The Christmas Promise Read online

  Her smile remained pinned in place. ‘I still think—’

  ‘You’d be doing me the most enormous favour. It would help stop Mum brooding and leave Van free to spend Christmas evening with Neale. I’ve been hoping Mary Berry or Nigella would pop round, but they seem to be busy. Will you come?’ He picked up his drink and held it poised to clink it to Ava’s glass as a seal to the deal.

  Ava tried to read the lights in his eyes. She wanted to question the wisdom of deepening the faux-dating pretence, what with Wendy already seeming uncomfortably invested in what she thought was their relationship, but Tod and Izz were looking so relieved that Ava heard herself saying, weakly, ‘Well … OK. Thank you.’

  Izz finished her drink and sighed. ‘I’ll get myself over to Piccadilly. Now I’m going home, Mum wants me to get all kinds of stuff from Fortnum’s.’

  Ava suspected the urge to shop was more an urge to hide away, feeling that she’d let Ava down. She tried to catch Izz’s eye so that she could send her a reassuring grin but soon Izz was calling her goodbyes over her shoulder as she made her way through the noisy throng between the bar and the door.

  Then Ava’s phone buzzed and she saw, with plunging heart, that Harvey had sent her a message.

  Just been looking at those pics. Fancy a little fuck at Christmas?

  Her heart leaped up to her throat. The bastard. He was just not going to go away!

  All the emotions of the past weeks, the money troubles, the Harvey worries, set the blood boiling in Ava’s brain. In fury, her fingers flew over the keypad: Not if you’re the little fuck on offer.

  She hit send.

  She slapped her phone back into her bag.

  Then cold horror flooded in to quench all anger.

  What had she done?

  Even now, Harvey would be opening the message. Reading it. Reacting. There was no way of reversing its route through cyber space.

  She began to shake. She must have lost her mind! Harvey was rancid when he was drunk. All that time she’d kept it together, kept her cool, made sure not to antagonise him while she waited for him to move on – all compromised by a moment’s unthinking rage.

  Her phone buzzed again. You wait, bitch!!!!! Remember that I have the gallery of shame.

  Another buzz. This time an image … Trembling, Ava opened it. A picture of herself, laughing at the camera. The fascinator of flamboyant cerise feathers that was her only adornment made her look like a tawdry 1940s porn star. The message beneath read: And remember this isn’t the worst of them. I have hot action shots …

  Hands sweating with shame, she fumbled through the process of closing the message down, feeling sick at the thought of how it would feel to know that images were circulating of her ‘in action’.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Ava started. It seemed that while she’d been occupied with Harvey’s shitty antics, Louise had commandeered Tod’s attention. Sam was now staring at Ava and frowning. ‘Yes.’ She put her phone away and wiped her damp palms on her dress.

  Sam’s gaze didn’t waver. ‘Sure?’

  She tried to smile but her lips took on a piteous wobble. ‘Positive.’ Don’t ask me any more. I’m so close to tears you wouldn’t believe it. She grabbed her bag with shaking hands. ‘Back in a minute.’

  Taking refuge in the ladies, she shut herself in a cubicle, sat down on the loo and slapped her head into her hands. She felt very strange. Shaky. Sick. Her lungs seemed to have forgotten how to suck air in past the sobs crowding her throat. Her hands and feet fizzed as if their veins were filled with prosecco and there seemed to be moths fluttering in her ears.

  Familiar flashes of white light appeared at the periphery of her vision. A band formed around the left side of her head. Barely able to make her hands work, she scrambled in her bag for her migraine medication, gulping down the smooth white pill.

  Vaguely, she was aware of people coming and going outside the stall, banging the doors of the other stalls, flushing, washing. Asking each other if her cubicle was broken. Giggling that someone might be in there and would hear them. Whispers that someone might be ill.

  Eventually, she heard the outer door open again. ‘Ava? Are you in here? Are you OK?’

  Louise’s voice surprised Ava into drawing a proper breath. Then another. The prosecco and the moths began to recede. The white flashes started to fade. She licked her lips. ‘Yes. I’ll be out in a minute.’ Her voice seemed to come from a distance.

  ‘Oh. OK.’ Louise hesitated. ‘I’ll go back to the others, then.’ The door squeaked as it opened and closed.

  Ava rose on unsteady legs, sucking in several more deep breaths. She looked in wonder at her hands. Trembling. Sweating. Dimly, she recognised that as well as an incipient migraine she had probably just suffered a panic attack.

  She tried to take stock. Her phone was quiet. No Facebook email notifications that Harvey Snaith had tagged her in a picture. None of her friends sending her WTF???? or OMG!!!! texts. Maybe the world wasn’t going to end after all? Maybe Harvey had harmlessly passed out and would awake in the morning with a slamming hangover and a blank in his memory.

  She continued to breathe, letting her brain enjoy the oxygen. Letting the fizzing and the fluttering fade to nothing.

  Finally feeling strong enough to leave the sanctuary of the cubicle, she washed her hands and wrists in cold water, patted her hair and ventured back into the racket and red tinsel of the bar.

  Tod, Sam and even Louise broke off their conversation to regard her with varying degrees of curiosity and concern. She’d no idea how long she’d been but as Louise had been despatched to check on her it had obviously been longer than was necessary for a quick pee. ‘Have I been ages? Sorry. I thought I felt a migraine coming on so I took my Immigran and sat quietly for a minute.’

  ‘Do you want me to get you home?’ Tod looked concerned.

  ‘No, I’ll be fine soon, thanks. The medication stopped it really happening.’ She sank down into her seat. Panic attack or migraine, what had happened in the ladies had turned her muscles to mush.

  Tod and Louise returned to their conversation. Incredibly conscious that Sam was staring at her as if he could read everything she tried to conceal, she cast around for something to divert him.

  ‘I’m not sure of the ethics of accepting an accidentally-on-purpose date for the specific purpose of deliberately putting the date off you,’ she said, reprovingly. ‘You remembered me telling you that she’d gone off Frankie for getting into comics.’

  His mouth quirked up at one side. ‘Guilty.’

  ‘I bet you don’t have a single Justice League comic.’

  ‘I have hundreds … in Mum’s loft. I haven’t looked at them since I was fifteen. One day I’ll get them out and have a charity auction. Perhaps give the money to No Blame or Shame.’

  ‘Poor Izz.’

  The face Sam pulled wasn’t unsympathetic. ‘I can’t fall in love with someone because she’s your friend and your heart’s touched by her, Ava. What I did might be juvenile but it allows her crush to fade, leaving her free to carry on working at Jermyn’s without either of us feeling uncomfortable. An inelegant but functional solution.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to join us for Christmas.’

  Another pre-panic subject to address. ‘It was kind of you to offer but—’

  ‘You’re not going to go back on it, are you?’ He shrugged out of his jacket and laid it on the seat beside him, making Ava realise that it must be hot in the bar now it was filled to capacity. Funny. She was cold. She glanced around. All she could see were people standing, except for a few who’d squashed into the other half of the corner seating.

  He leaned in, his voice low. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You’re very white.’

  ‘Are you sure you want me crashing your family Christmas? I’m not very good at Christmas, you know.’

  ‘Positive. I meant it when I said you’ll be doing me a favour.�
� He cracked a pained smile. ‘You can only imagine how much Mum will love it.’

  Ava struggled with her conscience. ‘The deeper we get into faux dating the more Wendy will be upset at the end.’

  ‘But we want her to have a happy Christmas and she’ll be no more upset at the end of a faux relationship than she would have been if it were real dating.’ His voice was sombre.

  She heaved a sigh. ‘OK. I’m in.’

  Then Tod began to recount a story about Frankie being pursued by a conquest who’d proved reluctant to limit the fun to just one weekend and Ava joined in the laughter as Tod described Frankie’s hunted look. She began to feel more normal.

  Turning to Sam to make a joke about him giving Frankie lessons on how to put a girl off him, she halted.

  Sam was gaping at his phone.

  And then at Ava.

  Unease bit at her guts. She couldn’t make her lips move to ask Sam if he was OK or what was making him look as if he’d just discovered someone had wiped his bank account. The moths fluttered up into her ears again.

  Tod’s voice slid into her consciousness. ‘We’re going off to Louise’s, if you’re certain you’ll be OK getting back?’

  ‘’Course.’ The moths fluttered so loudly she could barely hear her own reply.

  ‘Right, see you whenever. See you tomorrow, Sam.’ Louise latched herself on to Tod’s arm and they began to edge into the crowd.

  ‘Yes.’ Sam sounded as if he were rousing from a dream. He stared at Ava again, his emotions all over his face. Astonishment. Horror. Compassion.

  Sick dread took hold of her. She felt as if she was in one of those dreams when a huge juggernaut was bearing down on her and she was glued to a spot in its path. To avoid Sam’s gaze she stared into her wine. It really was the most perfect delicate pink imaginable. One day she was going to make a hat that was exactly the colour of Zinfandel rosé. Maybe she’d have shoes dyed to match.

  ‘Ava?’

  Her lungs flattened into useless empty sacks. She couldn’t make them work. Sweat began to prickle down her spine.

  He leaned in close. ‘We need to talk.’ He was trying to get her attention, frowning, squeezing her hand.

  The moths fluttered as if they knew she didn’t want to hear. If she’d thought her limbs would carry her she would have leaped up and sprinted out of the bar rather than hear what he was about to say.

  He put his mouth close to her ear. ‘Your horrible ex has just sent me picture messages.’

  The moths fluttered harder and harder. A sweating, cringing mass of humiliation, Ava clamped her eyes shut.

  ‘This is what you’ve been frightened of, isn’t it?’ His warm hand closed more tightly over hers. ‘That shit has these images of you and he’s been tormenting and threatening you with them.’

  Chapter Twenty

  The zombie formerly known as Ava

  Sam’s mouth was completely dry. It had taken him several seconds to process the fact that the giggling naked woman who’d appeared on his phone screen, her hair spilling across her breasts, was Ava, presently decorously dressed and sitting right in front of him. His heart had given a gigantic thump of dismay that instead of learning what lay beneath her clothes in a joyous and sensual sharing of bodies, it had been shown to him by that little shit Harvey out of a spiteful wish to humiliate her.

  But now the shock was beginning to recede and his brain began to do the job he usually expected of it, everything resolving into pin-sharp focus. This wasn’t about him. This was all about Ava. And so much was now making sense.

  The way she’d changed colour over the seemingly commonplace action of texting this evening.

  Her overlong absence in the ladies.

  Her occasionally distant or erratic behaviour.

  White-hot fury coursed through him and he knew a compulsion to grab Harvey Snaith by the throat. Tightly.

  But right now his concern was whether Ava was going to make it through the next few minutes. Her hand was sweating in his but her skin was icy cold. Her breathing was in rags and he tried to remember what to do when someone hyperventilated. Or even suffered cardiac arrest.

  Reassurance seemed a good first measure. ‘It’s going to be OK.’ He had no real idea whether OK was even attainable. He was still firmly rooted in ‘unholy mess’ but nothing good would come of him sharing that perspective. ‘Don’t worry.’ Of course she was worried. She was terrified. ‘I’m going to help you.’ That much he could guarantee. ‘But we need to talk and I don’t think this is the best place, do you?’

  He reached for her coat. ‘I’ll see you home.’ Damn. Izz would probably turn up before too much longer and while he suspected that Ava would have confided in Izz, he stood a better chance of unravelling this mess without her. ‘We’ll go to my place,’ he amended, ‘where we can sort this out. OK? Come on.’ He knew he was talking to her as if she were a child, but it allowed him to coax her rigidly to her feet and into her coat. He wound her scarf gently around her neck then took her freezing hand to lead her through what had become a raucous crowd.

  Out in the street the wind rushed up to greet them, spitting chill raindrops into their faces as people milled in and out of the nearby Bangladeshi-Indian restaurants under red and green neon signs. At least the crowds attracted taxis and it wasn’t long before Sam spotted one with its yellow light aglow. Outmanoeuvring four girls waving foil balloons, he clamped his hand onto the door handle. ‘Sorry, my friend’s not well.’ He ignored their tutting and muttering and bundled Ava into the back seat.

  ‘We’re going to sort this out,’ he repeated when he’d climbed in beside her.

  Ava sat perfectly still and gazed ahead all the way to Stratford. She didn’t argue when he paid the cab fare. He curled an arm around the zombie formerly known as Ava Blissham and guided her through the lobby and into the lift. In his flat he sat her down on the sofa. ‘I’ll make coffee.’

  When he looked at her again he saw that she’d dropped her face into her palms, like a picture titled ‘Despair’. His heart twanged with her pain.

  He wished for his mum. She knew what to say to women that had been through the same kind of ordeal as Ava. But he’d have to draw on whatever knowledge he’d absorbed from his mother, throw in sympathy and good sense and wing it.

  He deposited the steaming coffee mugs on the table. ‘He’s been holding these pictures over your head,’ he suggested, gently.

  From behind her hands, she nodded.

  He settled on the sofa, his shoulder brushing hers so that she knew he was there but only on the edge of her personal space. ‘Has he been blackmailing you for money? Is that why you’ve been so broke?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You can trust me, Ava. Tell me what happened so that I can help.’

  The silence seemed endless. Then she gulped, ‘I’m ashamed.’

  Rage rushed back, but he held it off. He’d find a way to channel his revulsion for Harvey-shitty-Snaith later. Now was the time for Ava, for sympathy and compassion. ‘Don’t be. Honestly. I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.’

  With gentle fingers he guided first one hand and then the other away from her face and pressed one of the coffee mugs upon her. ‘Come on. Drink.’

  Eyes averted, she began listlessly to sip.

  ‘If you had a bit of fun with your boyfriend and a digital camera, a lot of people have done the same.’

  No reply.

  ‘Harvey’s the one who’s in the wrong. What we need to do is look at your options and see what can be done to stop him hurting you any more.’

  No reply.

  ‘I think that you need to talk to someone and get help. If you don’t want to talk to me then Mum will put you in touch with someone. Or you could ring a helpline. What about the police?’

  A single, vehement shake of her head.

  ‘They’re the ones with clout. You could request a female police officer.’

  She grimaced, then took two gulps of her coffee. Huskily
, her voice returned. ‘Until tonight, he’s only threatened to spread the images around and the police need something more to go on than threats nobody else heard being made. If you were to offer whatever he’s sent you as evidence those images would have to be seen not only by every police officer and police civilian involved, but also lawyers and everything. My dad was a senior police officer in the Met. I know all about the strict confidentiality but … I also know how whispers can spread within the force. He’d die of mortification if one of his old mates told him. Harvey—’ Her voice wavered. ‘Also, Harvey says if I go to the police he’ll send the images to Dad. Can you imagine?’ She clamped one hand to her eyes again.

  Under his breath, Sam swore comprehensively.

  Despair rang in her voice. ‘Digital images can spread like the plague. YouTube. Red Tube. Twitter. Facebook. Sites for pathetic creeps to perv over.’

  It was hard to argue with her. In his job he’d seen the results of whispers, hacking, ‘accidental’ forwarding of data. He’d been involved in trying to retrieve the victim’s image or create a tide of counteracting positivity so that the public found it hard to credit the negative stuff.

  He left that question for the moment. ‘If he hasn’t asked you for money … is it sex?’ His guts pulled tight. If Snaith had forced Ava, Sam thought he might have to go into the bathroom and throw up.

  ‘No!’ She emerged from behind her hand with wide, horrified eyes. ‘Well, he suggested it tonight, in a text, when he was drunk, but I was obviously never going to agree! I think it was my insulting reaction to his suggestion that hacked him off enough to send the pictures to you.’ She shuddered. ‘I deleted the original images from his phone myself. If automatic backup even entered my head I’d never have thought Harvey would be such a bastard.’

  The sentences flowed like waves of helplessness. How Harvey seemed to feel humiliated at the acrimonious death of the relationship. How he alternated between trying to resume the relationship and threats of revenge. How she knew it was all her own fault—