The Christmas Promise

by Sue Moorcroft

  Copyright

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

  Copyright © Sue Moorcroft 2016

  Cover illustration and Design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

  Sue Moorcroft asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008175528

  Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008175535

  Version: 2016-08-25

  Dedication

  In memory of my mother

  Connie Moorcroft

  17 January 1934–17 March 2016

  My number one fan

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Christmas Begins in Blaggard’s Bar

  Chapter Two: The Trouble With an ex-Boyfriend

  Chapter Three: Not Currently Dating

  Chapter Four: A Bit of a Redo

  Chapter Five: Princess Leia Claus

  Chapter Six: A Christmas Kiss for Ava Bliss

  Chapter Seven: Not Dating at Gaz’s Caff

  Chapter Eight: A Hat, but no Kid Gloves

  Chapter Nine: Seeing, Not ‘Seeing’

  Chapter Ten: Faux Dating

  Chapter Eleven: No Blame or Shame

  Chapter Twelve: The Beautiful Business of Hat Making

  Chapter Thirteen: The Christmas Ball

  Chapter Fourteen: Football Stars and Booby Ruby

  Chapter Fifteen: Wendy Gets a Real Buzz

  Chapter Sixteen: Mixed Messages

  Chapter Seventeen: Village Affairs

  Chapter Eighteen: Putting the ‘Trick’ in Patrick

  Chapter Nineteen: The Gallery of Shame

  Chapter Twenty: The Zombie Formerly Known as Ava

  Chapter Twenty-One: A Pretty Cheeky Idea

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Hats Off to Ava Bliss

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Bubbling Under

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Bubbling Over

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Going Viral

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ava’s Hotspot Goes Bad

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Stuck Between Christmas and a Hard Place

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Final Faux Date

  Chapter Thirty: Not on the Christmas Agenda

  Chapter Thirty-One: Trust Issues

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Christmas Spirit and Black Roses

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Best Christmas Ever!

  Epilogue: First Date

  Author’s Note

  Alive Today Lifestyle Magazine Fashion Pages

  Acknowledgements

  Q&A With Sue Moorcroft

  Loved The Christmas Promise?

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Christmas begins in Blaggard’s Bar

  Saturday 1 December

  Battling her way along the crowded pavements of Camden High Street, under the red and green Christmas lights and past the huge boots and aeroplanes displayed on the shop fronts, Ava didn’t feel entirely in the mood for going out and having a good time. Today, her first day as a ‘casual’ stallholder in the West Yard market, had seemed endless. And she was pretty sure there would never be a second.

  ‘Even though I’ve been home to warm up, my feet are still burning and freezing both at the same time,’ she complained to Izz. They’d linked arms to share body heat as sleet danced in the air around them but she wished her dress would magically transform itself into a thick waterproof coat until she reached the warmth of Blaggard’s Bar. ‘It’s only the beginning of December and I’ve already had enough of Christmas shoppers who browse without buying, try on without buying, and especially, especially those who gasp, “How much? For one hat?” and drop one of my precious samples. Also without buying.’

  Izz’s teeth chattered, although she was marginally more warmly dressed in glittery jeans and a top. ‘Sales were a bit thin, were they?’

  ‘To the point of being anorexic, even though I slashed my prices and prayed that none of my bespoke customers would appear and demand to know why they’d previously paid double.’

  ‘Your hats are amazing. You should be charging more, not less.’

  Ava gave Izz’s arm a squeeze. ‘Aw, thank you! But needs must. I do need to eat, even if I can manage without luxuries like restaurants or the gym. I get anxious every time I think how much I spent on tarpaulin, skirting cloth and display stands, all of which look likely to end up on eBay after Christmas. If another casual hadn’t offered us a lift home I’d probably have stuffed the lot in a bin. I should have listed my stock on Etsy or Notonthehighstreet and saved myself a lot of freezing disappointment.’

  She gave a little skip to keep up with Izz’s long stride. ‘I hope this drinks party is worth coming out for. It’s a bit early for a Christmas do, isn’t it?’

  ‘PR and marketing people will be frantic for the rest of the month with clients. Anyway, three of the associates from Jermyn’s were already over here today with a new client. Oh, look, there’s Tod, going into Blaggard’s.’

  Ava watched the back of their mutual bestie Tod with envy as he hopped out of a cab and into Blaggard’s Bar, safe from the December drizzle. ‘Clients on a Saturday?’

  ‘It’s not necessarily a Monday-to-Friday industry.’ Izz was on a short contract at the communications agency where Tod was an associate. Tod was taking his newish and bossy girlfriend, Louise, to the agency Christmas do, and so Ava had agreed to be Izz’s plus one, Izz not currently having a boyfriend or feeling sufficiently brave to go alone. Izz’s next words illuminated why giving the event a miss had not been an option. ‘Sam says the agency Christmas bash is a cornerstone of team building, so everyone will probably be here.’

  ‘Ah! If Sam said it then it must be true,’ Ava teased, shooting thankfully through a midnight-blue door spangled with stars and into the happy and familiar din of Blaggard’s Bar, the rough-hewn wooden pillars incongruously strung with fairy lights and mistletoe tied with red and black ribbon. Typically Camden, Blaggard’s was about crowds and diversity; suits mixing happily with gothic black or steampunk satin.

  ‘Tod!’ Ava managed to grab Tod’s arm as he was about to vanish beneath a cardboard and tinsel archway. ‘Give me a hug for coming out on such a horrible night.’

  Tod blinked behind his glasses and wrapped her awkwardly in his warmth. ‘You could always wear a coat or take a cab.’

  ‘But then I have a coat to hold or a cabbie to pay.’

  Tod immediately let the subject drop. They all knew that Ava didn’t have the dosh to spend on cabs and would prefer not to fr
eeload in a cab Izz had paid for. He gave Izz a hug, too. ‘Sam and the others are here already. It’s going to be a great night.’

  Ava had to raise her voice to be heard over the Christmas revellers and pulsing music. ‘So I get to meet Sam the Big Important Man tonight?’

  ‘He’s over there’ – Izz was tall enough to see above people’s heads – ‘with Patrick and Jake. I can see some of the girls, too, over in the corner. Nobody else seems to have brought guests,’ she added uneasily, doing the looking-without-looking thing that was more obvious than staring.

  Ava gave her arm a reassuring pat. ‘But you were told you could. And I can always disappear off home if you think I’m in the way.’ She paused to check the angle of her black-feathered pillbox hat fixed to the coil of blonde plaits at one side of her head and made sure that the rest of her hair streamed smoothly over her shoulder. No point turning herself into a walking display of her work if she wasn’t meticulous with the effect.

  ‘No!’ said Izz in alarm, fluffing up her short hair, a pretty brown that, in Ava’s opinion, could do with a more exciting cut. ‘If you go home early I’ll have no one to talk to.’

  ‘What about Tod?’

  ‘He’ll talk to the others.’ Izz glanced back at the door, as if contemplating baling out before the evening began.

  It wouldn’t help Izz if Ava were to demand to know how she could be shy with people she’d worked with for weeks, so Ava simply said, ‘OK, let’s pile in.’

  Without the benefit of the height enjoyed by Izz and Tod, Ava was corralled by backs and shoulders as they battled through the melee, and could only gauge that their goal had been reached by a sudden chorus of, ‘Hey, Tod! Hello, Izz.’

  Izz hung back, allowing Tod to tug Ava forward. ‘Ava, meet Patrick and Jake.’

  Patrick had dark eyes, crisp curls and the kind of smile that was probably supposed to be a smoulder. Jake was more of a vague beamer.

  Ava smiled politely. ‘Hello, I’m Ava—’

  ‘And,’ Tod barrelled on as if he couldn’t wait to get to the important stuff, ‘this is Sam, our creative director.’

  Ava hadn’t intended to be impressed by Sam Jermyn, the golden boy who’d handled PR for a high-profile football player and, at thirty-five, made enough money to invest in his own communications agency. But as Sam turned his gaze on her she couldn’t help but be aware of him. He was tall, even taller than Tod or Izz. His tawny hair fell across one eye and was just long enough to tuck behind his ears. In his dark suit and white shirt he looked as well put-together as an expensive car.

  With a slow smile, Sam took her hand in his. ‘Ava. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘Likewise.’ She smiled sweetly. She wouldn’t embarrass her friends by telling Sam that Tod and Izz sometimes seemed to have no other topic of conversation.

  ‘What are you drinking?’

  ‘Thank you, but I’m not feeling flush enough to get involved in rounds. I might only stay for a couple, anyway.’

  ‘You’ve been invited for Christmas drinks. No need to reciprocate.’ Sam consulted Tod over Ava’s head. ‘What does Ava drink?’

  ‘Zinfandel rosé.’ Tod cheerfully ignored Ava’s exasperated stare.

  ‘It’s not PC to dismiss a woman’s perfectly valid wishes,’ Ava half-joked at Sam’s departing back as, having swiftly taken orders from Tod and Izz, he made towards the bar.

  Sam flashed her a glance over his shoulder. ‘Except for wine, surely?’

  She had to concede the point. Zinfandel made everything better, even ‘I can’t earn enough’ woes, and ‘Christmas is coming’ woes, and ‘with people I don’t know just to please my friends’ woes. Or, at least, it made them no worse.

  Upon his return, Sam passed her a large glass of rosé. ‘So, you’re friends with Tod and Izz?’

  Ava only got as far as, ‘They’re my best friends. I share Izz’s house and Tod lives not far away, in Kentish Town,’ when more agency people arrived in a flurry of greetings and cold air and, enlisting the help of Patrick and Jake, Sam once again turned himself into a drinks waiter, before the new group drifted further into the bar.

  Oh well. That was probably her ration of small talk with the head honcho. Ava gladly turned to her friends. ‘Thanks for helping me pack up that horrible stall today, Izz. I never dreamed I’d still have almost all my stock. I thought the only good thing about Christmas would be that I could sell a shedload of stuff on the market. I think my mistake was taking proper couture samples. I should have bought shapes and decorated them with readymade flowers and feathers. That way I could sell at what people want to pay.’

  ‘It’s not the only good thing about Christmas!’ objected Izz, her tongue loosening now there was just the three of them in the conversation. ‘What about new films and Christmas DVDs?’

  ‘And the food.’ Tod pushed back his floppy fair hair, which, maybe because of his Harry Potter glasses, always seemed to end up looking schoolboyish, no matter which trendy salon created the cut.

  ‘Drink.’ Izz brandished her beer approvingly.

  ‘Video games launching in time for Christmas shoppers,’ Tod contributed.

  Izz grinned at him. ‘For Christmas geeks and spoilt kids.’

  Tod’s eyebrows shot up in mock affront. ‘OK, I’ll be the Christmas geek if you’ll be the spoilt kid – still funded by your parents at twenty-nine.’

  ‘Oi, I work! It’s just that Mum likes to give an allowance to my sister, Danielle, and me. It would be rude to refuse.’

  Ava smiled at Tod’s snort of laughter but her mind was drawn irresistibly back to her problems. She’d been hopelessly optimistic in thinking market punters would leap at samples made for summer weddings or Ascot, the Ava Bliss Millinery labels removed. Christmas shoppers wanted fun cocktail hats, sexily veiled pillboxes and feathery fascinators. At workaday prices. Hand-embellished ready-mades – ‘dressmakers’ hats’ – might fall short of her couture ideals but, if it meant she could pay a few bills, she’d resort to them. Black for the goths and brown for the steampunk crowd. In fact, she wished she’d thought to search out a Christmas steampunk convention. She might have made a fortune from mini top hats with corset lacing.

  ‘Anyway, Ava’s parents paid her rent for years,’ Izz pointed out, breaking into Ava’s thoughts.

  Ava replied lightly, ‘Then they had to fund their retirement to Alsace.’ Worry dug its claws into her abdomen. Finances right now were more difficult than when she’d been a student, or even during the period before uni when she, Izz and Tod had had such a fantastic time working around Europe in cafés and bier kellers that one gap year had stretched into two.

  Izz stooped to peep into Ava’s face, eyes soft with concern. ‘They must get an income from their bookshop café?’

  ‘I don’t think it can compare with their old salaries. Le Café Littéraire Anglais is in a market town, Muntsheim, not a swanky part of Strasbourg. It’s mainly somewhere for Mum and Dad to hang out with ex-pats over pork pies and loose-leaf tea.’ Ava manufactured a laugh to counteract a threatening prickle of tears.

  ‘But they must have their pensions—’

  ‘Which are allowing them to enjoy dabbling in the bookshop.’ Ava shook her head. ‘I’m thirty! They’re entitled to have me off their hands by now. I’m not going to run to them with my problems when I’ve already told them that I’ll be OK.’ Scraping by would have been more accurate. ‘Hopefully I’ll be sorted soon. I would be, if bloody Ceri Mallory had made good on her promises.’

  Tod placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘It should have been a fantastic opportunity, working in an upmarket milliners. The prices at Ceri’s are staggering.’

  Ava took a sip of her wine to ease a lump in her throat. ‘Because she’s spent decades building up a client base and her reputation in the Old Brompton Road. I thought her vague “stick with me, kid, and I’ll take you places” would get me more than experience and her name on my CV. But look what happened when I reminded her how many
years she’d been dangling the carrot of a junior partnership while I rode the donkey of low salary: a full-on row and the carrot vanishing completely. I should have struck out on my own after six months, then maybe I’d have had time to establish myself before Mum and Dad took off.’

  ‘Well, it’s not as if you have a horrible landlady,’ Izz reminded her, gently. ‘I’ve already told you that you can take a rent break—’

  ‘My landlady is absolutely the loveliest, but I won’t sponge!’ Ava gave Izz a grateful hug, though the offer prodded awake one of the monster worries that a good day at the market today might have caged for a while – what if the time was near when she couldn’t afford Camden? The few years she’d had here weren’t nearly enough. She still felt new in this mad, colourful, happy, bohemian place, so much cooler than the Frimley Green side of Farnborough where she, Izz and Tod had grown up. How would she survive being separated from the others? All that was left for her in Farnborough was an aunt and whichever school friends had stayed put. She chugged down the rest of her wine. ‘Either of you guys up for a refill? No?’ Ava set out alone on the trek to the bar through the claustrophobic press of warm bodies.

  In her peripheral vision she noticed Sam Jermyn talking to Patrick and Jake, apparently having left their colleagues to their own devices. Sam’s bottle of Cobra was almost empty. She sighed. Sam the Important Man had bought her a drink. It was standard alcohol etiquette that she should now buy him one.

  It took her several minutes to get served. She wriggled back through the crush, drinks held high in an effort not to end up wearing them. When she finally reached her target she stretched forward to press the bottle of beer upon Sam with a gracious smile.