by Jenny Oliver
Christmas at the Davenports’ house was always about one thing: food
But when sisters Ella and Maddy were split up, Ella to live in London with their Dad, and Maddy staying in Greece with their Mum, mince pies lost their magic.
Now, a cheating husband has thrown Ella a curved snowball…and for the first time in years, all she wants is her mum. So she heads back to Greece, where her family’s taverna holds all the promise of home. Meanwhile, waitress Maddy’s dreams of a white Christmas lead her back to London…and her Dad.
But a big fat festive life-swap isn’t as easy as it sounds! And as the sisters trade one kitchen for another, it suddenly seems that among the cinnamon, cranberries and icing sugar, their recipes for a perfect Christmas might be missing a crucial ingredient: each other.
Also by Jenny Oliver:
The Vintage Summer Wedding
The Parisian Christmas Bake Off
The Little
Christmas Kitchen
Jenny Oliver
www.CarinaUK.com
Jenny Oliver
wrote her first book on holiday when she was ten years old. Illustrated with cut-out supermodels from her sister’s Vogue, it was an epic, sweeping love story not so loosely based on Dynasty.
Since then Jenny has gone on to get an English degree, a Masters, and a job in publishing that’s taught her what it takes to write a novel (without the help of the supermodels). She wrote The Parisian Christmas Bake Off on the beach in a sea-soaked, sand-covered notebook. This time the inspiration was her addiction to macaroons, the belief she can cook them and an all-consuming love of Christmas. When the decorations go up in October, that’s fine with her! Follow her on Twitter @JenOliverBooks
Contents
Cover
Blurb
Book List
Title Page
Author Bio
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Endpages
Extract
Copyright
CHAPTER 1
ELLA
The meeting was tedious. The air conditioner was broken and whirring too loudly, so it muffled the execs calling in on speakerphone. The stuffy air smelt of aftershave and strong coffee with a hint of the marker pen that kept running out on the flipchart. Big bushy garlands of tinsel were looped along the wall, baubles hung in bunches like grapes on the windows and a white fake Christmas tree with glittered branches twinkled in the corner.
Ella was having to look anywhere but at the new account assistant, Katya, who was presenting –nerves had made her voice catch and her cheeks flush a blotchy red. Ella couldn’t stomach the embarrassment she felt for her.
Their boss, Adrian, was tapping frustratedly on his Blackberry, not listening. She knew he was getting the presentations out the way before he brought up the accounts they lost last week and what it would do to revenue. As she glanced around the room, taking in the glazed faces and the distracted looks of her colleagues all wired on too much coffee and bourbon biscuits, her gaze stopped on the building opposite where an aerobics class was in full swing. As Ella watched the women jumping up and down in their Sweaty Betty lycra, she wondered when she’d last had time to do any exercise. She’d cancelled her gym membership soon after she’d got her last promotion – when she realised she rarely left work before eight.
Tonight she was leaving early though. Tonight she was being wined and dined. Tonight they were going to Fera at Claridge’s and she had a brand new Stella McCartney chocolate silk dress hanging on the back of her office door ready to team with her nude Manolo Blahniks and an aztec print scarf. It was all from Net-a-Porter – she’d ordered the entire outfit that the model was wearing. Shamefully, she always ordered exactly what the model was wearing. The grey pencil skirt she had on at the moment, and the cerise mules, was a case in point. Occasionally, when she went completely off-piste and gave her own eye a go, Max would walk into the bedroom, himself dressed like a Ralph Lauren model, and say something like, ‘Really?’ or ‘I don’t think that’s quite right for…’ whatever event they were off to – Ascot or Henley or the Hunt Ball. Then he’d pinch her bottom and kiss her cheek and say, ‘I’d love you in anything but you know what the girls are like…’
The girls. Ella narrowed her eyes at the baubles. The girls…
Friends since school, Max’s tight little gang were ferocious. A terrifying mix of confidence and boredom that came with being too good-looking and having too much money. All caramel highlights and butterscotch tans, they had ample time on their hands to be as vicious as they were whip smart and wickedly hilarious. Ella was like a fish gasping at the surface of a puddle when she was with them, not that she’d ever admit it to Max. What perplexed her the most was that she could handle the hardest CEO in the boardroom, present to rooms of the coolest, most guarded clients without breaking into a sweat, but those girls… they could pierce her with look, undermine her with a laugh, leave her flustered and blushing and wanting to cling onto Max’s hand when he was wandering off with the boys to check out a new sports car or race horse and reminisce about boarding school.
At the front of the room Katya was ploughing on through the presentation. From the way she was stumbling and relying so heavily on her notes, Ella knew she’d be packed off on a presentation course before the day was out. She glanced at her watch. She was booked in for a blow dry in forty minutes. Come on, she thought, this is child’s play, we all know this stuff, why do we need a bloody meeting about it.
Tonight was their anniversary – her and Max – seven years. Seven years and look how far she’d come. If she was the kind of person to put stuff on Facebook then she’d plaster it with pictures of the diamond bracelet he’d given her that morning. Almost just to reaffirm to them all that he loved her. Even after all this time she still heard the whispers behind the smiles. But if she ever mentioned it, Max would squeeze her tight and lift her in the air and say, they’re all just jealous. Burying her face in his neck she would close her eyes and breathe him in and hope this life lasted forever.
She glanced down at the gems sparkling on her wrist. She loved it. Or at least she thought she loved it, was it her taste? Yes, it was her taste. It was a bit thin and delicate for her wrist, but yes, no, she loved it. I love it, she thought as it winked under the strip light.
Her Blackberry vibrated where it sat on top of her iPad on top of her laptop on the boardroom table. She let the b
racelet tip forward over her hand as she reached forward, wondered if anyone else had noticed it sparkle, and slipped her phone off the table, holding it under the desk, out of sight, as she opened the new email.
‘This is all very well–’ her boss said, sitting up and stretching his back in an arch. ‘But I can’t see anything different here. I can’t see what you’ll be offering the client that every other firm won’t be offering? We’ve seen all this before. And if I’ve seen it, they’ve seen it.’ He frowned, frustrated. ‘Come on people. We need a bit more blue sky thinking. A bit more oomph.’ He sat forward. ‘Basically, we need this new business. It’s Christmas for crying out loud. Wow them with a bit of sparkle. Ella can you take charge of this one–’ He paused. ‘Ella… are you with us?’
Ella wasn’t with them at all. Every ounce of her concentration was caught by the email she’d just opened on her phone. Her mouth had hung open of its own accord. Her right eye, that had recently developed a tiredness tic, was flickering. Her stomach had tightened like she’d forgotten to exhale.
Subject: I just thought you should know.
Your husband is having an affair with my wife. Photo attached confirms. Suggest you get yourself a good lawyer. I’m going to annihilate her in court.
Ella recognised Prague in the background of the photograph. Saw the ornate buildings dark and dirty and snow speckling the canopies of the market stalls. She recognised it because she’d been there with him. Last Christmas. His company had an office there, he could get business class flights and a room in the Mandarin Oriental on expenses.
‘Ella?’ Her boss repeated.
‘Yes, sorry.’ She pressed her phone off and cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, I just…’ She shook her head. ‘Yes, absolutely, I totally agree. Great presentation Katya. Just fabulous, exactly what we were looking for. Really, really great. Good, let’s get started then…’ she said, her mouth stretched into her work smile as she started to stand up, gathering her iPad, notebook and pen to her chest and pushing her chair back.
She felt everyone in the room watching her. Mark, her colleague who sat to her right, whispered, ‘There are still three more presentations.’
‘Oh sorry.’ Ella paused. Felt her cheeks begin to pink.
‘Ella?’ Her boss sat back, put his hands behind his head. ‘Is everything all right? Did you hear what I was saying?’
She looked around the room as she sat down, everyone seemed suddenly distracted by their notepads, or the wood grain of the table top.
‘Yes,’ she lied quietly.
He made a face. Ella was his secret weapon. Ella was the reason he’d been promoted. Her work, his leadership. Ella had won them the last four accounts and was possibly the single reason they were still in the black. Ella, who worked twenty-four seven and never took her eye off the prize. Award winning Ella. ‘Let’s talk afterwards,’ he said, and she nodded vaguely. Her hand burning like her phone was on fire.
CHAPTER 2
MADDY
‘If I tell my mum about the job then she won’t let me go because she won’t approve. If I don’t tell her that I have a job then she won’t let me go because she’ll say that I’ll just be bumming it round London wasting my life when she needs me to work here.’ Maddy wiped her oily hands on the old rag hanging out her jeans pocket and then took the hand Dimitri was offering to haul herself out of the boat and up onto the jetty.
‘Maddy,’ he said, bending down to pick up the board of his windsurfer, the sail already propped up by the side of the taverna. ‘You’re twenty-four. Don’t you think it’s about time you just went anyway?’ He raised a dark brow and looked at her with a fairly patronising smirk on his lips, but then got distracted when he noticed a scratch on his board. ‘Shit, when did that happen? It’s those kids isn’t? Oi you lot–’ he shouted at the gaggle of little kids who were messing around at the end of the jetty, dangling bits of rope into the sea with worms on hooks to try and catch the millions of silver fish that darted around the wooden posts. They looked up all big eyed and terrified when Dimitri yelled. ‘Did you mess with my board?’
‘No Dimitri,’ they all chorused in unison, faces pale and perfectly innocent.
He glared at them for a second, six foot with shoulders broader than should be allowed, black shaggy hair and at least three days’ stubble, he knew he could terrify them.
‘Don’t.’ Maddy rolled her eyes. ‘They’re only little.’
‘They’ve messed with my board. Look at it.’
‘You’re mean. Stop being mean to them. Look at them.’ She turned to wave in their direction, all four kids huddled together, their fishing rods clutched in their hands, their cheeks pink, waiting for their telling off.
Dimitri sighed. ‘You stay away from my board. Yes!’
‘Yes Dimitri,’ they chorused again.
‘And while you’re at it, stay away from my bike as well. I saw you the other day sitting on it. Yes. I did, don’t shake your heads, if it fell on you it could do some damage. Don’t sit on my bike.’
‘Can we ride on it again with you, please?’
He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. ‘What have I started?’ he said to Maddy. And she shrugged a shoulder.
‘You shouldn’t have been so keen to show off your new toy should you?’ she said, nodding to where his beautiful Triumph Bonneville T100 sat gleaming on the cobbled slipway.
Dimitri followed her gaze, paused for a second to admire his bike and then said with a shrug, ‘I was excited.’
Maddy shook her head and turned away with a laugh, she stuffed the rag in her pocket and turned around to the kids and said. ‘I’ll take you out on this, if you like?’ This was the sleek white forty foot yacht she’d just repaired the engine of.
‘Are you sure Maddy?’ Dimitri questioned, dubious, as the kids all whooped and, chucking down their rods, ran over to jump on the deck of the boat, their shoes leaving tiny, dusty footprints on the gleaming surface.
‘Yeah it’ll be fine.’ Maddy said, pulling on a big red, oil streaked jumper that came down to just above the frayed edge of her shorts. Sweeping away the wisps of hair that the wind was blowing in her mouth, she said, ‘And with my mum, I just don’t want her to not want me to go. I want her to approve, I suppose. Stupid, huh?’ She laughed, husky and dry like a granddad.
‘It’s pretty windy out there, Mads.’ Dimitri shielded his eyes from the low sun and looked out to where the waves were starting to pick up.
‘Can you focus on what I’m saying about my mum.’ She frowned, ‘And – it’s ok for you take your windsurfer out but I can’t handle the boat? Are you kidding?’
‘It’s got worse in the last few hours. I would never dream of implying you couldn’t handle the boat. But let’s look at the facts, Maddy, it’s really bloody windy and it’s not your boat.’
‘Well he’d want me to test the engine as well as fix it, wouldn’t he?’ She kicked one of the posts with her old Nike hi-top trainer.
‘You can test it by turning the key in the ignition. Not taking a bunch of seven year olds for a joyride into a mistral.’ Dimitri shook his head, tendrils of black hair wobbling like a sea anemone.
‘It’ll be fine. And anyway–’ Maddy jumped down onto the stern, taking the rope she’d looped into one of the jetty rings with her to cast off. ‘I can’t say no now, look at them…’
The kids were all sitting crossed legged at the bow like tiny figureheads, watching expectantly.
‘See this is probably what your mum’s talking about. In your desperation to please people, you don’t think things through.’
‘Oh please.’ Maddy scoffed as she pressed the button to haul up the anchor. ‘She just doesn’t want me to go off to London and leave her alone.’
‘I think she worries that you’ve been too sheltered.’ Dimitri yelled over the wind and the sound of the two hundred and fifty horsepower engine as it sprang to life.
‘Bullshit.’ Maddy shouted back. ‘That’s the most patronising thing I
’ve ever heard, Dimitri. You’re so annoying.’
‘Good comeback,’ he said, raising a brow. ‘My case in point.’
Maddy snorted a laugh and then turned her back on him to steer the boat out of the little harbour. The kids were clinging onto the tinsel-wrapped railing at the front, dangling their feet over the edge and laughing as the spray bounced up into their faces.
As Maddy looked past them, out at the wide blue sea, dark like sapphires, the white horses jumping like skittish foals, rays of low winter sun darting off each wave like silver fish, all she could think was, god I wish this was London.
CHAPTER 3
ELLA
Ella threw her Blackberry on the sofa. Bloody holiday. She didn’t need a bloody holiday. She needed to curl up into a little ball and hibernate like a hedgehog. She needed to talk to Max.
Adrian had called her into his office directly after the meeting and asked her what was wrong. She’d shown him the email and he’d sucked in his breath.
‘Do you want a cigarette out the window?’ he’d asked.
‘I don’t smoke, Adrian.’
‘I know but sometimes moments call for a cigarette. If you don’t want one I might have one.’ He pulled open his desk drawer and fumbled around at the back for a hidden packet of Marlboro Reds and a box of matches. Hauling up the sash window he leant on the sill and inhaled half the cigarette in one. ‘Christ I’ve missed this.’ Exhaling he shook his head. ‘Max. Max, what are you doing?’
‘I think maybe it’s been photoshopped.’ Ella said, crossing the room to perch on the edge of the big leather covered desk. Outside it had started to sleet, watery white flecks cascading down like a snow globe. A couple of mangy pigeons on the roof opposite were shaking out their feathers, huddled up together next to a light up Santa Claus – plump and wet and depressed.
Adrian raised a brow, the creases on his forehead deepening. Ella frowned. ‘You don’t think so? You think he’s having an affair. I don’t think he’s having an affair. Especially not with her. I really don’t. Look–’ she held out her arm where the bracelet slipped forward over the back of her hand. ‘Look.’ she said again, a little quieter.
