Christmas at the Davenports’ house was always about one thing: food

But when sisters Ella and Maddy were split up, Ella to live in London with their Dad, and Maddy staying in Greece with their Mum, mince pies lost their magic.

Now, a cheating husband has thrown Ella a curved snowball…and for the first time in years, all she wants is her mum. So she heads back to Greece, where her family’s taverna holds all the promise of home. Meanwhile, waitress Maddy’s dreams of a white Christmas lead her back to London…and her Dad.

But a big fat festive life-swap isn’t as easy as it sounds! And as the sisters trade one kitchen for another, it suddenly seems that among the cinnamon, cranberries and icing sugar, their recipes for a perfect Christmas might be missing a crucial ingredient: each other.

Also by Jenny Oliver:

The Vintage Summer Wedding

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

The Little Christmas Kitchen

Jenny Oliver

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Jenny Oliver 2014

Jenny Oliver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9781474007795

Version date: 2018-07-23

Jenny Oliver

wrote her first book on holiday when she was ten years old. Illustrated with cut-out supermodels from her sister’s Vogue, it was an epic, sweeping love story not so loosely based on Dynasty.

Since then Jenny has gone on to get an English degree, a Masters, and a job in publishing that’s taught her what it takes to write a novel (without the help of the supermodels). She wrote The Parisian Christmas Bake Off on the beach in a sea-soaked, sand-covered notebook. This time the inspiration was her addiction to macaroons, the belief she can cook them and an all-consuming love of Christmas. When the decorations go up in October, that’s fine with her! Follow her on Twitter @JenOliverBooks

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Extract

Endpages

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

ELLA

The meeting was tedious. The air conditioner was broken and whirring too loudly, so it muffled the execs calling in on speakerphone. The stuffy air smelt of aftershave and strong coffee with a hint of the marker pen that kept running out on the flipchart. Big bushy garlands of tinsel were looped along the wall, baubles hung in bunches like grapes on the windows and a white fake Christmas tree with glittered branches twinkled in the corner.

Ella was having to look anywhere but at the new account assistant, Katya, who was presenting –nerves had made her voice catch and her cheeks flush a blotchy red. Ella couldn’t stomach the embarrassment she felt for her.

Their boss, Adrian, was tapping frustratedly on his Blackberry, not listening. She knew he was getting the presentations out the way before he brought up the accounts they lost last week and what it would do to revenue. As she glanced around the room, taking in the glazed faces and the distracted looks of her colleagues all wired on too much coffee and bourbon biscuits, her gaze stopped on the building opposite where an aerobics class was in full swing. As Ella watched the women jumping up and down in their Sweaty Betty lycra, she wondered when she’d last had time to do any exercise. She’d cancelled her gym membership soon after she’d got her last promotion – when she realised she rarely left work before eight.

Tonight she was leaving early though. Tonight she was being wined and dined. Tonight they were going to Fera at Claridge’s and she had a brand new Stella McCartney chocolate silk dress hanging on the back of her office door ready to team with her nude Manolo Blahniks and an aztec print scarf. It was all from Net-a-Porter – she’d ordered the entire outfit that the model was wearing. Shamefully, she always ordered exactly what the model was wearing. The grey pencil skirt she had on at the moment, and the cerise mules, was a case in point. Occasionally, when she went completely off-piste and gave her own eye a go, Max would walk into the bedroom, himself dressed like a Ralph Lauren model, and say something like, ‘Really?’ or ‘I don’t think that’s quite right for…’ whatever event they were off to – Ascot or Henley or the Hunt Ball. Then he’d pinch her bottom and kiss her cheek and say, ‘I’d love you in anything but you know what the girls are like…’

The girls. Ella narrowed her eyes at the baubles. The girls…

Friends since school, Max’s tight little gang were ferocious. A terrifying mix of confidence and boredom that came with being too good-looking and having too much money. All caramel highlights and butterscotch tans, they had ample time on their hands to be as vicious as they were whip smart and wickedly hilarious. Ella was like a fish gasping at the surface of a puddle when she was with them, not that she’d ever admit it to Max. What perplexed her the most was that she could handle the hardest CEO in the boardroom, present to rooms of the coolest, most guarded clients without breaking into a sweat, but those girls… they could pierce her with look, undermine her with a laugh, leave her flustered and blushing and wanting to cling onto Max’s hand when he was wandering off with the boys to check out a new sports car or race horse and reminisce about boarding school.

At the front of the room Katya was ploughing on through the presentation. From the way she was stumbling and relying so heavily on her notes, Ella knew she’d be packed off on a presentation course before the day was out. She glanced at her watch. She was booked in for a blow dry in forty minutes. Come on, she thought, this is child’s play, we all know this stuff, why do we need a bloody meeting about it.

Tonight was their anniversary – her and Max – seven years. Seven years and look how far she’d come. If she was the kind of person to put stuff on Facebook then she’d plaster it with pictures of the diamond bracelet he’d given her that morning. Almost just to reaffirm to them all that he loved her. Even after all this time she still heard the whispers behind the smiles. But if she ever mentioned it, Max would squeeze her tight and lift her in the air and say, they’re all just jealous. Burying her face in his neck she would close her eyes and breathe him in and hope this life lasted forever.

She glanced down at the gems sparkling on her wrist. She loved it. Or at least she thought she loved it, was it her taste? Yes, it was her taste. It was a bit thin and delicate for her wrist, but yes, no, she loved it. I love it, she thought as it winked under the strip light.

Her Blackberry vibrated where it sat on top of her iPad on top of her laptop on the boardroom table. She let the bracelet tip forward over her hand as she reached forward, wondered if anyone else had noticed it sparkle, and slipped her phone off the table, holding it under the desk, out of sight, as she opened the new email.

‘This is all very well–’ her boss said, sitting up and stretching his back in an arch. ‘But I can’t see anything different here. I can’t see what you’ll be offering the client that every other firm won’t be offering? We’ve seen all this before. And if I’ve seen it, they’ve seen it.’ He frowned, frustrated. ‘Come on people. We need a bit more blue sky thinking. A bit more oomph.’ He sat forward. ‘Basically, we need this new business. It’s Christmas for crying out loud. Wow them with a bit of sparkle. Ella can you take charge of this one–’ He paused. ‘Ella… are you with us?’

Ella wasn’t with them at all. Every ounce of her concentration was caught by the email she’d just opened on her phone. Her mouth had hung open of its own accord. Her right eye, that had recently developed a tiredness tic, was flickering. Her stomach had tightened like she’d forgotten to exhale.

Subject: I just thought you should know.

Your husband is having an affair with my wife. Photo attached confirms. Suggest you get yourself a good lawyer. I’m going to annihilate her in court.

Ella recognised Prague in the background of the photograph. Saw the ornate buildings dark and dirty and snow speckling the canopies of the market stalls. She recognised it because she’d been there with him. Last Christmas. His company had an office there, he could get business class flights and a room in the Mandarin Oriental on expenses.

‘Ella?’ Her boss repeated.

‘Yes, sorry.’ She pressed her phone off and cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, I just…’ She shook her head. ‘Yes, absolutely, I totally agree. Great presentation Katya. Just fabulous, exactly what we were looking for. Really, really great. Good, let’s get started then…’ she said, her mouth stretched into her work smile as she started to stand up, gathering her iPad, notebook and pen to her chest and pushing her chair back.

She felt everyone in the room watching her. Mark, her colleague who sat to her right, whispered, ‘There are still three more presentations.’

‘Oh sorry.’ Ella paused. Felt her cheeks begin to pink.

‘Ella?’ Her boss sat back, put his hands behind his head. ‘Is everything all right? Did you hear what I was saying?’

She looked around the room as she sat down, everyone seemed suddenly distracted by their notepads, or the wood grain of the table top.

‘Yes,’ she lied quietly.

He made a face. Ella was his secret weapon. Ella was the reason he’d been promoted. Her work, his leadership. Ella had won them the last four accounts and was possibly the single reason they were still in the black. Ella, who worked twenty-four seven and never took her eye off the prize. Award winning Ella. ‘Let’s talk afterwards,’ he said, and she nodded vaguely. Her hand burning like her phone was on fire.

CHAPTER 2

MADDY

‘If I tell my mum about the job then she won’t let me go because she won’t approve. If I don’t tell her that I have a job then she won’t let me go because she’ll say that I’ll just be bumming it round London wasting my life when she needs me to work here.’ Maddy wiped her oily hands on the old rag hanging out her jeans pocket and then took the hand Dimitri was offering to haul herself out of the boat and up onto the jetty.

‘Maddy,’ he said, bending down to pick up the board of his windsurfer, the sail already propped up by the side of the taverna. ‘You’re twenty-four. Don’t you think it’s about time you just went anyway?’ He raised a dark brow and looked at her with a fairly patronising smirk on his lips, but then got distracted when he noticed a scratch on his board. ‘Shit, when did that happen? It’s those kids isn’t? Oi you lot–’ he shouted at the gaggle of little kids who were messing around at the end of the jetty, dangling bits of rope into the sea with worms on hooks to try and catch the millions of silver fish that darted around the wooden posts. They looked up all big eyed and terrified when Dimitri yelled. ‘Did you mess with my board?’

‘No Dimitri,’ they all chorused in unison, faces pale and perfectly innocent.

He glared at them for a second, six foot with shoulders broader than should be allowed, black shaggy hair and at least three days’ stubble, he knew he could terrify them.

‘Don’t.’ Maddy rolled her eyes. ‘They’re only little.’

‘They’ve messed with my board. Look at it.’

‘You’re mean. Stop being mean to them. Look at them.’ She turned to wave in their direction, all four kids huddled together, their fishing rods clutched in their hands, their cheeks pink, waiting for their telling off.

Dimitri sighed. ‘You stay away from my board. Yes!’

‘Yes Dimitri,’ they chorused again.

‘And while you’re at it, stay away from my bike as well. I saw you the other day sitting on it. Yes. I did, don’t shake your heads, if it fell on you it could do some damage. Don’t sit on my bike.’

‘Can we ride on it again with you, please?’

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. ‘What have I started?’ he said to Maddy. And she shrugged a shoulder.

‘You shouldn’t have been so keen to show off your new toy should you?’ she said, nodding to where his beautiful Triumph Bonneville T100 sat gleaming on the cobbled slipway.

Dimitri followed her gaze, paused for a second to admire his bike and then said with a shrug, ‘I was excited.’

Maddy shook her head and turned away with a laugh, she stuffed the rag in her pocket and turned around to the kids and said. ‘I’ll take you out on this, if you like?’ This was the sleek white forty foot yacht she’d just repaired the engine of.

‘Are you sure Maddy?’ Dimitri questioned, dubious, as the kids all whooped and, chucking down their rods, ran over to jump on the deck of the boat, their shoes leaving tiny, dusty footprints on the gleaming surface.

‘Yeah it’ll be fine.’ Maddy said, pulling on a big red, oil streaked jumper that came down to just above the frayed edge of her shorts. Sweeping away the wisps of hair that the wind was blowing in her mouth, she said, ‘And with my mum, I just don’t want her to not want me to go. I want her to approve, I suppose. Stupid, huh?’ She laughed, husky and dry like a granddad.

‘It’s pretty windy out there, Mads.’ Dimitri shielded his eyes from the low sun and looked out to where the waves were starting to pick up.

‘Can you focus on what I’m saying about my mum.’ She frowned, ‘And – it’s ok for you take your windsurfer out but I can’t handle the boat? Are you kidding?’

‘It’s got worse in the last few hours. I would never dream of implying you couldn’t handle the boat. But let’s look at the facts, Maddy, it’s really bloody windy and it’s not your boat.’

‘Well he’d want me to test the engine as well as fix it, wouldn’t he?’ She kicked one of the posts with her old Nike hi-top trainer.

‘You can test it by turning the key in the ignition. Not taking a bunch of seven year olds for a joyride into a mistral.’ Dimitri shook his head, tendrils of black hair wobbling like a sea anemone.

‘It’ll be fine. And anyway–’ Maddy jumped down onto the stern, taking the rope she’d looped into one of the jetty rings with her to cast off. ‘I can’t say no now, look at them…’

The kids were all sitting crossed legged at the bow like tiny figureheads, watching expectantly.

‘See this is probably what your mum’s talking about. In your desperation to please people, you don’t think things through.’

‘Oh please.’ Maddy scoffed as she pressed the button to haul up the anchor. ‘She just doesn’t want me to go off to London and leave her alone.’

‘I think she worries that you’ve been too sheltered.’ Dimitri yelled over the wind and the sound of the two hundred and fifty horsepower engine as it sprang to life.

‘Bullshit.’ Maddy shouted back. ‘That’s the most patronising thing I’ve ever heard, Dimitri. You’re so annoying.’

‘Good comeback,’ he said, raising a brow. ‘My case in point.’

Maddy snorted a laugh and then turned her back on him to steer the boat out of the little harbour. The kids were clinging onto the tinsel-wrapped railing at the front, dangling their feet over the edge and laughing as the spray bounced up into their faces.

As Maddy looked past them, out at the wide blue sea, dark like sapphires, the white horses jumping like skittish foals, rays of low winter sun darting off each wave like silver fish, all she could think was, god I wish this was London.

CHAPTER 3

ELLA

Ella threw her Blackberry on the sofa. Bloody holiday. She didn’t need a bloody holiday. She needed to curl up into a little ball and hibernate like a hedgehog. She needed to talk to Max.

Adrian had called her into his office directly after the meeting and asked her what was wrong. She’d shown him the email and he’d sucked in his breath.

‘Do you want a cigarette out the window?’ he’d asked.

‘I don’t smoke, Adrian.’

‘I know but sometimes moments call for a cigarette. If you don’t want one I might have one.’ He pulled open his desk drawer and fumbled around at the back for a hidden packet of Marlboro Reds and a box of matches. Hauling up the sash window he leant on the sill and inhaled half the cigarette in one. ‘Christ I’ve missed this.’ Exhaling he shook his head. ‘Max. Max, what are you doing?’

‘I think maybe it’s been photoshopped.’ Ella said, crossing the room to perch on the edge of the big leather covered desk. Outside it had started to sleet, watery white flecks cascading down like a snow globe. A couple of mangy pigeons on the roof opposite were shaking out their feathers, huddled up together next to a light up Santa Claus – plump and wet and depressed.

Adrian raised a brow, the creases on his forehead deepening. Ella frowned. ‘You don’t think so? You think he’s having an affair. I don’t think he’s having an affair. Especially not with her. I really don’t. Look–’ she held out her arm where the bracelet slipped forward over the back of her hand. ‘Look.’ she said again, a little quieter.

‘It’s very pretty.’ Adrian nodded. Took another drag and then flicked the cigarette out onto the roof top, the pigeons scattered. ‘Do you want me to see what Anne thinks?’

Anne was Adrian’s wife. Anne had been friends with Max since childhood and it was through a dinner at their house that Ella had met Adrian and he’d given her a job. They had garden parties in the summer in their huge dilapidated mansion and their wild, adorable children ran around in slightly dirty clothes and no shoes while everyone else drank Pimms and adored the roses. They were the antithesis of Max’s other friends. So rich they could bypass into shabby and boho and not care in the slightest. But they were all so inextricably linked. Like a web. Or Kerplunk. One stick pulled out and it all falls down.

‘No.’ Ella shook her head. ‘I trust him. Of course I trust him. There will be an explanation. There’s always an explanation for things like this. It’s not bloody EastEnders is it. She’s one of his friends for god’s sake. If he was going to have an affair, would he really do it on his own doorstep?’ She felt her voice catch in her throat. She thought of Max – gorgeous, funny, beautiful Max, with his arm casually draped round the waist of a woman who wasn’t her – a woman with lovely hair and eyes that tipped up at the corners. Amanda. One of his ‘girls’. The one who had taken Ella aside when they’d first got together and taken her shopping and bought her champagne and linked her arm through hers and managed to get her to tell all her secrets about Max.

Max who she looked at every morning as he slept on their cream linen sheets and wondered how she’d managed to get that lucky. The sleet had turned to rain. It was pouring down the window and making a mockery of the Christmas decorations strung across the street. Little white lights trying to sparkle like her diamonds.

Max was actually having an affair. No longer did she need to worry about it or imagine it. Because it was actually happening.

No he couldn’t be.

Adrian went over to his Nespresso machine in the corner of his office, ‘Do you want one?’ he asked and Ella shook her head.

As it rumbled out the dark, glossy liquid in a thick white cup, Adrian said, ‘I’ve got some eggnog from that Christmas hamper we were sent last week. Do you want me to pour you a glass of that?’

‘No I’m fine. Honestly. I’ll just have some water.’ As Ella leant over to the carafe on his desk, her eye caught the photo that sat next to it of him and Anne and their kids. She thought of the amount of times she’d stared at that picture and imagined having one on her desk of her and Max and a couple of kids with his bright blue eyes and her dark hair. If Max was having an affair then he might want to split up and they’d never have children. And that might mean that she never had children because she’d have to get over Max, meet someone else and fall in love with them enough to want to have kids with them before she ran out of time. She was thirty-one. If Max was having an affair then not only would he have battered her heart, he would have snatched at her chance to have a family photo on her desk.

Please God she thought, please don’t let him be more in love with the woman with the shiny hair and the eyes that tip up at the corners than he is with me.

She felt Adrian watching her over the rim of his coffee cup.

‘Ok.’ she said after a pause.

‘Ok what?’ he said.

‘Ok, ring Anne.’ she said, when really she just wanted to ring Max and hear him say something funny down the phone and then walk into Claridge’s tonight looking all shiny and satiny in her new dress and for him to whistle and then grin and pull her chair out for her the way they’d taught him at Eton.

But instead they were going to ring Anne. Anne wouldn’t lie.

And that was why she was standing in her bedroom now, hauling her wheely case from under the bed, chucking in whatever was in front of her. Not her packing style at all. No rolled clothes and shoes in their own little bags, and travel sized toiletries. No outfits laid out on the bed making sure that she hadn’t missed a vital top or pair of shoes. This was more Max’s style of packing. Ella was the organised one, he was the haphazard fun one. That was how they complemented each other. That was why they worked so well. She succeeded, he charmed. They were the perfect unit. They were ‘Maxwella’ his friends joked.

Going over to the wardrobe she yanked out everything closest to hand – a pair of Jimmy Choo flip-flops, Ralph Lauren shorts bunched up next to the top half of her Missoni bikini and the bottom half of a Stella McCartney one. Record temperatures across southern Europe this winter was all the news could talk about. Violent thunderstorms and above average hours of sunshine were creating flood havoc alongside flocks of holidaymakers jetting off for cheap winter sun. But – as she threw in some white Victoria Beckham jeans that she’d bought just because all ‘the girls’ had them, a kaftan and a huge wooly cardigan that she usually wore to watch TV on her own – she didn’t actually think she’d be wearing any of it. Her subconscious knew it was all for show. The case, the holiday, the fleeing just before Christmas. Because her knight would come home, throw his sword to the ground, scoop her up and carry her off into the rainy London sunset while declaring it was all lies.

She chucked in toiletries, scattered in loose. Half pots of Eve Lom moisturiser and her specially mixed shampoo clattered alongside her hairdryer, straighteners, trainers. The crisp shirts she’d paid a fortune to have pressed at the dry cleaners were stuffed in willy-nilly. She stopped for a second and called a taxi – to the airport? Which one. I don’t know. Heathrow? Yes madam.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she hung up the phone. Hair uncharacteristically skewiff. Eyes that someone who knew her well might say had been crying. The trace of mascara stains on cheeks that she’d scrubbed already with cold water and while telling herself to get a grip.

Adrian hadn’t had to say anything. She’d just watched the expression on his face when he’d asked Anne if Max ‘might be perhaps being unfaithful’. She’d heard the cough he’d done to try and buy himself some time. Then the nod as if he was pretending that Anne was saying something completely different.

‘Shit. What am I going to do?’ Ella had said without thinking when he’d put the phone down.

‘Talk to Max.’ Adrian had said. He’d looked worried, like a boy watching his mother cry. Ella couldn’t break down. Ella didn’t show her emotions. Ella was always the strong, confident one.

‘Yes good idea.’ She’d swallowed, pulled herself together. ‘There’s bound to be a rational explanation.’ Perhaps Anne didn’t know Max that well.

But instead of calling Max she had gone home and rifled through his drawers. Discovered nothing. Wondered if that was because their style was so minimalist or because it wasn’t true.

As Ella was just zipping up the overstuffed bag she heard the click of the front door, the pad of Gucci loafers on the beige carpet, and turned to see Max standing in the doorway, one hand pulling his tie loose.

‘I thought you were going to Claridge’s straight from work?’ he said, his beautiful face innocently perplexed. Arrow straight eyebrows drawing lightly into a frown, blond hair casually dishevelled.

‘Are you having an affair?’ She asked, her lips tight. Infuriatingly her hands were trembling.

Max paused, his eyes narrowed momentarily, then he swept the tie from under his collar and threw it on the bed. ‘Not this again.’ he said, incredulous, ‘Ella, come on!’ He rolled his eyes and then stalked into the en suite as if the question hadn’t been asked. ‘Of course I’m bloody not. Honey, I never have and never will,’ he added after a minute with a laugh that echoed round the bathroom. Then he popped his head back round the door and said with a wink, ‘You’re crazy. It’s our anniversary.’

The first time Ella had met Max’s parents they had been shown onto the veranda by the Portuguese maid and poured iced mint water from a crystal jug. The still air had hummed with heat and the only noise was the sprinklers battering the lush lawn as the ice clinked in their glasses. His mother and father were standing rigidly next to one another, muscles tense, clearly having been interrupted in the middle of a blistering row. Max’s father had patted the golden retriever at his feet and trudged off down the garden without even a nod of hello, his mother had looked Ella up and down with an expression of languid distaste, her lips unnaturally plump as she pouted and said, ‘When the men in this family lie, their cheeks go a very unnatural shade of pink.’ Then she’d taken a sip from her white wine glass that sweated in the humid air and said, ‘It’s a gem his mother passed on to me. Very useful,’ before heading into the house and leaving the two of them alone on the decking watching as the labrador bounded through the jets of water drenching the lawn.

‘Ella.’ Max turned, leant against the sink, paused for a moment then walked towards her, wrapping his arms round her waist and said, as he always did, ‘You literally mean everything to me.’

His hands were warm on her back, his eyes seemed to soak deep into her – but his smile wobbled as if he was nervous and, much as she wished she couldn’t, even under his Val d’Isere tan, Ella could see the hint of pink tinging his cheekbones.

‘I’m not having an affair.’ he said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got the idea from but I promise, I’m not.’ He bit his lip, his fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt.

He smelt of Max. Of the shower gel from the gym mixed with his bespoke patchouli aftershave and perhaps a glass or two of wine.

‘Look.’ he said, pulling away from her, taking her hand and drawing her into the hall. ‘Look what I just carried all the way here.’ In the doorway was a Christmas tree, massive, ten or twelve foot, lying wrapped in white netting, a trail of needles behind it. ‘I had to drag it the last bit,’ he laughed. ‘So bloody heavy.’

He was nervous. Ran his hands through his hair as he almost bounded forward and propped up the tree. ‘We’ve never had a real one and I know you really like them so I wanted to surprise you. What do you think?’

‘Max?’ Ella said, nervously, watching as he moved quickly, edgily, holding the tree up then laying it down again and ripping at the netting to set the branches free.

‘I really love you.’ he said without looking up. ‘I really really love you.’

She realised then how many times before she’d asked him if he was cheating on her – usually when she was a bit pissed, unable to squash her insecurity and the carousel in her head that whispered, what does he see in me? – because she knew that he usually sighed and rolled his eyes, told her she meant everything to him, then got a bit cross. He never told her he loved her, or pleaded with her with big watery eyes that reminded her of one of his parents’ labradors. He was almost desperate.

Max was never desperate.

Maybe she could live with it. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she could turn a blind eye. Maybe this was the price you paid for having the perfect man. And then she could have her perfect kids and her perfect life.

As he pulled at the netting on the tree, it wouldn’t tear.

‘Let me just get some scissors.’ he said, and went through to the kitchen where she heard him rifling frantically through some drawers.

For a moment Ella thought about putting her suitcase back in the cupboard, forgetting the whole thing and getting changed ready for dinner, as she stood looking at him from the doorway. At the triathlete’s body and the skier’s tan. At the hands that sat in the small of her back when they walked into a room full of all his terrifying friends. At the boyish smile and the dimples as he jogged back with the scissors and started slicing through the mesh, needles flying off the branches. She thought how their cleaner would have a terrible time getting them out the carpet. She’d talked in the past about wanting a real tree because that was what they had had when she was little, but in this apartment it was completely impractical.

At the thought of her childhood Christmases an image suddenly popped into her head. Completely unexpectedly and entirely unwanted. Of sitting at the top of the stairs with her sister, both in their matching red dressing gowns and hearing her dad say, in a whisper so they wouldn’t hear, ‘I can’t do it. Not any longer. Not even just for the kids.’ She’d thought he meant dressing up as Santa. She’d realised how wrong she was the next day when he left and the world fell down.

She remembered her mum saying to the neighbour in a daze, ‘I’m not ready to be alone.’ Her phone vibrated with a message to tell her the taxi was outside at the same time as a horn beeped. God this was all happening without her really thinking about it. It was all suddenly real. ‘That’s my taxi. I er– I’m going to Greece.’

Max paused in his shaking out of the Christmas tree branches. ‘What do you mean, you’re going to Greece? You can’t. You hate Greece. And it’s Christmas. What will I tell everyone?’ He was holding his hair back from his face with his hand, looking like a teenager, his eyebrows pulled into a frown. Max who wasn’t used to not getting his own way.

She rolled her lips together, swallowed, then said quietly, ‘You can tell them you went to Prague with another man’s wife.’

She could tell it hit him by the expression on his face.

Oh god, it was all suddenly real.

She turned away to go back to the bedroom and get her case, presuming that he would follow her, but Max was struggling to prop the tree up against the bookshelf. So instead she dragged her suitcase from the bedroom and into the hall but the wheels caught in the thick carpet and made her stumble. This wasn’t going at all as she’d hoped. She had wanted some weeping melodrama but then a huge hug, reassurance and a swanky anniversary dinner. Not some farcical double act – her tripping in her heels, him balancing a ten foot tree on his shoulder. And certainly not her going to Greece.

‘At least let’s talk about this,’ he pleaded as he fumbled with the giant fir. ‘It’s not what it seems.’

‘Really?’ She raised her brows, disbelieving but inside her mind was still chanting quietly, He’s going to have a good reason. I’m going to be wrong. It’s going to be ok.

But then the tree slipped and crashed to the ground, the trunk smashing up against his precious smoked glass coffee table and shattering the right-hand corner. Max swore at the sound, then walked over and ran his hand along the crack. ‘Shit look was it’s done. Bollocks!’

Ever since he’d bought it at auction for a huge sum of money without consulting with her, Ella had hated that table and he knew it. It was a monstrosity that wasn’t at all in keeping with their interior designer’s scheme. Now, the way he sat down on the arm of the grey velvet sofa it was as if it was the table and him against the world. As if she had started this in order to ruin the table. As if suddenly Max was the wronged party.

She heard him sigh, saw his shoulders slump, the tree lay sprawled across the carpet like a whale. Max kicked the trunk with his foot and it flopped off the smoked glass to the floor with a thump. ‘You’ve never trusted me.’

No. She didn’t want to hear this.

‘I suppose I just…’

She wanted to quickly rewind to him cutting the netting and trying to impress her.

‘It was only once.’

Why had she even asked him? Why had she started this?

It was too late to realise she could have turned a blind eye.

What was she with no Max?

‘I don’t know, maybe I just did what was expected of me.’

No. No. No.

The taxi beeped again.

‘That’s your cab.’ he said, looking up at her through thick, blond lashes. The ball was suddenly back in her court without her realising quite how.

Walking out the front door seemed the only possible option. Like she had to trust that in this game they were playing he was going to come after her.

Outside it was still raining – tipping it down, and the grey sky almost melted into the grey pavements. She paused on the step, waiting for him to come running outside to stop her. To grab her arm again and pull her inside, drop to his knees and tell her that he’d made a mistake and she was the only one for him.

But as the seconds ticked by and the heavy door to the apartment block slammed shut behind her there was no sign of him.

Her hair was getting wet in the rain. Come on Max. Come on. We’re Maxella. We’re us.

‘Can I take that for you?’ A man in a suit had got out of the taxi and was holding an umbrella over her and leaning forward to take her bag.

‘Yep, just one minute.’ She held up a hand, he looked a little confused but waited next to her with the umbrella.

The door still didn’t open.

‘Shall we er–’ The taxi driver nodded his head towards the car hesitantly.

Ella turned back to look into the communal hallway of the block. And for a moment her heart raced when she thought she saw someone but then realised it was just the Christmas tree that the caretaker had put up that morning.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Ok. Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes. Let’s go.’

The driver held the door for her and she sank into the plush leather of the Mercedes. This was the company her work used, executive cars, no shabby old taxi with a tree air-freshener and a string of tinsel. The airport madam? Shit, yes, hang on, let me ring them. Shall I go? Yes, yes go. Googling Dial a Flight while hoping Max might be texting – I’d like to book a flight. For now. Greece please. From Heathrow, I’m on my way there.

Switching it to silent she threw her Blackberry into her bag and with her arms outstretched across the back of the seats she let her head sink back into the plush cream leather and felt the beat of her heart pound in her head.

God this was actually real.

CHAPTER 4

MADDY

The repairs to the yacht were going to cost all her savings.

‘I just don’t understand why you’d take someone else’s boat out into a storm?’ Maddy’s mum, Sophie, was rolling out filo into wafer thin sheets, refusing to look up at her and taking her frustration out on the pastry. ‘What would possess you to do such a thing. With little kids on board. Jesus Maddy. It’s Christmas. Imagine… imagine if one of them had gone overboard.’

‘But they didn’t.’ Maddy said, unable to hold back the sulky tone to her voice. She leaned against the table top and traced the pattern of the old wood with her fingertip.

‘But they could have.’ Sophie said, exasperated, slamming the rolling pin down on the stainless steel surface of the island unit in the middle of the room where she worked. ‘They could have, Maddy.’

‘But they didn’t.’ she said again. ‘You can’t live with “could haves” all the time.’

Her mum didn’t reply and after a pause said, ‘Can you get me the bowl of feta from the fridge?’

Maddy sloped out into the storeroom at the back of the kitchen that was piled high with vegetables, tins of beans and jars packed with lentils, flours, rices and rows and rows of herbs and spices. Along the back wall were three fridges, glowing fluorescent with see-through doors. Maddy loved the fridges, she loved that you could see inside and stare at the bowls of cucumber flecked tzatziki, pale pink taramasalata, tubs of tiny anchovies and plates of garlic covered prawns. See all the new creations her mum had made and the great trays of moussaka and pastitsio that they would have a wedge out of for dinner. As she opened the door and pulled out the big glass bowl of feta, she saw on the bottom shelf the rows of tiny mince pies that her mum had started to make for Christmas and closed her eyes for a second. Annoyingly she could picture herself eating them, standing with everyone on Christmas morning and popping a couple into her mouth – no longer London bound for the holiday season. No longer the possibility of her family toasting a picture of her with their champagne and wishing she was with them. Who knew that mince pies could depress her so completely?

‘Maddy – the feta!’ her mum called.

Back in the kitchen she slid the bowl over to her mum and looked up to see that Dimitri had sauntered in along with her grandparents and her mum’s friend Agatha who waited tables when they were packed but was so moody with the customers her mum always tried to play down their busyness.

‘So how much is it going to cost you, Maddy?’ Dimitri asked as he picked a handful of carrot sticks off the countertop and popped them one by one into his mouth.

‘I just chopped those.’ Maddy’s mum leant over and slapped his hand when he went for some more.

‘Sorry Sophie.’ He winked.

‘I’ll bet you are.’ She shook her head, attempted unsuccessfully to hold back a smile, and then pushing her hair behind her ear with the back of her flour-covered hand, said, ‘So yes, Maddy, how much is it going to cost? I can’t pay for it, you know that don’t you?’

They may have been seeing a massive spike in business at the taverna because of the unseasonably high temperatures, but the flip side was the wild thunderstorms that had swept part of the back roof off and flooded the outhouses – costing her mum pretty much the entire summer’s profit.

Dimitri leant up against the island unit, twisting the top off the beer he’d obviously grabbed from the fridge outside on his way into the kitchen, and said, ‘Is it as much as, say, a plane ticket to London?’ His expression dancing with mischief.

Maddy narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Yes Dimitri, yes it is that much, perhaps a little bit more.’

He sucked in his breath.

‘Who’s going to London?’ her granddad asked as he lowered himself into the ratty old armchair in the corner of the room.

After the divorce, when her mum had moved permanently to the island that they’d holidayed on every year, buying the taverna that sprawled out into the bay, gradually Maddy’s grandparents stopped going back to England. If anyone ever commented on how odd it was that they’d changed allegiance, relocating to move near their ex-daughter-in-law, they always said it was because they couldn’t bear to be so far away from her cooking. But really it was just because they loved her, and at the time, not so much now, she struggled to manage without them. They downsized to a pied-a-terre in Nettleton, the village both her mum and dad had grown up in, and shipped all their furniture from their big country house over to Greece where the majority of it didn’t fit in the little villa they’d bought. Now it was dotted about in various places – Maddy, for example, had their Chippendale writing desk and Dimitri had inherited a glass 1950s cocktail cabinet that sat next to the fruit machine in his bar. Her granddad’s armchair sat in the taverna kitchen, an incongruous addition to the rustic industrial chic look that her mum had going on.

‘No one’s going to London, Granddad.’ Maddy went over to the kettle and flicked it on to make him a cup of tea before he could say that no one took care of him properly.

She could feel her mum watching her. ‘Why are you talking about London?’ she asked.

‘I’m not. Dimitri was.’ Maddy said, too quickly, as she reached up to get the tea bags from the shelf.

‘You don’t want to go to London, do you Maddy?’ her mum said, slight panic in her voice as she went on, ‘Why would you want to go to London? It’s Christmas. You can’t go to London.’

‘Are you going to London, Madeline?’ Her grandmother looked up from where she was helping her mum spoon feta into the cheese pies. ‘If you are could you pick me up some chocolate digestives?’

Maddy had to exhale slowly to calm herself down as she made the cup of Earl Grey. ‘For god’s sake. No one is going to London.’ she said through gritted teeth as she walked over to her granddad and slammed the tea down on the doily that covered his little side table.

‘You’re a little angel.’ Her granddad smiled, then looked at the cup and added, ‘One of your mum’s lemon biscuits would really go down a treat.’

Maddy rolled her eyes and went back to the shelf to grab the biscuit tin. When her granddad reached in and took a couple he said, ‘Are you singing this week Maddy?’

‘Friday, at the bar.’

‘I hate the bar.’ He scowled

Dimitri shouted over, ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘You make it so I hate it, Dimitri. It’s not for people like me.’

‘Rubbish.’ Maddy laughed, the atmosphere lightening, ‘You could come to the bar. You’re not that old.’

Her granddad scoffed. ‘Maybe. Maybe just to hear you sing, then I’ll leave.’

‘Maybe I won’t let you in, Mr Davenport.’ Dimitri said with one brow raised.

Her granddad laughed. ‘I was in the war, kiddo, I could fight my way in.’

‘You weren’t in the war,’ her grandmother scoffed. ‘You were behind a desk filing papers.’

‘That was still the war.’ he said crossly and sat back in a sulk with his cup of tea. ‘Madeline…’ he added, ‘if you went to London you could see your father.’ His bruised ego deliberately trying to stir up trouble.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Michael.’ Maddy’s grandmother slapped him on the arm.

Her mum sucked in a breath. Maddy closed her eyes for a second and then scowled at Dimitri who made a face of laughing apology and sloped out the door with his beer.

‘That’s it.’ she said, ‘I’m going to work.’

Maddy grabbed her bag from the hat stand in the corner of the room – another of her grandparents’ antiques – and her mum wiped her hands on her apron and came over to where she was pulling on her trainers by the back door. ‘You’ll be back to help with the evening shift?’ she said, reaching forward to tuck Maddy’s long fringe behind her ear where it had slipped in her hurry to get her shoes on and go.

‘Yes,’ she snapped, but then paused when she saw her mum smile and said more softly, ‘Yes, I’ll be back. I need the money,’ she added with a laugh.

‘I’m sorry you lost your savings, Maddy,’ her mum added, taking her glasses off her head and putting them on so she could look at Maddy properly – straighten out her jumper so it didn’t hang off her shoulder and fix one of the pulls in the wool. ‘You’re so pretty, and you look so scruffy.’

‘Who’s gonna see me, Mum?’

Her mum paused, smoothing the fabric of Maddy’s jumper back into place, then she took her glasses off and said with a sigh, ‘London’s not that great you know. I know it seems so. And I know your sister makes it look like it is, but it’s just a place, Maddy.’

Maddy looked down at her dirty trainers. ‘I know.’ she said, rolling her lips together and thinking about all the money she’d had to hand over for the giant dent she’d put in the yacht. ‘But it’s just a place I wanted to go.’

‘Well if it’s any consolation, I’m glad you’re staying. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without you.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ Maddy lied, and then dashed out the back door to work.

If it was summer, going to work was no hardship. Maddy worked on the boats, jumping from one to the other in a bikini top and frayed shorts, feet roughened from running on pebbles and over hot tarmac, face golden, hair thick with salt and bleached at the tips, laughing and shouting, oil streaking her arms, smelling of sun cream and swimming in the sea till sundown. But in the winter she worked in Spiros’ garage – a shabby white building with green doors that were cracked and broken at the bottom – sanding, re-painting, fixing engines that tourists had given a beating during the holiday season. She had to listen to Greek folk music as it blasted out of a paint splattered radio and every day shake her head when Spiros asked her why she wasn’t married yet and had no babies.

Spiros was on the mainland today though, delivering an engine, so Maddy was on her own. She put her own music on and flung open the windows that Spiros kept closed because the sun made the place too hot. But Maddy could cope with the heat if it meant having the view – probably one of the best on the island, out over the Mediterranean, a sheer drop down on the cliff edge and, at this time of year, accompanied by the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.

As she leant on the window sill, looking down at the navy water, she pulled a letter out of her pocket. The headed paper said Manhattans, the double t shaped like the Empire State building. The job offer made it clear that the backing work was only for Christmas and that while there might be occasions where she was required to perform solo there was no guarantee of this, they reserved the right to replace her at any point. The address was in Soho. 15 Greek Street. She’d thought it was fate when she’d written back to accept.

This was her dream – of big cities and men in suits, of money and bright neon lights, of martinis in Soho House and cocktails at the Ritz.

Her sister had emailed seemingly just to brag that they were celebrating their anniversary at Claridge’s. Maddy had Googled the restaurant, Fera, and picked what she would have ordered on the menu. The ‘dry-aged Herdwick hogget, sweetbread, cucumber, yoghurt and blackberry’ purely because she didn’t know what hogget was and presumed that her sister would know. She wanted clothes from Topshop that she didn’t have to order online and to go to Selfridges and see a whole floor devoted to shoes. She wanted to see the Carnaby Street Christmas lights for real, not just on her sister’s Instagram.

But most of all she wanted to sing somewhere that wasn’t her mum’s taverna or her friend’s bar. Somewhere where she had been picked to go on stage because someone thought she had talent, not just because they were related to her. She wanted someone to verify what she hoped, that she was a bit better than average, and whoever that was going to be, she wasn’t going to find them in a tiny bar on a Greek island in winter.

This letter was the first rung on her ladder.

It was possibility.

It was bits of paper falling from the window down into the sea.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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