It began to rain, a fine misty shower, sending rivulets snaking down the windows as they wove through the London morning traffic.
Mallory turned on the windscreen wipers.
She was out of her depth. Any difficulties in her marriage had been swiftly negotiated with extra cocktails and placating trips to the jewellers.
But from the very beginning, everything about Grace and Roger’s romance had been extreme; the vivid Technicolor version of everyone else’s black-and-white lives. From their first meeting at the Grosvenor Square Ball, Roger had been almost frighteningly in love with her. Grace was new to London, unaffected and artlessly charming. His attentions were obsessive, extending to lavish gifts and very public displays of adoration. There was the surprise birthday party he’d thrown her at Scott’s, after only a few months of knowing her, complete with a pearl necklace and fifty of his closest friends. Mallory remembered being slightly jealous; wondering why Geoffrey couldn’t make more of an effort.
And Grace had been dazzled. By the time their engagement was announced, it was already a foregone conclusion.
It struck her as strange that such violent affections could be reduced to utter indifference.
Mallory tried to kept her voice light and calm, as if she were talking to a child or an invalid. ‘Perhaps it’s just a stage. Maybe he simply needs to adjust. Get used to the idea.’
‘I think he has adjusted, Mal. And he’s apparently doing very well without me.’
Grace’s confidences appeared to have cost her; she leaned her head against the window.
‘I have dreams . . .’ she said after a while. ‘Nightmares. I’m running in a wood, looking for something or someone. But no matter how fast I run, I cannot find it. Sometimes I think it’s just ahead of me, and then it disappears again. Then I start to fall, into some black, hideous abyss and I wake up. I used to have them all the time when I was a child. And now I only have them when something’s wrong, terribly wrong.’ She looked across at Mallory. ‘I had that dream again the night of the party.’
‘Grace—’
‘It’s hopeless, Mal,’ Grace sighed, cutting her off before she could continue. She wasn’t in the mood to be placated. ‘I used to think it would get better, that over time he would see me again the way he used to. But the opposite is true. It’s only become worse.’ She stared blankly out of the window, at the grey fog settling in thick filmy layers across Hyde Park. ‘I suppose it was only a matter of time before something happened.’
Mallory didn’t know what to say. She thought about the leaflet for the Secretarial College in Oxford. How Grace had been searching for a purpose; a way to be useful. And then she recalled, to her shame, how she’d dismissed the idea out of hand.
They drove along, down past Holland Park Underground station and into Shepherd’s Bush. London was a Turner watercolour this morning; rendered in dreamy, shifting blues and dusky greens, wet, melting, only ever half finished.
Mallory tossed her cigarette butt out of the window and looked across at Grace; at the deep frown line that cut down the centre of her brow; at her lips, tightly pursed.
She wanted to apologize; to reach out and hold Grace’s hand and reassure her. But she didn’t know how. If only she’d had the gumption to wrestle Vanessa to the ground on behalf of her friend.
Instead, she did what her mother used to do; one of the only signs of affection that ever passed between them. Mallory took a fresh handkerchief out of her coat pocket. It smelled faintly of Yardley Lily of the Valley toilet water, the perfume that haunted the bedrooms of her childhood. She pressed it into Grace’s hand.
‘Take this, darling. Just in case.’
Folding it over, Grace slipped it into her handbag. ‘Thank you.’
‘Who knows?’ Mallory forced a smile, trying to remain positive. ‘Perhaps a change of scenery will do you a world of good.’
‘May I help you find your seat, madam?’
The air hostess was attractive and smiling, with a model’s figure. Her soft brunette hair was tucked into a neat pillbox hat and her lipstick matched exactly the shade of her smart red uniform.
‘Yes, please.’ Grace glanced around uneasily, taking in the layout of the main cabin, the other passengers already comfortably seated, reading magazines and chatting.
The hostess looked at her ticket. ‘You’re just here, on the left. Allow me to hang up your coat.’
‘Thank you.’
Sitting down, Grace peered out of the odd little window, at the ground staff piling the luggage into the hold, at the row of shining silver planes parked like enormous long motor cars, one after the other, in a line. She felt almost queasy with the combination of nerves and excitement.