The Little Christmas Kitchen. Jenny Oliver

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ