Christmas at Claridge's Read online

  She turned to open the door when she felt his hot hand on her arm. She stalled at his touch, but the heavy silence between them remained. She twisted back to face him, though she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ she said quietly, obediently, politely.

  But it wasn’t gratitude that he wanted. The pressure in his hand increased and she looked up at him, bewildered.

  His eyes were shining with barely suppressed emotion, all the defiance and pride he usually wore like a mask was gone. ‘You never said why . . .’ His voice was thick, every word an agony to get out, and she felt her heart begin to pound like a boxer’s fist, the blood pooling to her feet.

  ‘I . . . I couldn’t,’ she managed, her voice no longer husked but raspy, as if it had been sandpapered. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Even now? All this time later?’ There was anger and disbelief behind his words, the muscles in his arms solid with tension, the tendons in his forearms straining beneath the self-control this conversation required.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, her voice too broken to do the job.

  He dropped her arm with a look of disgust, his other arm stretched over the steering wheel as he stared out through the windscreen.

  ‘I–I wanted t—’ she tried.

  ‘Just get out.’ The words were like bullets, coated with a contempt that was designed to wound, but it was the sight of him, so closed, that pulled the sob from her like a reflex.

  Blinded by tears, she reached for the door, grappling with the handle and having to kick it with her feet to force it open. She ran towards the back door, already able to see Tom and Chiara through the glazed window, both sitting by the table, their heads bowed together as Tom patted Chiara’s shoulder, her head dropped disconsolately. Clem burst in, turning to push the door shut as if she were trying to keep an intruder out.

  But he hadn’t followed. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was still sitting in the car, his elbows on the steering wheel and his face in his hands.

  ‘Clem! What the hell happened? What did they do to you?’ Tom asked in alarm as he took in her blotchy skin and juddering breaths as she struggled to compose herself in front of them.

  ‘It’s f–fine,’ she managed. ‘Just a s-storm in a teacup.’

  ‘It doesn’t look it,’ Tom said, coming over and placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘We only just got the message. Rafa took the call; Chiara and I were on the terraces over the road when the school rang. He just left a note on the table and raced off. We had to wait here for Luca to be dropped back.’

  She swallowed. ‘Where is he? Where’s Luca now?’

  As if in answer, a grubby little face emerged from under the table, his dusty, bloodied cheeks streaked clean with tear tracks. His doe eyes blinked at her, just as they had that first day, with the broken window lying smashed on the ground between them.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said in a tiny voice. ‘I did not want you to be trouble.’

  Clem laughed at the comment – no one ever did! – though she understood his sentiment. ‘It’s OK, Luca. I’m a toughie. Your teachers don’t scare me. I’d do it all over again.’ She crouched down to his level. ‘Are you OK? Did you get your ball back?’

  He swallowed and nodded.

  ‘It looked like you landed some big thumps on him.’ She pulled a fist with her own hand, to show him what she meant, and he nodded again, his eyes still enormous with apprehension. ‘Good.’ She smiled and straightened up, holding her hand out for a high-five.

  His smile, by return, split his face with relief – a flash of devilment returning – and he dashed out from under the table, ignoring her hand altogether and throwing his arms around her waist.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said in a small voice, so that it rumbled against her tummy.

  ‘Any time,’ she whispered, roughing his hair lightly with her hand.

  Clem looked across at Chiara, who was still sitting at the table, watching them. ‘I’m afraid everything that happened meant I didn’t actually get round to doing the shopping,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘You call getting arrested an excuse?’ Chiara dead-panned before an infectious smile gave her away. ‘Is OK. I have chicken. We can have Milanese.’

  ‘Get in!’ Tom rejoiced, prompting a delighted smile from Chiara as she moved over to the cupboard and began rifling through the contents for the ingredients. Clem noticed Tom looking at Chiara’s suntanned legs below her orange printed sundress as Luca scooted back across the kitchen to get his ball.

  Clem walked over to the sink and let the water run cold before splashing it on her face a few times. She always looked hellish when she cried. She patted her skin dry and saw through the window that the little green truck had gone. She could guess where to.

  It didn’t matter. It didn’t. This time next week she’d be home and today would be just another memory that she would hide from the light, letting the colours, sounds and smells fade like an old photograph, until nothing remained but a vague, indistinct ache.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was Tuesday – ‘the new Friday night’ in her book – and, as usual, she’d got nothing done. Luca had spent the morning trying to teach her football tricks – nutmegs, round-the-worlds and rainbow flicks – although Clem had only come out of it with bruised shins that matched his, and the afternoon session of doing bombs off the rocks had left them both with red bottoms.

  ‘You’ve broken me. I hope you don’t abuse all your babysitters in this way,’ Clem teased, sitting down on the small shingly beach as he skimmed stones across the water, using the legendary Alderton method her father had taught her as a girl.

  Luca laughed, before scoring a six on the water. He cheered, jumping up and down on the spot, and she rested her chin on her knees to watch him. She could have sworn he’d grown just in the time she’d been out here; his hair was longer and flopped in his eyes, his skin two tones darker after a summer of racing around in shorts and bare feet.

  As was hers. She fiddled with her top. She was wearing a yellow bandeau bikini today, trying to even out her tan lines, and she’d tied her hair into a scruffy topknot to get it off her shoulders.

  ‘See if you can get an eight,’ she called, watching as he found a perfectly smooth, thin oval stone, expertly running his long fingers over it and feeling for lumps or ridges that might affect its flight.

  ‘Eleven? Wow!’ she shrieked as he ran over for a high-five, before doing a series of cartwheels in a circle. She laughed at his celebrations. He was like a baby woodland creature, all legs, eyes and running instinct. She thought she’d never seen someone so unself-conscious, so free, a little imp who was as at home diving in the water as he was shinning up a tree or haring around the headland paths. Several times, she had heard him from the folly, playing out there in the early evenings, bouncing his ball in front of him as he ambled back from the lighthouse. They were so perfectly at ease with each other now, after a summer of Tuesdays and her standing chatting in their kitchen several evenings a week (on the nights when Gabriel couldn’t get back), a glass of wine in hand while Chiara cooked for them all.

  ‘Hey! I bet you can’t do a crab,’ she said, lying on her back and pushing herself up onto her hands and feet, forming a bridge with her body.

  Luca ran to her side, impressed for once, and tried it himself. Sheer determination got him up, but he wasn’t as supple as she was and his arms wobbled as he looked across at her, and the two of them giggled upside down, raising the stakes even further by trying to lift a leg in the air.

  ‘Lock your elbows,’ she said. ‘It’ll help.’

  She heard the sound of somebody crunching over the stones, but she couldn’t see who it was from her position, so she slid back down, rubbing her wrists.

  Rafa was coming towards them, Luca’s football under his arm from where he’d retrieved it on the lawn on his way down, his expression as inscrutable as ever. Clem scrambled to her feet, looking for a T-shirt to throw on, but it was still wet
and drying on the rocks from when it had been splashed by one of Luca’s spectacular bombs earlier. She stood awkwardly, wrapping her arms around herself in a way that she never did wandering around in her underwear elsewhere. Even fully dressed she felt exposed under his glare, and she saw him hesitate as he took in her discomfort.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said. It came out almost as an accusation, and she realized she was as cross with him for cutting into her time with Luca, as for catching her upside down in just her bikini.

  ‘I finished early today.’ His voice was a low growl, as though every word spoken to her pained him. Luca dropped out of his position, certain that Rafa must have noticed his new skill by now, and sprang up. Clem watched as Rafa handed him the ball and squeezed the boy’s shoulder affectionately. ‘Ciao.’

  ‘Ciao,’ Luca said casually, leaning against him whilst he spun his football on his index finger.

  Clem couldn’t help smiling at the bare, masculine exchange, but when she looked back at Rafa, she caught his eyes on her. They hadn’t seen each other since their tortured conversation in the green truck last week, and the echoes of it lay strewn between them like bones.

  ‘What is it you do in Florence?’ she asked finally, struggling to break the silence that seemed so loud with all the words that drifted unsaid between them.

  He stared at her and she could tell from his expression that he wasn’t going to answer. He was blanking her as well as avoiding her now.

  ‘Art school,’ Luca piped up.

  Clem looked down at Luca, then back at Rafa in astonishment.

  ‘Art school?’ She frowned. ‘But I thought . . . I mean, didn’t you do that when—’

  ‘No.’ His tone alone was enough to shut the conversation down, but Clem looked at him pensively.

  ‘Well, will you be able to take Luca with you, to Florence?’

  ‘Why would I?’ Rafa snapped. ‘It’s a long way, and the school is no place for children.’

  ‘What I mean is, I’m not going to be here for –’ she swallowed, having to take a run-up to the words – ‘I’ll be going back to London . . . at some point.’ She winced at the cop-out, too cowardly to tell him to his face. He would hear about her leaving from someone else and think she simply hadn’t been bothered to tell him herself. Not that he would care. ‘Who’ll look after Luca when Chiara’s in Bologna?’

  ‘Why would she go there?’ Rafa demanded.

  ‘Well, to care for her aunt, obviously.’

  Rafa stared at her as if she was playing a game he didn’t understand. ‘Her aunt is dead.’

  Clem gasped. ‘She died?’

  ‘Nine years ago,’ Rafa said in a low voice, suspicion clamouring in his eyes.

  ‘What?’ Clem whispered, confused by all this conflicting information. ‘But then . . .?’

  Her eyes fell to Luca who was staring up at her, and she tried to smile at him as comprehension began to dawn and she realized what Chiara had really been doing with her Tuesdays.

  She hugged her arms tighter around herself as a sea breeze brushed over her and her skin goosebumped. She gave a small shiver. The wind was warm but she felt cold suddenly. ‘Uh, Luca hasn’t had dinner yet I’m afraid,’ she said finally. ‘Signora Benuto usually feeds him in half an hour.’

  ‘I will take care of it,’ Rafa muttered, his eyes on her chilled skin. ‘What do you say Luca?’

  The boy looked up. ‘Grazie, Clem.’

  ‘In English,’ Rafa insisted.

  ‘Thank you.’ He sighed, tired out at last. ‘It was a good day again.’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled, her voice cracking at the understatement. She wanted to crouch down and hug him to her but she couldn’t. ‘It was. You practise those crabs, OK? You can’t let me be better than you at something.’

  Luca looked puzzled, not quite able to keep up, and Rafa translated quickly. Clem listened, rapt at the difference in his voice – when he spoke English it was surly and truculent, but in Italian he sounded animated, teasing, colourful. Then again, it wasn’t a language thing. It was just the difference between him talking to her and anyone else, because the discrepancy wasn’t just in his voice; it was in his eyes, too. She saw the switch clearly as he looked from Luca back to her, all expression deadening before her eyes. She blinked as he stared at her vacantly for a moment more, before he turned and led the boy up the path on the far side of the beach – the one that would go past her folly and out through the second gate.

  She didn’t watch them go. It was beyond her. Neither of them knew it, but that was the end of it, this awkward weekly ritual – their last Tuesday was done. She wouldn’t see him – either one of them – again. She walked past the jetty and up the steps without a backward glance, holding her breath and counting to ten.

  The next morning, Clem came out of the pasticceria, clutching the brown paper bag she had spent the past twenty minutes queuing for. It was just before lunch and the queue snaked all the way down the lane to the Gucci boutique. She knew better than to come at this time of course; it had been one of Chad’s first pieces of local advice to her, and she had spent the summer only ever shopping there first thing in the morning, when the smell of their famous freshly baked olive focaccia drifted down the street. But she was on her farewell lap, doing the ‘lasts’ of everything that had made her so happy here; she didn’t mind joining the tourists today.

  It was really happening now. She was leaving here and the more people she told, the more real it became. She had set everything in motion for her departure now, speaking to Gabriel last night – as she had suspected, he was only too happy for them to decamp back to London, saying the commute had become ‘draining’ – and she had told Chad this morning, who would in turn tell the workmen, who would in turn tell . . .

  She pulled out a corner of warm focaccia and began nibbling it. The last person to tell, and the most important, was Chiara. She couldn’t afford to let her learn it from someone else, but she felt sick with nerves. She didn’t fool herself that it was going to be anything other than a difficult conversation, especially now that she knew what her friend had been doing every Tuesday.

  Tourists were everywhere, filling the narrow Via Roma as they swarmed around the smudge-free glass windows of the designer boutiques – Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Pucci, Dior, Missoni, Gucci – cooing at the handbags that cost as much as cars.

  Clem, not in the mood for waltzing with strangers, dodged left up a tiny, metre-wide lane. Isolotto it was called, on account of its being so isolated from the bustle of the square and in every other way. On the other side of the buildings that flanked it were the most prestigious brands in the world, but here at the back was a warren of narrow footpaths, as small as capillaries, feeding off the port’s famous public face and leading to the homes of the families who had lived here for generations. They had to have done. Even a broom cupboard here would be far out of reach of local wages on the open market.

  Lines of washing reached from one side of the lane to the other, and rugs were hanging over the sides of the balconies, airing in the sun. A woman was throwing a bucket of soapy water down the drains and two elderly men were sitting at a table in companionable silence.

  Clem nodded as she walked past, an intruder in their private den. Not a tourist, but not quite a local either. The sound of shouting made her look up, and she could just see a girl in one of the dark apartments, her back to Clem, gesticulating vigorously to someone further out of sight.

  She popped another morsel of focaccia in her mouth and exited the lane a few moments later, stepping back into the bright sunlight and bustle of the piazzetta. The three-legged dog was chasing some ducks on the cobbles and every table along the waterfront was occupied. The port was at capacity, full to overflowing, like the azure blue water that lapped quietly just an inch or so below the pavements.

  Clem hooked a left, but she didn’t take her usual shortcut up the steps to the footpath above the road. Instead she followed the contours of the port, walking slowly, t
rying to take everything in and commit it to memory. This would be the food that would sustain her.

  She passed the jeweller’s, which glowed like an ice cave, mineral-white walls interspersed with rough floating shelves and glittering with treasures. She passed the bar with low-slung leather banquettes and rich young hipsters defying convention – eating mussels and drinking beer. She passed the gelateria with the grand chandelier and the antique mirrors, where coffee was served in tiny cups, sculpted like shells, and the ice cream cones were dipped in chocolate.

  A group of school children were crowded around the glass counter, marvelling at the myriad favours, and she looked at them, a vague smile on her face as she passed.

  She stopped and retraced her steps.

  Through the glass, she could see Chiara sitting at one of the tables. She was in profile to Clem, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail that curved into the nape of her neck and wearing one of the dolce vita sundresses that looked so good on her and positively ridiculous on Clem: it was pink with a red paisley print, and it had a square-fronted halterneck that emphasized both her soft cleavage and smooth back.

  Clem took a deep breath. Serendipity. It was now or never.

  She pushed her way through the school group and was emerging when a man set two ice creams in glass bowls on the table before sitting down; Chiara’s smile grew further, her beauty increasing tenfold. Clem stopped, stunned, as she watched how their legs angled together, though not touching, their foreheads only centimetres apart on the table as they leaned in to eat off long-handled spoons, eyes connecting briefly before being torn away modestly, only for the sequence to be repeated seconds later. It was stunningly obvious what was happening.

  Clem didn’t need to see the man’s face to know who her companion was. She would know the back of her brother’s head anywhere.