Christmas at Claridge's (39 page)

‘D’you like it?’ she asked.

‘I love it so much I’m going to keel over.’ Tom grinned.

Clem groaned. ‘Oh my God, that’s awful, Tom! No wonder Clover left y—’

The words were out before she could stop them and she looked at him in dismay. ‘That was an idiotic thing to say. I don’t know why I said it.’

Tom laughed lightly. ‘It’s fine, Clem. I’m not going to break, you know.’

She looked at him sceptically. ‘No? This time yesterday you looked three days from death.’

‘Well, you were right; the sun does make you feel better. I feel different out here already.’ He shrugged, his face in profile to her as he scanned the boat’s proportions. They
were quiet for a while. ‘Do you know how much a boat like this costs?’

Clem shrugged. ‘Ballpark,’ she mumbled.

‘He’s a big fish, sis.’ Tom looked across at her, and she knew what he was really saying: she was out of her league with this one.

‘And I’m a big girl,’ she replied. ‘So you can stop looking at me like that.’

‘This level of wealth complicates everything.’

‘I don’t see why. I’m not interested in his money. Or anyone else’s.’

‘Just because you don’t care about the money doesn’t mean it won’t affect your relationship. This boat is only a toy to Gabriel and it’s worth more than we’ll
probably ever earn. You’re in a whole other world with him and I just don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all.’

She gave a small, dismissive laugh. ‘As if! No man’s ever broken this heart, and they’re not going to either.’

She saw Tom’s expression. ‘What? Don’t look so sad. You should be pleased for me.’

‘Why?’ he shrugged. ‘It means you’ve never been in love. That’s sad.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, because I’m so gutted to have missed out on years of crying into my pillow. No wonder rom-coms are wasted on me.’

‘But you do cry into your pillow,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve heard you.’

‘I d-d-do not! I’m drunk, you numpty!’ she scoffed. You know how emotional I get after tequila.’

Tom nodded, but didn’t say anything further to contradict her, and she saw that same familiar pity shining from his eyes whenever she was reflected in them.

A sharp whistle made them both jump and they looked down. Chad and Mario were on the ground, looking up at them.

‘Want to climb aboard?’ Chad called up.

Tom gave a big thumbs-up sign and Clem, relieved by the distraction, began leading him back down the steps.

‘Just wait till you see the plans for the amethyst bar and the marble bath,’ Clem said quickly over her shoulder to him. ‘They rock.’

‘Quite literally.’ Tom quipped. ‘Are you sure she’ll float with that much stone inside her?’

‘Ha ha.’

Their feet pattered down the metal steps in unison and she heard him clear his throat. ‘By the way, I got talking to Chiara about the hotel last night. I said I’d pop in and have a
look at the proposals you’d made. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Are you kidding? You’d be doing me a favour. I bit off way more than I could chew with Chiara,’ Clem said, turning on the steps to look back up at him. ‘But I’m
warning you, you’re going to be banging your head against a brick wall. She’s stubborn as hell. She won’t commit to anything.’

‘Well, having lived with
you
all my life, I reckon I can probably handle her.’

‘Trust me, you can’t,’ she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder and continuing their descent. She couldn’t hear him smiling at her back, but she could feel it.
‘Tom, you can’t!’

She slammed the car door behind her and looked back in through the window. ‘Right, so Luigi’ll drop you back at Chiara’s and he’ll come back for me,
yeah?’

Tom nodded. ‘This I can’t wait to see.’

‘It’s lasagne, Tom,’ Clem quipped. ‘Hardly rocket science. Meat and tomato.’

‘Yes, but you said there was a secret ingredient.’

A reluctant smile came to Clem’s face as she remembered Luca putting the chilli powder in instead. ‘Fine. I’ll get the shopping and see you back at Chiara’s in an
hour.’

‘I look forward to it.’ Tom winked. ‘You? Cooking? I’m texting Dad now. He might well catch the next plane out.’

She rolled her eyes and stepped back to let the car pull away, watching them disappear around the sharp bend. Portofino was less than ten minutes away from here and she didn’t have
long.

She inhaled deeply and looked around her. It was the first time in the three months she’d been here that she had stopped in Santa Margherita, the town that was the backbone to
Portofino’s pretty face. It was here that the locals did all their shopping, laundry, went to school and caught the train, but she’d only ever been driven through it on the way to the
docks, her head down as she worked on her iPad or made calls before the connection became too bad in the tunnels.

The buildings here were in the same palette as the port’s – pink, peach, ochre and sand, all with dark green shutters – but they were much larger and more utilitarian, with
lots of 1960s blocks with narrow verandas and football flags tied to the railings. There were some smart, overpriced designer boutiques along the promenade, but Clem preferred to amble past the
brocante set up on the pavements, miles-long rows of Vespas bracketing it like a picket fence.

She drifted alongside the market stalls as if she were a paper bag caught in the wind, smiling absently at the stallholders and admiring, without stopping, the local laces and sugar-dusted
pastries. Her heart felt lighter in the market here. It wasn’t a million miles from Portobello . . .

She sighed, enjoying the time alone. Her days here were so over-scheduled and her nights so short with Gabriel in her bed that it felt almost hedonistic to have some time to herself. It was
ironic really that living in the lap of luxury, time and space was what felt most indulgent.

She turned inland, walking into a large square planted with mature orange trees. There was a launderette and a Gulliver supermarket on the far side, a battered lorry parked half on the pavement
and its lights flashing as it made a delivery. She walked along, kicking up small dust clouds around her feet and looking into the cafés and kitchens that were filled with the lunch trade.
She watched her own bare legs, lost in thought as she walked; they were nut-brown now and super-toned from so much hill-running along the headland and midnight swims in the cove, not to mention
keeping up with Gabriel’s sexual athleticism.

Not that it was her legs she was seeing – her head was replaying snapshot moments from her time here, the ones that were going to make returning home so unbearable. She flinched as her
mind settled on the thought again. The realization she had to go had come to her when she was lying in the dark last night, and it had been the reason sleep had fled for good. But she knew it was
the right thing: she wasn’t leaving because she had to go, she was leaving because she couldn’t stay.

He didn’t realize it, but Tom was a neon sign to any interested party – and to Chiara in particular, who was only a hair’s breadth away from the full undisclosed truth –
about what had happened all those years ago, joining up dots that needed to remain in splendid isolation. She knew Gabriel was on the scent, his hostility towards Rafa barely hidden beneath his
manners. But if she was honest with herself, it was getting harder for her to hide the truth, too. Every time she was with him, she felt doors she had long ago welded shut being prised open, chinks
of light shining through her and burning down her defences, filling her with light and love and laughter. Her worst fears were being realized: the wall was falling. The longer she stayed, the more
her feet were taking root where her heart had long since lived, and she wasn’t sure she could trust herself any more.

She resolved to tell everyone at dinner tonight. She had to get the ball rolling, then the news of her departure would steadily gain its own momentum and she would
have
to leave, even
when she knew her heart would betray her head and plead, beg, bargain for her to stay.

She turned a corner and heard the sound of children playing; it was coming from the scuola elementare on the other side of the street. A large, hand-painted banner was fastened to the black
metal gates, with ‘Scuola Estiva’ – summer school – spelled out in rainbow letters.

Summer School? Clem wondered if Chiara knew about it. That would solve all her childcare problems during the holidays, especially now that she wasn’t going to have Clem to rely on every
Tuesday.

She walked up to the gates, her cheek resting lightly against the bars. It was break time and the playground was full of children running, skipping, playing football. Two teachers were standing
by a wall, talking. Clem watched as a little girl came crying over to them, clutching a grazed elbow, and one of the teachers disappeared inside with her, holding her hand. The remaining teacher
cast a bored eye around the playground before digging in to her pocket and retrieving her phone. She made a call, looking around at the buzzing activity, before walking round the wall and out of
sight.

An angry shout caught her attention. In the far corner, she could see a scuffle breaking out – two boys grappling, their heads locked together in a scrum. A crowd quickly gathered as the
boys began to pull apart and a flurry of skinny arms and legs began flailing. The children watching began to chant names, picking sides, choosing a victor from the skirmish. ‘Tonio!
Tonio!’

She turned away, pulling her phone from her bag and checking the time. Damn, it was later than she’d thought. Luigi would be back for her in half an hour and she’d bought precisely
nothing. She began to walk when . . .

She wheeled round, her ears straining to hear it again.

‘Luca! Luca!’

Clem ran back to the gates, pressing her face against the bars, trying to see if it was her Luca, Tuesday Luca, the one with devilment in his eyes. There must be hundreds of boys around here
called Luca. And yet . . . He was tall for his age, but skinny, and she’d caught sight of the other boy’s bulk, if not his face.

Her eyes strained to make out the furious bodies that were now rolling on the ground as the other children – not a single child was left playing now – widened into a large circle
around them, their chants growing loud with delight at the fight. She ran up to the next set of bars, trying to get a better view, but it was impossible to see anything through the children’s
legs. Until a football slowly trickled out through the crowd, forgotten in the melee.

Then she didn’t need to see the boys’ faces. She knew.

Clem looked around to see whether one of the teachers had come back, but the children were unattended, left to their own, cruel hierarchical devices. Tonio’s name was the one gathering
fans and growing in strength.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, rattling the gates, but they were locked and at least 200 metres from the children; not that she would have been heard over them if she’d been two metres
away, they were that loud. ‘Hey!’

No one turned.

She took a step back and looked up at the gates in desperation; they were at least two metres high, she figured. There was only one thing for it. In an instant, she had thrown her bag across her
body and was climbing over the gates and jumping down on the other side. She ran across the playground, wading into the waist-height scrum of kids all jostling for a better view, and picked up the
child wrestling with Luca. He was twice Luca’s weight and had angry tears silently streaming down his face as he tried to land the punch on Luca that the smaller boy had clearly landed on
him. From the looks of things, he was going to have a shiner in the morning. But that was nothing compared to the mess he’d made of Luca. There was an angry graze across his left cheek, where
he’d clearly been pushed into the ground, and he was bleeding at both knees and elbows; small mottled patches were already coming up purple, heralding the bruises to come.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, you bully?’ she demanded furiously, holding the bigger boy by the scruff of his T-shirt as Luca scrambled to his feet, more
frightened by the sight of Clem in the middle of the playground than of his opponent.

The children fell silent, beleaguered by her English as much as her sudden, strange appearance.

‘Well? Who’s going to explain what’s going on?’ she asked again, still not clocking the language barrier because she was so mad. At least, not until the children took a
step back, began to disperse and Clem saw the errant teacher finally coming back round the corner. Clem watched the teacher freeze in alarm as she took in the situation before racing over.

Good, they could get to the bottom of this now.

‘This boy was bullying Luca,’ Clem said furiously, letting the boy drop as the woman reached her.

But the teacher didn’t appear to be interested in who was bullying who. She was more intent on hurrying the children away and screaming at . . . Clem.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re saying. Please slow down,’ Clem implored. Her Italian had improved enormously from a standing start three months ago, but she
still couldn’t keep up if anger or excitement were involved.

Another two teachers ran towards them from the school building, one on a phone, and Clem swallowed hard, getting a sudden sense of how much trouble she was in.

‘Now hang on a minute!’ Grabbing her by the elbows, they began to hustle her towards the school. ‘For God’s sake! This isn’t what you . . . Luca! Are you OK?’
she called, trying to catch sight of him over her shoulder, but one of the other teachers, who was attempting to calm the overexcited children, threw an arm over Luca’s shoulder and herded
him away from her. ‘For God’s sake, I was just trying to
help
,’ she protested as she was frogmarched into the shadows. But from the set of their jaws and the accusing
looks in their eyes, her pleas were falling on deaf ears.

‘You did
what
?’ Stella screeched, forcing Clem to move the phone away from her ear and making even her companion – or rather, guard (although he was
armed with only a biro and a packet of cigarettes) – wince; and he was sitting two chairs up.