Agent Provocateur (15 page)

‘I tell you what, shall I put some coffee on while you go and get dressed?’ Betty is delighted, he never thought she would get to see the perfect Grace looking much less than perfect. Even with her rain ruined look, she knows that her appearance is far better. Grace is not wearing a good look.

‘Thanks.’ Grace goes back to her bedroom, while Betty whistles her way to the kitchen.

‘You’re going to have to sneak out,’ she says.

‘Why? I need coffee. Anyway, I’d quite like to meet this woman. The woman who can send the unflappable Grace into a spin. I’m already late for work, might as well be a bit later.’ Eddie’s face is filled up with his grin.

‘Stop teasing. Please, just go quietly,’ she begs. Grace is nervous. She is trying to get ready quickly, but is all fingers and thumbs. Although he finds this amusing, she finds it disturbing.

‘No way. Anyway, who cares what she thinks?’

‘I don’t,’ she lies.

‘Then, you’ll let me meet her.’ He is dressed in seconds and before she can protest further, he disappears to the kitchen, leaving Grace wondering if this week can get any worse.

Betty is still whistling by the percolator when he walks into the kitchen.

‘Hello.’ He stands by the door. Betty turns round. At first she looks startled, but her look turns quickly to one of amusement. She knows that Grace will hate this; she stifles the desire to laugh.

‘Hi, I’m Betty.’ She flashes her best grin. The day is beginning well.

‘Eddie. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Would you like coffee?’

‘Love one. Milk no sugar. So you’re a journalist?’ He is standing behind Betty.

‘Yes.’ Betty looks surprised at him knowing this. But then she remembers she has no idea who this man is.

‘Grace told me about the article. How’s it going?’ It’s Eddie’s turn to be amused. Although he hasn’t seen them together, he knows, because he knows Grace, why they don’t get on. He can see, from minor mannerisms and body language, that the woman Grace professes to hate is actually quite similar to her. He cannot help but find this funny.

‘Really well,’ Betty lies. ‘So how do you know Grace?’ Just before he gets a chance to answer, Grace walks into the kitchen. She had the quickest shower she could and pulled on her clothes without drying her hair. She hates the idea of Betty and Eddie talking alone. About her. She shudders from the cold.

‘Is the coffee ready?’ The brightness in her voice is fake, but she is trying to put the bad start to the day behind her.

She is sure she sees Betty smirk as she turns round and hands her a cup. Grace begins to feel hatred rise up. Betty started it all, with her comments, Grace believed she had finished it last night by making Betty speak to ‘chino man’ for most of the evening, but obviously not. Looking at Betty’s smirking face, she knows they are at war and it will only be a matter of time before one of them climbs out of the trench and starts firing.

Betty is happy, smug even. Not only does she find Grace with a man, but also she has caught her on the run, looking dreadful (or as dreadful as Grace can). She feels Grace deserves this for the humiliating experience she subjected her to last night, although she is still not quite satisfied by the revenge. She needs more. She just has to figure out how to teach her a lesson whilst not losing her job.

Eddie leaves after what seems like hours to Grace, but actually was only another ten minutes.

‘As I’m running late, let’s go straight to the office.’ Her voice is curt; cold even. This only serves to annoy Betty further. She thought the least Grace could do would be to offer an apology for what happened last night. But none is forthcoming.

‘Fine,’ she snaps.

Grace has a meeting with a client that day, the meeting Nicole arranged to show different sides to the job. Unbeknown to Betty, Grace is already feeling apprehensive about this, and Betty’s presence doesn’t help. She doesn’t normally deal with clients; that is Nicole’s job. Although she has been briefed, and she knows what to do and say, she desperately doesn’t want to come across as incompetent. She can imagine how happy that would make Betty. She can already hear her sharpening her pencil.

They are going to the client’s home. The client is nervous and requested a face-to-face meeting before deciding to proceed. Nicole told Grace that at some point she normally meets the client. It is rare that a woman is happy to do the whole thing over the phone.

‘Remember I have to go and meet a client in an hour.’ She is still upset with the way the day has started, and although she is trying to be kinder, her voice seems unwilling to oblige.

‘Oh good, then I can see that side of your job.’

‘Yes you can.’ Grace feels uneasy; what she doesn’t know is that Betty feels the same.

Cold war breaks out in the taxi. Grace sits with her arms folded across her chest, pretending to read notes about the woman whose house they are visiting. Betty sits as far away from her as possible, unsure what to say but determined not to let Grace get the better of her. The humiliation she still feels from the previous night is burning her inside. Even if Johnny thinks she is overreacting, she cannot help it. Betty knows that if women like Grace didn’t exist to fuel paranoia and insecurity in women, then the world would be a better place. Relationships would be a better place.

‘Eddie is a bit... a bit old.’ Betty isn’t normally a bitch, but Grace brings out the worst in her.

‘Not really, he just looks it,’ Grace lies. She has no idea why.

‘Been together long?’

‘Yes, actually.’

‘How long?’

‘No offence, but I would rather keep my personal life out of this.’

‘I’m not asking for the article, I’m just asking to be friendly.’ Betty knows that she is doing anything but.

‘Really?’ Grace’s voice is dripping with disbelief.

‘Yeah. I mean, you know that I am happily married and have been for two years. Johnny and I have been together for five.’ Betty smiles at Grace. The tactic is to wrong-foot the enemy.

‘I was going to get married once.’ Grace surprises herself with this response. She has no idea what made her offer that information.

‘What happened?’ Betty is wondering if Grace is trying to wrong foot her.

‘He left me. Well, he decided that he was too young, or something. I guess you could say that I was jilted.’

‘Another woman?’ Betty is intrigued. Perhaps there is something in that last sentence that explains why Grace does what she does.

‘Not as far as I know. He probably did have someone else -most men do – but that wasn’t the reason he gave me. He thought we were too young and he wanted to see the world. I let him go. I was too scared to do anything else. Now I know that it was the right thing to do. We were far too young for settling down.’

‘How young were you?’

‘Eighteen.’ Grace has said it. She has told of another life, one that she barely acknowledges exists. A different Grace. The Grace who at sixteen started going out with Dave. Dave, who lived nearby and had known her all his life. Dave, who was two years older than Grace and known on the estate as a good catch. He was the first man who bought her presents; the first man to take her to places, not just to the bedroom or the back of the car. The first man she thought she was in love with.

Ask Grace what love is and she will shrug her shoulders. It was lucky that Betty didn’t ask her that question. She believed at the time she was in love with Dave, but it didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would when he left her, so she realised that that wasn’t love. Her next love affair she believed really was love, and it did hurt when that went wrong, but still, the hurt faded fast. She concluded a long time ago that she would never feel love, and that she probably never has.

Dave had the same background as she: they knew each other’s family, they lived on the same estate. She remembers her younger sister, Kathy, being jealous. Dave drove a car (a battered one but it was still a car) and he was training to be a carpet fitter. He was also very handsome.

The old Grace had her life mapped out for her. The only escape from her parents’ overcrowded house was to get married as quickly as possible. Her younger sister (by one year) had the same idea, but unfortunately her strategy was a little bit screwed up. Kathy would sleep with every man she met straight away; Grace would make them hold out. Dave waited patiently for eight months until he told her he was in love with her and she let him have his prize. Grace was the brightest of the Regan children; she was also the best looking. It was a wonder to her that the best assets had been bestowed on her, although one of her brothers had a great sense of humour. She used her assets to her advantage and she earned herself the coveted engagement ring from Dave.

However, just as she thought she had earned her escape, she learnt that getting the ring wasn’t the hardest bit. He said he wanted to wait until they could afford a decent wedding, so they saved. Grace got a job in a factory, in the office, where she did the filing and eventually learnt how to type. Her exams from school had been good enough for her to stay on, but she needed to work, to earn money to marry Dave.

Then he said that they should also save for a deposit on a house. They saved. Then after two years of saving, he emptied the joint account and left her a note saying he was too young to settle down and he was going to travel. Half on her money. It was the hardest lesson that Grace ever had to learn. Harder than the loneliness of childhood, the awkwardness of her teenage years. Harder than the lack of attention, the feeling of isolation. Harder than the bullying, the taunting and the feeling of not belonging anywhere. Her escape from her family home and the memories of growing up had been Dave. Her escape had escaped.

Kathy got pregnant. Seventeen, single and pregnant (and the gossip on the street was that it could be any one of a number of men’s). She got herself on the housing list, but had to live with her parents until a flat came up. Although she didn’t have a man to help her out, Kathy was happy. She had always been tougher than Grace; always a survivor.

Her brothers and younger sister were luckier, she guessed. Michael joined the army as soon as he turned sixteen. Escaped. Lee got married to a woman who, like Kathy and Grace, needed to escape. He became an electrician. As far as she knows Peter and Hope are still at home – they were when she left anyway -but she isn’t sure. Neither does she know the sex of her sister’s baby, or if she had any more.

Grace left, ran away, made her own escape. She was heartbroken (or so she thought), she was angry with Dave for taking their money and she felt claustrophobic. Her family’s answer to Dave’s desertion was for her to go find another man. They didn’t seem to have the energy to give her advice. Her father was too tired from watching television, her mother was too tired from working and looking after (in the loosest sense of the word) the family, Kathy was too tired from having sex with as many men as she could, and her brothers and Hope were too wrapped up in their own lives. Grace had no option but to rely on herself for her escape.

She left a note, telling them she had gone to stay with friends and get a job in West London. She called them once to tell them she was all right but her mother sounded more relieved that she wasn’t there than worried about where she was. She told Grace to take care and have a good life. That was it; the last contact with her family. She didn’t miss them at all.

She had only limited money, having had her savings cleared out, but she had enough in her current account to survive for one month. She went in search of a job and found one as a secretary to a fashion buyer. It was through an agency and Grace knew she was lucky. She didn’t get the job straight away – her agency sent her to ten interviews before she was successful. She was just pleased that it was the fashion industry that she got a job in rather than a bank.

And that was how it started; the reinvention of Grace Regan. What she calls the dignification of her life. It wasn’t massive, it didn’t happen overnight. Grace had always had a timid voice, and she learnt how to speak nicely – not like a posh person, but without a hint of an accent. She concentrated on not dropping her Ts or her Hs, until it became second nature. She had always had her looks, but she learnt how to make them work for her by dressing nicely, by using the right make-up, and styling her hair. She didn’t turn from the street kid into the queen, but she did feel that she had made improvements.

She likes her confidence, even if it doesn’t come as easily as it seems. She likes the way she speaks and the way she walks. She likes the way she dresses and she likes the way that she has control over her life. The most important lesson she has learnt is that you can control your life. She never knew that that would be possible, not while she was growing up, not while she was engaged to Dave. However, it is, and now she is living proof of that.

Betty is thinking about Grace being engaged. It surprises her, although she doesn’t believe the sob story about being dumped. She thinks that Grace probably broke his heart. No man would walk away from her. She wonders how she managed to get herself engaged so young, and presumes that he was a richer man, one of her set, someone who went to private school and drove a nice car given to him by his parents. Grace was probably the school flirt, every boy’s wet dream but unobtainable to all except the man with the best car. He was probably also the best-looking.

When Betty was at her secondary school, a rough comprehensive, which was large, grey and anonymous, she was not popular with the boys. Actually, she was universally unpopular. She was geeky, unsure of herself. She wore National Health glasses, her hair was wild and untameable, and for a while she had to wear a brace. She was frightful. Not like Grace. The other children were cruel. They would call her ugly and not care about how that could hurt. The girls would tease her, the boys would call her names and it hurt her to the core. It stopped when she moved on from her GCSEs and went to do her A levels at the local tech. Her brace was off, her teeth nice and straight, she got a part-time job and paid for smart glasses, and eventually contact lenses, and even her hair seemed to behave. Everyone was more grown up at the tech, and she met her first boyfriend there. After the age of sixteen she began to feel normal but she would never forget the feeling of inadequacy that she experienced prior to that, or how long it took to get rid of it.