Christmas at Claridge's Read online

  The glass fell from Stella’s hand onto the velvet ottoman. Luckily, and unsurprisingly, it was empty. ‘What the . . .? Why not?.’

  ‘He wanted me to beg.’

  ‘For what? Sex? Because I’d have done it. I practically was anyway. He’s gorgeo—’

  ‘For his name.’

  Stella walked around and positioned herself in Clem’s line of sight. ‘Let me get this right. You’re telling me you let that walk out of here, because you wouldn’t . . . ask his name?’

  Clem looked down at her, as if waking out of the trance, and nodded. She blinked nervously, waiting for Stella’s response. But Stella was mute with shock, lost for words for the first time in her life.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Clem asked as Stella turned on her heel, shaking her head and muttering to herself.

  ‘To ring Oscar. You won’t ask a bloke his name? Jeez, no wonder I’m not married!’

  ‘Stell!’

  But Stella just stuck her nose in the air and got on the phone. ‘It’s the blind leading the bloody blind with you.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Clem lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling, her arms folded behind her head as Shambles put on an aeronautical display for her, as though sensing her low mood. But even her party trick of dodging her head up and down, and side to side at breakneck speed wasn’t working.

  Tom was out again – either working late or staying at Clover’s – and she was all alone in the quiet flat. The evenings were getting longer now that they were in the middle of March, but the light was still fading, and she knew she ought to get up and switch some lights on. Lying alone in the dark with an eager-to-please parrot really was depressing.

  Her eyes swivelled slowly around her bedroom, taking in the chocolate brown walls of her kingdom, with exposed brick on the chimney breast; a black and white poster of Joni Mitchell blu-tacked to the wall; wedged in the corner of the mirror some photos of her and Stella – legs dangling out of the sitting-room window, a beer in each hand and Union Jack bunting strung up between their flat and Mrs Crouch’s at last year’s Notting Hill Carnival – a jumble of necklaces looped over a silver candelabra (one of a pair she’d received from her parents a few New Year’s Days ago), a vintage wooden champagne case that had boots spilling out of it . . . She was twenty-nine years old and this was what she had to show for her life. Not for her a smart sports car or ball-breaking career, a besotted husband or a tall town-house with a live-in nanny and a playroom. She still lived like a student, stuck in time, unable to move forwards.

  Maybe Stella had been right; maybe she had played it wrong. The Swimmer had gone to ground. It had been almost two weeks since the christening, and although she’d scanned every crowd and café for his triangular torso and angular face, she hadn’t seen him once.

  ‘A prochaine.’ The way he’d said it, she thought he’d pop up in front of her flat the next evening, with a bottle of wine in his hand and a rueful smile on his lips. ‘Touché,’ he would have said and they’d have both capitulated, falling into each other’s arms and finally getting it on.

  But the days had slipped past, apologetically empty. Even Josh had finally got the message and stopped calling; and Simon had resolutely refused to flirt with her ever since she’d ever-so-nicely blackmailed him in his own living room. She could scarcely believe it, but there was an awful truth staring her in the face: she’d lost her touch.

  The scratch of keys in the lock alerted her to Tom’s arrival and she jumped off the bed eagerly. She padded into the sitting room and turned on the floor lamp, just as the door opened and Tom fell in, laughing, followed immediately afterwards by Clover. Drat.

  ‘Oh, you are in,’ he said, throwing down his bag and giving her a smacker on her forehead. ‘It looked dark from the street.’

  ‘I was, uh, napping,’ she mumbled, wandering to the window and looking down the road – just in case. Across the way, she could see Mrs Crouch in her flat, pouring some gin into a rose-painted teacup and sipping it slowly, with her tabby cat Esme sitting on her lap whilst they watched Coronation Street.

  ‘D’you fancy an Indian tonight? I’m happy to get it,’ Clem said, perching on the windowsill and watching as the two of them moved busily about the flat.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Clover asked, her eyes raking briefly up and down Clem in her Topshop playsuit, man’s cardigan, thick grey, ribbed tights and snood twisted in her hair.

  Tom was oblivious to the slight. ‘Would have loved to, but we’re meeting the boys in the Duke in ten. I’ve just popped back to get a clean shirt for tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Tom slammed one drawer shut and hastily tore open another. ‘I don’t suppose you know where my bone cuff-links are?’

  ‘The ones Dad gave you?’

  ‘Yeah, I can’t find them anywhere. I’ve searched Clo’s, and they’re not in the obvious places here . . .’

  Clem shrugged. ‘Cufflinks aren’t much use to me,’ she murmured, leaning against the sofa and watching as Clover neatly folded a pink shirt into an overnight bag for him. He was staying at Clover’s five nights out of seven, and Clem wondered whether he was acclimatizing to living with her full time. Even though he’d been as good as his word and held back from putting the flat on the market, she felt sure he now saw selling it as the answer to all his problems. No big commissions had come in for Alderton Hide, the phone barely ever rang – Simon was of the view that Perignard had leaked what had happened – and the only remaining project was due to be completed next month.

  And, in spite of her very best efforts to pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat, things weren’t quite going to plan with the collection either. Yes, they now had nearly 400 followers on their Twitter page, thanks to a stealth word-of-mouth campaign, and her, Katy and Stella surreptitiously scouting potential customers in the market, but quite where the pop-up shop could actually be, or when, they still didn’t know. She didn’t know anyone with a big enough house to host who didn’t also know Tom, none of the landlords were prepared to rent out their vacant properties for just one day and the market inspectors wouldn’t budge on respecting the years-long waiting lists for stalls. It was a maddening situation: they had the beginnings of a collection, but nowhere to sell it.

  ‘Stella coming over later?’ Tom asked, stopping by her on his way back out and resting a warm, calloused hand on her shoulder.

  Clem nodded convincingly. ‘’Course.’

  ‘Well, give the old trollop my love. I haven’t seen her much lately.’

  Clem nodded. Nor had she. ‘Sure.’

  The door closed with a click and Clem fell back onto the sheepskin sofa, her legs dangling over the arm, the rest of the evening stretching out, long and shapeless before her.

  She had some options, of course: her parents were finally back from their holiday now; she could be over at theirs, tucking into a bowl of Scottish mussels with her father within twenty minutes, but that would involve seeing her mother. There was also a good chance Katy and Scott would be having a quiet drink in the Duke, but that would involve being sociable. She could fix herself some dinner and watch TV, but that would involve moving.

  She was so absorbed in the utter nothingness of her evening that at first she didn’t hear the knock at the door, but when it came again – more loudly – she sat up and stared at the door accusingly, her heart accelerating instantly to a gallop. She knew who it wasn’t. It wasn’t Stella: she was with Oscar again tonight. And Tom and Clover had their own keys . . .

  Had he been waiting and watching after all, hidden in the shadows? Had he seen the light go on and Tom and Clover leave? Did he know that she was here, and that she was here alone?

  Her mouth felt dry and she spun in a circle three times, not sure whether to wet her face and swallow some toothpaste in the bathroom, or hide her dirty clothes on the floor in the bedroom. Shambles, picking up on her sudden agitation, went into an even greater frenzy, speeding up the head slides alarmingly.

 
But before Clem could decide what to do first, the knock came again and she knew she had to answer it. He wouldn’t knock a fourth time, she knew that. He’d called her bluff once before. Whipping the snood off her hair and fluffing it up in the mirror, she slapped her cheeks hard several times, hoisted her breasts up in her bra and took a deep breath. This was it.

  She opened the door.

  Simon shrugged back at her. Clem knew that the expression on her face when she found it was him on her doorstep was the exact opposite to his when he’d found her on his doorstep.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Only me, I’m afraid. Were you expecting someone?’ Simon asked, taking in her flushed cheeks, parted mouth and cleavage.

  ‘No, no, don’t be ridiculous,’ she exclaimed in a voice that tremored with disappointment. ‘Come in.’

  He shut the door behind him and hung his coat on the peg with relaxed familiarity. Tom had held plenty of meetings here over supper. ‘Tom’s not in, I’m afraid. Just li’l old me,’ she said, padding over to the fridge and grabbing a bottle of Chablis and two glasses. ‘Thirsty?’

  He nodded. ‘Good. Because it’s not Tom I’m here to see. It’s you.’

  ‘Oh shit, what have I done now?’

  ‘You mean apart from blackmail me?’

  There was a small silence before Clem caught the twinkle in his eye and they both laughed.

  ‘It was the only card I had left to play, Si,’ she said, pouring them a glass each and flopping down on the sofa next to him. ‘And I did do it as nicely as I could.’

  ‘It’s true, you are the nicest blackmailer I’ve ever done business with,’ Simon grinned, clinking her glass. ‘I forgive you.’

  ‘How are things with Pixie anyway?’

  ‘Oh, uh, so-so.’

  Clem frowned. ‘Are you still nailing her or not?’

  He tutted. ‘You are such a bloke sometimes.’

  ‘Answer me. Is that why you’re here? To say you’ve dumped her and I no longer have a hold on you and you’re going to dob me in to my big brother?’

  ‘You’ll always have a hold over me, Clem,’ he replied with a grin.

  ‘Glad to hear it. My ego could do with the boost right now,’ she quipped.

  His eyes flicked up at her before he leaned down and reached into his bag. ‘Actually, the reason I’m here is because we took delivery of a large shipment today. The pieces that had been sourced for Perignard.’ He pulled out his iPad.

  ‘Oh shit. We’d already ordered materials?’ Clem curled her legs up, resting her chin on her knees.

  ‘The entire showroom was designed around this,’ he said, bringing up some architect’s drawings and showing them to her. ‘They were going to line the walls with this. Dappled with pink diamonds of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He showed her a close-up of rose-pink suede that even from here looked as supple as silk.

  ‘Gorgeous!’ Clem gasped, getting up onto her knees. ‘That pink is amazing.’

  ‘It’s nubuck, a full-grain leather. Took two months to source enough hides of sufficient size and quality before we could even start tanning and splitting.’

  ‘I’m gobsmacked.’

  ‘I know! Can’t you just imagine the glow it would have given off? Everyone looks good in a pinky light, and the jewels would have looked really lustrous.’ He flicked onto another image, showing the palest green and ivory mottled shagreen leathers. ‘And these were intended for the cabinets. Again, incredibly rare and it took months to source.’

  A small groan escaped Clem. How could one reckless moment have endangered so much?

  ‘No point in dwelling on it,’ Simon said, reading her thoughts. ‘What’s done is done. We can’t change it and it’s their loss as far as I’m concerned. My point is, we now have a consignment of finest top-end leather that’s all but useless. We obviously can’t return it, and if the company does go into receivership, it’ll simply be sold on at cost, which would frankly be criminal.’

  Clem gasped. It was hideous even hearing the word ‘receivership’. ‘So then what are you going to do with it?’

  He looked directly at her. ‘Give it to you.’

  Clem’s mouth dropped open in surprise.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, and the more time goes by without any help on the horizon, the more I think what you’re doing is right. Bespoke is fucked right now, the banks won’t even table any more meetings and the VCs who were circling last summer aren’t interested when they see our orders book. I’m trying to bring forward invoicing, but legally no one’s obliged to pay yet, and they’re all in the same boat as us, waiting for someone else to pay them. We’ve got to do something else, something new. The way I see it now, we can either continue to sink slowly or go down in a ball of flames.’

  ‘Simes, I can’t believe it!’ Clem gasped emotionally. ‘Wait till I tell Stella! She’ll go nuts with this leather. She’ll be able to do something really amazing with it.’

  ‘How have things progressed with your plans?’

  ‘A bit like you and Pixie: so-so. I’ve got a target customer base poised and ready to shop. Stella and I have trawled the market and a couple of events, handing out flyers to women we reckon would like what we’re doing. I’ve set up a Twitter account @clemportobello. It’s got over four hundred followers already and I’ve only done one tweet so far.’

  Clem brought it up on her phone and showed him the screen: ‘©clemportobello Watch this space . . .’

  ‘When everything’s ready, I’m going to tweet the date, time and location of the sale. And there’ll be no paper trail for Tom to find out.’

  ‘You realize how badly this has to work? The company’s reputation might be all he has left. If you trash it—’

  ‘I never would. I know what it means to him. But doing a collection doesn’t downgrade the brand; it just opens it up to a new audience.’

  ‘I agree,’ Simon shrugged, taking the bottle from the table and refilling both their glasses. ‘I just wish he saw it that way. Who’d have taken Tom for a snob? He’s the most liberal, egalitarian bloke I know, and yet . . .’

  Clem shrugged. ‘He’s just become blinkered on this issue, that’s all. He’ll come round when he sees what we’ve done. Talking of which, do you want to see one of the bags?’

  Simon nodded eagerly and Clem jumped up, wandering into her bedroom to find the bag she’d hidden at the back of her wardrobe. Simon drained his drink and followed after.

  ‘I’ve only got this one bag here. I’m having to keep everything at Stella’s obviously; I can’t risk Tom finding things here.’ She handed him the ivory suede pouch with the ruby-red silk cord. Had it not been for the outsize scale, it would have looked like something a Tsarina would have carried. ‘Like it?’

  Simon nodded. ‘I love it,’ he murmured, inspecting it closely for quality. He nodded, impressed by the welted seams. ‘And you made this with an off-cut?’

  ‘Yeah! Do you remember the suede we had for making the benches in Barclays’ head offices?’

  ‘This is from that?’

  ‘What was left of it. We only had enough to make three, but I reckon that just means we can charge more for them. Rarity value. I’d like to hold on to one myself, but I’m going to have to be selfless for once.’ She sighed longingly.

  ‘I wish I’d seen this earlier. I’d have seen the light immediately.’

  Clem shrugged. ‘I felt bad enough coercing you into it, I didn’t want to make you any more complicit than you had to be.’

  Simon gazed at her steadily. ‘You know, if everything else is as strong as this, you might just have something here. You could do it.’

  ‘Well, especially now that there are some complete hides, we could. It’s been really hard working with such small, irregular pieces. We’re only going to earn so much selling purses, hats and wrist-warmers. Some big statement pieces could really stamp an overall personality on the collection, plus a lot more profit margin.’
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  ‘Listen to you with your business jargon. You’re a revelation,’ Simon smiled, handing the bag back to her, his fingers brushing hers as she took it.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far,’ Clem said, clocking a look she knew all too well in Simon’s eyes. ‘It is, after all, because of me that we’re all in this mess.’

  She went to move past him back into the sitting room, but in one swift move, he caught her by the elbow, his lips finding hers with an ease that had been practised in his dreams. He tasted of toothpaste and wine, and his stubble grated against her skin.

  ‘Simon,’ she protested, struggling to get out of his grip whilst trying to bring a light-hearted laugh to her throat. ‘Bugger off.’

  But his hands were on her, gripping and squeezing her, ramming her to him as his mouth covered hers.

  ‘Simon!’ she managed. ‘Please stop.’

  ‘Come on, Clem,’ he said urgently, holding her hard by the arms. ‘Why not? You know how crazy I am about you.’

  ‘Because I don’t think of you like that,’ she said, trying to lean back.

  ‘But you’re a party girl. You’ve slept with guys just because they bought you a drink.’

  With a burst of anger, she pulled away and slapped him hard around the face. The sound of it resounded between them, like a vibration pushing them apart.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she whispered, her hands rushing up to her cheeks. ‘Simon, I’m so sorry.’

  He stepped away from her, his head lowered, his hand to his cheek. He shook his head, his face scarlet, and a long silence stretched between them in which Clem didn’t dare move or speak.

  Eventually, he looked up at her. ‘I’m sorry, Clem. I should never have . . . tried,’ he began. ‘I don’t know why I thought you’d go for it . . .’ He sniffed. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.’

  He turned and walked quickly out of the room, picking up his jacket from the sofa, then he walked to the door.

  Clem stayed by the doorway of the bedroom, desperate for him to go, but not as an enemy. ‘Simon, we are still friends, aren’t we?’