Christmas at Claridge's Read Online Free PDF Page A

have you any other way. Tom most of all.
He’s a total softie where you’re concerned.’
    ‘I know, but he shouldn’t have to be. I should be making him proud and helping him, not holding him back. I’m the pelican around his neck.’
    ‘Albatross,’ Stella murmured, going back to her pinning.
    ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s what I said.’

Chapter Three
    Clem stood on the doorstep and rang again. The bell sounded deep into the shadows of the tall magnolia house and presently she heard the sound of her father’s slippered
footsteps on the other side of the imposing black door.
    She readied herself with a smile as she heard the sound of the deadbolts being pushed back, and knew that meant she was the first to arrive – for once. The break with tradition
didn’t thrill her as perhaps it should have done. Tom hadn’t come home at all yesterday and her sense of dread for when she did next see him was growing deeper with every passing
hour.
    ‘Bunny,’ her father smiled down at her, still determined to call her by her baby name, even though she had a maxed-out credit card and a freezer stocked with vodka. At sixty-six, he
was still an imposingly tall man of 6 foot 3 inches. She had inherited his height, wry sense of humour and languid demeanour. Everything else was her mother’s fault.
    ‘Hi Daddyo.’ She reached forward to kiss him on the cheek, her fingertips burrowing softly into the holey, patched cranberry cashmere sweater that he had worn all her life and
possibly a significant portion of his life before that, too. ‘Happy New Year and all that jazz.’
    ‘Indeed.’ He shut the door and looked down at her fondly for a moment, resting one hand on the top of her head, like he used to when she was little. He was one of the very few people
she remained ‘little’ to. ‘And how is the year treating my girl so far?’
    Clem nodded brightly, wondering whether Tom had rung ahead and ratted on her. ‘Well, I’ve decided to break my resolution never to have any resolutions.’
    ‘Oh?’ A flash of hope raced across his gentle features, which Tom had inherited, his florid cheeks clashing with the smooth snowy-white hair that had once been raven black.
    ‘Don’t get your hopes up! It’s nothing earth-shattering. Just the normal self-improvement ones that most people make. Thought I’d give them a go.’
    ‘You’re not going on some ridiculous diet, I hope? That’s what most of you young’uns bang on about nowadays and you’re like a wire hanger as it is.’
    ‘Thanks! And no, that isn’t one of them. I’m going to learn to drive, cook . . . that kind of thing.’ The hope that had skittered over his face a moment before was chased
now by what she thought was mild disappointment. ‘I figure I have to keep it realistic or I’ll never do it,’ she added quickly. ‘And I’m not getting any
younger.’
    ‘Quite so,’ he nodded, staring at her with a wistful look. ‘Well, come through. Your mother’s in the conservatory, waiting to see you.’
    Clem knew it wasn’t
her
that her mother was waiting to see, but she followed after him anyway, automatically smoothing her hair – which she’d conditioned especially
– and checking her appearance in the tall gilded mirror: pale grey jeans and heeled camel ankle boots, a dusty pink silk shirt Stella had made her and a thin leather strap she’d picked
up in the workshop and wound around her neck several times like a lariat. The Akubra hat would have been the perfect finishing touch, but it hadn’t recovered from the other night and
she’d hidden it at the bottom of her wardrobe, hoping that what was out of Tom’s sight would be out of his mind, too.
    ‘Mother,’ she said, crossing the glass room to where her mother was sitting reading
The Economist,
her seated form as erect as a ballerina’s, half-moon spectacles
perched on the end of her aquiline nose, and her grey bobbed hair already immaculately styled by her hairdresser, who gave her