The Twelve Dates of Christmas Read Online Free Page B

same result with the other. She stretched a handful of flesh away from her stomach as if it were bread dough.
    ‘You are sexy and exciting,’ she whispered to her reflection. ‘Just look at you.’ The bare-breasted, diamontéd Hitler in the mirror struck a prose.
    Penny woke mid-morning to the sound of a thousand dying cats in her living room. Following her late-night performance she had found her best friend in a shivering, tearful frenzy on the doorstep of her building, and it took four hot chocolates and three episodes of
The Big Bang Theory
before she fell asleep on the sofa.
    Flying out of her room she saw Claudia in the plank position, guttural, inhuman groans bursting out of her. On the TV was Penny’s
Insanity Workout
DVD.
    ‘3 … 2 … 1!’ yelled the presenter, and Claudia collapsed with a last dying wail.
    Penny flicked off the TV. ‘Why is this happening?’ she demanded.
    Claudia wiped her sweaty brow on the carpet. ‘This morning – well, last night, I suppose – I had the realisation that I am not considered a Sexy Lady. I am therefore becoming said Lady. Starting with a little exercise.’ If she just fixed herself everything might still work out.
    Penny rolled Claudia over and glared at her. ‘You’re a very Sexy Lady. Seth is a total moron with no brain cells and shrivelly, cowardly balls. Don’t you dare change for him!’
    ‘I’m not – this is for me. I want to be a Sexy Lady for me.’ She peeped at Penny to see if she was buying it. ‘I’m sorry I got your pyjamas sweaty. And your sofa grimy.’
    ‘Don’t care and don’t care, but if you’re going to start an insane fitness plan then we’re going to do it together, because I want to be a Sexy Lady too.’
    ‘You already are a Sexy Lady.’
    ‘As are you! But we do need to get you a change of clothes. Will you let me take you home?’
    ‘No thank you.’ Claudia shrank back against the sofa.
    She’d stood on the frosty street for a good half an hour the previous night, overwhelmed by the responsibility of deciding what to do with herself. Eventually she’d turned her back on her block of flats and tottered the mile to Penny’s house. By the time she’d arrived her emotions were rollercoastering, with certain sharp peaks that she just kept swinging back around to.
    She wasn’t sexy any more.
    He didn’t love her.
    A Jack the Ripper wannabe could kill her at any moment.
    She wasn’t exciting.
    She’d fallen out of the Tube and cut her knee, and it wasn’t
fair
.
    Penny crouched down and began untangling Claudia’s hair with her fingers. ‘We’ll be really quick, I’ll go in first, check the coast is clear, then you can run in, grab some stuff, pour bleach in his shampoo and we’ll be back here within an hour.’
    Claudia nodded. She could do this, if Penny held her hand. Seth should be at work anyway. ‘I called in sick,’ she confessed. Claudia worked at Edurné’s, a popular dancewear shop on Neal Street. She liked her job. Really. She kept herself up to date with the dance industry’s news, trends and fashions, and could match a dancer with their perfect shoe just by looking at them. But she’d been doing the same thing for years, and the truth was she was bored.
    ‘
Quelle surprise
. What’s this, the fifth time in the last six weeks?’ Penny pulled Claudia to her feet. ‘Come on, we’ll go in all black, like ninjas. You’ll have a great time.’
    Fifteen minutes later Claudia was walking through Kensington wearing black leggings and a big black duffel coat. Penny chassed along next to her, humming a mash-up of the
Batman
,
Spiderman
and
Avengers
theme tunes. Claudia kept quiet, her heart thudding in her chest.
    She hated that she was nervous about going to her own home, but what if he was there? She stopped in her tracks. ‘What if
she’s
there?’
    ‘She won’t be there – Seth would have expected you to be home last night, so he wouldn’t have brought her around unless he’s even more of a