Christmas at Claridge's (7 page)

If Tom had been disappointed by her decision, he’d never said. He’d even ridden to her rescue when she’d been fired from her last and latest job as a sales manager at a chichi
lingerie boutique on Westbourne Park Road. He had thrown her the lifeline of working for him, even though there was no real role to cover and her job was more display than anything else.

Tom covered the corporate and trade accounts, and was the only point of contact for hotels, high-end architects, investment banks and car manufacturers etc., whether they wanted leather walls,
floors, desks, tables, chairs, rugs, sofas, beds or steering wheels. Simon, on the other hand, dealt with the less sexy accounts, invoices, sourcing and production functions.

She, by comparison, was called the Press and Marketing Manager, but it wasn’t lost on anyone that Alderton Hide didn’t advertise, they weren’t in retail or wholesale, and in
the five months she’d been taking up office space, she’d managed only two one-line mentions in
World of Interiors
magazine. If she was honest, she mainly just answered the
phone and flirted with the clients when they were examining the colour wheels.

Her phone bleeped in her bag and she groaned as she reached down to retrieve it.

She tapped back in the affirmative, feeling her spirits lift slightly. Stella would have some words of wisdom to impart; she always gave sound advice – not including the time she said
necking vodka shots through your eyeballs was the low-cal way to get drunk. Tom might not want her help, but surely there had to be something she could do. Stella always said she was charmed, born
lucky. Something would come up to make everything right again. It always did – in the end.

‘Wassup?’ Stella demanded, shrugging off her khaki parka and collapsing into the seat Clem had reserved for her as Clem poured her an enormous glass of red wine
from the carafe on the antique-mirrored table between them.

‘Bike-gate’s gone to a whole new level,’ Clem grimaced, handing the glass over. ‘Perignard’s pulled the account.’

‘No!’ Stella breathed dramatically.

‘Yep. No bike equals no lovely leather-clad, diamond-twinkly showroom.’

‘Shit.’ Stella’s eyes were wide over the rim of her glass.

‘Oh but no! That’s
nothing
! Apparently the bike was also the big
raison d’etre
for Berlin, which is where we get all our new business, and an
“I-could-tell-you-but-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you” confidential pitch to Bugatti, which was the big prize all along. Over three hundred thousand in projected revenue, gone. Just
like that.’ She took a big glug of her wine. She’d almost fallen over when Simon had told her the figure after his meeting. He hadn’t even looked angry, just scared.

‘Holy mutha.’ Stella tried stretching her legs out on the footstool, but it was too far away, perched as it was, comfortably under Clem’s ankles. She reached inside the stool
and pulled out the black cashmere blanket instead, wrapping it around her legs. ‘You’d better drink up.’

Clem did as she was told and scanned the room absently, looking for familiar faces in the queue for the bar. She had bagged seats towards the back as usual. The Electric was one of her favourite
haunts. At the front, the heavy red velvet curtains were still closed, and smug couples were lying stretched out on the signature velvet beds. Almost all the leather club chairs were filled with
couples or groups, laughing and dipping flatbreads into hummus before the lights went down.

‘Well, I had thought this might impress you,’ Stella said, rummaging in her jeans pocket and pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. ‘But after hearing that, probably
not.’

‘What is it?’

‘An ad I saw in Ajeep’s. Cleaner looking for work.’

‘Oh right, great,’ Clem said, taking it from her lethargically.

‘Give her a ring,’ Stella insisted. ‘Remember what we talked about? That could be one way of making things up to Tom at least.’

Clem shot her a look. ‘He’s just lost three hundred grand because of me; you really think he’s gonna care if I hire a cleaner?’

‘You know what they say,’ Stella tutted. ‘A tidy house equals a tidy mind.’

‘Who says that?’ Clem frowned as the lights began to drop.

‘Just ring her. And make sure you check the references,’ Stella hissed as blackness fell like a sheet from the rafters, and everyone swivelled around in their chairs to face the
bright screen. A few latecomers darted into the last remaining seats and Clem stared, annoyed, into the playfully tossed-up hair of the girl who sat down right in front of her.

Stella jiggled the box of popcorn loudly and Clem thrust her hand in, florets of popcorn spilling out of the cone all over the floor. They laughed at their messiness, prompting a few curt
shushes from anonymous members of the audience. Clem pulled a face at them in the dark and lobbed a single floret into the crowd.

To her astonishment, a moment later, it came back.

Stella gasped, lobbing a fresh couple of her own in the same direction. Sure enough, several moments later, they were back in her lap. Both girls leaned forward, trying to see their combatants.
A pair of cocky grins, almost blue-tinted in the cinematic glare, shone back at them.

Not bad, Clem mused. That was certainly her favoured way of shrugging off a bad day. She poured herself and Stella a fresh glass each and sat back in her seat, deciding to let them stew for a bit
and refusing to make further contact of either the eye or popcorn kind, even though several more florets were expertly thrown into hers and Stella’s laps.

She tried to concentrate on the film, but the girl in front’s hair was in the way and she had to angle herself diagonally in her chair to see round her. Matters weren’t helped by the
fact that the girl constantly fidgeted away from her boyfriend’s affections as he tried to caress her slender neck. Clem sighed. That was all she needed right now, a lover’s tiff right
in front of her.

The person on the far side of the girl appeared to say something to her and she leaned in to listen. Then she took something and turned around. ‘For you,’ she murmured, holding out a
scrap of paper towards Clem and Stella.

Oh.

Clem took it with a surprised nod. Thanks.’ Then she opened it up to read it, Stella’s chin resting on her shoulder curiously.

Wanna get out of here?

‘Cheeky beggars!’ Stella giggled, clearly delighted and straining to get a better look at their admirers. ‘What do you think?’

Clem looked over, too, wondering which one she’d choose. From what she could make out, they looked a couple of years younger than her and Stella, but that had its own advantages as far as
she was concerned. ‘Yeah, why not?’ she said in a low voice. ‘If I’m going to spend a night in the dark, I may as well spend it doing something other than
brooding.’

‘What about Josh?’

‘What about him?’

‘I thought you two were getting a regular thing going.’

‘Listen, I still like that he’s different to the other guys I usually go for but . . .’ she shrugged. ‘Every time I look at him now I’m reminded of what I
did.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘And he
so
wasn’t worth it. It’s not his fault but . . . we’re not going to get past it. Come on,’ she whispered, checking
her make-up in the mirrored table before standing up and bending down low to collect her bag, accidentally knocking the contents onto the floor as she did so.

‘Shit!’ she hissed, crouching down and hurriedly sweeping her purse, hairbrush, keys and spare ‘get lucky’ knickers back into her bag. The boyfriend in front turned at
the sounds of the kerfuffle and Clem felt herself go limp as she met the glacial blue eyes that had held hers once before.

The Swimmer.

Her knees wanted to buckle, to force her to sit back down again so that she could spend the rest of the evening staring at the back of his head in the dark. How could she not have noticed him
before?

But it was too late. The cocky strangers had seen the girls get up and had themselves left their seats and were now making their way up to the doors to wait for them.

Stella hissed at her in the dark. ‘Move it, Clem! I’m not bloody going on my own.’

Painfully, tearing her eyes away from his, Clem walked towards the aisle, aware of his gaze upon her back. Why had she thrown that damned piece of popcorn? Why couldn’t she just have sat
quietly in the cinema like a normal person instead of starting a food fight with strangers across the room?

‘All right? I’m Jake, he’s Oscar,’ the taller one said to her as she approached, appraising her with lively hazel eyes; she could tell it was his grin she’d seen in
the dark. Stella was already in full flirt mode with his friend – a Matt Damon lookalike but with a goatee and thighs like thunder.

‘Clem,’ she muttered as Jake reached for her hand and gallantly kissed it.

‘Well, Clem, let’s go and find some real fun, shall we?’

He held the door open for her and Clem hesitated for a moment. She looked back at the Swimmer. He was holding his beautiful girlfriend’s face in his hands, cupping her like a flower, as if
she was the only woman on the planet, much less in this room. Then his lips were upon hers, the door swung shut and once again Clem found herself spun out of his orbit.

The following morning it was so cold that Clem’s breath hung like bridges in the air, leaving a trail of ghostly suspensions behind her as she ran, soft-footed, through
the sand paths of Hyde Park. To her right, the No.12 bus was pacing her along the Bayswater Road, and she was gradually gaining on the Queen’s Household Cavalry, who were out for their early
morning drills, the red-plumes from their helmets bouncing bonnily their brassware clattering and steam rising from the flanks of their mighty horses.

She reached the path that turned right towards the Serpentine and accelerated, feeling last night’s alcohol dissipate like spirits in the mist. Stella had long since given up trying to
stay abreast of her. They did everything together but this. Where Stella ran to lose weight, Clem ran to . . . well, she didn’t really have a reason for it. It was a physical need. She just
did it because she could. This was the one thing she was truly good at. And for the record, she didn’t jog, she ran – hard and fast, as though, if she felt like it, she might not
stop.

Jake had still been sleeping when she’d left, but she knew he’d be grateful to her for slipping out early and discreetly. He’d been fun. They’d ended up drinking
cocktails and chaser shots at the Portobello Star, as he’d determinedly jollied her out of her sulk. Her parting image of the Swimmer kissing his girlfriend had messed with her, and
she’d spent much of the first hour wondering whether the charge that surged between them was a figment of her imagination. Then the alcohol had kicked in and everything had settled down into
that familiar, dreamy blur that she knew so well and she’d stopped thinking about anything much at all, other than dealing with what was in front of her.

She sped around the Serpentine and back towards the Italian Gardens, hurdling athletically over a buggy that suddenly appeared from behind the café wall, and overtaking a posse of women
in orange BMF bibs being shouted out by a commando. By the time she caught sight of Stella ahead of her, fifty minutes later, she’d run three times as far as her friend on half the
breath.

Clem laughed as she watched her jogging alongside the cavalry on their way back to the barracks, talking in vain to one of the soldiers atop an 18-hand horse who, in spite of his raging desire
to talk to the bosomy brunette, was gloomily bound to regimental silence.

‘Give it up, Stell!’ she called, sitting on the back of a park bench, and motioning for her to come over. ‘He’ll have to clean the loos with a toothbrush for a month if
he even looks at you.’

Stella jogged over slowly, holding an overflowing bosom in each hand. ‘Shame. He looked good in brass,’ she panted as she got closer.

Clem chuckled, wiping her hair away from her face and drinking greedily from her water bottle.

‘You were off like a rocket today,’ Stella remarked once she’d got her breath back, instantly reaching into the waistband of her leggings and pulling out a packet of
Marlboro.

‘Yeah, I felt like I had some puff today.’

‘You usually only run like that when you’re wound up about something,’ Stella murmured into a cupped hand as she lit up.

‘Me? No.’ Clem slapped the water bottle from hand to hand as if it was a ball.

There was a suspicious silence as Stella inhaled deeply before blowing out smoke slowly. ‘Come on, out with it. I can always tell when you’re hiding something from me. You’re
being far too virtuous – running, water
.
Get you, angel girl.’

Clem sighed. ‘It’s this bloke.’

‘Of
course
it is!’ Stella cried triumphantly, sliding down the bench until she was lying on her back as if she was on a shrink’s couch. ‘Tell me
everything.’

‘There’s nothing to tell, that’s the problem. I was hoping you could tell me.’

‘Me?’

‘I’ve got no idea who he is. I first saw him at yours on New Year’s Eve.’

‘Describe,’ Stella ordered, waving her cigarette around as if it was a wand and closing her eyes in concentration. One of her strongest skills was her photographic fashion memory.
She was a nightmare with faces, a disaster with names, but Stella could remember people and places by outfits. There was precious little point in Clem saying ‘
6
foot 3
inches, dark blond, angular, big shoulders, blue eyes.’

‘Charcoal jacket with black revers, pale blue shirt, jeans.’

There was a short silence as Stella mentally catalogued the night’s outfits before firmly shaking her head. ‘Nope. Must have been another party.’

‘No, it was definitely New Year’s Eve.’

‘Uh-uh.’

‘I promise you, Stell, it was. I saw him just before Tom pushed the hat down over my eyes and Josh face-planted me.’

‘Ooh, class act.’ Stella giggled. ‘Nah, sorry babes. I’d remember someone in that get-up. The jacket sounds cool.’