Christmas at Claridge's (34 page)

‘You don’t have a bike,’ Clem said, correcting her. ‘And you haven’t eaten prawns ever since you tried reheating that three-day-old curry and were sick in bed for a
week.’

‘Well, I know
that,
but . . . ugh!’ Stella exclaimed, stomping off and bashing a cushion back into shape on the sofa. ‘It would be nice to have the option. I’m a
spontaneous girl. You never know what I might do next.’

‘That’s true, we never do,’ Clem said obediently, desperately trying to manage her own see-sawing emotions. She had a feeling she knew what was coming next. ‘What was
Oscar’s response?’

There was a short pause. Confirmation. ‘He hasn’t exactly had one.’

‘You dumped him without telling him?’ Clem said, planting a hand on her hip.

‘Well, of course I did! He’s hardly signed up for a kid, has he? We’ve just been fooling around. It was never meant to be anything serious.’

‘Not meant to be, no. But you’ve been glued together for four months now. It’s more than a fling, babe.’

‘Listen, just because you can’t get past twelve weeks doesn’t mean we’re going to walk down the aisle simply because we’ve got to sixteen,’ Stella
rebutted.

‘You’re hardly kids,’ Clem said, ignoring Stella’s arguments. ‘Thirty’s looming on the horizon, and I already know you don’t like the cut of its
jib.’

‘Where are you going with this?’ Stella asked suspiciously, grabbing another cushion and threatening it with a closed fist.

‘You need to tell him. You need to talk it through together.’

Stella broke their stare with a blink. ‘What I need is just to get on with it.’

It?
Clem felt pressure building on her chest, as if someone was kneeling on her. ‘Stell, look . . . It’s a massive decision; it’s not something you can rush
into.’

‘I don’t want a kid, Clem.’ Stella’s voice was stony and flat, as if she was trying to stick to a script while she punched the dangling cushion.

‘Don’t you, though?
Really?’
Clem questioned her, remembering Stella’s panic at the christening. ‘I think you’d be a great mum, for what it’s
worth.’

Stella threw the cushion down and was quiet for a long while, her shoulders up by her ears again. ‘Fuck’s sake. I can’t believe you’re trying to talk me into it.
You
of all people. You hate kids.’

‘Hate’s
a bit strong. I’m just not a natural. And I’m not trying to talk you into anything. I just think you should let it all settle in your head for a few
days. You don’t have to decide right this instant.’

They lapsed into fretful silence, Clem desperately trying to find the right words. ‘Just try to imagine where you’d like your life to be five years from now. Please God don’t
be led by me. You’re chasing something that I’m not.’ It was painful to say. She didn’t want to lose her pub buddy, but she’d always known the path she had to take
was, by definition, a solitary one. ‘You need to talk to Oscar. He’s nuts about you. You’re the one who keeps holding things back. I mean, maybe this was written in the stars.
What if he’s the one?’

Stella sniffed contemptuously, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Babe, we are modern girls. Neither one of us believes in that crap.’

Clem fell still. ‘No. No, I guess not.’

Stella yawned. ‘Damn, I’m so bloody tired all the time.’

‘Go upstairs and lie down. I’ll get Signora Benuto to bring over some supper. You look wiped out.’

‘You sure?’ Stella asked, already wandering back to the stairs.

‘Of course. Have you booked into a hotel anywhere?’

‘No, I . . .’ Stella grimaced. ‘Sorry I wasn’t really thinking it all through. I just had to see you. Couldn’t go another day—’

‘I’m glad. You’d have been ripped off. You can stay here with me. We can share the bed.’

‘What about Gabriel?’

‘It’s fine. He’s in Paris for a few days.’

‘Good,’ Stella said, climbing the stairs. ‘At least he shouldn’t hear me snore from there.’

Clem looked alarmed. ‘You snore?’

‘Like a bear, baby.’ Stella sighed, a tiny amused smile curling her lips. ‘Like a fricking bear.’

She lay in bed, the round wagon-wheel windows open, one ear automatically listening out for the sound of the V8 over the waves, even though Gabriel wasn’t due back from
Paris till the following night. She was trying to sleep but could only manage fitful naps – Stella’s news lodged in her mind – before being jerked out of sleep by full body
spasms, her heart hammering in her chest, her head spinning with all the changes. Beside her, Stella was snoring; she’d been sleeping solidly since Clem had sent her up to bed earlier –
relieved of the weight of her secret now that she’d burdened Clem with it.

Clem thought she heard a sound outside and turned her head towards the stairs, waiting for it to materialize into footsteps and a turn of the latch, but nothing came. Her ear tuned back into the
splashing, smashing of the waves and she drifted off again.

When she awoke, the moon was up and she was misted with a sheen of sweat, her legs tangled in the thin cotton sheet. It was the middle of the night now, the lights in the gardens long since
turned off, the coast blotted out as if it had been smothered with a coat.

Clem sat up, sensing a change. Stella was sleeping more soundly beside her now, a small smile on her face.

A gust whipped around the room, making Clem shiver, and she realized the wind had picked up. The day had been sticky and still, leaching energy and conversation, but now thick, rolling clouds
were gathering like armies in the skies, marching past the moon in tangled formations. A sudden crack of light, as if the sky was splitting open, sent the world into negative image – white
was black, black was white – and she realized that was what had woken her.

She got up and walked to the window, watching as the waves steadily reared, row upon row, showing their bellies and beginning to snarl and froth. She looked left, towards Chiara’s. She
already knew what the storm would look like from there. Was Chiara watching, too, as she worked through the night again, sitting at her kitchen table with ledgers spread around her while the sky
flashed? And what about Luca? Every child loved an electric storm, didn’t they? Or was he scared? No, she thought, probably nothing scared him, except maybe his wish not coming true, whatever
that was.

A sound downstairs, not more than a sigh, made her turn. Gabriel?

She walked down on tiptoes, finding him asleep in his suit on the sofa, his long legs hanging over the edge. She curled up in the lemon chair beside him and rested her head on the arm, gazing at
him as he slept. He was just so beautiful to look at; she thought she would never tire of it. He was the ultimate escape; sometimes she felt as though she could climb inside him and hide. He was
her oblivion. She felt shielded by him, protected – as she needed to be.

Her eyes roamed the length of him – his expression was benign, his fingers unfurled, no tension in his legs or brow. She extended a leg, nudging his foot lightly with hers, and he stirred,
groaning lightly before blinking slowly into the gloom. He noticed her curled up in the armchair and smiled, pushing himself up to sitting and stretching out his back.

‘What are you doing down here?’ he asked, his accent always thicker at night, his shirt rumpled.

‘I was about to ask you the same thing.’ She smiled.

‘I came up to bed but saw that you have company.’

‘Stella came out and surprised me.’

‘So did I, but I didn’t think I should surprise her by joining you.’ He smiled, a wicked gleam in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, it’s not fair that you should have to sleep down here.’

‘It is one night,’ he said wryly. ‘I will survive. I am not so spoiled as you think,’ he said, jokingly cricking his neck. ‘Is she OK? Was it an
emergency?’

‘You could say that; she’s pregnant,’ Clem whispered. ‘She needed to talk.’

Gabriel frowned. ‘Of course. It is very serious. What will she do?’

‘I’m trying to persuade her to keep it. I think she wants to but . . .’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘I think she’s frightened. The father doesn’t know yet and he
might not want a baby. It wasn’t planned.’

He watched her keenly. ‘She’s lucky to have you as a friend,’ he murmured, reaching out to clasp her by the wrist and pulling her onto his lap. He tilted his face to kiss her
as his hands slowly brushed up her waist, one hand cupping her breast as another combed through her hair. ‘I like to see this side to you.’

‘What side?’ she whispered, closing her eyes as he kissed her neck, beginning to lose herself in him again.

‘Maternal.’

She stiffened, her eyes open as his lips met hers.
‘I’m
not the maternal type, Gabriel.’

He chuckled softly. ‘You can’t fool me. I’ve seen you playing with the little boy here sometimes. He makes you laugh . . . It makes me think what you would be like if, one day,
we had a son.’

She pulled back abruptly. ‘That’s not an option.’

‘Not now maybe, I agree – I want to keep you to myself a bit longer – but in a few years . . .’

‘No. I’m never having children.’

He stopped kissing her and met her eyes. ‘And you have just made that decision all by yourself? No thought of what I might want?’ he asked after a long pause.

‘I made that decision a long time ago, long before I ever met you.’

‘But why?’ he asked, incredulous.

‘Because I wouldn’t be any good.’

‘Of course you—’

‘Trust me. I’m never going to change my mind on this.’

‘I don’t understand.’ He frowned as she got up off his lap, pulling down her T-shirt in jerky, agitated movements.

‘You don’t need to.’

‘Well, were you ever going to tell me?’ he asked, a throb of anger in his voice at her casual flippancy.

‘We’ve been together six weeks, Gabriel,’ she said impatiently. ‘I didn’t think it was a discussion we needed to have right now.’

She saw the muscle clench in his jaw and she shifted her weight, anxious suddenly that she’d been too vehement in her proclamations. This could be a deal-breaker – it very probably
was – but that didn’t mean she could be without him now, not while she was still out here. She changed tack. ‘I’m sorry I . . . I’m just a bit freaked out because of
Stella. It’s a lot to take in. It’s going to change my life as much as hers. We’re inseparable back home.’

‘You are not students any more,’ Gabriel muttered. ‘Or maybe you didn’t notice you are nearly thirty? You think being the party girl is going to make you happy ten,
fifteen years from now?’

Clem bit her lip. She’d heard all this before – from Tom, her parents, Freddie and Josh; even Simon had said much the same thing. ‘I’m going back to bed. We’re both
tired,’ she replied evasively.

She turned and walked up the stairs with his eyes on her back, her own eyes falling on the heaving, moonlit sea beyond the windows. Being sequestered here on this tiny peninsula had made it easy
to pretend up until now, as they played house together and made love in the folly. But reality was already blinking over the horizon, like a distant ship, and their fairytale existence here was as
fragile as a dream.

‘Oh God, you’re never coming back, are you?’ Stella drawled, sitting in front of Clem and dangling her toes in the turquoise water of the hotel pool, the
roofs of the pink-speckled port far below them. ‘I mean, who in their right mind would leave this?’

Clem grinned. ‘Lucky for you, then, that we both know I’m not in my right mind.’

She had woken to find Gabriel already gone – a note on the table telling her he’d taken his usual room at the Splendido for the next two nights, until Stella left. When she’d
called him, he had been cool, although he hadn’t rebuffed her suggestion that she and Stella join him there and make the most of the facilities for the day before heading down to the port
later for window-shopping, drinks and dinner. It was a welcome respite from the dust and noise back at the house, and Stella really needed to rest.

Clem lay back on the lounger and looked around at the poolside scene. All around them, honeymooners lounged elegantly in Heidi Klein bikinis and Manuel Canovas sarongs, sipping pink drinks and
talking in hushed tones. She and Stella broke the mould somewhat; Clem fiddled with her tiny Isabel Marant bikini, pretty sure no one had ever worn tie-dye in the Splendido before, and as for
Stella in her yellow crocheted swimsuit, her wild hair pinned up with clasps decorated with silk butterflies . . . it was as if she’d bottled Portobello – eclectic, irreverent, ballsy
– and drenched herself in it. Clem watched as Stella flicked quickly through the pages of her Paris
Vogue,
as though the biggest dilemma in her life was choosing which dress to wear
to dinner. There was no sign of her condition yet, but she had slept for almost twelve hours and when she had woken, she was in a bright mood. Clem wondered whether her words had had an impact?

She looked across at Gabriel, who was lying on the bed beside her. He looked obscenely good in his powder-blue Orlebar Brown trunks, and she knew most of the women round the pool were eyeing him
up behind their shades. He was reading reports on his iPad, looking sterner than she was used to seeing him, and she squeezed his hand, liking the way his features automatically softened at the
sight of her, before he remembered her arrogance and frowned again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Clem whispered. ‘I was a cow. I should never have tried to hold a conversation in the middle of the night. Sleep’s all I’m fit for at
night.’

He was silent for a few moments and she knew he was thinking that wasn’t all she was fit for at night. But this wasn’t the time for jokes.

‘I wasn’t saying I want them now,’ he murmured, keeping the conversation deliberately oblique lest Stella should overhear. ‘But it was a shock that you wouldn’t
even discuss it.’

‘I know. It’s just way too early for that conversation, that’s all . . . Forgive me?’ He could hear her pout, even if he wouldn’t look at her. He raised an eyebrow
a fraction of an inch and she knew she had him. She rolled onto his stomach, deliberately and carelessly crushing his newspaper between them as every set of eyes swivelled towards them.
‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise,’ she said, her parted lips kissing his. She pulled back onto her hands and knees like a cat. ‘Our first fight,’ she said as though
it was as sexy as their first kiss, a gleam in her eyes as she backed off the lounger, watching the way his eyes travelled rapaciously up and down her body.