Christmas at Claridge's Read online

‘Y – you – are – with her,’ she half-hissed, half-hiccupped, furiously wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands. She didn’t want his pity.

  He released her elbow, reassured she wasn’t going to run at least, and put his hand in his pocket. ‘Yes.’

  Clem tried to laugh, but couldn’t quite manage it – instead a strange, strangled sound came from her throat. ‘Well, that’s great. I’m thrilled for you,’ she said sarcastically, going to step round him

  But he grabbed her by the arm again and stopped her. ‘She’s everything you’re not. Polite, charming, gracious, elegant . . . dull predictable, compliant. What am I supposed to do? Break it off because I’ve seen you a couple of times and we’ve had one conversation where you couldn’t even be bothered to ask my name?’ He was angry now. ‘Ask it. Ask me my name and I’ll go back in there right now and break it off with her.’

  ‘What?’ She looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘Ask me. I’ll do it.’

  ‘No!’

  He stepped towards her, so close she almost had to put her hand against him to keep him from advancing. ‘Ask.’ His breath was warm on her skin and she could smell his cologne – subtle, slightly smoky.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she whispered as he stared down at her, robbing her of breath and focus.

  ‘Thanks to you? Yes, quite possibly. You’re driving me out of my mind.’ His voice was low and urgent, his hand on the wall keeping her close. They hadn’t even begun and already there was more, here. That first time, in the party, she’d felt it: that he could see right to the heart of her. For all the eyes that had ever lingered on her (and there had been many) she’d only ever been looked at that way once before, and she knew he could see what other people didn’t, looking straight through to the wall that had been bricked up inside her, hidden and hard. But if she let him in, he’d try to pull it down. He had proved today that he would keep on trying.

  ‘Ask me.’

  The tears fell and she raised her hand to his cheek, one lover to another. Her lips formed the word long before her throat could get the sound out.

  ‘No.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Clem was dancing on the bed in her underwear when Stella let herself in an hour later, Florence + the Machine blasting through the flat.

  ‘Oh! Right, really sick,’ she said sarcastically, leaning on the doorframe and watching as Clem performed a gangly leap, the beer in the bottle in her hand flying through the air and spattering the duvet as she landed. ‘Nice.’

  ‘Mmm, saving some for later,’ Clem giggled drunkenly taking another swig. Several bottles – some still unopened – were grouped on the bedside table, another on the floor. ‘Want one?’

  ‘We’re in double figures, right?’ Stella shrugged, briefly checking her watch and picking up the nearest one, opening it swiftly by bringing the heel of her hand down on the bottle top, angled against the bedside table. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean!’ Clem shouted above the music, jumping on the bed so hard it creaked.

  ‘Tom texted me!’ Stella shouted back. ‘Said you had to leave the meeting ’cos you were so sick.’

  ‘Yeah, I didn’t feel so great,’ Clem shrugged, pausing her frenetic dance to swig more beer. She stumbled on the bed slightly, her head hanging so that her hair swung, before resuming the frenzied gazelle leaps.

  Stella watched her for a moment before crossing the room and removing the iPod from the docking station. Silence filled the room like a gunshot.

  ‘Hey!’ Clem protested. ‘I was—’

  ‘Out with it. What’s going on?’

  Clem frowned.

  ‘You and I both know how important that meeting was to Tom,’ Stella said patiently, settling herself on the pillows. ‘And you and I both know you’d eat your own leg before ever willingly doing anything to upset him. So why did you do a runner? The maths too advanced? Someone gave you Chardonnay?’

  Clem sighed and sank down onto the end of the bed. ‘I left because of him.’

  ‘Him? Tom?’ Stella looked puzzled for a moment, before she remembered the enigmatic stranger at the christening. ‘Oh Christ, him? The Swimmer?’

  Clem nodded, almost wincing at the name they’d given him. ‘He was the client we were meeting today. He set it all up.’

  Stella’s eyes brightened and her hand gripped Clem’s wrist more tightly. ‘And?’

  ‘And his girlfriend pitched up. He did it deliberately.’

  The light in Stella’s eyes darkened. ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Yeah, I mean, seriously? All that hassle just because we’ve flirted a few times and I knocked him back? Jeez, he needs to get a life.’

  ‘Well, to be honest, hon, there was way more going on there than mere flirting! A frickin’ blind man could see that. You practically had full sex in that sitting room. Even though you had your clothes on and . . . and didn’t actually touch.’ She circled the beer bottle around frantically. ‘You get my point.’

  ‘I really couldn’t give a shit,’ Clem replied defiantly, swigging from the bottle again.

  ‘Clearly,’ Stella quipped. ‘That’s why you’re wasted at eleven thirty on a Tuesday morning. I mean, he was only the man who was clearly going to give you the best sex of your life, right?’

  ‘Exactly Good riddance.’

  Stella lapsed into silence, watching her friend carefully as she studied the label on the bottle, a devastated expression settling on her face in repose. ‘Are you sure this is about his girlfriend? You’ve been funny about him since the off.’

  ‘No I haven’t.’

  Stella arched an eyebrow. ‘What’s his name?’

  Dammit. Clem shrugged slightly. ‘Something French.’

  ‘You still don’t know? You’ve had a meeting with the guy and you don’t know his name?’

  Clem tutted and began peeling the beer-bottle label, shredding it and rolling the gluey bits between her fingers.

  ‘I thought so.’

  Clem raised her eyes to her friend’s. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re scared.’

  ‘I am not!’ Clem was indignant.

  ‘Yeah, you are. If you didn’t care about him, you’d have asked it the first time and forgotten it the morning after, just like normal. But you like him.’ She gasped as the realization hit. ‘You’re worried about how much you already like him, that’s why you’re being so weird about it all. You’re scared shitless of falling for him.’

  ‘Wrong!’ Clem intoned the word, eyes shut, as if it were the strike of a bell.

  ‘Not.’ Stella swigged her beer and looked at Clem closely. ‘I think you’re afraid of falling for him and losing control because you’re afraid of falling in love and being happy.’

  ‘No!’ Clem protested, frowning furiously

  ‘That’s why you dump guys after three months, no matter what, and I don’t care what you say – Freddie Haywood was good news for you.’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Stella said, eyes brightening as she warmed to her theory. ‘He made you happy, but that made you scared. You like to be the one calling the shots: they do the loving, you do the leaving. You’d choose a hot one-night stand over a steady relationship any day of the week, and that’s not normal, Clem. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. You really are the only single twenty-nine-year-old in London who genuinely doesn’t want to settle down. For some reason, you’re actively seeking the chaos—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Clem shouted, startling them both. She had jumped up to standing on the bed again, her legs trying to balance, as if she was popping on a surfboard, her beer-free hand balled into a tiny fist. ‘You are categorically wrong. You couldn’t be more wrong.’

  ‘You don’t usually care if they’ve got a girlfriend, Clem. You never hang around long enough for it to be a problem. So why are you running away from him?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Stella sighed. ‘You walked out of the meeting because his girlfriend pitched up, and y
ou refuse to even find out his name,’ she said slowly, as though Clem had been drugged or lobotomized. ‘That is running away.’

  Clem stared down at her, swaying slightly. ‘Fine then! Just to show you how totally, completely and utterly wrong you are, I shall bed the boy. Happy? Will that dispel your hyp . . . hypothemus?’

  ‘Hippopotamus?’

  ‘Stop laughing at me!’

  Stella giggled, pulling her legs up too late as Clem swiped a kick at them. ‘Good, I’m glad.’

  ‘You should be. I’m only doing it to make you happy.’

  ‘And I’m only making you do it to make you happy.’ Stella sat back against the headboard, satisfied by her reasoning as Clem – much drunker – tried to keep up with the twisted logic. ‘So you promise you’ll call him?’

  ‘Uh-huh. That’ll call his bluff. He won’t be expecting me to call him after today’s little show. Ha! And then I’ll . . . I’ll treat him just like all the others – good time, goodbye. No special treatment.’ Clem inhaled sharply.

  ‘Even if he’s effectively your boss?’

  Clem shook her head sorrowfully. ‘That’s not gonna happen. The whole thing was just a ruse to restore his male pride. He was never gonna give Tom the job. I sincerely doubt there even is a job.’ She went to take another swig of beer, but the bottle was empty.

  ‘Come on, give me that. You’ve had enough. Go and have a bath and I’ll get us some food. You can think about what you’re gonna say to luvaboy.’

  Clem rolled her eyes, but jumped off the bed and grabbed her dressing gown from the hook on the door. ‘Fine. But just so we’re both clear, I won that argument,’ she said, swaying slightly as she looked back at Stella.

  Stella nodded magnanimously. ‘Yeah. You did.’

  Clem lurched across the sitting room towards the bathroom, rankled. They both knew she hadn’t.

  They were halfway through the boxset of Borgen, two empty, slightly soggy pizza boxes by their feet, when the door downstairs slammed and they both jumped. A small group of people were singing very badly – caterwauling, in fact – as a multitude of feet stomped slowly up the stairs. As they got closer, Tom could clearly be heard leading the group in a rendition of ‘Chicago’ – the rugger bugger version – as he stopped in the hall and attempted, many, many times, to get the key in the door.

  ‘Oh shit, this doesn’t sound good,’ Clem winced, just as Tom finally succeeded in his quest and fell into the flat holding a cardboard box, closely followed by Simon and Pixie. They were each holding an open bottle of Perrier-Jouet in their hands.

  ‘Champagne?’ Stella asked, rather incredulously. ‘Have you got something to celebrate?’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’ Tom grinned, reaching into the box, pulling out a fresh bottle of fizz and handing it to her. ‘We’re saved! Alderton Hide is back in business!’ He frowned and gave a single hiccup. ‘Or do I mean, staying in business? Because technically we never actually ceased trading. Things just got pretty s – 1 – o – w there for a while,’ he said, moving in slow motion to make his point.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Clem gasped, delighted and clapping her hands excitedly. T can’t believe it! You did it! You actually did it!’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ Stella exclaimed, thinking how strange it was, for the second time today, to be the sober one. ‘So what’s the job?’

  ‘Oh, nothing special,’ Tom shrugged. ‘Just a . . . mansion and yacht in Portofino!’

  ‘Portofino? Fucking A!’ Stella grinned, looking over at Clem and giving her a conspiratorial wink. ‘Can I come and work for you?’

  Portofino?

  No!

  ‘Yup. An’ it’s all thanks to my li’l sister doing what she’s best at: batting her eyelashes till the poor client can’t even see straight.’ Tom staggered over to the sofa, sitting down clumsily on the arm and draping a heavy arm around Clem’s shoulders.

  She looked up at him, as though bewildered to see him there.

  ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, sis, you did the right thing cutting and running once his girlfriend arrived,’ Tom continued. ‘I didn’t like the way she was looking at you at all. Things became a lot more focused once you left. He couldn’t wait to hammer out the details.’

  ‘So it’s all confirmed, then? It’s definitely going ahead?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Signed, sealed and delivered!’ Pixie yelled, throwing herself at Simon so that he had to catch her.

  Tom turned Clem to face him and tried to look sober, which he couldn’t. ‘Now look, sis, play safe with this one, OK? I can’t say I’m happy about it but’ – he held his hands out, shaking his head acceptingly – ‘it is what it is. We’re all depending on you, so don’t stuff it up. Do it for me.’ He stood up and brought his hands together in prayer, his eyes closing as the room began to spin, a soppy smile on his face.

  ‘Oh? And why’s this all dependent upon Clem?’ Stella asked, grinning mischievously at her friend. This was all getting better and better as far as she was concerned.

  Tom stared at Stella and tried to focus, but she was an exceptionally long way down. And he was very drunk. ‘Clem’s the project manager on this. The client insisted upon it.’ His tone betrayed his bewilderment – even now, several hours later. ‘In fact, it was his only condition: carte-blanche budget, but he wants Clem to oversee it all. He says she has a distinctive eye. Or . . . did he say she had distinctive eyes? Anyway, whatever!’ He burst out laughing at his joke, before looking across at his sister. ‘It’s going to mean the summer in Portofino. Will you cope?’ he teased.

  ‘No,’ Clem whispered, looking up at him.

  Tom laughed. ‘I know! It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it, right?’ He took another swig of the bottle. He smacked his lips together and appraised the three-quarters-drunk bottle. ‘Christ knows what I’d do if I didn’t have a pretty sister, eh, Simon? We’d be fucked if I had to rely on your face pulling in the business.’

  Both men fell about laughing, Pixie cooing sympathetically over Simon and telling him he was ‘very handsome really’.

  ‘Tom—’ Clem said.

  ‘Whatever you do—’

  ‘Oh I think we all have a pretty good idea of what it is they’re going to do,’ Simon interjected waspishly

  Tom tried to wag his finger at him, but the effort was too much and his hand dropped. He looked back at Clem. ‘As I was saying, whatever you do, don’t dump him before the project’s finished. Wait till after it’s done, even if it means going past your “three-month rule”.’ He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers. ‘Or better yet, wait for him to dump you. Huh? Huh? Novel idea, I know.’

  ‘Tom—’

  ‘And more importantly than anything,’ Tom slurred, almost falling over with the force of his own words. ‘Don’t let the girlfriend catch you at it. I’ve got a feeling she’s fiercer than she looks,’ he said with a sage expression. ‘Right, well, that’s enough big brotherly advice for one day. Who needs another bottle?’

  ‘Me!’ Pixie’s and Simon’s hands shot up in the air as if it was a spelling test.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  The words were so quiet and flat that, for a moment, no one responded. A cork popped and Pixie laughed as Simon tried to lick the foam before it reared out of the bottle.

  Tom turned, slowly, and looked at her. ‘What?’

  Clem stood up and met his eyes pleadingly. ‘I can’t do this job. I’ll do anything for you, you know I will, but just . . . not there, not Portofino.’

  Silence rang like a bell. He straightened up, greying before her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Tom . . . can we go into a room and talk about this privately, please?’

  ‘No!’ he replied in an icy tone. ‘What do you mean, you can’t do it?’

  ‘It’s not something I can talk about here,’ she said, her voice getting smaller, her eyes darting from one person in the team to the next. Simon particularly, she thought, looked incandescent, angrier even
than Tom.

  ‘Why not? What have you done?’ Tom demanded with a wild look. ‘Have you gone of him already? Bagged him already, is that it?’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘No, no, I know it isn’t! I saw what the two of you were like together. That only ever comes before with you. You lose interest as soon as you’ve got them.’

  Behind Tom, Clem saw Simon’s eyes burning.

  ‘You didn’t know he had a girlfriend, is that it?’

  ‘Tom, I—’

  ‘‘Cos it’s not like that’s ever stopped you before.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s not him.’

  He stared at her. ‘So what is it, then? Is it because . . .’ he racked his brains. ‘Is it because you feel like you’re being hired out? Is that it? You think I’m pimping you?’

  His laughter was cold and furious, and a hot, angry tear slid down her cheek. How could Tom do this to her, shout at her in a drunken rage, humiliating her like this?

  ‘Leave her alone, Tom!’ Stella said furiously, seeing Clem’s distress and pushing herself between the two of them. ‘You’re drunk and behaving like an arse.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, I’m sorry, Stella,’ Tom slurred, smacking his hands on his chest. ‘Am I not entitled to celebrate the deal that’s just saved my company, all these good people’s jobs and her flat? Am I not entitled to be a little bit angry that she’s going to jeopardize all that for . . . well, we still don’t know what for.’

  ‘She has her reasons,’ Stella replied staunchly, even though she too had no idea what they might be.

  ‘Oh, I’m quite sure she has. My little sister always does. Her reasons determine everything in our family. I’ve stuck up for her all my life. There’s never been a time when I haven’t had to wade in and rescue her from a disaster of her own making. But now, now when I need her, when the boot’s on the other foot and I ask for something in return – and she says no! – I’m just supposed to accept it?’

  ‘I get why you’re angry. I do. All I’m saying is, sober up, and talk about it rationally and calmly then. You can see she’s upset and you’re in a state.’

  Tom looked over at his sister, his eyes focusing with pinpoint accuracy suddenly. He looked back at Stella, unmoved. ‘I don’t care. Not this time,’ he said coldly. ‘Too many people are depending on this deal to happen. It was the one stipulation, the one caveat that will cancel the deal if she doesn’t agree.’ He looked at Clem. ‘You owe me, Clem. You will do this.’