Page 15 of Christmas Is All Around
“I feel I should note that I’ve no intention of murdering anyone, and my car boot isn’t big enough for a body,” Graham said calmly, taking another sip of his virtuous tea.
“Of course you aren’t a murderer,” Ava said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Your family’s house is so nice!”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I do think your reasoning is a bit flawed,” Graham said dryly. “Have you studied much English history?”
“It was never my strongest subject,” Ava said, offering him a downright flirtatious smile. Alice gave a squawk in Simone’s arms, recalling Ava to the fact that she was not alone, but in fact married; in the company of her child and mother-in-law; and on a mission. “You’ll forgive us for stealing Charlotte away, won’t you? We’re going ice skating and then to tea at Fortnum’s.”
“Of course,” Graham said gravely, as though Ava had just informed him that they were headed to a state funeral. He glanced at Charlotte, his eyes alight with unholy glee, and mouthed,Tea at Fortnum’s?
Charlotte stared grimly back.
“I’ve never been at Christmas before!” Ava said brightly. “I’ve heard the crowds are awful, but I want to see their window displays.”
Charlotte contemplated drowning herself in the dregs of her coffee.
“Ready?” Ava asked, and Charlotte nodded like someone about to head to the gallows, took one last sip of her coffee, and—envisioning the lineup of other Christmas horrors that awaited her in the next few weeks, and weighing how desperately she wanted to escape them—tore the corner of a page out of her sketchbook and scribbled her number on it. This she handed to Graham.
“I need to finish up another commission I’m almost done with tomorrow,” she told him, “but I’d be free to get started on this on Wednesday, if you were able to take me to one of the villages that day.”
He glanced down at the number scribbled on the paper. “So that’s a ‘yes’?”
Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at Ava and Simone, distracted by Alice. “If I go on an excursion with you, I’ll have an excuse not to go to the Christmas market in Hyde Park with Ava and her in-laws that day.”
He pocketed the slip of paper, and leaned toward her, speaking in an undertone that only she could hear. “I feel as though I’m being used.”
“That’s because you are,” she told him briskly, then shoved her sketchbook into her shoulder bag, pulled on her coat, and Ava swept her from the coffee shop and into an afternoon of Christmas hell.
She didn’t allow herself to look back.
FOUR WEEKS TO CHRISTMAS
CHAPTER FIVE
So, let me get this straight,” Ava said on Wednesday morning, wearing a bathrobe and a sheet mask, sipping a cup of herbal tea. “You’re going to Berkshire to draw people in corsets?”
“No,” Charlotte said patiently from her spot at the kitchen table, nursing an enormous mug of coffee and responding to Instagram DMs on her laptop. There were an annoying number of message requests from people tagging her in memes from the movie; if she never again had to see her nine-year-old self in a red beret, eyes filled with tears, clutching a rabbit, it would be too soon. “I’m going to Berkshire to draw ahousethat was once used for a movie featuring people in corsets.”
“And you’re doing this for Sexy Reasons?” Ava pressed.
Charlotte frowned at a message request from someone offering a poorly spelled accusation that she was part of an evil plot to destroy Christianity by ruining Christmas culture, and hit the delete button with some satisfaction. “No,” she said, glancing up at her sister. “I’m doing this for business reasons—Graham is going to stock my art in his gift shop year-round if I do this print series he’s commissioned, so I can build a customer base in the UK.”
“But,” Ava pressed, scrutinizing a bowl of oranges before carefully selecting one, “your business relationship will just happen to involve an extremely handsome Englishman whowears glasses?”
Charlotte took a sip of coffee to hide her grimace. “I regret ever telling you about my glasses weakness.”
“I would have known anyway,” Ava said, reaching for a knife. “There’s no other reason you would have dated that douchey start-up bro for so long otherwise.”
Charlotte blinked, lowering her mug. “Craig?” she asked, naming the ex-boyfriend of her early to midtwenties—and, not at all coincidentally, her last long-term relationship. “He didn’t wear glasses.”
Ava lowered her knife. “Yes, he did.”
Charlotte bit back an impatient reply, and instead said simply, “I promise you, he didn’t. I dated him for three years—I think I would have noticed.”
Ava began slicing her orange into quarters. “Maybe I was thinking ofmyex-boyfriend,” she said thoughtfully.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. This was not the first time Ava had made such a mistake. “Youareright that he was a douche, though.”
Ava frowned. “But if he didn’t wear glasses, what was your excuse for dating him?”
