Christmas at Claridge's Read Online Free

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had fallen to the floor, its precious contents still pristine, thankfully, and she knew she had to hide it again before Tom came back. It had been reckless to—
    Tom. She swivelled one mascara-clotted eye around, looking for him. Usually he woke her nose-first, cooking up one of his famous fried-egg sandwiches, which always settled her stomach and
enabled her to move to a vertical position. But the flat was quiet and still, yesterday’s dirty dishes were where she’d left them on the worktop and the eggs were keeping their healing
properties a secret in the fridge.
    It was too early for him to come back from Clover’s, she reasoned. It was still dark outside. She should go back to sleep and try to slumber through the worst of this. But water. She
needed water.
    Shambles, watching from her perch in Tom’s room, squawked loudly at the sight of Clem’s jerky, hesitant movements. ‘Sexanddrugsandrocknrollsexanddrugsandrocknroll.’
    Clem nodded feebly in acknowledgement and slowly sat up, smoothing a hand through her matted hair and seeing, with damped horror, Tom’s flattened Akubra hat, which she’d used as a
pillow.
    ‘Oh, Shambles,’ she mumbled, trying to punch it back into shape. ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’
    ‘Where’s
the remote?’ the parrot squawked.
    ‘Mmmgh.’
    Grabbing a handful of seeds from the bowl on the small round kitchen table, she opened the door to Shambles’ cage and scattered them in. She left the door open so that Shambles could come
out to stretch her wings, and staggered over to the sink.
    The sound of keys in the door made her turn apprehensively, but the first glimpse of giant blue Ikea bags told her it was Stella following after, not Tom. She was over so often, she had honorary
housemate status with her own set of keys.
    ‘Hey!’ Stella panted, throwing the bags ahead of her like a ball at skittles, and stopping short at the sight of Clem standing dazed and confused in just last night’s jumper
and knickers. At least she was wearing knickers. ‘Oh dear. You look
baaaad.’
    ‘I
feeeeel
bad,’ Clem groaned, sagging against the worktop. ‘Thank God you’re here. You can do that egg thing that makes me feel better.’
    ‘What, eggnog?’
    Clem retched. ‘God no. That always makes me throw up.’
    ‘Oh, Tom’s hangover special, you mean?’
    ‘That’s the one,’ Clem sighed, giving up the fight against gravity and collapsing onto a kitchen chair. ‘How come you’re up so bright and early anyway?’ Clem
moaned, her head in her hands, as Stella crossed the room and got busy in the kitchen. She was wearing an outfit only an official designer could get away with – a vintage kimono coat over
silk pyjama bottoms and a metre-long scarf – and looked dispiritingly healthy, even though she had drunk Clem and most of Tom’s rugby club under the table. Quite where she put the
alcohol in her 5-foot-2-inch frame, no one knew.
    ‘It’s hardly early, babes. It’s almost five.’
    ‘In the afternoon?’
    Stella grinned at her, delighted. ‘It was a great party, wasn’t it?’ Stella always gauged the success of her parties by the severity of Clem’s hangovers and the number of
bodies unconscious in her flat the morning after. ‘There were seven still sleeping it off at mine this morning. Last one only just left, although he had rather more reason to stay than the
others.’ She winked joyously as she cracked the eggs, accounting for the flush in her cheeks and the brightness in her green eyes.
    ‘Well at least one of us got lucky.’ Clem frowned. ‘What . . . what happened with Josh?’
    ‘He passed out at ten and slept in the bath. I got Tom’s mates to move him out of the way for me. He was hogging the sofa. Gone by the time I surfaced this morning, though.
He’s no doubt cycling up Snowdon as we speak.’ She pulled a sympathetic face. ‘Hate to say it, but I did tell you not to trust a man who doesn’t drink.’
    The eggs hissed as they