Christmas at Claridge's (45 page)

Clem emptied her glass and hurriedly poured herself another. Her drinking had tailed off hugely in the past few months since she’d been with Gabriel, and she was down to a respectable
glass per night. The upside had been bright eyes and more energy, but the downside was her alcohol tolerance had dropped sharply, and she could already feel the third glass beginning to dull her
senses.

Her stomach was in knots. Chiara had followed after Luca and spoken to him in his room at length, while Tom had stirred the risotto and Clem started on the wine.

They heard the guests’ back door slam shut and they both looked up, listening to the footsteps coming down the hall. A moment later, Rafa filled the doorway, his surly expression
suggesting he’d had more exciting plans than this for tonight.

‘Raf,’ Tom said, simultaneously tasting the risotto off the wooden spoon and holding up a hand in far-off greeting. ‘Thanks for coming, mate.’

‘Prego
,’ Rafa murmured, managing, if not quite a smile, certainly to enliven the light in his eyes. He scarcely looked at Clem, his anger at her still palpable for crumpling
his truck – and more besides.

‘Here, have some wine,’ Tom said, walking over and pouring him a glass. There was a momentary hesitation, as both men took in their roles – Tom, the host; Rafa, the guest
– in this, the very hotel where Rafa had been man of the house for the best part of a decade and still part-owned.

Tom cleared his throat awkwardly and they nodded a toast. ‘Chin chin,’ Tom mumbled.

Chiara, hearing their voices, came back into the kitchen. Tom met her eyes, the question in them not needing to be articulated. ‘He’ll be OK,’ she said quietly.
‘Ciao,
Raf.’

Rafa looked between them, alert. ‘Is Luca? What is wrong?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Chiara said calmly. ‘Just a confusion. Please, sit,’ Chiara said to Rafa, gesturing for him to join Clem.

Tom came over, too, and the three of them noisily scraped their chairs into position around the table.

‘Thank you both for coming,’ Chiara said quietly, clearly leading the discussion. ‘There is something very important I wanted to talk to you about.’

Clem lunged for her glass and gulped down the remnants. She was scarcely over the shock of Chiara’s last bombshell. What the hell was coming now?

Clem felt Tom’s eyes on her, and the weight of that look, the one he reserved for her alone and which had been curiously absent out here since she’d been proving herself as an
independent, fully-functioning adult. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her gaze skippy and restless, like a horse about to buck.

‘Clem, you . . . you obviously know about me and Tom—’

‘Well, if I didn’t before, I sure do now,’ Clem drawled.

‘What?’ Rafa frowned, trying to catch up, looking between them all as if they were keeping a secret from him – which they were.

Chiara looked across at him directly. ‘Tom and me . . .’

Clem winced. She wanted to correct her to say ‘I’, but didn’t. Damn, she was more like her mother than she cared to admit.

‘. . . we are together.’

Everyone fell still, as the words settled like pieces of a jigsaw on the table between them. From the rapid flicker of Rafa’s eyes, Clem watched him trying to piece the picture together.
She watched the small pulsing bulge at his jaw, saw how he had inhaled deeply but not yet let it go again.

Rafa looked up at Chiara, pointedly not looking at Tom, as though it wasn’t safe and he didn’t quite trust himself. ‘You only just met,’ he said in Italian, a voice so
quiet that Clem and Tom could scarcely hear it.

‘I know,’ Chiara nodded. Then she shrugged. ‘It was instant.’

Clem’s eyes swivelled between them. She wasn’t sure why
she
had to be here. She had guessed at what was happening long before today; she’d picked up on the chemistry
that first night, during dinner at the Splendido. This was a love triangle, not a square.

She reached for the bottle again and emptied the contents into her glass.

‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’ Tom asked, a rebuke in his voice.

Clem hesitated, thinking back to the events of the past thirty-six hours. ‘No,’ she said, defiantly taking a large swig and then immediately ruining her hard-drinking image with a
loud hiccup.

‘We are in love,’ Chiara said quietly, her eyes tender and apologetic on Rafa’s. This time, Clem felt her brother’s stare swing like a compass needle towards Chiara, the
woman he loved, the woman Clem sensed he loved more in three weeks than he had loved Clover in five years.

Tom cleared his throat again. ‘Raf, I . . . I don’t want this to undermine our friendship, mate. My understanding was that you broke up long before I arrived.’

Rafa couldn’t meet his eyes; hostility shimmered around him like a heat haze.

‘Neither of us was even looking for this. We’re as surprised as anybody,’ Tom continued.

Not quite, Clem thought to herself. Not as surprised as the little boy in the next room. Her eyes glanced at the wall that separated them.

Rafa said nothing, his jaw grinding slightly from side to side, as though he was massaging his fist under the table, getting ready for the killer punch. Clem saw the muscle spasm in Tom’s
cheek, his childhood stress tic, and felt a familiar protective rush course through her.

‘Oh, don’t get too worked up about it, Tom,’ Clem said too quickly, too rashly. ‘Rafa moved on long ago. He’s already got a girlfriend. Gorgeous, she is. Not to
mention . . . young.’

Rafa’s glare was upon her like fames over petrol, furious and fast, beating her back.

‘What would
you
know about any of it?’ he growled. ‘You? You just look for the rich man.’

Clem couldn’t reply – the hatred he directed at her almost seemed to be a living, breathing thing that he nurtured inside himself.

‘Stop!’ Chiara interrupted, smoothing her hands between them both. ‘This will not help anybody. We did not ask you to come for this. We are here for Luca.’

‘Luca?’ Rafa and Clem echoed in unison, both looking back at her. What did he have to do with it?

Tom’s head had snapped up at the boy’s name, too.

Chiara met his gaze, both of them visibly softening as their eyes rested on each other. ‘Tom must return to London soon’ – she took a deep breath – ‘and I want to
go with him.’

Silence fell on them, flattening them all. In an instant, Rafa had gone completely white, even his dark lips appeared pale.

Somewhere – not on a conscious level – Clem could see this was news to Tom, too; a whimsical suggestion made more in hope than expectation that had suddenly come to pass, a dream
that was coming true. But that didn’t make it OK. Even her beloved brother’s happiness couldn’t come before Luca’s.

‘We’ve already discussed this,’ Clem hissed to them both, instantly on the attack. ‘You can’t take that boy away from
here
– the middle of fucking
paradise – and just drop him in the middle of a city.’

‘You discussed this? Without me?’ Rafa butted in, his voice ominously quiet, his eyes burning at Chiara. The wine was forgotten and the council of war reconvened.

‘No. No.’ Chiara shook her head, staying calm. ‘Because Luca is not coming. He will stay here.’

This time it was Clem who paled.
‘What?
You’re just going to leave him here?’

‘Please. I am not
just
going to do anything. I have spent much time thinking about what is best, and it is best he stays here – for the moment. Here he is surrounded by
people who know and love him. He is at school, he has friends here and he will be with Rafa.’

‘That is it? This is how you tell me you are going? This is how you tell me you are leaving me with the child?’ Rafa asked, his colour returning after the initial shock.

Chiara looked at him. ‘You love him, Rafa.’

‘Yes!’ he agreed vehemently. ‘But that does not mean my life is . . . is fit for this. I live in a small house, I work crazy hours . . .’ He looked desperate, as
panic-stricken as Clem felt.

Chiara looked across at her calmly. ‘Clem, you have spent very much time with him this summer. Maybe you would consider to stay, too?’

‘You
know that I can’t do that,’ Clem whispered, transmitting urgent, desperate messages with her eyes.

But Chiara wouldn’t play ball. They had an audience and she was using it, both of them knowing Clem was gagged. ‘Why? When you stop to think, there is not really a reason to leave.
You have a beautiful home here, a man who loves you, and Luca talks about you with very much affection. It would only be for a few weeks to begin with, but
if
I decide to stay in London,
then that is when we can decide if he joins me there.’

‘And I get no say in this?’ Rafa raged. ‘I just get told he will live with me and then he won’t?’

‘You get every say He loves you like a father. But he is my brother, not my child, and I have looked after him and taken care of him every one of the days in the eight years since Mama
died. I gave up my own life in Firenze and my career hopes to come back here for him, because I love him with all my heart. But it has come at great cost to me. I have been sad for very long and
now . . .’ Her glance flickered back to Tom, and once there couldn’t wrest free again. ‘This is my chance for happiness. I love Tom and I want to be with him.’ She looked
back at Clem, her expression tender, affectionate and utterly implacable. ‘I would not even consider this if I did not believe Luca would be safe, protected and loved by you both.’

‘Why do you include her?’ Rafa roared. ‘She is a stranger.’

‘Not any more. Not after this summer,’ Chiara said, her eyes on Clem as they communicated without words, their tangled past twisting into the present, too, keeping pace with them
both, keeping them connected.

‘Well, it will not work, your plan,’ Rafa hissed. ‘She is already going. I heard her. They cannot wait to leave.’

Clem gasped at his words. He’d been listening that night?

He nodded, leaning in to her, his eyes on the ring glittering on her right hand. ‘Not a white diamonds girl?’ he snarled, standing up with such force that his chair went flying back,
clattering noisily to the floor as he stormed from the room.

The back door slammed behind him and Clem stared at her hands miserably, shaking from the blitzkrieg. ‘When are you going?’ she asked after a few minutes, defeated. She knew when
Chiara had made up her mind; and she also knew what Luca’s response was going to be, if this afternoon’s was anything to go by.

‘After the wedding. Luca goes back to school a few days later and he will be so busy he will not miss me so much as he thinks. He will only be home to sleep and eat. Anyway Rafa is his
world.’ She reached her hands out to Clem’s, her face low to the table, trying to catch Clem’s eye. ‘Please, it would just be a few weeks more for you, Clem. Surely, after
everything, you can give me that? Is it really so dreadful to stay?’

‘You know perfectly well what it is you’re asking of me . . .’ Clem whispered.

‘I do,’ Chiara nodded soberly. ‘And I
still
believe it is the best. For all of us.’

Us – the very word was inclusive, implying their shared, overlapping lives, how they were as linked as sisters.

Overwhelmed by all of this, Clem got up and walked to the back door in silence.

‘Clem?’ Tom asked, looking concerned.

But she shook her head. She didn’t want to talk any more – she’d had too much to drink and was feeling dangerously emotional; she didn’t trust her own tongue. She pulled
the door shut behind her and leaned against the wall, breathing in the night air. She walked slowly through the garden, trying to take in the bombshells that had fallen on her in the course of one
afternoon. She had spent the last ten years trying to outrun her past, but it had well and truly captured her now, gathering her in its sticky claws and refusing to release its grip, no matter how
much she struggled to get away again.

She opened the gate and stepped onto the road just as a scooter blasted round the corner, its lights dazzling her. She pressed herself against the rough wall in fright as the Vespa passed. She
couldn’t see who it was over the headlights, but she could guess. The blonde hair streaming from the passenger riding pillion was a dead giveaway.

‘You are awake.’ Gabriel’s voice was soft in the dark, like fur brushing over her skin.

‘No, I’m not,’ she whispered from her position, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling. She wished she could brush her fingers against the smooth silk envelope that had
always kept her going during her most difficult moments, but she couldn’t. It was hidden beneath a hard and heavy mattress – away from Gabriel and Signora Benuto but, crucially, away
from her, too.

‘You are. I can tell.’ She could tell that he was smiling. She felt the mattress dip as he shifted position to face her, and she knew he had planted his head on his hand and was
looking down at her. ‘You are a truly dreadful sleeper. If I had known this before, it might have changed things between us.’

She turned to look at him and his mouth swooped down on hers. ‘Got you,’ he murmured.

She smiled and turned onto her side, facing him, nestling down into the pillow and closing her eyes again.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘How can I
?
I’m still sleeping,’ she mumbled.

‘Maybe I shall use that to my advantage.’

Somewhere further down on her thigh, she felt his fingers beginning to tiptoe over her skin, and her muscles contracted involuntarily, her body instantly waking up to his touch without
hesitation. His fingers stopped their march.

‘Is it me? Us?’

Her eyes opened. ‘No. You’re everything.’

Slowly after a pause, his fingers continued their walk over her hipbones. ‘Good.’

Clem blinked into the dark, feeling more awake than ever, and not just because of where his hands were now. She’d told him the truth, no word of a lie. He was everything.

But it was never going to be enough.

Clem fidgeted in her seat and tried not to stare. The benches were hard and narrow and her knees pressed up against the back of the pew in front. The church was almost full now
– the pews filling from the front to the back (although she’d made a beeline for the back row as ever) and she had a prime view of the backs of everyone’s heads. Surprisingly, she
recognized many of them and had been gratified by the number of greetings by name she had received as she approached the church. She certainly wasn’t unknown in the port, even though
she’d kept herself to herself for the most part, and she wondered if Chiara and the workmen talked about her? If they did, it would seem to be positive, given all the smiles she received.