Christmas Under the Stars Read online

  For Rebecca MacLeod

  Not forgotten. Deeply loved. Very much missed.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I: BEFORE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part II: AFTERWARDS

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prima DONNA

  Christmas at TIFFANY’S

  The Perfect PRESENT

  Christmas at CLARIDGE’S

  The SUMMER WITHOUT YOU

  Christmas in THE SNOW

  Summer at TIFFANY’S

  Christmas on PRIMROSE HILL

  The Paris Secret

  Prologue

  Saturday 25 March 2017

  Lucy pulled the bedcovers back up, smoothing out the wrinkles and re-plumping the pillows, the covered hot-water bottles already warming the sheets, the steam from the hot bath in the next room escaping round the door and misting the small mirror on the dressing table. The guests would be freezing when they got in.

  Outside, the wind moaned again and the windows rattled in their frames. The storm was really gathering strength now, this afternoon’s break in the blizzards but a brief hiatus as the eye passed over them, and she could see the snowflakes dancing in feverish patterns, tangoing with the flurrying gusts like a shaken-up snow globe.

  She crossed the room to draw the curtains, glancing for a moment at her own home across the courtyard. From this four-star perspective, she saw how shabby the little bungalow was becoming – even aside from the industrial bins parked along her wall, the white paint was slowly blackening from rain and snow melt and moss and damp; the kitchen window was cracked in the bottom corner (from a thrown shoe, if she remembered rightly); and the planters either side of the door were depressingly neglected, with just a few skeletal twigs poking through the snow all that remained of the hydrangeas she’d planted last summer. She turned away, vowing to set Tuck onto it as soon as the snow went. A lick of paint, a trip to the nursery and her modest little home would look very different. Feel very different.

  In here though – in here, all was perfect, as it always should be in a hotel (wasn’t that the point of them, after all?) and with a final glance, she let herself back out into the hall. The door clicked shut behind her and she smiled at a Japanese couple coming out of their room further down the corridor. Room 28 – the electric towel rail was faulty in there.

  ‘Hey there, is everything OK for you? Do you need any fresh towels, more water . . . ?’ she asked as she passed, and they politely demurred, probably more on account of their limited English than anything else.

  Crossing the carpet in brisk, silent steps, she used the service stairs, exiting into the kitchen where her mother was standing over a bubbling pan of soup, much to the surprise of the staff, who were only just arriving for their shift and couldn’t have looked more astonished to see her with her shirtsleeves rolled up if she’d been standing there in stockings and suspenders. Barbara glanced up as she came over – her cheeks were pink with harried fluster but her eyes were bright and of course, not a platinum-bobbed hair was out of place. It never was. Not in a storm. Not in a crisis.

  ‘All done?’ she asked.

  ‘Everything’s sorted,’ Lucy nodded.

  ‘Good.’ Barbara checked her watch, rubbing her hands together the way she always did when she was anxious. ‘Well, they should be here any minute now . . .’

  Lucy’s phone rang and she glanced at the name on the screen. ‘Hi,’ she said, turning away and walking over to the back door, a smile already on her lips, suddenly blind to the bleakness of her tired bungalow as she gazed through the window, across the courtyard again.

  ‘Luce, it’s me!’ Tuck’s voice sounded distant. The line was breaking up and she could tell he was outside from the way that it sounded as though sheets were being shaken out beside him.

  ‘Where are you?’ she called, hoping he could hear her over the wind.

  ‘On my way back from Bill’s.’

  Lucy bit her lip. Of course he was. Every day ended with a beer or four with the boys. She guessed it was four tonight given that he was walking home in these conditions, no doubt having been forced to leave the truck keys behind the bar. The staff knew him too well.

  ‘Listen,’ he shouted. ‘Have you spoken to Mitch or Meg?’ He sounded out of breath, as though he was running or at least walking very fast.

  ‘Not since this morning.’

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t get Mitch on his cell and I don’t know where he is. I thought they were gonna come back down during the break in the weather this afternoon?’

  ‘Well, not that I’ve seen. They must still be up at the cabin.’ She frowned. ‘Why? What’s going on? What’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s a couple of hikers missing in Wilson’s Gully but Search and Rescue won’t go out – no visibility and the avalanche risk’s too high! Fucking pussies. Everyone’s freakin’ out. One’s a twelve-year-old boy, for Chrissakes. Twelve.’

  Lucy winced, knowing from his language it was definitely more than four beers. ‘But Tuck—’

  ‘Listen, I gotta go. I’ve gotta get hold of Mitch. He’s a mile from there.’

  She hesitated. ‘You mean you want him to go after them? In this?’

  ‘That’s his call. But he’d want to know. I would.’

  Lucy felt the pulse in her ear, her eyes on a racoon scratching around the recycling bin, seeing the way its fur was brushed to standing as another gust whipped the small courtyard and sent it scurrying for cover in the undergrowth again.

  ‘Luce? You hear me?’

  ‘Uh, yeah, yeah.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a bit, OK? But if they call in the meantime, you let him know I’m trying to get hold of him.’

  ‘Sh-sure.’

  ‘Bye, babe.’

  ‘Bye,’ she murmured, her voice a whisper, her heart pounding at double time, the phone like a burning coal in the palm of her hand.

  Part I

  BEFORE

  Chapter One

  Saturday 18 February 2017

  The snow-lined gully curled and sliced before them, the tips of their boards overhanging the flat.

  ‘I don’t know, man, it’s too much. Just look at those rocks,’ Tuck murmured. ‘We hit them at speed, they’ll be like a fricking serrated knife.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Tuck turned, staring at his own reflection in the orange mirrored lenses of Mitch’s polarized goggles. ‘You do?’

  Mitch nodded. ‘So we better not hit ’em.’

  Tuck swallowed as Mitch extended hi
s arm and pointed out his line for their descent through the couloir. ‘We keep to the shadow down this first drop here, then take the left side of the tower, ’cause you see the ice on the right? –’ he indicated the six-metre-high finger of frozen granite smack bang in the middle of their path – ‘Just a glimmer there? Slip or lose control on that and you’ll hit the wall at a hundred twenty kph.’ Mitch shook his head and tutted. ‘So we keep left. It’s gonna be tight.’ He squinted as though calculating the mathematical ratios required to get round it, to survive, before looking back at Tuck and nodding with a smile. Tuck couldn’t see his eyes behind the goggles but he didn’t need to. He could read his friend like a book. ‘It’s doable.’

  Tuck looked back down at their self-appointed mission, wishing he could feel so confident. ‘Is that a crack?’ he asked, slapping Mitch in the chest, his eyes up on the rocks above them.

  ‘Where?’

  Tuck pointed to a hair’s-breadth line in the snowpack on the overhang, ten metres down, just past the tower. ‘Jesus, man, that is loose as. It could come down at any time. It could dump straight on us as we’re going past.’

  Mitch grinned. ‘Only if you’re screaming like a little girl.’

  Tuck slumped. Perhaps on the inside . . .

  Mitch grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it. ‘I hate to point out the obvious, buddy, but there’s no other way down from here. We can either wait for that slab to slice, or we can zip this chute and get the hell out of here. The weather’s closing in tomorrow and this is probably our only window to get the shot. I told you Meg made me promise this would be the last run before the wedding. She says she doesn’t want me waiting up the aisle for her in traction.’

  Tuck nodded but he still felt weak. He could best almost any other man on the mountain; but Mitch, his oldest adversary and best friend, was always first off and first down.

  Beside them, Badger whined – not from fear but impatience. A cross of Bernese Mountain Dog and German Shepherd, his large frame but slim build made him the perfect back-country companion, running through the deep powder with impressive stamina, tongue lolling and ridiculously pink in the all-white terrain, ears up and tail aloft. Mitch had trained him since he was a pup and if the worst did happen and the snow cleaved – even if there was no one else around to pick up the transceiver signals in their backpacks – Badger would dig them out. He was their comrade and lifeline.

  ‘You ready, huh, Badge?’ Tuck asked, scratching him behind the ear with one bulky gloved-up finger. ‘A’right, let’s do this.’ Pulling his glove off quickly, he reached up and turned on the camera on his helmet. ‘You good?’

  ‘The best, but then you already knew that, man,’ Mitch grinned, wisecracking as ever. He stopped smiling suddenly. ‘Woah! What the hell happened?’

  ‘Huh?’ Tuck glanced at his wrist, trying to see what Mitch could see. ‘Oh. Nuthin’. Some branches caught me when I was doing the logs.’ Tuck pulled his sleeve down and got the glove back on. It was minus twenty-five Celsius with wind chill today.

  ‘Big fuckin’ scratches.’

  Tuck shook his head with a grin. ‘They were big fuckin’ logs, man.’

  There was a pause as Mitch carried on staring at him.

  ‘What?’ Tuck laughed with a shrug.

  ‘A’ight,’ Mitch nodded. ‘Well, see you at the bottom.’

  And without a moment’s hesitation, he tipped himself forward, accelerating with dizzying speed within seconds, keeping to the left side of the pass for as long as there was shadow before turning hard left round the tower and out of sight. Badger, knowing the drill, followed a few seconds after, pitching himself downwards without fear, his body in a rocking-horse motion as he plunged front paws first into the snow before leaping out with his hind legs, on and on, seemingly never tiring, never spooking.

  ‘Shit,’ Tuck muttered, feeling a swift kick of anger that he was now up here, alone. ‘Goddam sonofa—’ It was always a game to Mitch. Fear was an alien concept to the guy. Tuck tipped forwards before his brain could think about it again, his eyes immediately trained on his friend’s tracks, the snow to the right side turfed up and crushed by Badger’s exuberant descent.

  He refused to look up at the perilous snow slab as he passed the tower – also the site of the narrowest turn – there was no point. If it came down now, he’d be crushed just from the sheer volume.

  He held his breath and made it through, his eyes back on Mitch as he saw him take a nerve-shredding straight-line pass past the knife rocks. ‘Must be crazy . . .’ he muttered, still not believing that he’d allowed his friend to talk him into this, in awe that they were actually doing it; taking the line they’d talked about since they were kids, never thinking they’d have the expertise or balls, or equipment – their boards, their design – to someday go do it.

  The granite walls whipped past at lightning speed – dagger-like icicles suspended in front of the exposed cliffs in a dazzling arctic blue, a membranous skin of ice swelling, magnifying, distorting the rock face – but there was no time to worry. Not now. This was instinct. There was only this moment and no other.

  Mitch was already out in the sunshine, the gradient levelling off to a mere sixty-five degrees, arms punching the air as he slowed, knees bent as he idly swooped in lazy turns, the hard work over, the reward reaped as the endorphins flooded his body. ‘Whooo-hooo!’ he hollered at the top of his voice, Badger barking in excitement as he caught up with his master.

  Tuck was almost there himself – the walls of the couloir were about to splay open, drop away to open pasture, the mountain becoming a friend again – when he heard it, that low rumble like an old man’s cough even as Mitch’s victory whoops still echoed around them like bats.

  Tuck couldn’t turn back to see, not while he was still in the col, but then he didn’t need to, to know that hundreds of tonnes of snow were falling and tumbling and gathering and sliding behind him. He saw Mitch hear it too, saw him look back and his body stiffen as he took in what Tuck could not.

  ‘Fuck!!’ Mitch hollered, turning the board ninety degrees and facing the end straight down the slope. ‘Get out of there, Tuck!’

  Tuck, listening to the sound of his own breathing against the growing roar of the avalanche, kept his eyes on his friend, following his every move as he cut left down the mountain face. It was a way steeper line than the one they’d planned but the trees were at a higher level there and they both knew the forest would slow the avalanche, though not necessarily stop it. If they could just get deep enough in . . .

  But the noise was growing louder, the snow slide gathering volume and speed. They took lines that would ordinarily have made even Mitch pause, jumping big air without sight of what was below them or how far the drop, but what choice did they have? They had to take their skills past their limits or they wouldn’t be getting out of this alive. Badger was barking but at full gallop, the snow more compacted on these exposed slopes from where the wind whipped it, so he didn’t disappear up to his belly with every bound. He was keeping up.

  Then the light dimmed and Tuck knew it was the avalanche spiriting ahead in a rolling, billowing airborne cloud, a sure sign the snow below it was snapping at his feet, gaining on him. He turned for more vertical pitch but the sudden flat light had robbed the snowy landscape of definition, texture, contrast, and at these speeds, on unknown terrain . . . He had to slow; he could be boarding straight towards a million-year-old rock wall for all he knew.

  He couldn’t see Mitch or the dog. The snow powder was showering down on him now like ash from a volcano, icy lumps battering his helmet like hail bullets, the sticky snow catching in his craw, his nose. He felt the back of his board nudged by the moving earth behind him, felt his balance wobble and put his weight on the front leg, trying to outpace it when suddenly he saw the trees – their trunks like the legs of friendly giants, offering shelter. So close.

  Too close.

  Tuck braked hard, travelling too fast for the tiny turns he would have to m
ake to wind through them – slamming into a tree would feel little different to the human body than slamming into a rock wall, or being pulverized by 500 tonnes of snow.

  ‘Yeah!’ he heard Mitch holler, just ahead but still out of sight.

  ‘Where the fuck are you?’ Tuck shouted, still not daring to look back as his legs – exhausted now, beginning to shake – manipulated the short board into tight chicane turns, the branches whipping past his face and body with stinging smacks.

  ‘Over here!’

  Tuck followed Mitch’s voice, grateful for Badger’s joyous bark telling him that wherever they were, it was out of danger. Tuck kept moving, zipping and weaving through the trees, not sure whether he was yet, before he noticed that the roar had become more distant and he could see shadows again. He strained his ears to hear, his eyes alighting on a faint lime glow fifty metres ahead. Mitch’s jacket!

  ‘Are we good?’ Tuck shouted, his friend’s jacket like a ship’s beacon in the fog as he boarded straight up to him.

  The two men hugged hard.

  ‘Yeah, man! We’re the freakin’ best!’ Mitch roared, thumping him mightily on the back so that Tuck knew he would be bruised the next day. Badges of honour.

  They looked back through the trees together, the dimness of the snowscape telling them the avalanche was still in full spate, a snow tsunami – frothing and huge and devastating. And the best thing was – they had it all on film.

  They whooped and faced up to the sky, both howling like wolves just as they had done when they were seven, and eleven, and fifteen, and twenty-one . . . Badger joined in, as though he too knew what they were celebrating – that they were young. They were free. They were alive.

  Chapter Two

  Saturday 18 March 2017

  Meg could hear them from behind the curtain, the two older women disagreeing as per usual.

  ‘You’ll be saying we should just give them bibs, next,’ Barbara huffed, sounding put out.

  ‘Nonsense. I just don’t see what’s dignified about arranging them as swans, that’s all,’ Dolores rebuffed. ‘Simplicity is best in my book.’

  ‘Hmmph, well, we all know that’s what you tell your hairdresser,’ Barbara snipped. ‘Besides, if it’s good enough for the Japanese . . .’