Meet Me Under the Mistletoe Read Online Free PDF Page A

again. Steadying herself against the table, Bea took her seat.
    ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Rachel said.
    ‘Absolutely. Now, I thought we were going to have a nice gossip? Let’s not spoil it, Rachel.’
    CHAPTER 3
     
    Wednesday 22nd November
    As Laurie walked towards the Victorian mansion block where she lived, the winter sun setting hazily over Brixton, she saw that the girl was there again. Pressing the buzzer and leaning in towards the intercom, her pale-blonde-streaked hair partially covering her face, kohl-dark eyes just visible through it.
    ‘Jay, it’s me,’ the girl said huskily. Laurie felt a tug at her heart as she heard his name. The blonde must be in her twenties, Laurie guessed, not older than twenty-five. It was close to freezing out that night and she was dressed in a mini-skirt, black tights and brown-leather biker boots and a denim jacket. Barely clothed, really.
    That tone, Laurie thought, taking her keys out of her bag, her Tiffany keyring jangling. What was that? Intimacy?
    Laurie held her key fob up to open the front door. She and Jay were over. It was none of her business who came to the flats – and as of Monday she had much bigger stuff to think about. She held the front door open for the girl to walk through. Laurie walked across the chessboard tiles and up the winding staircase, her hand gliding over the timber rail of the wrought-iron balustrade, leaving the girl behind her in the hallway reapplying lip gloss in the mirror.
    Laurie continued up the stairs, passing Jay’s doorway with a quick glance. That could have been me, she thought, as she imagined Jay drawing the girl into his arms, kissing her. But she’d messed that up. Just like she seemed to be messing everything up.
    She continued up to the third floor, her floor. The penthouse flat, she joked to friends – it wasn’t as glamorous as all that, this was Brixton after all, but it was true that her place had the best view – on a clear day sunshine would spill in through the bay window in the living room, and she could see over the other buildings towards the city, the skyline taking in the Gherkin, St Paul’s, the Shard. She also had a roof terrace that made her the envy of the block during the summer months. Initially she’d seen the flat as a first step on the property ladder, on her way to a more desirable postcode – in Primrose Hill or Maida Vale maybe, when her career really took flight – but after only a couple of months in Brixton, after meeting her neighbours, she was sold. The area, and the block itself, had worked its charm on her and now it was home – colourful, chaotic and vibrant. She never wanted to live anywhere else.
    Laurie wasn’t headed straight home. She stopped at the flat next door to her own and leaned down to open the letterbox. ‘Hey,’ she called through it. ‘Siobhan. Are you in?’
    She heard a shuffling of feet and a moment later was greeted at the door by her neighbour Siobhan, in checked pyjamas, her hair bundled into a towel turban, bright-green eyes shining out from her pretty, freckled face. A streak of tabby curled round her legs and purred. Mr Ripley – tabby with white paws – was Jay’s cat, officially. He fed him, but Mr Ripley spent as much time ducking in and out of all the other rooms in the block, finding his way in through doors and windows left ajar, making each flat his home.
    ‘If it isn’t the style police,’ Siobhan said, greeting Laurie with a smile, undoing the towel around her hair and beginning to scrub it dry roughly. ‘You’ve caught me unawares.’
    ‘I’m strictly off duty this evening,’ Laurie said, raising a weary smile. Siobhan took a step back and motioned for Laurie to come in.
    In architectural terms, Siobhan’s flat was a mirror image of Laurie’s – but that was as far as it went. While in Laurie’s flat sparse, Japanese-style furniture and white carpets set the minimalist tone, here in Siobhan’s there were decorative gilt