Christmas at Claridge's Read online

  Tom blinked and Clem could read the fear in his face. ‘You make it sound like she’s known about this for a while,’ Tom said.

  Their father paused. ‘Eleven years. I don’t know if you remember that she had a persistent cough she just couldn’t shake.’

  Clem looked at him, startled. She remembered it well. She’d been woken up for weeks at a stretch by the sound of her mother coughing through the night and early in the morning; she remembered how bitterly she’d wished her mother would just go and get some antibiotics so that she could get some sleep.

  ‘When she got it checked out, she was referred immediately to an oncologist that same day.’

  ‘But Mum’s never smoked!’ Tom protested, as though this information alone would mean it couldn’t be possible; their mother couldn’t possibly be suffering from lung cancer.

  His father shook his head. ‘No. No, it was just bad luck, Tom. She had stage three and embarked upon a course of radiotherapy. She insisted we tell you we were going on a cruise.’

  ‘The cruises?’ Tom echoed. ‘You mean, for all these years you’ve been telling us—’

  ‘No, no, no. It was just that first time that was a lie. You were doing your exams. Your mother didn’t want you distracted by her condition. She had her treatment and, blessedly, went into remission. But it gave us the idea to start escaping the worst of the British winters and protect her health.’

  ‘You just said it was stage three, but the nurse told us it was stage four,’ Tom said with effort, trying to negotiate now, if not on the origin and undeservedness of the disease, then at least on the severity of it. What was it they said about the seven stages of grief? Denial? Bargaining?

  ‘It is now,’ their father said gently, knowing that every word he said was a punch in the guts to his children.

  ‘But that’s . . . I mean, that’s still OK, right? She’s still going to be all right? It’s been eleven years and she’s clearly beating it,’ Tom said, his words tripping over each other as they looked at their mother, who didn’t look like she was beating anything. She was sleeping, a tube coming out of her nose, and Clem watched the pulsing numbers on the screen, which even she knew were weak.

  ‘Your mother’s a fighter. She’s been in remission since the original diagnosis. But this relapse has been very rough . . .’ Edmund’s voice wavered and he pinched the bridge of his nose for a long moment. ‘You have to prepare yourselves – there is no stage five.’

  ‘No . . .?’ Clem knew that beneath his mask, Tom’s tic would be in full spasm. She wanted her hand to find his, she willed it to, but she couldn’t move. Something else was demanding her attention.

  Eleven years. Her mother had been diagnosed with cancer eleven years ago. Tears streamed down Clem’s face, soaking her mask, as she understood that it hadn’t been Clem her mother had worried about coping with a baby – it had been herself.

  ‘You should have told us, Dad,’ Tom said, his voice cracking. ‘We had the right to know. She’s our mum. What if Clem hadn’t found the wheelchair and all those pill bottles?’

  Edmund frowned. ‘But we did tell you. Or rather, your mother did, in the letter.’

  ‘What letter?’

  Edmund frowned harder and looked back at his wife before facing them, dropping his voice. ‘At Christmas, I finally convinced your mother to write you a letter telling you the truth. I told her she didn’t have to send it if she didn’t want to, but I could tell she was getting worse. I-I suspected she’d moved into the next stage . . .’ He was silent for a moment. ‘She didn’t show me the letter, but she spent days working on it, even going so far as to burn the drafts she discarded. When she had finally finished, she wrote your name on the envelope, Clem.’ He looked imploringly at his daughter. ‘Relations between you two have been so poor for so long, you both needed to make peace with each other before . . . before . . .’ His voice trembled and Tom put a hand on his arm and squeezed it. ‘She left it propped up on the dressing table for a week. I would walk into the bedroom and she’d be sitting on the bed, just staring at it. I knew she wanted you to read it; I just wasn’t sure that she’d ever have the courage to send it. And then one day, it wasn’t there. When I asked, she told me she’d put it in the Birkin for you, inside the zipped compartment where you always used to put your dolls’ dresses. She felt it was safest there.’

  Clem looked back at him in dismay. ‘I never even opened the bag.’

  ‘But why?’

  She shook her head. How could she explain to him that the bag had been her mother’s peace offering – or bribe, as she’d seen it – without telling him why her mother had had to make peace? ‘It’s back at your house now. The letter will still be in there.’

  He closed his eyes for a long moment. ‘I thought she’d lied about putting the letter in the bag. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why you never mentioned it. That’s why I arranged that breakfast – I was determined to tell you. But then Tom cancelled and you were so closed, so unhappy already.’ Edmund sighed. ‘I should have just told you, but as much as I disagreed with your mother’s decision, I couldn’t bring myself to go against her wishes.’

  ‘But what if she’d died, Dad?’ Tom demanded. ‘How would you have explained that to us?’

  ‘I thought if she’d been in remission once . . . I thought we still had time.’

  They all looked towards the frail figure lying on the bed. It was clear there wouldn’t be a remission this time. Portia stirred slightly, her eyelids dragging open heavily, as though they were weighted down. Her head moved fractionally towards their voices.

  ‘Edmund?’ Their mother’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper, as papery as her skin.

  ‘Mum!’ Tom cried, running over and pressing his masked cheek to her hand. ‘Mum, we’re here.’

  ‘Tom?’ The effort it took to say even that word expunged her voice and she rested again, closing her eyes.

  Clem felt rooted to the spot, wanting to run to her, but too scared, frightened off by years of conditioning herself to do the opposite.

  ‘Clem?’ Her father’s voice beside her was rounded with suspended hope, his hand hovering lightly on her shoulder.

  Clem, unable to take her eyes off her mother, walked slowly across the room, getting closer to the tiny figure that didn’t appear to grow in size with proximity.

  ‘Mum?’ Her voice quavered and a tear fell from her lashes onto the cold hand on the bed.

  Her mother opened her eyes again, the same eyes she’d given to Clem and which had made so many men, Rafa included, fall at her feet.

  ‘Bunny?’

  ‘I’m here, Mum,’ Clem whispered, almost poleaxed to hear her pet name coming from her mother again after so many years. Whatever had happened, whatever they’d done to each other, they were in time; it wasn’t too late. ‘I’m so sorry, for everything,’ Clem said as she pressed her mother’s hand against her cheek, trying to warm it with her own heat.

  She felt her mother grip her hand back with her fingers as tightly as she could, though the pressure was feeble. ‘It is you who must forgive me, darling. My letter was years too late. I was selfish, only thinking about myself . . . I hurt you both so much . . . But I wasn’t coping . . . and . . . he just kept calling, I knew it would stop if I told him about the abortion . . .’ her mother said, her voice barely audible, though her eyes blazed intensely at Clem.

  Clem rocked at the bombshell, Rafa’s enduring anger explained in a breath. He thought she had got rid of their baby.

  ‘Abortion?’ Edmund exclaimed in alarm, looking between his wife and daughter.

  Clem blinked, trying to take it all in as she realized her mother’s letter had been the real gift all along, not the bag. It had given her the apology she’d craved, even though it was too late and couldn’t possibly have changed anything.

  Except . . .

  ‘You’re still in love with him . . .’

  Gabriel’s bitter words floated through her mind and she realized
it had changed one thing: he had found the letter when his assistant had bought the bag on his behalf. He’d found it and read it – an unopened letter addressed to her, an unopened letter in which her mother told her she was dying and which he had ignored because it told him about Rafa, too, and that was all that concerned him. He had wanted to take her away from everyone – Rafa, Luca, her mother . . . Her instincts had been right after all – he had wanted total possession of her.

  ‘I made so many wrong decisions,’ her mother whispered.

  ‘But for the right reasons,’ Clem whispered, forcing Gabriel’s treachery from her mind and squeezing her mother’s hand as much as she dared – it felt like it might break in her clasp. ‘You were sick and just trying to cope. And . . . and anyway you weren’t the only one.’ She swallowed hard, wondering how to say the words. Clem looked down at her hands intertwined with her mother’s. The words that had been bottled up inside her for so long were rising, and the pressure just to hold them back was overwhelming, but was now the right time? She looked at her mother’s frail form and knew there might not be another time. It had to be now.

  ‘I made the wrong decision for the right reason, too.’ Clem felt sick. What if the shock was too great? Oh God, how could she lessen the enormity of what she had to say?

  An idea struck her.

  ‘There’s something I want to show you,’ Clem said, delving into her bag and pulling out her phone (which the receptionist had insisted was set to aeroplane mode before they could even leave the waiting area). She flicked it open onto the photo that was saved as her wallpaper and turned it round for her parents to see. ‘His name is Luca. He lives in Portofino.’

  She watched as her parents blinked at the screen, confusion gradually clearing as they recognized her bone structure, Tom’s dimples . . .

  Open-mouthed, they looked back at her in stunned amazement. Her mother’s eyes met hers first, understanding immediately, and in them was relief, regret, delight and pain. How much time they had lost.

  ‘Is that . . .?’ Edmund choked, supporting himself with the bed, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing.

  Clem nodded, one hand clamped over her mouth as a sob of anguish, love and pride burst out of her like a sunbeam, strong, powerful and dazzling. ‘Yes, Daddy. That’s your grandson. My son.’

  Tom darted round the bed to support his father, who looked like he might fall as the truth finally broke like a wave over their family.

  ‘I’m so proud of you,’ Portia whispered, a single tear sliding down her cheek.

  ‘I’m a g–grandfather?’ Edmund whispered as Tom rubbed his shoulder, nodding frantically.

  ‘He’s amazing, Dad! And so like Clem. Cheeky as hell and always in trouble!’

  ‘We have a grandson? Portia! Can you believe it? I just can’t believe it! Look, darling, doesn’t he have exactly Clem’s—’

  But Portia didn’t respond. Her eyes had closed, and she was completely and utterly still.

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  Chapter Forty-Five

  ‘Have you got it?’ Clem asked, arms hovering on either side of the tree as she kept the blanket slack.

  Tom, who was positioned precariously on an extra-long ladder, three metres above the floor, nodded. He was at full stretch, trying to attach the enormous star to the topmost branch of Claridge’s’ Christmas tree. It was a composite of five enormous baguette-shaped diamonds – 10 carats each – arranged in a star formation and held in place by a brooch brace on the back, which could then be dismantled and the diamonds sold on individually – unless a passing billionaire should choose to buy the whole thing as the star for his Christmas tree, and that was reasonably likely with Claridge’s’ clientele. The assembled star’s full, terrifying value came in at £6 million, and security teams were milling around everywhere. Cartier was taking no chances and neither was Claridge’s; once the ladder was removed, the diamond would be impossible to access – even swinging from one of the chandeliers – but there would still be a twenty-four-hour guard on duty by the tree until it was taken down on twelfth night.

  Clem looked directly at the diamond, on eye level with £6 million for the first and, she knew, only time in her life. She blinked into its brightness, musing blankly at how easy it would be to simply pluck it like a berry from the branches and walk out. Six million pounds, just like that, a life-changing sum by anyone’s reckoning – except hers. Six million, sixty million pounds couldn’t improve her life. It wasn’t money that she lacked or craved.

  Below them, Clem could see a cluster of frowning, uniformed security men huddled over a clipboard, alternately jabbing the page with stubby fingers and pointing to the various doors, entrances and exits that fed off the lobby. Tensions were high enough, even without the diamonds. Alderton Hide and Cartier had only had from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. to bring in, position and dress the Christmas tree. The unveiling of the Claridge’s Christmas tree was one of London’s big Christmas triggers – right up there with the switching on of Regent Street’s lights and Santa’s Grotto at Harrods – and Tom and Clem had worked on it almost exclusively since their sudden return home, both cloaked in their bereavements and desperate not to stop lest they should have time to think, or feel. Chad was overseeing the completion of the Portofino job on their behalf now that they were as unwelcome in Gabriel’s house as they were in Chiara, Rafa and Luca’s; the project was in the final stage anyway, and it was simply a matter of hanging curtains, paintings and light fittings. Chad, true to his word, had sent them photos on an almost daily basis and everyone, even Simon, was impressed by Clem’s vision. Gabriel’s verdict hadn’t yet come in: he had returned to Paris and no one, not even Signora Benuto, knew when he would be back.

  Clem let the blanket sag further between her hands. If those diamonds should fall, there would be a national emergency as everyone clamoured to find them in the bushy fronds of the blue spruce.

  ‘There,’ Tom whispered, slowly raising his hands up and away from the tree, ready to lurch forward again lest the diamond should wobble, but it stood firm, dazzling as powerfully as the North Star. A relieved and exulted round of applause ricocheted around the room as Tom’s tired eyes met Clem’s, a triumphant smile on his face.

  ‘Last one down’s a ninny.’ She winked, throwing the blanket down to the ground like a parachute. She ran down the wide staircase that swept around the tree like a nautilus seashell while Tom shinned noisily down the ladder, beating him only by two seconds. Clem stuck her tongue out as the Claridge’s housekeeping and estate teams slapped them both on the back and the smartly suited executive teams shook hands with each other. Everyone was giddy with exhaustion after a full night without sleep and Clem was tempted to book a room in the hotel and be fast asleep in ten minutes rather than have to negotiate the London traffic home. Hourly caffeine had kept them all going, but mostly they’d been galvanized by a desperate desire to see the finished result. The buzz around the confidential project had been immense for weeks. Cartier – having heard the rumours about Alderton Hide’s heavy, near-fatal investment in formulating the technology to sew diamonds into leather – had been quick to come in on the project (Perignard who?) and the trade was clamouring to get the first look they’d been denied at Berlin.

  ‘You like?’ Tom whispered as they gazed up at it, arms folded across his chest. From down here, the tree seemed immense and hauntingly beautiful.

  Clem could only nod. She was too full of emotion to speak just yet.

  He looked across at her, knowing her silences were never empty. ‘Is it how you imagined?’

  ‘Better. It’s beyond imagination.’

  ‘I think it’s magnificent,’ Tom murmured, his eyes scanning the whistle-thin leather lariats, snow-white and stitched with pave diamonds, which were delicately draped across the branches – ‘like tinsel for the rich,’ he’d joked. Other lariats had been intricately hole-punched into lacework that was as fine as spider’s webs and which wove around and through the tree like the spun suga
r of a croquembouche.

  Clem herself couldn’t stop looking at the hundreds of tiny white solitaire-studded leather boxes that were hanging like baubles from the branch tips. Each one had a small square of hand-made parchment inside, upon which – for a small donation to charity – hotel guests and visitors could write a wish. It was a Christmas Wishing Tree in the middle of Mayfair.

  ‘Ten minutes everyone,’ the manager said, indicating that the famous revolving doors, which had been locked for confidentiality and security all night, were going to be released, and the dignitaries and VIPs who called this their London home would be sweeping through once more. He clapped his hands lightly and the works teams efficiently and expertly began to clear away the blankets, sweeping away dropped pine needles, removing the ladders and restoring the gracious art deco lobby to its pristine splendour.

  ‘I’ll get Dad to come down,’ Tom murmured, fishing for his phone in his jeans pocket and wandering off towards the lifts.

  Clem watched him go, leaning against the buttermilk-coloured wall, before realizing, with a small, sudden start, that she was standing in the exact spot where Gabriel had cornered her eight months earlier, on the morning of their meeting last April. Her hand blindly smoothed the wall as her eyes flooded with tears at the memory – not because of Gabriel’s seductively relentless, ruthlessly dogged determination to capture her, but because she understood now that it had been the morning when her life had been pitched another curve ball, swerving from its path to angle her back to Italy and the man and boy she’d left behind ten years earlier. Though she hadn’t known it at the time, it had all started up again right here, in this very spot that now stood in the shadow of the wishing tree.

  She stared at the highly polished floor, counting to one hundred – ten wasn’t close to cutting it any more – as the last members of the estate teams disappeared and a slow trickle of well-heeled guests came through the revolving doors. Clem, hiccupping, tried texting Stella, who had promised to be first through the revolving doors at 6 a.m. – although, in truth, she was so large now that she was full term, the doorman would probably have to open a swing door for her instead.