Читать книгу Her Perfect Life: A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist - Sam Hepburn, Sam Hepburn - Страница 19

Gracie jumps at the invitation to spend Christmas and New Year at Tom’s sister’s rambling house outside Bristol. It’s a chance for the two of them to lose themselves and each other in the chaotic jollity of squeezing ten around the kitchen table, hunting down missing wellingtons, dashing out to pick up more wine and sharing the guest bed with Elsie and a wheezing, overweight Labrador.

As soon as they get back to London they take a couple of days off to begin their hunt for a new house. It comes as a shock to find themselves alone, facing up to the fallout from Tom’s betrayal. But somewhere, in setting the sat nav, laughing at the overblown language in the brochures, and traipsing through other people’s dreams and dirt, a little of the strain dissolves.

Gracie sifts through the pile of ‘possibles’ in her lap and takes a sip of her coffee. ‘My favourite’s still the warehouse in King’s Cross.’

Tom grunts, chewing down the last of his baguette as he swings off a roundabout. She looks up. ‘Where are we?’

‘Making a little detour.’ He pulls up on a litter-blown forecourt. With a pang she recognises the building in front of them. It’s the chapel he told her about. Without a word he gets out and stands with his feet apart, gazing at the building. Gracie stays back, her hand on the roof of the car, taking in the boarded-up windows, the angry neon tags, the bowed roof. Her eyes dart away to rest on Tom. From the tilt of his head she knows that he’s seeing beyond the graffiti, flapping posters and bubbling paintwork to the fabric of the structure, imagining light flowing in through those boarded-up windows, the stone walls scrubbed clean and those big wooden doors flung wide.

‘You’ve got to be kidding. It’s miles from anywhere and it’s falling apart. Look at it.’

‘Where else are we going to find a space with this much character and potential?’ She notes the we. The way he’s wedding himself to her new project.

‘There’s loads of parking space at the back, which leaves all this free for an outside eating area.’

‘What about the road?’

‘We’ll cut off the noise with glass panels. Come and see inside.’ He grins and holds up the keys.

He pulls her through the high double doors into a cool darkness that smells of piss and damp. The room is a long rectangle – crumbling pink walls embossed with graceful white moulding, a scarred marble floor heaped with rags and newspapers and a dark wooden balcony running beneath the domed ceiling.

‘A false floor up there would give you plenty of room for your workshops and we’d soundproof the whole thing so there’d be no problem with filming.’

‘It’d cost a fortune.’

Tom’s not listening. He’s skimming through a set of sketches on his tablet, making excited sweeps with his arm as he talks. ‘Can’t you see it, Gracie? Kitchens back there, a big counter on this side for the bakery, seating all across here and the cook shop at the end with its own entrance.’

His enthusiasm brings the damp echoey space alive. For a moment she really does see what he sees.

‘Think about it at least,’ he says.

Conscious of the wild thudding of her heart she paces slowly, imagining what she could do with this place. ‘I’d have to have a proper look at the stats for the area, and put a business case to my backers,’ she says.

‘Of course. It’s all in that research the French guy had done.’

She gazes up at the ragged holes in the plaster. ‘To get this place the way I’d want, I’d need to be totally hands on.’

‘I’d be the one managing the build.’

‘No, Tom. I’d have to be involved in every decision, and if the company goes ahead with this out-of-town thing—’

He looks up, bewildered. She gives an impatient shake of her head. ‘I told you about it. The bit of land one of the backers has bought in Oxfordshire. He’ll build on it eventually but for the next couple of years he wants Gracie’s Kitchen to put up a semi-permanent marquee and use it for weddings and events. I’d get a manager in to run it but I’d still need to be across the planning.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s not OK. How could I juggle all my other commitments if we buy a house in Primrose Hill or the other side of Highbury and I’m dashing over here every day? It’s Elsie who’d lose out. I’m not having that. Half the point of moving is so that I can spend more time with her.’

‘So …’ a nervous half smile, ‘do you want to check out houses in Clapton?’

‘All I’m saying is that if we did go for this place, and it’s a massive if, living nearby is the only way it could work. But we wouldn’t find anything you’d want to live in round here.’

He shrugs and taps his tablet. ‘We might as well see what there is.’

She watches him type in the postcode and swipe through nearby properties on Zoopla. Slowly she brings out her phone and does the same. She’s still searching as they get back into the car, looking up only to shake her head at a loft conversion he’d wondered about, that turns out to be above a noisy engineering plant. At the traffic lights she clutches his arm and leans over to show him the photo on her screen. ‘Look at this one. It’s a little bit further out than I was hoping, but worth taking a look.’

He rubs his hand across his chin as she flicks through the photos of the interior. ‘Nice.’ He punches Falcon Square into the sat nav.

She gazes out of the window, taking in the old-school betting shops, the cheap takeaways still hung with winking Santa lights and a redbrick Victorian school. He hesitates at a noisy junction, cuts past a bow-fronted church and turns into a square of shabbily grand Georgian villas.

He slows the car, twisting in his seat to look up at the long sash windows glinting in the wintery sunlight. ‘God, I love London,’ he says. ‘Where else could you turn off a shitty high street and find a place like this?’

As he pulls up outside number 17, Gracie looks around and finds herself imagining the life she might lead if she lived here, the people she might bump into in the park or the supermarket. She glances at Tom. His smile is smug. She forgives him that. It’s a small price to pay for this glimpse of a future that doesn’t leave her feeling hollow inside.

Six months on from Tom’s confession Gracie wakes shivering and afraid from the running dream. It’s their last night in Greenwich and she paces the landing, gazing at the construction lights on the cranes across the water, the dabs of brightness moving with the ripples of the blackened tide. It’s windy outside, spatters of rain mist the panes as she presses her palms to the glass and silently hands the Wharf House back to Louise.

There’s movement behind her. She swings round.

‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ Tom whispers.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Numb. Angry with myself. Sad about leaving the river.’

‘I’ll miss it too.’

‘But I’m taking everything that matters with me.’ He slips his arms around her.

Hesitantly, she leans into him, her throat almost too tight to speak. ‘We still have to go on working on us.’

‘I know.’

‘But once we’re settled,’ she says – barely a whisper, ‘let’s think about giving Elsie a brother or sister. Take a proper look at the options.’

There’s a slight shocked pause as he takes this in. ‘Why the change of heart?’

Her arms tighten around his waist. ‘I never stopped wanting another baby, I just put the feelings on hold when … it didn’t happen. Scared of the disappointment I suppose. But you’re giving up this house for me and I want to do this for you, for us, for Elsie.’ Taking his hand, she leads him back to their room and they make love. Gentle tentative love that makes her want to cry.