Saving Grace (15 page)

Grace had always felt unending gratitude for all the good things in her life, but suddenly there seemed to be problems, hiccups, even though Grace couldn’t name them. On the surface, nothing had changed, or nothing that should be causing her this vague but omnipresent anxiety.

It was almost, she realized, a sense of foreboding. She felt as if life was getting ready to throw something at them, only she didn’t know what. She also knew, intellectually, that this was probably a load of rubbish. Grace had never been one for prescience. Her dreams never came true, she had not yet had the ability to predict the future. She did have good intuition, it was true. She was good at reading people, had a sixth sense about who people were, but she was not used to being unable to place the source of the anxiety.

She only knew that looking back through these photographs, to when they first got married, she had no idea how difficult life would turn out to be. I had no idea, she thinks sadly, exactly who I had married.

T
ed came down at 7.30 to find Grace noisily pulling pots and pans out of all the kitchen cupboards.

‘Grace!’ he barked. ‘For God’s sake! What’s all this racket? And why in God’s name is the boot room filled with rubbish bags and boxes. What’s going on?’

‘I’m having a sort-out.’ Grace picked up an old frying pan, encrusted with years of burned oil, shook her head, then tossed it in a box. ‘I’m feeling rather good about it, actually. I went through the cupboard in the boot room and found things I haven’t thought about for years. Look!’ She got up and brought back a pair of baby shoes. ‘Remember these?’

Ted’s face softened as he puts his hand out to take the shoes, a smile playing on Grace’s face as she remembered Clemmie toddling around the garden, wobbly on her chubby little legs. Ted smiled too before turning serious again.

‘Grace,’ he said sternly. ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’

She turned to him with a start. ‘Me? Why? What are you talking about?’

‘I . . . this being up all night, night after night. Clearing out cupboards in the middle of the night. You’re behaving like a crazy woman.’

Grace pales. That word. The word she has always dreaded.

‘Don’t call me crazy.’ She grits her teeth. ‘I’m fine. It’s just hormones.’

‘I can’t believe all these changes are just hormonal. I think you need to get yourself to a doctor.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said quickly. Too quickly.

‘You’re clearly not,’ he responded. ‘And I’m not the only one who has noticed it.’

Grace’s head whipped around. ‘What? Who have you discussed it with?’

‘I haven’t discussed it with anyone. But Beth has asked me a few times if you’re okay. I haven’t talked about this with Beth, but I’m aware that you seem to be a little . . . paranoid about her. I know you accused her of stealing your scarf, and—’

‘How do you know about that?’ Grace’s voice was icy cold.

‘Grace, she came to me because she was so upset. I didn’t know what to say. And that whole fiasco with the hire equipment not showing for your event . . . well. I can’t help but feel you seem to be accusing her of something then too.’

‘Did she tell you that?’

‘She didn’t have to. I see it for myself. The point is, she’s worried about you.
I’m
worried about you. I’m wondering if there’s something else going on.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Grace snapped. ‘How dare you and your assistant sit there talking about me! I can’t believe she came to you telling you I’d accused her. I feel like there’s some kind of bloody conspiracy going on—’

‘Look at you!’ Ted said, interrupting her. ‘Look at how angry you’re getting! This isn’t like you, Grace. You’re not angry. Where is this coming from? What the hell is going on that is making you act like this, because you’re definitely not acting like yourself, you’re acting like some kind of crazy woman. It’s nuts. Completely irrational. I have no idea what to do about it other than suggest you ought to see someone.’

Here it is, she thought. The moment of reckoning. I have spent my whole life terrified of becoming my mother, creating the perfect persona, hoping, praying that my mother’s illness would not pass down to me.

The prospect, hearing her husband describe her as crazy, filled Grace with instant fear.

‘What do you mean, “see someone”?’ Grace snapped, jumping on the defensive. ‘A doctor?’

‘Maybe. Or a psychiatrist.’

‘I don’t need a psychiatrist,’ said Grace. Crazy people see psychiatrists. Her mother should have seen a psychiatrist. She has never seen a therapist, is one of the few women she knows who is not taking antidepressants, does not believe in burdening other people with her problems. I’m English, for God’s sake, she always used to joke. We don’t
do
doctors. Unless we’re on death’s doorstep, and even then we have to apologize for disturbing them.

‘Grace.’ Ted’s voice drips with disdain. ‘I can’t stand the way you’ve been acting. Do you have any idea how difficult this is for me? Jesus Christ. I’m spending so much time worrying about you, my work is suffering. I’m tiptoeing around this goddamned house, terrified of saying or doing anything at all to upset you. Get yourself to a doctor and get yourself better.’

Grace just stared at him, Welcome to my world, running over and over in her mind.

G
race stirs the polenta and looks over at Sybil, weariness exuding out of every pore.

‘I think I’m just exhausted,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night and ended up having a massive sort-out. And . . . well. I haven’t been feeling too good recently.’

‘Let me help,’ Sybil says, leading Grace over to the garden bench. ‘In what way?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing I can put my finger on. I definitely feel low.’ She attempts a laugh. ‘I’m sure it’s just the regular old blues. They’ll pass soon.’

Sybil peers at her. ‘Are you sure that’s all it is? I’ve seen you with the blues before, but . . . I’m just worried.’

‘I know. Thank you. I’ll be fine. I suppose I have to admit I do feel a bit . . . unsettled. Almost as if I have a sense of foreboding, and I know this is crazy, but there’s something about Beth that is making me feel uneasy.’

‘Beth?’ Sybil’s eyes widen. ‘Really? I thought she was Wondergirl.’

‘She is. Which is why I feel so nuts thinking that there’s something not quite right. I keep trying to remember whether there is any way I could have made that call to the hire company to change the date, and I couldn’t have done; I wouldn’t have done. And I cannot stop feeling that Beth has something to do with this.’ She shakes her head. ‘I feel like I’m going mad. Ted wants me to go and talk to someone. Get therapy. I don’t know. What do you think?’

‘Therapy changed my life. I know you don’t believe in it, but I think Ted has a good point. If nothing else, it may help you sort through the jumble of thoughts in your head, make sense of everything.’

‘You’re right,’ says Grace. ‘It probably is a good idea. Maybe I will go and see someone after all.’

T
ed and Beth thread their way through the restaurant, stopping every few feet to greet someone he knows: a writer, a journalist, an editor, a publisher. The great and the good are gathered at Michael’s for lunch, as the pair work their way to the table just next to the window in the front, the best table in the house for the great Ted Chapman to have lunch with his publicist.

Beth is resplendent with her new chic haircut, in a dark green silk blouse that is not one of Grace’s cast-offs, but looks very much like it could have been. Tailored black trousers, high-heeled black shoes with a distinctive red sole, and a chunky, gold necklace.

Gone is the shy, demure, mousy girl of old. This Beth smiles as she moves fluidly through the restaurant, aware of the radiance of her smile, aware she is being assessed.

‘This is Beth, my sparkly assistant.’ Ted brings her forward, again and again, as she confidently extends a hand.

‘Good Lord,’ they hear, over and over again. ‘We thought it was Grace’s younger sister!’ Beth laughs with a good-natured shake of her head, flattered and delighted at the comparison.

This is not the first time this has happened. Ted brought Beth to an event the week before and frowned the first time someone said they thought Beth was Grace. He had turned his head, taking Beth in, truly looking at her, as if for the first time. Physically, she is not Grace, although when she smiles as she is smiling now, as she has, in fact, been doing so often of late, she has a luminous beauty that you do not see, do not expect when her face is in repose. Physically, there is little resemblance, but her confidence and poise, the way she places a hand on Ted’s arm, are what cause the confusion, cause people to do a double take.

He looks at her now. How little he sees her face in repose these days, he realizes. The hesitant, serious woman who joined their lives a few short months ago now beams each time he looks at her. It is as if she has modified her natural expression from one of gravity to one of levity. Her face in repose now has a small but permanent smile playing on her lips. Her new haircut has imbued her with a confidence that was missing before.

Could he really be so shallow as to admit he only found her interesting once she cut her hair? It is true he found himself watching her more once she had changed, fascinated by her transformation, but it was more than the hair.

As she grew more comfortable in the job, more comfortable in the house, more comfortable with them, she relaxed into her skin, and the ease with which she now carries herself is really quite lovely to see.

And inspiring.

He has introduced a character into his new book who is largely based on Beth. A young, insecure girl, product of an abusive background, abandoned by her family, invisible to all, blossoms into a great beauty under the care of an older man. Of course, he turns out to be controlling and abusive in much the same way as her family, and it comes full circle. He now finds himself watching Beth each day before he starts writing, taking breaks to take note of how she sits, what her body language says, guess at what she might be thinking.

Naturally he has changed the details, is quite certain there is nothing recognizable in the book. She is his muse, perhaps; not his heroine. No one would know the character was inspired by Beth, he tells himself, not when he is so famous for his characterizations.

‘I draw from my life,’ he says at book readings, signings, events where hundreds of people turn up to hang on to his every word, ‘without ever writing
about
my life. People I come across may serve as a snapshot, but they quickly become their own characters.’

Despite this, there have been many who have recognized themselves within the pages of his books. They have different names, different hair colours, different backgrounds, yet there is something so achingly familiar to them as they read, there is no question that Ted held them in his mind as they were writing.

He denies it. Of course he denies it. He is the first to explain that the character within the pages of the book takes on a character of its own within a few pages anyway – usually nothing like the person who you originally had in mind.

So Beth is his inspiration for the book he is currently writing, and, as with all his muses, he is increasingly fascinated by her. You would have to be blind not to see how she is attempting to emulate Grace’s style. Grace is flattered, as she should be, and he has to admit, Beth does pull it off rather well. If anything, though, the look is a little old for her. She is, after all, only thirty-eight. A young woman, divorced, no children. She should perhaps be dressing more provocatively, perhaps in a way designed to entice men her own age.

Although, he flushes slightly at the memory, she said in passing she had never been interested in men her own age. She had been flipping through the pages of a magazine at the time, looking for an article he had vaguely remembered reading, and hadn’t looked up. From someone else, those words might have seemed provocative, but there was nothing flirtatious, nothing that would lead him to think anything more.

Except he had. He had found himself thinking about it all afternoon. Mostly for his character. Initially the husband hadn’t been older, until Beth had mentioned that. Of course! It made much more sense! A father figure. A man, he wryly thought, much like himself.

He had been so excited at the change, he had done something he hadn’t done in years. Climbed out of bed at ten o’clock at night and gone out to his barn, spending the next three hours writing, the words flowing from his fingertips with swiftness and ease.