Christmas at Claridge's Page 22

  ‘Sure thing.’

  Clem wove her way through the tables to the dark, cool building behind them. The door was heavy and she pushed it open with her shoulder, pausing for a moment to see where the toilet signs were. Several tables had been dressed with tablecloths and cutlery, but only the waiters were indoors, one with his back to her, pouring frascati into carafes.

  The ceilings were barrelled, suggesting the café had once been either a wine store or boat house, and the walls were lined with sepia-toned photos of the port back in the Fifties.

  She saw the universal silhouette of a woman painted on a far wall, and walked towards it, the image of Gabriel and Fleur kissing in the dark, swimming before her eyes, a buzz in her brain.

  ‘Clem?’

  Clem stopped and turned. A woman with big, round brown eyes and a plump mouth was staring at her in astonishment. She was standing in a doorway, a bunch of files in her arms and a biro in her hair.

  ‘Ch . . .’ Clem stammered. ‘Chiara? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I am asking you the very same question!’ Chiara laughed, dropping the files on the nearest table and walking over to her. She rested her hands on Clem’s arms, her eyes travelling up and down her with undisguised amazement. ‘You are exactly the same.’

  Look, no shadow, Clem thought. ‘And you. You haven’t changed a bit.’ That wasn’t quite true. The last time they had seen each other, Chiara had been as round as a pudding with a frizz problem. Now, she looked like she had been whittled by a potter, with shapely calves contouring into tiny ankles, a tight waist splaying into soft hips. ‘You don’t look a day over twenty.’

  ‘You are too polite,’ Chiara admonished disbelievingly. ‘When did you come here? Just today?’

  Clem hesitated. ‘Last week actually.’

  ‘Last . . .?’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I was going to call, but I’ve just been snowed under with work since I arrived. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.’

  Chiara smiled, less certainly. ‘You are doing the advertising in Portofino?’

  Clem remembered her last letter and how she’d told her about the job before last. ‘No, no. I work for my brother now. He has a leather business. We’re doing up a house on the headland.’

  Chiara considered for a moment. ‘Villa ai Cedri? The Frenchman’s house?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘There has been much talk about it in the village. I . . . I cannot believe that it is you.’ Chiara held her hands out, smiling.

  ‘I know! I know.’ Clem nodded, not quite able to meet her eyes. She knew it was unforgivable that she hadn’t called; that Chiara’s wasn’t the first place at which she had stopped. But it was too hard. How was she supposed to just walk – of her own accord – smack back into her past? ‘What are you doing here? You don’t own this too now, do you?’

  ‘No. But I do their books. It is my other job.’ She frowned. ‘I think I told you this in my letters, no?’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘You must come to dinner. You know you must. Tomorrow night?’

  The door swung open, a hiss of warm air and outside chatter rushing in. Chad stepped inside. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ Clem managed. ‘I just ran into Chiara here.’

  ‘Oh, you know each other?’ Chad asked, wandering over and giving her an easy kiss on the cheek. ‘Hi, doll. How are you?’

  ‘Bene, Chad.’ She smiled.

  ‘How do you two know each other then?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh we . . . we go way back,’ Clem murmured.

  ‘Yeah?’ He looked between the two of them.

  ‘We are pen pals,’ Chiara explained. ‘Since school.’

  ‘No shit!’ Chad exclaimed, laughing in surprise. ‘Since school? You two must have really hit it off!’

  ‘Something like that,’ Clem nodded.

  Her eyes met Chiara’s and the two of them lapsed into silence. Both their smiles had gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was no good. She couldn’t pretend. It had been pointless thinking that Gabriel was the answer, the way to put space between her and her past when it had been thrust in her face twice in three days. It was more than she could handle; she was rattled and completely on edge as ghosts came alive all around her.

  She watched as the boat drew nearer, the sound of the motor so distinctive to her now, her feet drumming the soil smooth beneath her as she jogged nervously on the spot. She could see him clearly in the moonlight, his face turned towards the lamp-lit folly, his eyes scanning it for signs of movement inside, looking for her.

  It was five to ten. He was good to his word.

  A lump formed in her throat at the thought of what he’d think and feel when he saw that she’d not been true to hers. Nothing but a smile she’d promised. She could see him loosening his tie, handing his briefcase to Stefano, then the two men diverging as the skipper continued up the steps to the house and Gabriel turned into the gardens. The lights were still on and she kept her eyes on him as he moved through the pools of light from one to the next, chain links that brought him closer to her.

  He walked quickly over the bridge, not looking down at the path at all, his focus solely on the folly that was now ahead and coming into view. She crouched down, watching as he half-walked, half-ran down the meandering path, cutting the corners to save time and get to her faster. She saw him pause at the door before turning the handle and letting himself in.

  The lights were on inside and she saw him, through one of the porthole windows, stand at the bottom of the stairs, taking in the empty room. He ran up the steps lightly, easily, and she saw his head and shoulders through the top window, the freeze of his body as he took in the empty, made-up bed.

  Then he was running back down, turning round and round in the folly, looking for her, even though there was nowhere for her to hide inside. The front door flung open and his silhouette filled the doorway, urgency in his movements, tension in his limbs. She saw his desperation, even from this distance, and the shock of it made her lose her balance, falling back onto the dry earth, her feet slipping on the shallow soil and sending rivulets of mud and stone skittering down the bank.

  The sound reached his ear and he turned towards her.

  Clem froze. There was good tree cover here, it was why she had chosen it – it was the only watch point where she could see him clearly from the cove, through the gardens, all the way to the folly, and not be seen herself.

  But he had seen her. Or sensed her.

  In an instant he was running up the bank, his arms like pistons, powering him up the dirt track towards her with a speed that was terrifying. She scrambled back up the bank, feeling panic rise. This wasn’t part of her plan. She was already tired from her earlier run, another exhausting run where she’d tried to pound the feelings out of her. She’d wanted only for him to see her gone, to understand it had been a mistake and to leave again. He wasn’t supposed to do this.

  She ran without knowing where she was running to. It was dark and there were no lights up here in this part of the garden, but her eyes had become attuned to the dimness and she ran fleetly, as desperate to escape as he was to catch. She understood vaguely the shape of the garden, knowing its boundaries from the paths that encircled it in loops and twists, and she knew that soon the walls would scoop her back down from the top, taking her beneath the trees towards the level of the house. If she could just get back to the folly and lock the door . . .

  He was gaining. She could hear him behind her, though he hadn’t said a word, hadn’t called her name, hadn’t asked her to stop.

  She saw a faint light ahead, a sign that she was tracking back towards the main part of the garden, and she headed towards it. The dirt path had disappeared altogether now, lost somewhere in the shadows behind her, and she was running ankle-deep through flowers, fragile heavy-headed flowers that snapped beneath her feet and left her footprints there like arrows.

  There was a
short drop, five feet or so, from the edge of the flowerbed to the path, coming out just by the bridge, and she jumped it, landing like a cat in her trainers.

  She straightened up, but in the next moment he had landed beside her, his hands instantly pinioning her arms to her body as he pushed her against the wall by the bottom of the steps, trapping her.

  Neither of them said a word; they couldn’t, their chests were heaving with the effort of breathing and recovering.

  She stared up at him, giddy from the night air and disoriented by his sudden proximity as he bore down on her with silent fury. God, he was gorgeous. How could she have run from him? How could she have fooled herself that she wouldn’t share him if that was the only way to have him? How could she have thought he wasn’t enough?

  She saw that his shirt was torn, his clothes muddied and covered with grass stains.

  ‘You . . . you’ve ruined your clothes,’ she panted as he stared at her darkly, trying to get his breath back.

  ‘Small . . . price to pay,’ he replied, his voice deep and strained, his accent thicker than she remembered.

  She waited for the question to come – Why? – but part of her already knew he wouldn’t ask. He would chase her, he would keep chasing her, but only so far. She had to give too. It was how they were. Their thing. Them.

  ‘Fleur,’ she said finally, her breathing returning to normal.

  He paused fractionally as understanding hit and relief eased his features. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pretty name.’ Clem angled her head. ‘She’s a pretty girl.’

  He nodded. ‘She is. She’s my assistant.’

  The words floored her. ‘What?’

  ‘She slapped me as soon as the door closed that night in the Electric. I had to give her a pay rise on the spot.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘I was using her to make you jealous, yes.’

  Clem felt her muscles soften involuntarily beneath his grip. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I had to give her another pay rise to go along with it at Claridge’s.’ He shrugged, his hands loosening slightly around her arms, more confident that she wouldn’t run now. ‘Small price to pay.’

  A tiny smile hovered around the edge of her lips at the echo and she tried to lean into him, she wanted him to kiss her, but his hands on her arms kept her pressed back, close but not close enough. He hadn’t forgiven her for running from him yet, for making him believe for four whole minutes that it was over. She could feel the heat rising off him and she closed her eyes, trying to smell him, inhale his scent.

  He released her arms. She opened her eyes as he caught the hem of her top and pulled it over her head in one seamless movement, so that she was in just her bra. With one step he reached around her, unhooking it and throwing it over the side of the bridge where it sprawled on the footpath below.

  She laughed with shock to be so suddenly half naked in the night, the sound dying in her throat as she saw the look in his eyes. Then his hands were on her waist, lifting her and she wrapped her legs around him as he carried her to the top of the steps beside them, pushing her down, her back arching with the tiny bridge’s curve, the stone cold and hard against her skin.

  He kissed her urgently, the scare she’d given him transposing into an angry passion now as he undressed them both. She kept up, her hunger matching his, because she had felt it, too. The difference was, she was still running scared.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ Gabriel said, wrapping his shirt around her and rolling the cuffs up to free her hands, seemingly forgetting all about her running clothes which they’d left strewn by the steps, her bra still lying under the bridge – just like her clothes abandoned on the beach. Little monuments to the passion that rocked them both.

  He held her hand in his and led her through the gardens, walking slightly ahead of her in just his trousers, the midnight moon catching the glint of sweat on his back and making it shine. Clem lagged back, enjoying watching him move as much as she liked watching him sleep. Everything about him was magnificent, the way his muscles rose and fell beneath the surface of his skin in rolling waves, the feeling of his hand covering hers, how a solitary tendril of his hair curling at the nape of his neck left her itching to tuck it in.

  She felt soothed again. Settled once more. A bedtime routine for grown-ups.

  They walked past the still pool and the ripening kitchen garden; past the lemon trees and under the jasmines that scented the night and decorated the days.

  ‘How long have you had this house?’ she asked, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb.

  He looked back at her. ‘Five months.’

  ‘How can you afford it?’

  He paused. ‘That is your way of asking what I do?’ He smiled.

  She shrugged.

  ‘My family is wealthy. We own a grand cru vineyard in Champagne. I work for them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They had reached the main house and he stopped by the door, pulling her in for a kiss. ‘Do you like champagne?’ he murmured.

  She could only nod.

  ‘Good.’

  They walked through the hall in their bare feet and up the stairs, not a creak giving them away. He led her to the bedroom in the south tower, where the ivy-fresco’d ceiling swirled to a point and a four-poster bed was the only furniture in the room. She walked towards it and sat down, looking back at him leaning against the wall, watching her.

  ‘Why do you live here when you’ve got so little furniture around you?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you’re here,’ he replied. ‘I usually stay at the Splendido.’

  She bit her lip, watching him. The simplicity of his answers was disarming after so many weeks and months of game-playing.

  ‘I thought I was never going to see you again,’ she said, giving a shrug so big that his shirt slipped off her shoulders a little. ‘After the christening I mean.’

  He shook his head as if the idea was absurd. ‘I had to find a way to make our lives collide properly. It took time to set up.’

  ‘Why . . .’ She cleared her throat. ‘Why did you want me so much? I mean, you didn’t know me. I was just another girl on the street.’

  He frowned, as though her words made no sense to him, even though she knew he was fluent in French, English and most probably Italian, too. ‘My Portobello girl,’ he said, looking down at the floor, drawing the words out slowly, as if they were soothing to say. He lifted his eyes to hers. ‘When I think about you in the day, when I am working, what I see is you on that golden bike in the rain.’ He cracked a small, amused smile. ‘The way you laughed and shouted at me for being in your way, even though you were in the wrong . . . that hat and the glimpse of your eyes beneath it . . . You took the breath from me. I chased after you all the way to your friend’s flat. You were fire. The deal was done.’

  She didn’t know what to say. No one had ever spoken about her like this before. ‘Where had you been going?’

  ‘To a dinner at a house in Elgin Crescent. I was late.’ He smiled. ‘You made me later still.’ He shook his head and Clem could see he’d been in trouble for it.

  He crossed the room and picked up a large gift-wrapped box. ‘But here – this is what I wanted to give you.’

  He sat on the bed next to her, watching her face as she pulled out the rose-pink jumpsuit and . . . oh God! Her mother’s Birkin! ‘You bought these?’ she gasped. ‘But how? You weren’t there. I would have seen you. Or Fleur,’ she added.

  He watched her closely, his eyes roaming her face. ‘I sent someone else from my office – I couldn’t send Fleur after the way you’d reacted at the hotel.’

  ‘But how did you even know about it?’

  ‘I saw you handing out the flyers at the christening. You were so secretive about it, it raised my interest. Besides, you had changed your pattern completely, working late every night, not going out—’

  ‘Did you actually have me followed?’

  He shrugged. ‘In my life, people are very ofte
n vetted. It is not a malicious thing. Did you even notice?’

  She shook her head. She had to admit she hadn’t.

  ‘I was trying to find a way in with you.’ His eyes glittered. ‘Especially as you were so determined to make it difficult for me. Not even asking my name . . .’ He shook his head, an amused smile on his lips; she knew no other woman had ever tested him like her.

  ‘You weren’t invited to that christening, were you?’ It was more of a statement than a question.

  He grinned. ‘People never ask, it’s extraordinary.’

  ‘So that family has got christening photos with a complete stranger in them.’ She giggled, knowing full well why no one had questioned who he was: they wouldn’t dare risk him leaving. His very presence would have felt heaven-sent.

  ‘When the tweet about the sale came, I told the girl to buy the finale item and the bag. My mother has some Birkins, so I know a little about them.’ His words were modest, but Clem had a feeling he was more of a connoisseur than he was letting on – a cultured Frenchman from a grand cru champagne house was bound to have more than a passing acquaintance with the Hermès icon. ‘And for you to have come into possession of a Shooting Star model? I thought it must be . . . significant. Was I right?’

  Clem looked down at the Birkin in her hands, securing the straps together the way her mother always did. Not just a bag.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘You were.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Clem stood by the door, the umbrella bouncing softly in her hand as raindrops trampolined on it, water rushing through the downpipe beside her and emerging in torrents at the other end. Her shoes – leather-soled – were soaked, but she hadn’t noticed. She was staring at the doorbell, summoning the strength to push it. She’d been there for nearly ten minutes already.