Christmas at Claridge's (29 page)

‘To a dinner at a house in Elgin Crescent. I was late.’ He smiled. ‘You made me later still.’ He shook his head and Clem could see he’d been in trouble for it.

He crossed the room and picked up a large gift-wrapped box. ‘But here – this is what I wanted to give you.’

He sat on the bed next to her, watching her face as she pulled out the rose-pink jumpsuit and . . . oh God! Her mother’s Birkin!
‘You
bought these?’ she gasped.
‘But how? You weren’t there. I would have seen you. Or Fleur,’ she added.

He watched her closely, his eyes roaming her face. ‘I sent someone else from my office – I couldn’t send Fleur after the way you’d reacted at the hotel.’

‘But how did you even know about it?’

‘I saw you handing out the flyers at the christening. You were so secretive about it, it raised my interest. Besides, you had changed your pattern completely, working late every night, not
going out—’

‘Did you
actually
have me followed?’

He shrugged. ‘In my life, people are very often vetted. It is not a malicious thing. Did you even notice?’

She shook her head. She had to admit she hadn’t.

‘I was trying to find a way in with you.’ His eyes glittered. ‘Especially as you were so determined to make it difficult for me. Not
even
asking my name . . .’
He shook his head, an amused smile on his lips; she knew no other woman had ever tested him like her.

‘You weren’t invited to that christening, were you?’ It was more of a statement than a question.

He grinned. ‘People never ask, it’s extraordinary.’

‘So that family has got christening photos with a complete stranger in them.’ She giggled, knowing full well why no one had questioned who he was: they wouldn’t dare risk him
leaving. His very presence would have felt heaven-sent.

‘When the tweet about the sale came, I told the girl to buy the finale item and the bag. My mother has some Birkins, so I know a little about them.’ His words were modest, but Clem
had a feeling he was more of a connoisseur than he was letting on – a cultured Frenchman from a grand cru champagne house was bound to have more than a passing acquaintance with the
Hermès icon. ‘And for you to have come into possession of a Shooting Star model? I thought it must be . . . significant. Was I right?’

Clem looked down at the Birkin in her hands, securing the straps together the way her mother always did. Not just a bag.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘You were.’

Clem stood by the door, the umbrella bouncing softly in her hand as raindrops trampolined on it, water rushing through the downpipe beside her and emerging in torrents at the
other end. Her shoes – leather-soled – were soaked, but she hadn’t noticed. She was staring at the doorbell, summoning the strength to push it. She’d been there for nearly
ten minutes already.

The door opened and Chiara reached her arm out, taking her by the hand.

‘I’ve been watching you on the CCTV. We have it for guests,’ Chiara pointed to a small camera overhead. ‘It’s OK. It’s just us tonight . . . Come
in.’

Clem walked into the corridor. She had arrived at the back door, which was directly accessible from the footpath into the port. Entering through the front meant walking along the road itself, a
bad idea in these conditions.

She tried, unsuccessfully, to collapse the umbrella, but Chiara took it from her in quiet understanding.

‘You are OK?’ she asked, looping her arm through Clem’s.

Clem looked down at her and nodded as Chiara led them down the back staircase, towards the kitchen.

‘Rafa has Luca tonight. I thought we should talk, just the two of us. I have made Braciole alla Livornese. I remember it was your favourite, no?’

Clem hadn’t eaten it since her last visit here, but she nodded again and tried to smile.

They stepped into the kitchen and she shivered. Nothing had changed. The place looked exactly the same as it did ten years ago – the cream walls, terracotta floor, glazed orange crockery
on open shelves, thin lace blinds, all locally made, hanging at the windows. Even the back-door key, she saw, still hung from the same hook.

‘Drink this,’ Chiara said, pouring a glass of Soave and handing it to her.

‘Sorry sorry,’ Clem mumbled. ‘I’ll be fine in a minute.’

‘Is OK. It was always going to be hard.’

Clem necked the drink, wincing as it burned her throat, and held out the glass for another. Chiara refilled it for her, then went over to a pot on the range and began stirring, looking back at
her carefully, assessing her.

‘Does anyone know?’ she asked quietly.

Clem shook her head vehemently. ‘No one. I never told a soul.’ She swallowed hard. ‘You?’

‘No.’ They lapsed into their own thoughts, how both their lives had been irrevocably changed by the secret they had kept.

‘The letters . . .’

‘They kept me going.’ Clem looked at her gratefully. ‘You don’t know what they meant to me.’ Clem took another sip of wine, the edge beginning to round off her now.
‘I was so sorry to hear about your mother. I know how close you were. She was an incredible woman.’

Chiara sighed heavily, looking back into the simmering pot. ‘It is very difficult still. I miss her every day. Little things, you know? Maybe a nice comment from a guest in the book that
would make her proud, or . . . or Luca coming first in his spelling test.’

‘He must miss her, too.’

Chiara nodded. ‘Yes. It has been bad for him. They adored each other.’

Clem watched as Chiara crossed the kitchen and snapped some basil leaves from a plant on the windowsill, tearing them up in her hands and checking their aroma. She was wearing a white apron with
two small blue-painted handprints splayed across the front pouch pocket. ‘Luca, 2.10.06’ had been written in spidery writing beneath.

‘I’m sorry about you and Rafa, too. I really am. You were together a long time.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘You look exhausted,’ Clem said, seeing the bags under Chiara’s eyes, the undercurrent of weariness in her movements.

Chiara sighed and smiled. ‘Since Rafa left, it has been almost impossible to do it on my own.’

‘Can’t you sell? You’d get an absolute fortune for this plot. You could move back to Florence and have the career you always wanted.’

‘I cannot. Mama left a third share of the hotel to Rafa.’

Clem looked at her in surprise. ‘What?’

‘I don’t blame her. She thought we were going to marry; we had been together a long time, eight years.’ Chiara shrugged. ‘He was like a son to her after Papa died; he did
so much to keep the hotel happy.’

‘But you’ve still got the majority share surely? You could still sell.’

‘The other third is in Luca’s name, held in trust until he is eighteen.’

‘Oh, Chiara! I don’t know what to say.’

Chiara shrugged, coming back over with the wine bottle and refilling it for them both. ‘It is a mess. We don’t have the money to do the repairs or decoration so we cannot charge more
money for the rooms; and without more money coming in, we cannot afford the repairs. It is a – how you say?’

‘Vicious circle.’ Clem nodded. ‘Yes, I can see that.’

‘I try to make extra money with the accounting, but I am so busy with the hotel all day, and we have to make the season as long as possible . . .’ She sighed. ‘The days are not
long.’

‘Not long enough, no.’ Clem bit her lip. Her problem was always the opposite – they were too long. She tried moving the subject to something happier. ‘Are you seeing
anyone new?’

Chiara rolled her eyes. ‘No! Where would be the time? And how would I meet anyone new? It is a small town here. Everybody knows everybody.’

‘You said in your letter that Rafa has a new girlfriend, though.’

‘Sure.’

‘Are you . . . OK with that?’

Chiara hesitated. ‘It was sore, for sure, but we were not romantic for a long time before we broke out.’

‘Broke up.’

Chiara giggled. ‘My English.’

‘Hey, your English is a lot better than my Italian. I’m really struggling to get my ear in again.’

‘Maybe not a surprise. You have tried to forget it.’ Chiara patted her hand in understanding. ‘I think Rafa stayed so long only because of Mama. She was sick
and—’

‘Oh God! You don’t think he hung around, knowing she’d put him in her will do you?’

‘No!’ Chiara’s tone made them both jump. ‘He is not that man.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You are not the first to say it,’ Chiara said, trying to smile and soften the words. ‘But I know, in my heart, it was as much a surprise to him as to me. He is good. It is
hard between us at the moment, for sure, but it will be OK in the end. For Luca it will be OK.’

‘They’re close?’ Clem traced the grain of the wooden table with her eyes.

‘Devoted.’ Chiara tipped her head down, trying to catch Clem’s eyes. ‘And you? You have a boyfriend? I bet you do!’

Clem smiled. She couldn’t not. After the fright she’d given him last night, Gabriel had taken the day off again, ruthlessly eradicating her doubts and fears, making her fall deeper
and deeper. ‘There is someone,’ she nodded.

‘It is serious, I can tell,’ Chiara said, watching her closely.

‘Maybe.’

‘Do you love him?’

Clem inhaled sharply. ‘Trying not to.’ She bit her lip.

‘Trying?’ Chiara echoed, frowning.

Clem met her eyes, tears filling them, and she took another deep breath, trying to stay in control, trying so hard.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said sadly, squeezing Clem’s hand tightly in her own.

She was the only person in the world who really did.

Two hours later, dinner had burned but the cellar had been relieved of three bottles of wine and the world had been put to rights. They were sitting on the balcony outside the main reception,
the rain smattering the faded yellow and white striped awning above them, their feet resting on the metal balustrade, their eyes out to sea.

To the far right, almost out of sight, Clem could just make out the subdued lights that dotted the upper gardens of Villa ai Cedri, where last night Gabriel had chased her, caught her and made
love to her. Just the memory of it made her skin tingle.

He wasn’t there tonight. She had told him about her dinner plans with Chiara and he had taken the opportunity to fly back to France for forty-eight hours. The thought of him not just over
the sea, but a country away, made her feel hollow inside, frightening her all over again that she could feel so deeply already. Her three-month rule had never felt so flimsy or unenforceable.

The rain had brought a strong wind with it – or maybe it was the other way round – and they watched as a sleek double-masted yacht that had dropped anchor just outside the port that
afternoon, rocked slowly on the whipped-up waves. It was only the beginning of May, but this yacht was just the first of many that would moor here in the coming months, the size of the boats in
inverse proportion to the size of the tiny port.

That almost seemed to be the point. The sleeker, bigger and faster the boats, cars and visitors became, the more Portofino seemed to revel in its slow, small, faded grandeur. The harbourside
buildings weren’t added on to or rebuilt in the pan-modernistic style of the international rich. The paintwork hadn’t been revised to a fashionable, sludgy palette – windows and
doors remained stubbornly dark green or dark brown – and some of the buildings had paint flaking off them, revealing bare plaster beneath or all but losing the fanciful embellishments imbued by
trompe l’oeil trickery.

It was exactly as it had been in the Fifties – that was its unique appeal. Everyone got to imagine they were Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant when they were here because it was as unchanged as
when they had stepped over the cobbles. It was one of the few places left in the world where time had stood still and where old-school glamour could still be found.

Everyone aspired to come here, which was why it was so horribly ironic that Chiara couldn’t make the hotel turn a profit. The hotel – well, its sun terraces over the road –
stood right on the water on the first cove out of the port, just a three-minute walk away. It was the only such property in the Portofino area that wasn’t run as a private residence and the
plot alone was worth tens of millions. But Chiara couldn’t sell. She wanted to do it up, but she couldn’t raise the capital through her revenue stream, because the facilities
weren’t smart enough to charge more. And she couldn’t earn more because there weren’t enough hours in the day (Clem had clocked the files sitting on the kitchen table, ready for
her to work on through the night). Poor Chiara was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t, locked in a cycle of too much work and not enough sleep.

She had given Clem a tour earlier, walking her through the bald, basic bedrooms with beds as hard as tables and pillows with all the stuffing of a teenager’s bra. Most of the guests only
booked with her because of the hotel’s exclusive private beach and the tiered terraces that gave a stunning panoramic view of the sea and the entrance to the port.

Chiara had grand plans for the place in principle – or rather, Rafa had – wanting to convert one of the basement stores into a spa and open a cocktail bar on the roof. But they were
pipe dreams when she couldn’t even afford to replace the single glazing in the windows.

Or . . .

Clem sat up suddenly, tipping her chair forward so that it came to rest on all four legs again.

Chiara looked across at her, her sensuous face dreamy and relaxed for once as the wine spirited her worries away for a night. ‘What? What is it?’ She smiled.

‘I’m not sure,’ Clem frowned. ‘I think I might just have had an idea.’

Chiara arched a thick but beautifully shaped eyebrow.

Clem turned to face her, wondering how to begin. ‘Just . . . just before I came out here, I came into some money.’ She shook her head. ‘Well, no, not came into. I made it.
Quite a lot of it. I mean, not enough to do all the things you want to do, but it would allow you to upgrade – to a four star at least.’

Chiara pushed her chair forward and frowned. ‘Clem, no. I could not let you do that.’