Christmas at Claridge's Read Online Free PDF

a blow-dry every morning on his way to the salon. ‘Happy New
Year.’
    ‘And to you, Clementine.’ Her mother’s distinctive turquoise eyes – which had in part singled her out as one of the notable beauties of her generation and were extending
the same compliment to Clem – skimmed over her smart appearance. ‘Are you going into the office today?’ The question was posted as though she couldn’t be quite sure. Outfit
fail.
    ‘Yeah, worst luck.’
    But her mother wasn’t listening. She was looking beyond her to the hall. ‘Where’s Tom? Isn’t he with you?’
    ‘No. He stayed at Clover’s yesterday.’
    ‘All day?’
    Clem nodded casually, but she saw the understanding shift into her mother’s sharp eyes immediately. The siblings had always been close and Tom was a stickler for the family being together
on high days and holidays, even if being with Clem on New Year’s Day usually involved holding her hair back.
    ‘I know, that’s what I thought. And then I thought maybe he’s proposed or something,’ Clem said quickly, trying to throw her off the scent. ‘I mean, it has been five
years now, and I suppose New Year’s Eve is one of the traditional times to ask.’
    ‘Good God, I hope not,’ her mother grimaced, appalled. ‘What a horrid cliché. I would hope we brought you both up to have rather more imagination than that.’
    Clem smiled as her mother sidetracked into disappointment – mission accomplished – then sank into the orange velvet sofa that had faded along the back where the sun caught it in the
late afternoon. A giant fern obscured her mother’s face from view, but she made no effort to move it, throwing her long legs over the tapestried scatter cushions and checking texts, just as
Lulu, her parents’ caramel-coloured cockerpoo, bounded into the room like a hairbrush on springs and jumped onto her lap. She was crazily cute, even though she was so small, spoilt and fluffy
she had no business calling herself a dog. There were cats on the street that could bark more convincingly.
    ‘Don’t put your feet on the sofa, Clementine,’ her mother admonished quietly as Clem tickled the dog’s tummy. ‘And put Lulu down. You’re encouraging her to
jump up.’
    Reluctantly, Clem put the dog down on the floor and pocketed her phone.
Where
was Tom?
    ‘So, what did you and Daddy do for New Year?’ she asked, swinging her leg metronomically in the full know-ledge that it would drive her mother mad.
    There was only the slightest pause before her mother answered. ‘We did our usual safari supper – drinks and canapés at the Bennetts’, dinner at the Wilson-Hopes’,
pudding and Bridge here.’ She dropped her voice fractionally. ‘As we have done for the past twenty-six years.’
    ‘Nice,’ Clem nodded automatically.
    ‘And you?’
    ‘Stella threw a party.’
    ‘Of course she did.’
    Clem peered through the fern at her mother, who had a smile on her lips but none in her eyes, just as her father walked through, carrying steaming plates of grilled kippers, poached eggs in
hollandaise sauce and ribbons of smoked salmon twisted into appealing heaps. Since retiring as CEO of music publishers Haycock & Gibson twenty years earlier, he had fallen into a passionate
secondary love affair with food, and was so often to be found chatting to the deli owners and fruit and veg market stallholders about black garlic or how to cook with lavender salt, or the merits
of pecorino over parmigiana, that for the first year of his retirement, Clem’s mother had been quite convinced that he had not just another woman, but an entire other family on the go.
    ‘Well, we can’t wait for your brother any longer I’m afraid,’ he said, putting the plates down on the oval table, which was painted in a grey limed wash and set with
olive-embroidered linen napkins and bone-handled cutlery. ‘I’m running a tight ship here and I calculated my cooking times according to you both needing to be in