Christmas at Claridge's Read online

  For Andrew and Eilidh,

  who will no doubt read this book out loud all the way up the M6.

  Contents

  Prologue

  NEW YEAR’S EVE, 2013

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  PORTOFINO

  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

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  PORTOBELLO

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Karen Swan Author Q&A

  Players

  Prima Donna

  Christmas at Tiffany’s

  The Perfect Present

  An extract from The Perfect Present follows . . .

  Chapter One

  Prologue

  April 2003

  She awoke with a start. Her dream had been greedy, sucking her into a deep, motionless sleep, and her heart pounded heavily within her chest at the sudden fright. Above her head, the thin blue paisley curtain fluttered wildly like a trapped bird at the open window, the room falling into sporadic darkness as battle-fresh storm clouds surged across the sky, blocking the moon’s earthly gaze. She blinked and lay perfectly still, watching the curtain flap and flail and listening to the ghostly sounds outside as the gusting wind skimmed the sea’s skin and sprayed droplets through the air, misting the sheet so that it clung to her body like a shroud.

  The bang came again and she jumped – not because it was particularly loud, but because it was out of place. The storm had been forecast and everything was tethered. That gate had been locked. She had done it herself.

  In one move she was up on her knees, her face scrunched against the wind as it found her in the narrow window and whipped her long dark hair around her like Medusa’s snakes. She saw the dark green trellised gate bang against its metal post again before sweeping back on its hinges, ready for the next attack. Her eyes lifted to the frothing surf behind it as rearing white horses stampeded the inlet, throwing themselves against the basalt rocks, while the gate crashed closed again and again and again – the drummer boy to the sea’s cavalry charge. If she was going to get any sleep . . .

  Her bare feet touched the cold tiled floor as she pulled on the white dotted cotton nightdress it had been too muggy to wear before the storm had broken. She opened her door soundlessly and looked down the long hall. Shadows played in silence, interrupted only by the caprices of the clouds, and downstairs a Viennese wall clock ticked. She ran lightly, the pads of her feet making a tiny sticky patter only the mice could hear.

  She moved like a ghost through the kitchen, automatically reaching high for the back door keys that were stored safely on a hook. But they weren’t there. Tentatively she put her hand to the handle and pushed down. It was unlocked.

  She hesitated, listening for further sounds that would indicate activity or reasons to be outside in the storm, but everything around her seemingly slept on. But . . . she looked at the handle again; someone was up. With a deep breath, she stepped outside, immediately hunching herself into a stoop as the hot wind lunged at her in snappy gusts. Her hair flew across her face, and she had to release one hand from clutching her nightie to pin her hair back behind her ear as she looked across the gardens for signs of life. She was alone. The chickens were nestled together in the furthest corner of their coop, the tree branches empty and there was no sign of the black and white stray cat with ginger tail and eyebrows either. She hobbled over the cobbled-mosaic path, as above her, the olive and cypress trees bent low as if in greeting, the wild daisies in the stone walls nodding their heads in frantic unison.

  She reached the gate mid-swing, only just stopping it from slamming again. Replacing it on the catch, she reached down to re-attach the chain that she knew she had secured earlier. Padlocks didn’t just unlock themselves and there certainly wasn’t enough power – even in these winds – for the gate to force it. To open it required a key that was left on the same hook with the back door keys. Who was out here?

  She looked across the small, narrow road that divided the property from the rocky shore, searching for an untethered boat on the savage swell or an uprooted tree – anything that might explain why anyone would come out in this weather. But the moon was eclipsed by buffeting clouds suddenly and the garden plunged into darkness. Shadows were swallowed whole and the wind howled as it victory-lapped the lone villa.

  That was why she saw it, the barest flicker of a candle further down the shore path, the only light out there. Her eyes focused with pinpoint accuracy as she keened into the headwind, trying to see the dot of light in the distance. No one would willingly choose to step outdoors during a storm like this. Something had to be wrong.

  Letting the chain drop heavily from her hand, she opened the gate again and crossed the narrow road, darting straight into the protection of the fig-tree-lined tunnel on the other side that would take her down to the stepped terraces and the bar area, and then beyond that, swirling down in a vortex of cobble steps towards the beach and boat stores.

  The ground was wet beneath her feet as spray – all that was left of the waves pounding the rocks and tors and walls – fell like mist, making her hair and nightie cling defiantly to her skin in spite of the wind’s assaults. Her hands smacked against the jagged walls for blind guidance as she headed towards the solitary flicker that she could see now was coming from the tall, round folly on the small bay’s furthest promontory. With relief, she knew the dark path she was on would lead directly to steps that descended to the headland; the door was only locked at the bottom, where it opened onto a small concrete bathing platform a metre above the sea.

  Disorientated by the dancing, whirling darkness, she reached the first steps before she expected to, almost falling headlong down them and having to grapple with the wall for support, grazing the skin on her forearms. She closed her eyes as the sting smarted, her hands clasping the cuts as her heart pounded from the near miss. A shiver shot over her skin; she was shielded from the warmth of the Saharan-sourced wind here and the chill of her damp hair and skin began to creep.

  A sudden noise – a sob? – beneath her made her catch her breath. She strained to hear more and made out the dull sweep of skin on stone, as if something or someone was being dragged, and then a sharp scraping as though furniture was being moved. She waited, her breath held, one hand slapped over her mouth as an insurance policy. There came the sounds of hurried breathing, of panting.


  She froze, suddenly certain that whoever was down there, and whatever they were doing, it had nothing to do with the storm. Although the small windows on the stairwell were open to the elements, with only iron bars at them, the steps themselves ran down a central spine, blocking the floor below from sight and protecting everything in there from the weather. Whatever was happening down there, in the dead of night, amidst the storm, it was happening in secret.

  She looked behind her into the enveloping blackness, knowing she should turn back; knowing that whatever was going on, it had nothing to do with her; she wasn’t supposed to see this. She was eighteen. Her whole life was spread before her like a beautifully laid picnic.

  The breathing around the next corner grew more ragged and desperate, building . . . She turned to go. She had to get out.

  ‘Help . . . me.’ The whisper reached out to her – only her – in the darkness.

  She spun round, her eyes wide and black with fright. Had they heard her? Had she heard correctly? Above the wind, she didn’t know if she could trust her ears. But she could trust her eyes. Every instinct was telling her to turn and run, to leap over the steps three at a time and escape back to the safety of the storm. There was fear here. She could feel it reaching up the stairs like ivy and entwining her.

  She was unseen, but already a part of this. Even as her head screamed at her to run, her feet began to move, spiriting her forwards and downwards in silence as the storm raged above. Shaking palpably, instinctively sensing that each step she took was a step away from her own path, she turned the corner.

  Two pairs of eyes met hers. And she stepped out of the shadows.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE, 2013

  Chapter One

  The red leather-clad phone on the table buzzed waspishly jolting Clem out of her meditation on the rain. She read it with a sigh.

  ‘Where ARE you? If you’re not here in five minutes, I’m coming to get you.’

  The sender hadn’t signed off, but then, she didn’t need to. Stella and she practically maintained an open line to each other. Her hand fell back onto the silk pouch resting on her lap and she looked out into the slippery, gleaming night. It was just gone nine thirty and she’d made a solemn pinky-promise to get there soon after eight, but for all her hard-partying reputation, she loathed New Year’s Eve. It was the second worst night of the year in her book.

  ‘Wardrobe crisis,’ she texted back.

  The reply was instantaneous. ‘Bollocks! We decided on the sequin skirt and mohair jumper. Move it!’

  Clem’s eyes fell down to her copper sequinned mini skirt – which flashed her extra-long still-brown legs – and the winter-white sweater that slipped off one still-brown shoulder. Stella always knew when she was lying.

  ‘Shoe crisis,’ she half-heartedly tried again whilst sliding her feet into the metallic bronze python stilettoes lying abandoned beside the sofa and pushing herself to standing. At 5 foot 9 inches in socks, the shoes took her above 6 foot and her gaze drifted out the windows onto the reflections in the puddles on the pavements outside. It really was raining very hard she noticed for the first time. Stella’s flat was only a couple of streets away, but she’d be soaked if she walked there, and what were the chances of catching a cab on the Portobello Road on New Year’s Eve?

  The phone buzzed again. ‘Pythons. And FYFI Josh just arrived and been ambushed by bosomy blonde in red.’

  ‘What?’ Clem screeched to the empty room. With sudden focus and impressive speed, she raced into her bedroom, digging beneath the piles of dirty clothes for her bag and a coat. Her hands found the rabbit-fur jacket (or ‘lapin’ as Stella insisted on saying, making it sound like an exotic tea) and she held it up questioningly She’d bought it on a whim in the market last week and worn it home in the rain so that now the fur looked like it came from a rabbit that had died of myxomatosis. Hmm.

  It was still chucking it down, so she ran back into the sitting room and grabbed the tobacco unlined leather jacket off the hook on the back of the door. It had cost a bomb and she couldn’t quite remember whether she’d actually got round to waterproofing it yet, but there wasn’t time to worry about that now. Josh was at the party. He was there and she was not, and a woman with a bosom was making a move – Clem was damned if she was going to let that wench undo her two months and nineteen days of hard graft getting him to believe that there really was more to her than just a good-time girl.

  Grabbing her keys and phone, she dashed out of the door, slamming it behind her. A minute later, she was letting herself back in again and running – she was surprisingly fast in 4-inch heels – to the fridge. The Billecart-Salmon was nicely chilled. At least the bitter night air temperatures were going to work with her on that. Shame the rain would make her mascara run, her jumper pill and her hair flat.

  Ooh. Hair flat. Hat! She bolted into Tom’s room and grabbed the Akubra hat he kept on top of his wardrobe, her eyes falling on the bike in the far corner as she checked herself in the mirror. She stopped and stared at it, her mind racing with the sudden possibility. No. She couldn’t. It was a spectacularly bad idea, even by her standards. And Tom would kill her. Completely hang her up by her earrings and . . .

  ‘. . . Hair flick followed by bosom thrust.’

  Clem gave another small scream that made Shambles, their pet parrot, fall off her perch, and crossed the room in record time. To hell with Tom. This was an emergency.

  The streets were quiet, the shops and cafés long since shut and all the residents safely ensconced in raucous house parties or the pubs, out of the rain. The roads gleamed in their wet skins beneath the street lights and Clem allowed herself a laugh of delight as she sliced through a deep puddle, her feet off the pedals as the spray dived cleanly to her left and right.

  The bike – even though it was a man’s model – fitted her well, her famously long legs stretched fully on the downward rotations, and it felt responsive and light to manoeuvre, even riding one-handed. She’d have to see whether she could get herself one of these. It’d be a dream for getting through the market, and she could be in Hyde Park in minutes. Maybe she should give up running and take up cycling instead?

  Turning right onto Ladbroke Grove and third left into Oxford Gardens, she mounted the pavement, almost taking out a man striding towards her. He began swearing at her in French, but Clem didn’t have time to stop and even less inclination to apologize. ‘And you nearly made me drop my bottle!’ she hollered indignantly over her shoulder. ‘What you doing out here anyway? Got no mates?’

  She pulled up at Stella’s flat minutes later, swinging her leg off the bike as if she was dismounting a horse, and grabbed the mirror from her bag to check herself over. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold night air and her eyeliner had smudged a little in the damp, but she decided she rather liked that. She always preferred to look a little ‘undone’, and anyway, it picked out the aquamarine tints in her blue-green eyes, which usually only appeared when she cried. And she wasn’t going to be crying tonight. Oh no.

  The door was on the latch, but she had to push it with some force to get past the revellers drinking, dancing and talking in the hall. There wasn’t enough room to lean the bike against the wall, but she noticed the looped metal demi-chandelier wall-lights . . .

  ‘Hey!’ she shouted over the music to a guy in a gunmetal-grey shirt, allowing her signature husky voice to become even more gravelled. ‘Would you mind . . .?’ She indicated from the bike to the wall light. From the look on his face, just the sight of her with her jumper slowly slipping off her shoulder, would have made him lift a tractor up there had she asked.

  Clem flashed him a teasingly grateful smile and pushed her way past the bodies to the party’s hub in the long, tall living room. It was so crowded that there wasn’t enough room to swing her hair, much less a cat, but people moved aside for her anyway, their stares slow and interested at the sight of her looking soggy and dripping raindrops from the brim of her hat, while still somehow managing to be the most arrestin
g woman in the room. Stella was standing near the fireplace, drunkenly pouring vodka into a row of shot glasses.

  ‘Where is he?’ Clem asked, grabbing one of the vodka shots and downing it.

  Stella, unperturbed, did the same and they each picked up a fresh glass, ready to go again. ‘Kitchen. You took your time.’ Concern posing as suspicion danced in her glass-green eyes.

  Clem ignored her. ‘Any idea who the dolly is?’

  ‘Nope, but she dances like she’s been tranquillized and she’s got all the subtlety of a claw hammer.’ They clinked glasses and dispatched them without missing a beat.

  ‘Hmm. How do I look?’

  Stella gave her the quick once-over – she was, after all, the designer of Clem’s outfit that evening. As the two of them always said, she was the one with the eye, Clem was the one with the legs.

  ‘Hatefully gorgeous, and keep the hat. Bonus points for styling,’ she replied, arranging Clem’s nut-brown hair so it curled softly like sleeping kittens around her shoulders. Clem let her gaze drift around the room. She knew most of the faces there. Fifteen feet away she could see Tom and Clover chatting to his rugby mates, Tom leaning against the back of the sofa, a beer on the go and his ever-ready grin plastered all over his handsome face, as Clover winsomely stroked the back of his neck with her hand. Clem slunk down a little. It was usually Clover she avoided, but she really didn’t want to deal with her big brother right now.

  Stella handed her another shot of Grey Goose. ‘You’ve got to play catch-up,’ she ordered bossily, as Clem wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and watched a silky brunette move in for the kill on Freddie Haywood, her ex, three times removed.

  ‘Regrets?’ Stella asked, watching as Freddie’s eyes flickered towards Clem.

  ‘Who? Freddie? Don’t be daft,’ Clem murmured, looking away.

  ‘I still don’t get why you two broke up. You made a great couple.’