The Twelve Dates of Christmas Read Online Free Page A

licked his ear.
    Claudia held his gaze and tutted.
    He went back to staring at the girl’s jawline from two centimetres away, and she spanked his be-jeaned bottom with her Oyster card.
    Claudia, the wine, and her emotions couldn’t take it any more. The three of them clubbed together and gave her a voice.
    ‘Get out of her neck, man!’ she slurred. The couple looked up, deer in headlights, before he struggled to regain his cool and narrowed his eyes. ‘Personal space,’ Claudia hissed.
    ‘What’s your problem?’ he squeaked.
    ‘Your face,’ Claudia replied. And then hiccupped.
    ‘At least it’s not old. Like your face,’ the girl piped up, before sinking back behind her curtain of hair.
    Claudia snorted. Her eyelids were becoming heavy and she was beginning to wonder why she’d picked a fight with a couple of teenagers. ‘At least my face isn’t being sucked on in the middle of the Tube. Sooooo romaaaaaantic.’
    ‘Well your face probably isn’t going to be sucked on at all this Christmas. Because it’s crap.’
    Claudia had no answer to that. The little shit was probably right. She stuck out her lower lip and thought about it, then flicked her eyes towards the girl.
    ‘You’ll find out, girly,’ she lectured, ‘that relationships and snogging is all well and good until your brother here’ – she motioned at the boy, who looked aghast – ‘puts his hands on your other sister’s bum and cocks it all up.’
    ‘
We are now arriving at Baron’s Court Road
’
    Claudia used the pole to heave herself up and tottered clumsily to the train doors. She looked back at the couple, who were having a heated discussion about whether to stand up to the crazy drunk lady or let it go because she might be stronger than them. The doors opened and the cold night air rushed into the train.
    ‘I am a wronged woman,’ she declared, and fell face down onto the platform.
    Ouch. Fresh tears trickled down Claudia’s cheeks. It wasn’t fair, she didn’t want to be hurt right now, she was hurting enough. She pushed herself up from the cold, gritty tarmac and hobbled down the long platform, feeling very alone. London is a noisy, crowded, energising city, but at night certain pockets can be as silent as the countryside.
    Claudia exited the station aware that the only sound was the clacking of her high heels. She didn’t like this feeling. She was injured and alone, it was dark and really cold, and the damned wine was heightening her emotions even more. She could see her breath misting in front of her face, and a quiet, lazy breeze pushed crackly leaves and cigarette packets across the street.
    Claudia stopped and stood still in the middle of the road.
    A new fear made her heart thud. She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t bear it. What if he came back? What if he
didn’t
?
    She was all alone, at night, on the streets of London, and she had nowhere to go.

Starbucks, Holborn
    Claudia unpeeled her face from the sofa cushion one eyelash at a time. Beneath her she left a zebra-print of tear-streaked mascara on the cream fabric. Penny would kill her, if Penny were one to care about such things and didn’t regularly lob red wine, pasta and hair dye all over her flat.
    She padded to the bathroom and had a good stare at herself. She was still wearing last night’s make-up, but not one bit of it was in the place it started out. A false eyelash had nested above her top lip, giving her a Hitler moustache. She tilted her head.
If only I could be a boy
…
    Her hair glittered faintly with hidden crystals, the few survivors cowering fearfully in her sunken up-do. She wore thick penguin-print pyjamas that belonged to Penny and were, if she was being brutally honest (which right now she felt like being), too short, too tight, less cute and more adult baby on her than they were on her friend the petite ballerina.
    Claudia opened the shirt and looked at her breasts. She lifted one and let drop; it bounced in the manner of a yo-yo. The