I saw Laetitia the other night and she asked after you.’
 
‘Oh, I haven’t seen her for ages,’ Lily said a little wistfully. But then she remembered that Grace was a terrible person who deserved all the yellow ice that God saw fit to send her way. ‘She was more your mate than mine,’ she clipped out. ‘I don’t want to get into anything with you, Gracie. I just came to give you the message.’
 
‘I know,’ Grace sighed. ‘But nice to catch up.’
 
Lily rubbed her belly again, which seemed to have replaced tugging on a silky lock of her hair as her new nervous gesture. ‘You’ve still got my blue tunic,’ she said, before beetling off to the safety of the beauty department.
 
As Grace knocked quietly on Kiki’s office door, she could feel panic welling up. What had she done wrong now? Actually she hadn’t done anything wrong in weeks, which meant that Kiki must have been saving up all Grace’s minor transgressions for one gigantic bollocking.
 
‘You wanted to see me?’ Grace stood at the door and tried hard not to shake, as Kiki, Lucie and Courtney all stared at her like she’d had a spider’s web tattooed on to her face during her lunch-hour.
 
‘We have a problem,’ Kiki purred, and it was hard to judge what kind of mood she was in, though there was a cut-glass tumbler on her desk that would make a really good missile. ‘And for once, you’re actually the solution, hard as it is to believe.’
 
‘I am?’ Grace stood in front of Kiki’s desk with her hands behind her back so no one could see her twisting her fingers nervously. ‘Do you need me to call something in?’
 
‘It’s Nadja Stasova - we’re trying to book her for the main May fashion story, but her agency says that she’ll only shoot for
Vogue.
’
 
Grace pressed her lips together so she didn’t start smiling. Nadja was constantly filling Grace in on her plans for total world domination and how they didn’t include shooting for magazines without international editions. ‘Is a waste of time if they not syndicate the pictures,’ she’d sniffed after snubbing the Editor of an American magazine at an opening in New York.
 
‘That’s a shame,’ Grace said, trying to sound surprised. ‘Do you want me to start pulling in comp cards for other girls with a similar look?’
 
‘No, Grace, I don’t,’ Kiki said irritably. ‘My sources tell me that you know this jumped-up little tart socially.’
 
Yes, but she lets me call her Nadja.
‘Well, yeah, her boyfriend knows um . . . mine . . .’ Grace ground to a halt as she always did when she tried to define exactly what Vaughn was, but Kiki’s glare had managed to circumvent the Botox and was making her look positively demonic. A casual observer would never have guessed that only a few hours before, she’d been giving Grace a tutorial on cleavage and cocktail dresses. ‘We’ve hung out a few times.’
 
‘You have her personal number?’
 
Nadja had programmed it into Grace’s BlackBerry under H for hot bitch. ‘I don’t know her that well,’ Grace lied, because when her Vaughn life merged with her
Skirt
life, things always got complicated. ‘Maybe you could try her booker again.’
 
Kiki didn’t even blink. ‘You phone her right now and get her to agree to the shoot and I’ll let you style an advertorial. She’s just bagged the new Prada campaign and they’re making noises about only advertising with
Elle
and
Vogue
this year.’
 
It wasn’t like Kiki to offer Grace any sweeteners. She was obviously desperate. Grace was all set to give serious phone, when she remembered Vaughn telling her that she had to make the most of opportunities that came her way, and this was an opportunity with a caps lock O.
 
Grace surreptitiously wiped her sweating palms on her arse, because hadn’t Vaughn also said that she was crap at follow-through? ‘I don’t mind phoning Nadja, but I’d really like to style the pictures for the Hot Trends pages.’ She tried to say this without a hint of anything that might sound like whining.
 
Kiki picked up the tumbler thoughtfully and Grace instinctively ducked but she just took a sip of water, then placed it safely back on its coaster. ‘Are you trying to blackmail me, Grace?’
 
‘No! I just . . . I thought . . .’
 
‘I’m not letting you loose on actual models. You can shoot the accessories still-lifes for Snapshot and if you get Nadja Stasova, I’ll let you assist and give you a styling credit.’ She tapped her lacquered nails on the desk. ‘Of course, if you don’t get Nadja then that’s a whole other conundrum, isn’t it?’
 
But it turned out that when Grace phoned Nadja, she was in the midst of a very long hair appointment and only too happy to hear from ‘my little Gracie with the coloured tights’.
 
Grace had to suffer a long diatribe about how the girl doing Nadja’s hair had taken four attempts before she managed to mix the dye to the exact shade on the swatch Nadja had supplied, until it was time to plead, implore, and if that failed, cry loud noisy tears. Sometimes Grace found that having no dignity worked really well.
 
‘I get the cover, yes?’ Nadja wanted to know.
 
‘Well, no, but it’s the main fashion story, twenty pages, and we’re shooting in Barcelona. We can hang out and drink Sangria and go shopping.’
 
Grace heard Nadja snapping at someone. ‘They have Cavalli in Barcelona?’
 
‘Lots of very cool shops and a great vintage market.’ Grace tried to seal the deal.
 
‘I never wear second-hand clothes. Make sure they fly me first class and I have best room in best hotel. We share and have a sleepover.’
 
Grace didn’t know whether to feel elated or scared. ‘You’ll do it then?’
 
‘Call my booker and she tell you my new day rate. Is very expensive. And Sergei and me we in London soon so you take me out to the cool places. I go now before this bitch ruins my hair.
Ciao
, like they say in Spain.’
 
Later, when Grace told Vaughn, he laughed and pinched her cheek. ‘See? I knew you had it in you.’ He was all smiles like she’d just discovered the next Damien Hirst. ‘Leave it a couple of months and I’ll give you some pointers on demanding a promotion and a pay rise.’
 
‘I might cock up my shoots,’ she said hastily. ‘Probably will. Kiki’s so picky about still-lifes and I’m going to have to juggle Lucie and Nadja when we—’

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