Читать книгу Her Perfect Life: A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist - Sam Hepburn, Sam Hepburn - Страница 15

Gracie pushes open the door of the steamy little trattoria in Meard Street and feels a choke of relief as she sees Daphne Dawes, lifestyle journalist, regular pundit on the daytime TV circuit and Elsie’s sporadically enthusiastic godmother, sitting in a dimly lit booth at the back, her face partially hidden by a fall of dyed red hair. Wine glass in one hand, phone in the other, she taps the toe of a shiny ankle boot against the table leg; an exotic oddity in this world of vinyl-covered banquettes, oversized pepper mills and autographed portraits fading in their frames. But Stefano’s is where she and Gracie come to thrash out their problems, attracted by the comforts of the unreconstructed menu and the certainty that they will never bump into anyone they know.

Gracie feels steadier as she squeezes towards her through the closely packed tables. Oddly, Daphne has had this effect on her since the day she teetered past Gracie’s cake stall in Broadway market, caught a kitten heel in a rise in the road and fell over. Despite her smudged makeup and mussy beehive there was a wobbly dignity about the way she ignored her bloodied knee, pulled herself into Gracie’s chair and lit a cigarette; and something brave and heartening about her snappy response when Gracie asked her if she was OK. ‘No. I’m bloody not. I’m hungover, I’ve just been dumped and my editor wants eight hundred words on the latest leisure trend by tomorrow. Oh yes, and it’s got to be sharp and funny.’

They agree that it was one of those moments when fate snaps her fingers and everything changes, though ten years on they still argue about whose idea it was for Daphne to devote her column to the joys of baking. Either way, Gracie couldn’t believe it when Daphne rang the next day to set up a photo shoot and asked for the address of her website. Still in her pyjamas, she managed to race to her laptop and pull the name Gracie’s Kitchen.com off the top of her head, twenty seconds before she clicked ‘confirm’ to buy the domain name. She’s still got that article, along with the letter it prompted, asking her to audition for an occasional baking slot on a daytime TV chat show.

‘Sorry I missed the launch,’ Daphne says, eyes still on her phone. ‘How’d it go?’

Gracie slides into the seat opposite. ‘All right.’

‘We’re running the first extract on Sunday. They’ve agreed to a sidebar plugging the series.’

‘OK.’

‘You could sound a bit more enthusiastic.’

‘It’s started again,’ Gracie says shakily. ‘One of my coral earrings and a note saying, “Hello Gracie.”’ Daphne’s thumb pauses. ‘Only this time the packaging was different, so I didn’t realise what it was till I’d opened it.’

‘Have you told Reeves?’

‘He’s gone off on secondment. They sent this other guy, Jamieson.’

‘Cute?’

‘Kind of creepy.’ Gracie picks up the menu, the red plastic cover slightly sticky beneath her fingers. ‘Tom thinks it’s a copycat. Jamieson thinks it’s the old stalker back to his,’ she takes a breath, ‘or her, old tricks.’

‘What do you think?’

Gracie keeps her gaze on the blurring selection of pizzas. ‘I think it might be a new her,’ she says. ‘And new tricks.’

‘Really?’ Daphne presses send. ‘Why?’

‘Tom slept with one of the interns in his office.’ Saying the words out loud is like kicking off a crippling pair of shoes and pressing her aching feet against a slab of marble. She looks up slowly, a pained expression on her face. Daphne is Tom’s friend too, her rackety affairs and caustic observations part of the fabric of their lives.

‘You’re kidding.’ Daphne drags her eyes from her phone. ‘When?’

‘While I was in New York.’

‘Christ! What a shit.’ Daphne fills Gracie’s wine glass and lowers her voice. ‘You think it’s her who sent the earring?’

Gracie nods. ‘Tom told her it was a mistake and she went off on a crazed power trip, threatening to tell me and the board if he didn’t let her work on one of his projects.’

‘Good for her.’

‘Daph!’

‘Well honestly, it serves him bloody well right. It’s not 1972.’

‘And she’s not some poor little innocent. She practically jumped him when he was drunk.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. No one forced him to screw her.’

Gracie grows still. Imagining Alicia. Imagining Tom.

‘How did she get hold of your earring?’ Daphne’s voice is sharp, wrenching Gracie back from the vision of her husband and his lover.

‘He … he slept with her in our house.’ Gracie drops her head as if she is the one who should feel ashamed. ‘In our bed.’

Daphne sucks her breath. An elderly red-faced waiter arrives. Daphne orders two plates of rigatoni with ragu and pushes him away with the menu. ‘Do you really think it was her?’ she says when he’s gone.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Tom says it’s not her style. We’re not telling the police why she was in the house but she’s on the list of “visitors” they’re going to interview.’ She lifts her fork and stares bleakly at the prongs. ‘If I’m honest, I think I’d rather it was her than the faceless weirdo.’

‘Sure. And why would he stop for months on end then suddenly start up again?’

‘Jamieson thinks it’s to keep me on edge.’

‘Bollocks.’ Daphne dips a breadstick into her wine. ‘It’s obviously this intern trying to get back at Tom. How did you find out about her?’

‘He confessed. The night I got back.’

‘Why?’

‘How about because he loves me and he can’t bear keeping secrets from me?’

Daphne watches her and waits, her head tilted a little on her neck. Gracie keeps her eyes fixed on the fork in her fingers. ‘Apparently it wasn’t just about enhancing her CV. She thought she and Tom had a “future” and now she’s threatening to go to the press.’

‘Have you talked to Daley?’

‘No.’

‘You need to. Maybe he can keep a lid on it.’

‘He does PR, not miracles. See it from her point of view. She’s angry, she wants revenge.’

‘At least it proves it’s over.’

‘Oh, yes. It’s over for her and Tom. Not for me. It’s never going to be over for me.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘He says he hates himself, that she meant nothing and I believe him. But—’ Gracie’s hand moves to her lips but the words come spewing out. ‘It feels as if Louise has done this to punish me.’

It’s a shocking moment. Daphne stares at her. And goes on staring, as if she’s seen something disturbing and can’t tear her eyes away. ‘Punish you?’

‘For being alive. For daring to marry her husband.’

‘Fuck’s sake, what’s the matter with you? Tom screwed up. That’s what men do.’

‘He’d never have cheated on her.’

‘Stop this.’ Daphne moves aside and points to the speckled Campari mirror on the wall behind her. ‘Look at yourself. You’re gorgeous, funny, smart and you’ve got more sex appeal in one toenail than that po-faced ice queen had in her whole body.’

Gracie catches her reflection in the mirror and looks away. ‘She was the love of his life.’

Daphne bites on the breadstick and points the broken end at Gracie. ‘He was a wreck when you met him, still would be if you hadn’t married him. He knows that.’

‘I just happened to be there – good old Gracie picking up the pieces.’

‘Paying for his sodding house.’

‘Not all of it.’

‘Oh, come on. If it wasn’t for Cooking with Gracie it’d still be a building site.’

‘I never cared about the money. I just wanted him to be happy.’ She twists away, struggling to breathe.

Daphne grabs her wrist. ‘You’ve got to let this go.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Because you want the impossible.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do. You convince yourself that men are something they’re not and when it turns out they’re pathetic and human you fall apart. Look at the state you were in after that tosser Harry Flynn. All over the place for months. Right up until you started seeing Tom.’

Gracie presses her lips together, this talk of Harry loosening more pain than she can bear.

Daphne’s voice softens. ‘Tom loves you, Gracie. Anyone can see that.’

‘Not the way he loved Louise. Oh sure, he wants things back the way they were and he thinks if I let him convert some crappy old church into my new café everything’s going to be fine. But I can’t trust him. Not any more.’

‘It’s over, Gracie. You said so yourself.’

‘Over with Alicia. But it wasn’t just a fuck. If it had been then maybe, eventually, I could have dealt with it. But Alicia’s like Louise. She understands his world. She can talk to him about architraves and bloody elevations and when she told him he was a genius and the Bristow’s client was an idiot, it actually meant something.’

‘Is that what he said?’

‘No. But think about it. It happened the night he lost the tender. He brought her home so she could rave about his prizewinning masterpiece and bolster his ego in ways I never could. You know what he’s like about his work. He needs constant validation. Sooner or later he’s going to leave me for someone who can give it to him.’

The waiter appears with their food. Gracie blots her eyes with a napkin while he spoons parmesan from a steel pot and waves his ridiculous pepper mill. Daphne glares at him. He retreats. ‘Eat.’ She forks up a mound of pasta. ‘You two are the perfect couple. It’s never going to happen.’

‘Like Tom screwing an intern was never going to happen?’ There’s a fevered desperation in her voice, a shudder when she breathes.

Daphne looks her in the eye. ‘You’re not going to leave him?’

For a moment Gracie is hyper-aware of everything: the fragility of the glass in her hand, the murmur of voices, the crash of plates in the kitchen. ‘Think what it would do to Elsie.’

‘Is that the only reason you’re staying?’

Gracie blinks at her. ‘I love him. I loved our life together but now, every time I see another woman, I hate her because she could be the one who takes him away and then I go home and it’s … like I don’t belong there, like I’ve got no right to …’

Daphne’s eyes drill into hers. ‘No right to what?’

‘Live in Louise’s house.’

‘Yeah, well you know my feelings about that.’

‘I swear it didn’t bother me before. Not really. Not when everything was OK. But now—’

Daphne throws aside her napkin. ‘Tell him to sell it.’

‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’

‘After what he’s done?’

Gracie’s face sags with wretchedness. ‘That house is a part of who he is. I can’t ask him to give it up. Specially not now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Losing the Bristow’s tender has totally crushed his confidence. The house is his reminder that he’s got what it takes.’

‘What’s more important to him – that bloody house or his marriage?’

‘If I made him leave it he’d end up hating me.’

‘What about you? What do you want?’

Gracie grows still. ‘Certainty, I s’pose.’ She stares across the restaurant. ‘Certainty that I’m not building my life on something Tom can snatch away next time some intern bats her eyes at him.’

‘Well dream on. No one gets that. Why do you think I’m still single?’ Daphne pours herself more wine. ‘You look like shit.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Are you sleeping?’

‘Not really. I lie there for a couple of hours then I get up and wander round and …’ her face crumples ‘… I see Alicia in every room. It’s like I can smell her, like she’s laughing at me, mocking me for thinking I could ever take the place of a woman like Louise.’

No longer brash or hectoring, Daphne says, ‘You can’t go on like this.’

Gracie’s eyes are closed, her voice a rasp. ‘I know.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know, Daph. I just don’t know.’