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 keep 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.
The hostess was back. ‘Is this your first trip to Paris?’
‘Yes. And I’ve never been on an aeroplane before.’
‘It’s perfectly safe,’ the girl reassured her. ‘May I bring you a glass of champagne to help you relax?’
‘Are you sure? I mean, won’t it spill?’
The hostess laughed. ‘It’s not like that. You’ll see. The whole thing is much smoother than you imagine. Sit back and try not to think too much. We’ll be there in no time.’
Grace watched as she slipped into the narrow galley, which appeared to be little more than a series of metal boxes and drawers. Soon the distinctive pop of a champagne cork could be heard. A little while later, she moved easily down the aisle with a tray, handing out glasses like a hostess at a dinner party.
And it began to feel like a party, with laughing and drinking, people chatting across the aisle to one another. The pilot, handsome in his uniform, paused before climbing into the cockpit to welcome them all aboard, even joking about how strange it felt to fly across the English Channel without being shot at, which got a spontaneous round of applause.
Then the doors were shut. The engines started and the whole plane shuddered and trembled. They rumbled along the runway, building up speed.
Grace looked out of window trying to discern the moment when the wheels left the ground. And then, without her really feeling it, they were airborne, climbing at a steep angle before banking to the left.
London, with its little winding rows of identical brick houses, rendered in a thousand shades of grey, receded rapidly as they flew into the dark, wet fog. Then, quite suddenly, a sparkling blue strip of horizon appeared, high above the thick cloud cover; a golden place removed from the blanket of bad weather below.
Leaning back, Grace took a sip of the cold champagne and, opening her handbag, took out the letter.
She’d read it many times since it first arrived but she still had the compulsion to reread it, as if this time she would finally spot something she’d missed.
Madame Eva d’Orsey.
Eva d’Orsey.
The name meant nothing to her.
But there was a kind of poetry in it, a soft, lilting rhythm that captured her imagination.
Perhaps she’d been a friend of her parents. A fellow writer like her mother or a colleague of her father’s.
Or maybe she would travel all the way to Paris just to discover that in fact the whole thing had been nothing but a misunderstanding after all.
In any case, England had disappeared now entirely from view. And only a vast, empty canopy of sky lay ahead.
