Christmas at Claridge's (26 page)

She laughed, so grateful for his generosity and laid-back manner.

They got up and she walked him to the door.

‘I’ll come back at ten tomorrow, OK? We can get started then,’ he said, kissing her easily on the cheek as if she’d known him for years.

‘OK, thanks. I really mean it.’

He winked and started down the steps.

‘Oh, Chad!’ she called, remembering something, and he turned back to her. ‘What’s . . . what’s his name? Beaulieu’s I mean?’

This time it was Chad who laughed. ‘Ah! He told me you’d ask me that.’ He walked back up the steps to her and took her hand again, squeezing it comfortingly. ‘And he told
me it’s more than my job’s worth to tell you. I can’t get fired for you twice.’

‘Oh.’ Of course he couldn’t. Did that mean that all of them – Signora Benuto, Stefano, Alberto and God only knew who else – had been told to keep it from her, too?
She tried to smile. He’d thought of everything. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It
shouldn’t.
But it obviously does.’ He tipped his head to the side, his eyes amused and sympathetic all at once.
‘Ciao, bella. E benvenuto a
Italia.’

The wind was against her, trying to blow her back and over as she pounded up the narrow path, but she wouldn’t stop. The urge to run was stronger here than she’d
ever felt before. She had to purge, exhaust, distract herself to the point of collapse every evening. It was the only way she could sleep. To be so close to him here, and yet still so far, there
had been nights when she’d thought she was going to go out of her mind.

She knew that sooner or later she would have to leave the headland and go into the port. It had been six days now and she already knew where every twist and turn of these narrow, labyrinthine
paths – which she’d first spied from her bridge – led to. She knew how to get to the different beaches, the castle, the park, the lighthouse, and she was running out of track. She
was going to need more space soon, more mileage, but there were risks attached to that, risks she didn’t feel ready to take. This was a small place.

She rounded the corner and felt the wind lift her hair, as it always did when she came to the sea’s edge. The white lighthouse stood staunchly at the furthermost tip and she allowed
herself to slow to a walk, hands on hips as she tried to catch her breath before she collapsed on the bench outside the deserted café.

She checked the sign again, even though she knew its message by heart: the café would reopen on Monday 3 May. Next week. She would need a new route by then. She needed to be alone on her
runs. They were her only refuge, her sanctuary, the place she could go to inside herself after a day spent poring over swatches and illustrations with Chad.

That was going well at least. He had broken the project down into bite-size chunks for her and they were making good progress on the library, the first room they had decided to tackle –
their ‘starter’ room.

In spite of her declarations that she couldn’t clad the entire house in leather, that was pretty much what she was doing in there: firstly, it guaranteed a hefty order in quickly to
Alderton Hide, which meant they could get everyone working at capacity again. Secondly, it was a library, and a library more than any other room was all about leather: no one ever stocked
paperbacks in these rooms. Somewhere – in Florence probably – an antiquarian bookseller had been tasked with sourcing a mile of books, and would be hunting high and low for precious
first editions and grandly gilted leather-bound classics. Leather shelves therefore, in a soft mossy-green, made perfect sense, and they were currently tossing up ideas for words or quotes to be
embossed in the front-facing fascias. That had been Clem’s idea, and she’d been pretty pleased with it. She smiled as she thought back to her idea of her favourite line of all time, a
Winnie-the-Pooh quote, written when he’d eaten too much ‘hunny’ and got stuck in the door of Rabbit’s ‘howse’: ‘Well then, would you be so kind as to find
a sustaining book such as would comfort a wedged bear in great tightness?’ She and Tom had always loved that line – their father’s deep,
lento
voice had been particularly
well suited to the rhythms of A.A. Milne’s writing – and she and Chad had laughed like drains at the thought of printing it across the front of this grand leather-clad library. It had
been the first of many bonding exercises between them.

They were laying down a chestnut leather floor in there, too. The existing wooden strip floor, upon inspection, had been found to be too rotten to save, and Clem had come up with the idea of
laying leather tiles on the floor in parquet-style bricks, rather than the more usual stitched squares, arranging them in a herringbone pattern. It was classic but with a twist, would be quieter,
warmer, and layer up the luxurious subtle scent of leather in the room. Chad had loved it and seemed impressed by her outside-the-box thinking.

He, in turn, had sourced some wall lights, and they were choosing between a naturalistic bronze oak-leaf design, or a modernist chrome tubular design looped with a sling of chunky
mariner’s rope – she couldn’t quite decide yet on how contemporary or classic to take the scheme; Clem’s instinct was that a woman like Fleur would prefer the more classical
design, but remembering the Swimmer’s modish tailoring, she knew contemporary was the way to go for him. Knowing nothing about the dynamics of their relationship, she wasn’t sure which
one to follow.

They had agreed, however, on a set of club chairs and sofas with discreet, shallow pin-button backs and softly curved arms that Clem thought should be upholstered in a lustrous silk tweed, and
which Chad was currently sourcing.

All in all, it had turned into a surprisingly productive week and she had spent her evenings, before her runs, formulating the shelving and floor dimensions and spec to send through to the
office which, in turn, responded only with technical questions. No banter, no concern; just simmering, silent hostility that all their fates rested upon her.

She watched the sun descend to its watery bed, changing the colour palette from blues and greens to pinks and reds, aware that she should start heading back. There was little dusk here, and
though she was becoming well-acquainted with the paths, there was practically no lighting along them and she didn’t want to negotiate them in the dark. The walls of the private estates on
either side were high and indistinguishable, with ivy growing along them, and her best landmarks were the bridges that occasionally straddled the paths, connecting one part of an inland garden to
its coastal access. No vehicle was narrow enough to get down here and the clusters of steps meant scooters and bikes were useless, too. Anything that couldn’t be carried in a suitcase had to
come on to the headland by sea access – all the properties had one. The one exception, that she had seen – quite unsurprisingly – was the lighthouse café, which had a
specially adapted micro-van fitted with caterpillar tracks to transport ice creams, glasses and whatnot along the paths.

Clem got up and eased herself into a jog. It was still warm, even at eight o’clock in the evening, and she’d need to have a cool shower to bring her temperature down before Signora
Benuto brought her dinner through at nine.

She had rapidly become accustomed to eating alone. She usually Skyped Stella or flicked through the swatch books and websites Chad left with her. For one thing, it stopped her worrying about
when the Swimmer was going to arrive. This was obviously all part of his game – keeping her on tenterhooks for his arrival – but she couldn’t sustain that level of anxiety. Busy
was best.

She made her way back along a different path, moving easily, her breath coming evenly. She could talk, sing if she wanted; her body knew these rigours and rhythms too well. After twenty minutes
she passed by the gate to the house with a ferocious-sounding dog, then under the bridge with the oval plaque in the middle, and she knew that meant she had to take the next right.

The path rose in a hump before her and she pumped her arms harder in a burst of effort, sidestepping a broken drain and leaping athletically over a puddle that had formed from the
neighbour’s overzealous sprinkler system. She took the right turn, where the path began to drop down again, and sped up, always preferring to finish her run on a sprint. She could, if she was
feeling lazy, end the run just ahead and go through the house’s main entrance on the right, but she never did. The gate that led directly to ‘her’ part of the garden was just
further down, after a turn on the left, and crossing under the bridge was like crossing a finish line. She preferred the extra privacy. She had no idea what, if at all, Signora Benuto was reporting
back to her employer, but the fact that he still hadn’t liaised with her directly, even though he was in constant contact with Chad, Stefano and Signora Benuto, had the effect of keeping her
on edge. The settings of their ‘relationship’ were so undefined.

Ahead, she could see a man and boy walking up the hill towards her – the first non-estate people she’d seen since arriving here – and she slowed her pace. The path was so
narrow they would have to drop back into single file to pass each other.

They were talking animatedly, a football in the boy’s hands, a bucket in the man’s. The boy was almost chest-height to his father, and when he said something to make him laugh, the
father reached down and mussed the boy’s hair affectionately. Clem tried to remember ‘good evening’ in Italian.

They drew closer and she saw that they were both dark-haired, rangy and blessed with the smooth, even dark tan that comes from living in a sunny climate. Clem slowed to a walking pace, her
ponytail no longer bouncing manically across her shoulders, and her eyes met theirs as they prepared to pass, the father hanging back to let the boy walk in front.

No!

She dropped her eyes quickly, looking down at the paving stones as they moved past her.

‘Buonasera
,’ the boy said politely, looking up at her.

‘Grazie
,’ the father followed up, a question mark in his voice and eyes. Clem turned almost to the wall, away from them, the sound of her own blood rushing in torrents in
her ears.

They were behind her now, but she could hear only one set of footsteps continuing onwards. Small ones, light ones. Then they stopped, too. She broke into a run, arms pumping, breathing erratic,
her ponytail swinging in full revolutions around the back of her head. No style, just power; no grace, just acceleration.

She was around the corner in seconds, her hand on the left wall and opening the gate. She leapt into the garden and closed the door behind her, throwing closed the bolt. She heard footsteps
sound on the path, big ones, heavy ones, getting closer. They stopped and she heard breathing on the other side of the wooden gate.

She held her breath. No. No. No. No. No.

Time stopped. Seasons changed. Years rolled back.

Or so it felt.

Then the footsteps moved away again, becoming fainter, disappearing around the corner and continuing along the path to the lighthouse.

She exhaled with a sob, her heart pounding at three times the rate it had hit on the run. She bent double, her hands on her knees, trying to control herself. But she was far beyond that. She
tried walking but her legs wouldn’t support her. She leaned against the wall, but the effort even of that was too much. Survival instinct took over. Her body folded three times and, with
violent efficiency, she turned and threw up in the bushes.

The shower didn’t help. The run had already happened. She couldn’t understand a word on the TV. She couldn’t ring Stella and talk to her about it. She
couldn’t even get drunk – there was no fridge in the folly and she didn’t fancy waking Signora Benuto at this time of night.

It was gone eleven but she was still shaken up. Sleep was a distant promise tonight, she already knew. She walked to the window and looked out at the twinkling light of the glamorous Cinque
Terre towns on the far side of the bay. Life continued. It always did, but that was far from comforting to her tonight.

Her eyes rose to the sky. The moon was full and the sky practically clear, only long wispy clouds that looked like they could be threaded through a needle, drifting parallel to the horizon and
casting bright shadows on the deep, dappled cove below her. The sea was calm tonight, calmer than it had been at any point since she’d arrived, and she watched it gently buffeting the basalt
rocks with a soothing ‘shush’, like a mother pushing a cradle.

Even from this distance, in this light, the water looked clear and cold. Numbing.

She blinked slowly at the thought. Then, pulling a striped mohair jumper on over her knickers, she jogged down the stairs and settled the door on the latch behind her. She had seen the dirt
track from the folly to the beach; it was steep in some places and overgrown in others, but she picked her way down carelessly, barefoot, almost enjoying the sweet sharp scrape of brambles against
her flesh. The tangible pain felt more bearable than the one buried deep inside her, like an ache she couldn’t cup, an itch she couldn’t scratch.

She was down within minutes, and she stepped out of her clothes, gasping as she immersed her feet in the shocking, almost icy water. It would be another two months before the sea heated to a
comfortable temperature, but tonight, comfortable was precisely what she didn’t want. Defiantly, she stepped in deeper, her feet trying to grip onto the bald, slippery stones. Her body
tightened and contracted in defence, and she gasped, almost crying out as the water welcomed her with viscous fingers.

Slowly, she dropped her weight forward, sliding through the water like a cat till her shoulders were submerged. She dived under, wanting to freeze her head most of all and stop the thoughts and
memories that were hardest to escape. She surfaced with a sob, but went under again. And again. And again.

Eventually, it worked. Eventually she couldn’t feel anything but a distanced buzz, and she tipped her head back and floated with a moonbeam on the heavy sea. Peace, of sorts.