Playing Grace

by Hazel Osmond

Genres: Humor & Satire; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

A romantic comedy about love and learning to let go. Perfect for fans of Sarra Manning, Ellie Adams and Rosie Blake. Grace Surtees has everything carefully under control - her work life, her home life and her love life - especially her love life. But then her boss hires Tate Saunders, a brash American, to spice up the gallery tours his company provides. Messy and fond of breaking rules, Tate explodes into her tidy existence like a paintball, and Grace hates everything about him... doesn't she? Because, for Grace, the alternative would be simply too terrifying to contemplate: to love Tate rather than hate him would mean leaping out of her comfort zone, and Grace's devotion to order hides some long-kept secrets... secrets she's sure someone like Tate Saunders could never accept or understand. Discover Hazel Osmond's other novels, Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe?, The Mysterious Miss Mayhew and The First Time I Saw Your Face.

Release date: August 23, 2016

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

Right at that moment, Grace could have done with the United Nations dropping in and working their magic. The Americans were getting restless and the smiles of the Japanese were growing more and more mask-like. True, the New Zealand couple looked pretty laid back as they studied the statue of the Greek god who obviously favoured doing his hunting naked, but the way that Monsieur Laurent, the French guy, was gripping the gallery guide suggested he was having a hard time with his savoir faire.

At the ticket desk, Lilly gave her an uncharacteristically sympathetic smile, although Grace knew that if her little Tower of Babel continued to clutter up the entrance hall much longer, she’d suggest that Grace take everyone outside to wait.

She glanced at the gallery clock and saw the minute hand jump another segment to the right. It was heading for the powdered wig, now faded and crazed with age, of a young man who had been painted on the clock’s face. He was loitering against a backdrop of straggly trees and Grace had always suspected that he was waiting for some rose-lipped country wench to trip into view for some al fresco seduction. But his intentions today were of minor concern. The more pressing problem was that when the minute hand reached that wig, it would be exactly ten minutes since her tour should have started. By now they ought to be exploring the ‘Leading Lights of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Movement’ in one of the Paddwick Gallery’s wood-panelled rooms upstairs.

Grace heard the large double doors open. She had given up all expectation of anyone from the United Nations appearing, but was still hopeful that it would be the tardy Tuscelli family – the reason they were all loitering about on the flagstones. It was an elderly woman walking with the aid of a stick. She made a slow progress towards the ticket desk and then an even slower ascent of the oval stone staircase that spiralled up through the centre of the building, carrying people from the Reformation to the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. The minute hand moved to poke the powdered wig and Grace knew, without having to look, that the Americans, Evangeline and Scott Baldridge, would be on the move too.

Lodged at the ‘intensely demanding’ end of the client spectrum, the Baldridges treated any glitch or deviation in the advertised sched-uuu-le (said with a deep Texan drawl) in the same manner: Mrs Baldridge would get one side of Grace, Mr Baldridge the other, and in a whinging pincer movement they would complain fulsomely about the tour, the company, the other people in the group and the UK in general. Mrs Baldridge had a voice like a buzz saw in a biscuit tin and Mr Baldridge a tendency to express opinions that other people would not even dare to think, and so it was with much unease that Grace turned to face them.

‘Late,’ Mr Baldridge pronounced, pointing towards the clock before bringing his hand down to rest on his hip, or where his hip must have been when he was younger and several stone lighter. ‘Well, ahh saw it comin’, of course. Always the same with them Eye-ties.’

‘Yup,’ the buzz saw agreed, tilting her head towards her husband.

Racial stereotyping did not sit well with Grace. After nearly four years of gallery tours with Picture London, she had to concede that there were certain characteristics you could loosely assign to particular nationalities, but anything more was an insulting straitjacket. In her experience, people were as individual as you allowed them to be and the Tuscellis were unfailingly punctual. She would wait a few more minutes and then try Signor Tuscelli’s mobile.

But how to stop the Baldridge duo saying something even more inflammatory in the meantime? Grace sensed tension already building – most of the members of this particular tour had met on a previous trip around the National Portrait Gallery, during which allegiances had been formed and dislikes taken. The Baldridges were definitely not going to be asked to swap addresses with anyone. The moue on Monsieur Laurent’s face suggested he was bracing himself to defend his own nation should Mr Baldridge tire of insulting the Italians and move sharply northwest towards France.

Grace saw that Mr Baldridge was now going for the double-hand-on-hip approach. ‘Ahh do hope,’ he said, ‘that if this delay means less of a tour, wheel be gettin’ a refund.’

Mrs Baldridge’s nod made the creased wattle of her neck wobble.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Grace said in best head girl mode, ‘we’ll simply tack the lost time on at the end …’ As she saw the next objection forming in Mr Baldridge’s skull, she added, ‘But before we get into that, what about last night, hmm, Mr Baldridge? Magnificent, magnificent performance!’

Mr Baldridge looked as if he had been caught doing something illicit. Over at the ticket desk Lilly tilted her head in an attempt to eavesdrop, making her large earrings wobble.

‘Ma’am?’ Mr Baldridge’s confusion was underlined by his failure to close his mouth once the question had been asked. There was a nervous shift of his eyes towards his wife who, unable to mirror her husband’s expression, merely assumed the appearance of somebody who had been slapped in the face with a wet haddock.

‘I’m talking about the baseball, Mr Baldridge,’ Grace explained. ‘The Rangers. Good win over the Rays.’

‘Well, yeah … yeah, they did good … did you … do you?’ Mr Baldridge was a small truck that had suddenly stalled.

‘I take an interest.’ Grace gave a self-deprecating laugh and forgave herself for bending the truth – to describe her knowledge of baseball as an ‘interest’ was like saying Leonardo da Vinci knew how to apply a mean undercoat. She knew a vast amount about the players, the management teams and could reel off a list of reasons why the Rangers were likely to win the World Series that year. She could also have chatted about various American football teams, athletes, TV programmes and films. In fact, with the exception of the no-go areas of politics and religion, there were few aspects of American life that she couldn’t have whipped out to plaster over a nasty moment.

As Mr Baldridge opened his mouth again, Grace sensed the need to bring in reinforcements. She smiled over at Mr Hikaranto.

‘Baseball,’ she said with a brief nod of her head instead of a bow. ‘Mr Baldridge supports the Texas Rangers. But I believe your team, the Yomiuri Giants, has also had a good year?’

Mr Hikaranto beamed in a modest way. ‘Very good team, Texas Rangers. And yes, so kind, the Giants are playing …’ He turned to his wife for help.

‘Like giants,’ she said softly, with a shy glance up at Grace.

Mr Baldridge raised his eyebrows. ‘You into baseball?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ the Japanese couple replied, in unison.

Hoping that the Baldridges might now be fully occupied, Grace turned her attention to the next potential flashpoint – Monsieur Laurent’s grip on his gallery guide was leaving indentations.

‘We don’t really play baseball in Britain,’ she said, before feeding him a line she knew would be snapped at: ‘Although perhaps we should. Might be better at that than—’

‘Football,’ he said and accompanied it with a Gallic smirk, thereby proving one of Grace’s rules governing the discussion of sport with foreign clients: you could yabber away forever about their local teams but the only national team you should ever discuss was your own. This facilitated a psychological exchange known as ‘assuming the position of underdog in order to make visitors feel superior’.

She rewarded Monsieur Laurent with her ‘What-can-you-do-about-our-overpaid-footballers?’ expression.

‘Don’t s’pose you’ll wanna talk about rugby either?’ Mrs Macintosh, the New Zealander, said, breaking off from her close examination of the nude hunter’s buttocks.

Her husband laughed. ‘Now, love, don’t rub it in. Just ’cos they’re going through a rough patch.’ As Grace found Mr Macintosh attractive in a big, outdoorsy kind of way, she decided to forgive him and his wife with a gracious smile.

With the march of time apparently forgotten, this would have been Grace’s opportunity to slip outside and ring Signor Tuscelli’s mobile, but she was saved the effort by the arrival of the latecomers themselves, who appeared in a flurry of padded coats, spiky boots and sunglasses, the double doors slamming shut behind them. They rushed across the flagstones towards Grace, both adults talking so fast and so much over each other that it took Grace a few seconds to understand why they were late.

‘I said Temple, to get off,’ Signor Tuscelli was assuring Grace, his hands chopping out the words, ‘but Gisella,’ he indicated his daughter, ‘she said it was Charing Cross. And so we have had to run, run up the …’

‘The Strand,’ his wife supplied.

‘Yes, the Strand. So fast.’ Signor Tuscelli blew out his cheeks.

‘So hot.’ Signora Tuscelli was shrugging off her coat.

A heady perfume reached Grace as Gisella of the large, dark eyes and very tight jeans said, to the group in general, ‘Scusi. It was all my fault.’

Everyone muttered that it was OK, although Monsieur Laurent in particular looked as if he’d like to hear more of Gisella’s pouty apology.

Mr Baldridge, as usual, spoilt the party. ‘The name of the toob station was clearly written on our itin-er-rary.’

‘Ah, but these things are so much harder when your first language is not English,’ Grace said quickly.

Mr Baldridge jerked his thumb at Mr and Mrs Hikaranto. ‘Well, our friends here managed.’ Only the way Mrs Hikaranto gripped the handle of her Prada bag suggested the Japanese couple were not keen on that ‘friends’ label.

Signora Tuscelli was beginning to look affronted, so Grace suddenly threw her arms wide – a gesture that always distracted people long enough for her to change the subject.

‘The London Underground is a confusing place,’ she said so brightly and so loudly that she got an admonishing frown from Lilly at the desk. ‘Yet for all its confusion, it’s an adventure too. An experience. And talking of experiences, there is another wonderful one waiting for us now. This building was largely completed in the eighteenth century and stands on the site of what used to be a Tudor Palace. Constructed on neoclassical lines around a central courtyard it housed a variety of government departments before it became an art gallery. I think you’ll agree it is both elegant and stately, dominating the Strand on one side and a large stretch of the Thames on the other. Quite simply it is a masterpiece in Portland Stone.’ She laid her hand on a portion of the wall to make her meaning clearer to the Hika-rantos. ‘A masterpiece housing other masterpieces, because here are names that are famous the world over. Monet, Renoir, Cézanne. The paintings of Van Gogh and Manet. We have so much to see, so let’s not waste a moment. Mr Bald-ridge, if I could ask you to lead the way, please? Up the stairs and then sharp left into the first room …’

Sometimes Grace felt like a games mistress who had inhaled too much muscle rub, but faced with all her eagerness and confidence, even the most recalcitrant complainer usually rolled over and gave in. She watched as Mr and Mrs Baldridge vied momentarily on the bottom step to be the first up the stairs and then it was Mr Baldridge who, having gallantly elbowed his wife aside, led the group on the climb upwards.

Grace watched and thought of all the people whose feet had worn down those stone steps. The earls and lords on the way up to adventure and down to the scaffold; the ladies, their skirts lifted just high enough or way too high; the government spies, the civil servants and now the art lovers, tourists and students.

As she moved to follow them, she mouthed a quick ‘thank you’ to Lilly who replied by jerking her head in the direction of Mr Baldridge, who had now reached the first-floor landing.

‘You be able to get all the way round without World War Three breaking out?’ she asked with a chuckle making her earrings do some more wobbling.

‘Of course. Some people just need careful handling and a lot of distraction. It’s all under control now.’ Grace had reached the bottom of the staircase. ‘Besides, they’re about to see some of the most beautiful art in the world – that’s bound to make them happy. It’s not like we’re going to come face to face with anything that stirs everyone up or provokes them, is it?’

Perhaps if she’d had any inkling that she was one hundred per cent wrong about that, Grace would not have run lightly up the steps to join her group with a confident smile on her lips. She would have turned around and headed back out of the double doors as fast as she possibly could.

It was after Monet and just before Manet that she noticed him. He was what her boss, Alistair, called a ‘floater’. Grace felt that description carried far too many toilet overtones and preferred the more poetic name of ‘shadower’.

You got them on almost every tour: the member of the public who would loiter near the group to listen to what the guide was saying while trying to appear as if they weren’t. Sometimes they would pretend they were studying a different picture, or station themselves on a nearby bench and shut their eyes as if gallery fatigue had overtaken them.

A woman Grace had attracted last week had developed some problem with her shoe which necessitated taking it off and peering at the heel as Grace explained why Gauguin had felt compelled to leave France and paint in Tahiti. The moment Grace stopped talking, on went the shoe and off went the woman.

Alistair got very shirty about the whole thing, reasoning that if someone wanted to listen to a tour they should damn well put their hands in their pocket and pay for one, but Grace took a more relaxed approach. None of the shadowers stayed long and barely any followed from one room to the next. If they did, Grace stared at them and asked, with a concerned expression, whether they were lost. That invariably sent them slinking away.

This particular example of the species was different. Positioned just behind the Tuscelli family, he was making no effort to hide the fact that he was following them. He moved on exactly when the group moved, stopped when it stopped.

Grace guessed that he wouldn’t have had much success trying to be inconspicuous anyway. He was more of a show-off than a shadower. His shaggy blond hair, finger-combed she suspected, made her wonder if he was Scandinavian or perhaps spent a lot of time outside in the sun. He might even be a surfer, but his clothes had definitely never been anywhere near the sea. He seemed to be wearing a formal evening dress jacket with tails, its sleeves pushed up to reveal a jumble of brightly coloured wristbands from music festivals. Under it was a purple T-shirt and on his bottom half were, well, Grace was not sure what. She would have said pinstripe trousers but, if they were, they were incredibly old-fashioned, the kind that you’d expect to see topping spats in a black-and-white film. His were teamed with black biker boots, chunky and looking as though they’d been scraped along the road, possibly where he’d fallen off a bike.

There was something deeply familiar about that kind of appearance – the off-the-wall rather than off-the-peg clothes and the way they had been put together – and Grace didn’t like it at all. Not one bit. It made her feel that everything she had worked to dampen down in herself over the last nine years might be in danger of taking light again, and while her mouth continued to explain about brush-strokes and artistic influences, in her chest there was a sense of unease that felt as solid as if she had swallowed something down without chewing it properly. She continued to talk, the group continued to listen, but there was mad Fred Astaire at the back, his blond hair blaring out at her every time she let her eyes stray that way.

Her sense of unease intensified as she got beyond his hair and clothes to his face. It wasn’t a disturbing face in itself – strong nose, green eyes, usual number of lips – but as she talked it was obvious from the range of expressions animating it that he was intensely, mind-numbingly bored. His body language was shouting that too – now he was crossing his arms, now uncrossing them. He examined the palm of his hand, turned it over and seemed to find fault with one nail. If he did look at the painting they were gathered around, it was with an expression that suggested not only boredom but also irritation. It was followed by more fidgeting.

All that energy. All that restlessness. Hard to contain.

Once or twice she caught him watching her and then his expression became even more morose, a frown making him suddenly look more Viking than beach boy.

Not knowing the Swedish or Norwegian for ‘Are you lost?’ and hoping that he would simply drift away, she shifted position so that he was not in her sight line. A quick check on the group confirmed that nobody else was really concerned about his presence yet. Except for Gisella Tuscelli: she was running through what Grace supposed was her flirting repertoire, alternating hot glances with shy dips of her chin, her body being subtly displayed in the blond guy’s direction. He gave her a half-hearted once-over and returned to examining his fingernail.

‘So,’ Grace said briskly, ‘that’s the first of Manet’s paintings we’ll be looking at this afternoon, and now, for the second.’ She gestured along the wall. ‘It’s perhaps one of the best known in the world.’

Everyone turned to look.

‘A Bar at the Folies Bergère,’ Mrs Macintosh said, as if she couldn’t believe it was here, just a few feet away. Grace saw that a few others had the same star-struck expression on their faces and waited for the customary scramble to get the best position. She beat them to it and asked them to move back a few steps, mindful of a previous client who had been so caught up in the moment, he’d reached forward and would have touched the painting if Grace had not stopped him.

The blond guy had followed them and the unchewed thing in her chest got bigger.

‘So strange to see this in front of me,’ Mrs Macintosh said, the sense of wonder still in her voice, ‘I had a poster of it on my bedroom wall when I was a student.’

‘I also.’ Monsieur Laurent nodded at the woman in a black-and-white dress standing at the centre of the picture. ‘She is beautiful.’

Beautiful she might be, but Grace had always felt the woman seemed distant, as if she were protecting herself from all the frenetic activity around her in the painting. Perhaps that was why she loved it so.

‘This is a painting that is very much rooted in a particular time and place,’ Grace said, her enthusiasm genuine. ‘It’s full of details that make the famous Parisian nightclub come alive.’

She heard a sigh from the blond guy and turned to see him wander over to a window and stare out through the glass. He was putting his hands in the pockets of his trousers, a flash of a silver ring on one thumb. Everything about him said bored, bored, bored. He remained there, chin down, looking glumly out at the courtyard.

That was the point when, if Grace had been one to indulge strong emotions any more, she would have lost her patience. As it was, she contented herself with hoping he might force the window open and jump out, and returned her attention to Manet.

‘Painted in 1882, this was Manet’s last major work, and although he’s not strictly classed as an Impressionist, this painting conveys beautifully the new trends in painting at the time. Most importantly, Manet has done some intriguing things with perspective and reflection.’ Gisella was again turning and flirting, occasionally glancing slyly back at her parents to make sure they hadn’t noticed. Well, Gisella’s parents had paid for her to learn about the paintings in this gallery and as far as Grace was concerned that was a binding contract.

‘Now,’ she said, raising her voice, ‘I mentioned the many wonderful details in this painting so perhaps I could ask Gisella …’ She was amused to see the girl’s head turn sharply to face front as if she were a schoolgirl caught dreaming in class. ‘Gisella, would you like to come here and look in the top left-hand corner of the painting? Tell us what you see.’

Gisella’s parents helped propel her forward, and she hesitantly approached the painting, leaned in closer and peered into the corner. There was a sharp exclamation.

‘Feet,’ she said, looking round at the group, the astonishment evident. ‘Green feet on a … a …’ She deferred to Grace.

‘A trapeze,’ Grace said, ‘trapezio. It’s one of the entertainments in the nightclub: an acrobat. I love the way he, or she, is just tucked away up there. I’ve seen some posters of this cropped so badly that the acrobat isn’t even on there.’

‘That’ll be the one I bought,’ Mrs Macintosh said with a wry shake of her head.

Gisella went back to her parents and after one or two others had come up to peer at the feet, Grace began to talk through other details about the painting: a way of leading everyone gently towards the bigger things Manet had been trying to convey. She pointed out that there was champagne and beer at the bar and that the beer was Bass Pale Ale, so the tastes of British tourists were obviously being catered for. She showed them where the painter had signed his name on one of the bottle labels.

‘Damn clever,’ Mr Baldridge said.

‘Indeed. So, remember I was saying about perspective and the use of reflection? Well, if you look behind the barmaid and off to the right, do you see the back view of a woman and a man in evening dress?’ Grace could not stop herself from glancing towards the blond guy and his take on evening dress, and was pleased to see he had not moved from his contemplation of death by jumping. ‘Now, if this is meant to be a reflection of the barmaid here, talking to a customer who would be standing where we are now, it’s in the wrong place. It should be right behind her – that’s how reflections work. Does that mean Manet wasn’t that good a painter? Or has he deliberately played with perspective to create a kind of before-and-after situation – two realities? Look closely at those figures off to the right. The man is bending in to ask the barmaid something and even from the back she looks engaged, animated; but here at the centre of the painting, the barmaid we see staring out at us appears distant. Are we seeing her reaction to what the man in the reflection has asked her for?’ She paused. ‘It’s only one reading of the painting, but it makes us question her status and her relationship with the man.’

Grace usually left it there and let the grown-ups draw their own conclusions, but she had barely got the word ‘man’ out when a bored American voice said, ‘Oh come on, cut to the chase. What you mean is, has he just asked her for sex because she might be the kind of barmaid who’s also a prostitute?’

The voice came from behind the Macintoshes this time and was accompanied by a hike of eyebrows and a grin suggesting that the blond-haired guy had started to enjoy himself and was fully aware of the effect his words would have. Nearly all of the group were now staring at him rather than at the painting, except the Hikarantos, who had their phrase book out and were no doubt searching for the word ‘prostitute’.

Grace knew that at least one of Mr Baldridge’s hands would be on a hip. His wife’s mouth looked as if she’d drunk hot varnish.

If Grace weren’t careful, this was going to descend into something unpleasant. But would trying to get rid of the blond guy be even more disruptive? She checked along the gallery to the seat usually occupied by Norman, a large, amiable attendant, but it was empty.

‘Thank you so much for that interesting comment,’ Grace said, hoping that beneath her sweet delivery the blond guy would hear the sarcasm. She followed up with her iciest stare, the one which unfailingly told anyone getting too close to retreat. The guy just stared right back and, if anything, seemed even more amused, but whether it was by Grace or the reaction his speech had just provoked, she could not tell. For the first time in a long, long while, she was tempted to stop being well behaved and say exactly what she thought, something along the lines of ‘Bog off, you smug freeloader.’

She quashed that idea and said politely, ‘I’m sorry, I think you might have mistaken us for your group. I did notice another one in the “Italian Masters” section. If you go through that door—’

‘Nice try,’ the blond guy said, ‘but I’m right where I’m meant to be.’

‘You think?’ Mr Baldridge cut in. ‘You paid to be part of this group, son?’

‘Nope.’ The tone was laconic.

‘Well, we have.’ Mr Baldridge raised his chin. ‘Paid in full, up front.’ Others in the group nodded.

Mr Baldridge upped the ante with a double-hand, double-hip stance and the blond guy responded by pointedly folding his arms and lowering his chin. Monsieur Laurent was strangling his leaflet again off on the sidelines.

‘I think,’ Grace said slowly, calmly, ‘it would save time if we left chatting about payment until after we’ve viewed the paintings.’ The blond guy opened his mouth, no doubt to say he wasn’t paying for anything, but she had regained the group’s attention and she wasn’t giving it back. She was already moving. ‘Come along then. It’s Van Gogh next. No time to waste; remember there’s so much more to see.’

Like a fussy mother goose with her brood, she got them out of the room and on to the next one. She talked brightly to cover up any lingering embarrassment and spotted where Norman the attendant was roosting today. Slumped on a seat next to the wall, he had his eyes closed, but at the sound of their feet on the wooden floor, he opened them and mouthed, ‘All right, Grace?’

She was going to mouth back, ‘Not really,’ when she saw that the blond guy had not followed them.

The unchewed thing in her chest dissolved slightly, but even while she was talking them through the self-portrait of Van Gogh, she kept an eye out for that blond hair. She explained about the painter’s extraordinary use of colour and the huge influence he had on artists who had come after him. She waited. No interruption; still no sign of him. Gradually she felt her muscles stop clenching and, as she relaxed, she could see the group was doing the same. If one of them felt at ease enough to ask a question, she knew all was well again.

‘I hear,’ Signor Tuscelli said, ‘Van Gogh did not sell any paintings when he was alive.’

She flashed him a grateful smile. ‘That’s very nearly true, Signor Tuscelli. He sold just one – Red Vineyard at Arles. Tragically, much of the time he was struggling against poverty. And now … well, the highest price ever paid for a Van Gogh was $82.5 million back in the 1980s.’

‘So sad,’ someone said. ‘Such a pity.’

There was an exasperated, ‘Only if you think an artist’s worth is measured in money.’

‘You back?’ Mr Baldridge snapped and the blond man, now towering over the Hikarantos, said, ‘No fooling you, is there?’ did a pirouette and wandered over to a bench and sat on it. He made a big show of turning in the opposite direction, but when Grace started talking again it was obvious he was listening. At one point he sighed loud enough for everyone to hear, before stretching out his legs and wiping something off his boot. Grace could see he was unsettling people once more – every now and again someone would turn to check what he was doing.

She carried on, refusing to lose what felt like a battle of wills. When they moved from Van Gogh to Cézanne, she saw Blondie lie down on the bench and cross his hands over his chest as if he were dead. She increased her volume and animation and when she looked again she was pleased to see that Norman had hauled himself off his chair and was standing near the bench, presumably asking the blond man to sit up. He did so like a lamb, but as he turned his head to look at Grace, she heard him say, ‘Hey, she’s the one who put me to sleep. Tell her off.’

Grace fought the temptation to walk over and ping all the wristbands on his arm to wipe that lazy grin off his face. She could feel her muscles, particularly those in her jaw, start to tighten up again. She would ignore him, talk louder.

The next time she checked, the source of her irritation was leaving the room, methodically folding and unfolding his gallery ticket as if that was the only thing that would prevent him from falling into a coma.

‘I think we’re safe now,’ Grace chanced saying in a conspiratorial whisper to the group, as the noise of his heavy boots receded, and was pleased to get back laughter and smiles and a comment from Mrs Macintosh that she didn’t know how Grace had stopped herself from ‘slugging the guy’. Gisella gave Mrs Macintosh a look that suggested she’d like to strangle her, ditch her parents and follow the sound of those boots.

For a while, there were no further incidents, and Grace should have headed straight upstairs to ‘Impressionist Landscapes’, but she wanted to introduce the group to a painting hanging on the wall in a darkened side room. Although, if she was truthful, her detour had more to do with her need tha