Grace took a deep breath because Lily had provided her with the perfect opener. ‘You remember that guy I met in Liberty’s on my birthday who bought me the Marc Jacobs bag?’
Lily nodded. And kept on nodding. Then Lily stopped nodding and her eyes widened comically as Grace got to the part where, ‘So we have this arrangement where I’m kind of his official escort. Like, how famous gay guys have beards except he’s not famous or gay. How can I explain this? It’s dating but with benefits.’
‘How long has this been going on and why are you telling me about it now?’ Lily sat back and folded her arms, which wasn’t exactly encouraging.
‘I’ll get to that in a minute,’ Grace said, and the only way to do this was quickly, like ripping off a plaster super-fast so it only hurt for a second. Though she wasn’t entirely sure if quick was for Lily’s benefit or her own.
‘Lils, I can’t make the wedding. I won’t even be at my gran’s for Christmas. Vaughn’s got a really important lunch on the twenty-fourth in Canada and I have to be there. But I can still help you with all the planning. It’s just the wedding itself that’s going to be a problem.’
Lily slammed her glass of carrot and pear juice down so hard that Grace flinched. ‘What? What? What the fuck are you talking about?’
Grace summed up her agreement with Vaughn in a few pithy lines, stressing the benefits of foreign travel and parties, which Lily would appreciate, and glossing over contracts and really bloody-minded older men, which she wouldn’t. ‘I know it’s a lot to take in.’ Grace reached out to touch Lily’s arm but she slapped Grace’s hand away, as the people sharing their table turned and stared. Served them right for communal dining.
‘I can’t believe you’d do this to me!’ Lily shouted, tears streaking her mascara. ‘You’ve ruined my wedding day because you’re a skanky, disgusting bitch who fucks men for money and I hate you.’
Then they were thrown out of Wagamama.
Grace tried to reason with Lily all the way back to the office because Lily was too scared to run in heels now that she was pregnant and couldn’t get away from her. ‘C’mon, Lils. It’s not the end of the world. You’ll still have a special and romantic day and I’ll be there with you right up to the twenty-second.’
‘Fuck right off,’ Lily said in a cold tight voice. ‘You’ve been lying to me for weeks, haven’t you? Making me feel sorry for you because you had to get a part-time job when basically you’ve pretty much become a prostitute.’
Lily stopped crying, just as Grace started. ‘I’m not. That’s not at all what it’s like.’ Grace grabbed hold of Lily’s coat-sleeve so she could force her friend to a halt. ‘He pays me to act as his hostess, not to sleep with him.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Lily snorted in disbelief. ‘You’re screwing someone you hardly even know, Grace! He’s put you on a salary. It’s the skeeviest thing I’ve ever heard. How could you?’
‘You’re not listening to me! The screwing and the money are completely separate from each other.’
‘Yeah, it really sounds like that,’ Lily said icily, her nostrils flaring. ‘God, what the fuck is wrong with you, Grace? It’s like you can’t do anything normal.’
‘It is normal. Girls do this all the time,’ Grace protested. ‘What about when big Julie was going out with that really horrible DJ just because he’d fly her out to Ibiza every weekend over the summer? You didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. You laughed about it!’
‘That was different,’ Lily said quickly. ‘She said he was really funny once you got to know him.’
‘Yeah, that was why she dumped his funny arse the moment that his residency finished,’ Grace snapped before she could stop herself, because she didn’t have any right to get angry at Lily, not when she was bailing on Lily’s wedding day and sending her blood pressure sky high, which couldn’t be good for the baby. ‘And what about Dan? He does nothing but mooch off you. He sure as hell doesn’t work for a living.’
‘Dan’s a web designer . . .’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought he sat on his arse all day playing computer games.’
‘You’ve never understood how me and Dan work because you’re incapable of being in a proper relationship,’ Lily informed Grace, patches of red staining her face. Even as Grace gasped in shock it occurred to her that if she and Lily weren’t such good friends then they wouldn’t know exactly what to say to cause maximum hurt. Though that wasn’t much comfort right now, but it was just what she needed to remind her to rein in her temper. She was in the wrong here. Elbow deep in the wrong.
‘Look, Lily, I was going to tell you right from the start but you’d just got engaged and then you found out you were pregnant. And the longer I left it, the harder it got to tell you, because—’
‘Because I would never do what you’re doing, but then I guess I have a stronger moral code than you - not that it’s hard.’
Grace was still holding on to Lily’s sleeve; now she clutched her arm even tighter. ‘We’ve both had one-night stands so don’t you dare try and pull that crap on me. Vaughn’s all right - we’re not having the love affair of all time but we get on, most of the time.’
‘Well, you kind of have to when he’s paying you. God, why can’t you just stop shopping and save some money so you can pay off your own credit cards? If you can’t afford stuff, then just don’t buy it,’ Lily said sanctimoniously, trying to shake Grace off though she was clinging on for dear life.
Grace let go. And she wasn’t going to get angry with Lily - not when she was going to get absolutely bloody furious instead. ‘You have no fucking idea what it’s like to try and manage on your own,’ she shouted, rage bubbling up and spilling over so Lily took a step back from the twisted expression on Grace’s face. ‘No, you’d never do something like this because you don’t have to. You’ve never had to solve your own problems because your dad’s always there to bail out his precious little darling. Well, I don’t have that luxury - and if you didn’t have Daddy funding you, you’d be in way worse debt than me.’
‘I don’t have problems?’ Lily screamed back, her face red with rage as she pointed at her stomach. ‘I’m pregnant and the one person I need is too busy fucking some dodgy old bloke to come to my wedding. You could have said no to him, Grace. You could have finished it, but you chose him over me! Well, I hope all the dresses and stuff he gives you for spreading your legs is worth it.’
The argument was running away from them, careering out of control as they stood on a narrow Soho street shrieking at each other as people had to step into the road to get round them. Grace tried to take a deep breath and calm the hell down because this was Lily and they would get over this, they’d carry on being best friends for ever because—
‘You know what you are, Grace? You’re a fucking slag,’ Lily spat, and it was the single worst thing ever to call your best friend. It wouldn’t have hurt as much if Lily had called her a C U Next Tuesday, and it meant that calming the hell down wasn’t an option any more.
‘And you know what your problem is, princess? You can’t handle the fact that I’m not your sidekick any more. I’m going out and doing exciting things and being flown all over the world and I have a £3,000 Marc Jacobs dress . . .’
‘Yeah - and what did you have to do to get it? I bet—’
‘And you’re pregnant and you’re getting married and you know that your life is over, so don’t take it out on me!’ As soon as the words came tumbling out of her mouth, Grace realised that she wasn’t just saying them as payback but that she actually meant them. Had been thinking it for months.
‘Oh, fuck you, Gracie,’ Lily hissed, and she might have been pregnant but she was still perfect, so when she stuck out her hand a black cab immediately came to a halt beside her in a furious grinding of its gears.
‘We are done. I’m never speaking to you again, not after what you’ve just said.’
‘Yeah, but you said—’
But Lily was slamming the cab door
and she’d obviously told the driver that she’d tip him extra if he lead-footed it because he took off with an audible squeal, leaving Grace standing there.
It took half an hour to walk back to work, smoking five cigarettes in quick succession because Grace had this awful feeling that she and Lily were broken beyond repair. She couldn’t begin to imagine how they could work their way back from this, and she wasn’t sure she even wanted to after the things Lily had said. Horrible, hateful things that were forcing Grace to confront all the aspects of life with Vaughn that she tried not to think about any more. Because Lily hadn’t said anything to her that Grace hadn’t thought herself when Vaughn first propositioned her - and the ugliest truth of all was that she hadn’t even considered telling Vaughn to stuff his arrangement. Not even during their fight in Miami when he’d spelled out her duties. Leaving him simply hadn’t been an option. Or maybe leaving his money hadn’t been an option, Grace wasn’t sure.
There was no opportunity to dwell on this when she got back to the office. Lily was still crying, the other beauty girls crowded around her, but they all looked up as Grace walked through the door and she was surprised that she didn’t immediately shrivel up and die from the condemning looks being thrown her way. Meanwhile, Maggie, the Beauty Director, was slipping out of Kiki’s office just in time to send Grace a glare of utter loathing.
The effort nearly killed her, but Grace reached for the nearest box-file and started sorting invoices. Or rather she made three piles of invoices on her desk just for something to do as the beauty department must have told the art desk, who’d told the subs, who’d passed it on to the features team who’d filled in the fashion girls. Everyone was staring at Grace’s reddening face, although Posy had just sent her an email with the subject heading: OMG!!! We HAVE to talk!!!
‘I can’t believe it,’ Grace heard Bunny hiss in a fierce whisper. ‘I mean, Grace isn’t even that pretty.’
Grace heard Kiki’s door open behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Maggie sweep back down to the beauty department where Lily was still sobbing, but in this muted, understated way that would have tugged at the heart of an Al Qaeda suicide bomber.
‘Grace. In my office now.’
There wasn’t one solitary sympathetic look as Grace got up and shuffled to where Kiki was standing in the doorway. She let Grace sidle past her, then slammed the door.
‘Take off the boots,’ was Kiki’s opening salvo, which wasn’t what Grace had been expecting.
‘Um, why?’ Grace mumbled, folding her arms behind her back, like she used to when she was called in front of her old headmistress.
‘Because I told you to,’ Kiki said coolly.
Grace knew that arguing would be futile. Awkwardly balancing on one leg, she unzipped a boot and carefully eased it off, then did the same with the other.
Kiki took them from her and didn’t need longer than a second to ascertain their origins. Kiki had many faults but her ability to spot luxury leather goods wasn’t one of them. She didn’t give the boots back, but gestured to the hard-backed chair in front of her desk.
‘Four is such a boring number,’ she remarked as Grace sat down and noticed there was a hole in the toe of her polka-dot socks. ‘Don’t you think?’
Grace eyed her warily. She knew that the explosion was going to happen really soon, she just didn’t know what the number four had to do with, well, anything really. ‘Never thought about it.’
‘Because when I add two and two together, I keep coming up with at least double figures.’ Kiki smirked at her own cleverness. ‘Care to fill in the blanks?’
Oh, where to begin? ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about,’ Grace hedged.
‘I’ve had Maggie in here, which is always a pain, insisting that I have you court-martialled by HR while the entire office waits to see if little Lily miscarries due to the stress of finding out her best friend is a high-class call girl who’d rather entertain clients than attend her wedding. So, it’s not really a surprise that you’ve got a pair of Fendi shearling boots, though I’m dying to know how you got fast-tracked up the wait list.’
Grace gulped and exhaled at the same time, which immediately led to a choking fit. She was going to fucking kill Lily. She couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t involve grisly details of just how she’d bring about Lily’s demise, so she settled for answering the last question. ‘I was in Miami this weekend and the Fendi there had a pair delivered by accident. And actually they were bought for me by a friend. A girl. Not a girlfriend. A friend who’s a girl . . . fucking hell!’
‘Oh Gracie, what mess have you managed to get yourself into now?’ Kiki asked, and it still wasn’t the whipcrack bark she’d been waiting for. It was amused, maybe even a little concerned, which completely spun Grace off her axis.
‘I . . . it’s hard to explain . . .’ Grace spluttered, and typically, predictably, the tears began to punctuate what she couldn’t even begin to explain. Not again. It was much easier to cover her face with her hands and give in to sobs that felt like they were being torn out of her.
It was humiliating to cry in front of Kiki, but every time Grace tried to stop, a fresh wave of tears began to spurt out. Then she felt a hand pat her head and looked up through tear-spiked lashes to see Kiki perched on the desk in front of her.
‘Stop it right now,’ she ordered brusquely. ‘Everyone will know you’ve been crying and you don’t want to give them that satisfaction, do you?’
Grace really didn’t. She took a series of shuddering deep breaths, finished off with a couple of hiccups and blinked in surprise as Kiki pulled a bottle of champagne out of the mini-fridge under her desk and popped the cork.
‘I don’t have any brandy and you look like you could do with a drink,’ she said, carefully pouring some champagne into a mug. ‘Now what you say in this office stays in this office - unless you’ve done anything to bring the Skirt name into disrepute, in which case I’ll have to fire you.’
Grace took the mug and knocked back the champagne in one long gulp. ‘I am not a hooker. Or a whore. Or a fucking slag, as Lily put it,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m just seeing this guy . . .’
Getting it off her chest took half an hour and the whole bottle of Taittinger. Grace stuck to the facts. That girl met rich, older man.
There was mutual attraction and a Marc Jacobs bag. Which led to spending time together exclusively, designer dresses and very swank parties on both sides of the Atlantic, which were fantastic networking opportunities for a lowly fashion assistant.
‘It’s just a simple arrangement,’ she said, though really it was anything but simple. ‘And the places we go, well, I couldn’t exactly turn up in a New Look dress, and he takes up a lot of my free time, which he reimburses me for. It doesn’t mean that I’m a prostitute!’
‘Hardly,’ Kiki drawled, leaning back with a look of disappointment as she realised that Grace had reached the end and that further details wouldn’t be forthcoming. ‘Charles’s main attraction was the large mutual fund that he manages, so what does that make me?’
‘But you’re married to Charles!’
‘Well, that’s neither here nor there,’ Kiki said. ‘And I wouldn’t even have had one date with Charles if he hadn’t sent me a single Christian Louboutin shoe with a note telling me I wouldn’t get the other one until I had dinner with him.’
That sounded better than a tear-stained Marc Jacobs bag. Not better, but romantic. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that Charles would do something like that,’ Grace said carefully because she’d met Charles only once and he’d been stodgy of build and personality.
‘He has to - he’s ugly but rich.’ Kiki laughed. It wasn’t her usual cackle but something warmer, more affectionate. She was full of surprises this afternoon. ‘Come on, Gracie, you know exactly what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Grace said indignantly. ‘Vaughn isn’t ugly at all. He’s actually pretty OK looking. Kinda handsome, actually.’
‘
Rich and kinda handsome? Well, you’ve either hit the jackpot or you’re in for a world of trouble.’
It was exactly half and half, Grace thought to herself. ‘Well, let’s say that one makes up for the other.’ And it was the sort of clever thing that she never thought of to say very often and she could tell Kiki was impressed because she did her secret, amused smile that she usually only pulled out when she’d been sent something fabulous like a pair of Prada skis.
‘Well, you weren’t lying when you said you were working evenings and weekends. So, as a matter of interest, how much are you getting?’ she asked without preamble, not even blinking or blushing though Grace imagined that the Botox had probably paralysed her blood vessels.
‘He doesn’t pay me to be his girlfriend,’ Grace protested. ‘Why does no one believe me? He gives me a monthly allowance and something on the top for clothing because he takes me to lots of parties and I need to dress the part and—’
‘Yeah, yeah. How much?’