A Perfect Paris Christmas

by Mandy Baggot

  Also by Mandy Baggot

  One Last Greek Summer

  My Greek Island Summer

  One Christmas Star

  That First French Summer

  Summer by the Lake

  Safe for Summer

  One Summer in Nashville

  One Night on Ice

  A PERFECT PARIS CHRISTMAS

  Mandy Baggot

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Mandy Baggot, 2020

  The moral right of Mandy Baggot to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 9781838933449

  Cover design: Cherie Chapman

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  For my much-missed pets…

  Sleep well Truffle, Stripey and Kravitz xxx

  One

  Kensington, London

  November

  ‘Duncan, not that awful disco ball of your mother’s again! Please, I beg of you. Last year it gave Lydia Mumford some sort of aura migraine before I’d even served the Waitrose arancini,’ Lizzie Andrews said, raising her eyes and glaring at her husband who was stood precariously at the top of a stepladder. He was about to fix the large revolving silver sphere to a hook above the kitchen island where, on the hob, something containing cranberries was simmering.

  Twenty-six-year-old Keeley hid her face in her mug of super-hot, extra-strong coffee and tried to stop a laugh from escaping her lips. Her parents’ conversation over her long-since-passed-away gran’s festive regalia had been treading the same path since the decorations had been left to them in the will. Her mum had always insisted it was because the old lady never liked her.

  Joan loathed me. Loathed me, Duncan. Right from the get-go. Ever since the first time I came to your house with peonies for her and she shoved them in an empty tin of Heinz beans as a vase. That was when the die was cast.

  But Keeley liked the decorations. None of them matched together – there were vibrant purples and emerald-greens alongside 1980s-style robots swinging on bunting and Chinese paper lanterns that probably should have caught alight long ago. At first glance, they might not seem to correlate, but somehow they worked. Her sister, Bea, had loved them too. Bea would always be fighting their dad for use of the ladder, having somehow actually worked out complicated things about balance, or the optimum angle to enable the globe to spin in a completely symmetrical way that would please Lizzie’s need for order. Bea had always plunged into things with full-on gusto but never without the knowhow to back it up.

  Thoughts of her little sister made Keeley’s heart squeeze and she took another sip of the coffee before the toaster popped with the crumpet she was cooking.

  Lizzie shook her brown curly hair and sniffed, nose in the air like a prized perfumier. She dropped the pinecones she was painting to the newspaper-covered work surface. ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Is that one of those giant crumpets I bought yesterday?’ Duncan asked, grinning down from the ladder, both hands still holding the whole giant reflective world in his hands.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Keeley replied, trying to wiggle the large crumpet out of the sleeve of the toaster. She had got it in without too much effort, but now it seemed it was impossible to remove.

  ‘Keeley!’ Lizzie exclaimed in horror. ‘A giant crumpet!’

  ‘Would you like one, Mum?’ Keeley asked. The crumpet still wasn’t moving and with every pull she was shaving the outer crust away from the body of it. It wasn’t going to stay ‘giant’ for long if it kept this up.

  ‘What you putting on it, Keeley?’ Duncan asked, tongue sticking out of his mouth, eyes concentrating hard on the hook on the ceiling. ‘Bit of peanut butter? Or… how about that wild blueberry jam? That’s nice, that is.’

  ‘Duncan!’ Lizzie said. ‘That wild blueberry jam was meant for the scones for the advent afternoon tea with the Forresters! I can’t believe you’ve opened it!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Duncan answered. ‘Perhaps you should stick labels on things you don’t want opened by the mere mortals of your family.’

  ‘Well,’ Lizzie continued, still sounding exasperated, ‘it should be obvious that it isn’t for you. When have I ever bought wild blueberry jam for you?!’

  ‘A change is as good as a rest though, so they say,’ Duncan replied. ‘I thought it might have been one of your “new opportunities” like the yoga and the… Crap Gaga.’

  Keeley really couldn’t stop the laugh this time as she opened t
he drawer for a fork. Her fingertips were not going to move this sucker, so it was time for reinforcements. ‘It’s Krav Maga, Dad.’

  ‘He knows!’ Lizzie said, taking her glasses off and putting fingers to the bridge of her nose like she was getting a headache. ‘I’ve invited him to join me,’ she carried on. ‘Except he’d rather spend his time playing darts than doing something that’s classed as real cardiovascular exercise.’

  ‘Are we going to have the “darts isn’t a real sport” discussion again?’ Duncan asked, taking one foot off the ladder in a bid to reach out further. ‘Because, if we are, I’ll find that article from The Telegraph.’

  Keeley lowered the fork towards the crumpet in the toaster. And it was then that Lizzie screamed. Running like someone might again be about to infiltrate the coveted blueberry jam, before Keeley could even take another breath, her mum arrived at her side and plucked the fork from her fingers.

  ‘What are you doing?! Keeley! For heaven’s sake!’

  ‘What?’ Keeley asked. Her heart was thumping now and she put a hand to her chest in case she needed to push it back in. ‘What have I done?’

  Lizzie brandished the fork like it was a light sabre and she knew exactly how to use it. ‘Do you know how many people die each year from toaster accidents?’

  ‘Er… no,’ Keeley answered. She had a feeling her mum was just about to tell her though.

  ‘Seven hundred,’ Lizzie said. ‘Seven hundred idiots who should know better. You know better!’

  Keeley could see her mum was getting emotional, and not simply the kind of emotional she usually got when she started making festive wares for afternoon teas, Christmas fairs and fundraising afternoons. This was almost the kind of emotional she got when she talked about Bea.

  ‘Sorry,’ Keeley offered.

  Lizzie put the fork down on the worktop with a bang, then shifted past Keeley to tackle the toaster herself. ‘Why are you toasting a crumpet anyway? There’s low-sugar muesli in the cupboard or there’s fresh fruit – clementines and a Galia melon – or…’

  ‘Blueberry jam,’ Duncan offered. ‘The Forresters won’t be able to have it now the seal’s broken.’ He let out a grunt as finally the globe was hooked in place. ‘There we go! Perfectomundo!’

  Keeley watched her mother deftly, somehow, pull the crumpet from the toaster. It was dark brown, slightly burned around the edges, just as she liked it. She could almost taste it. A thick layer of butter melting into the fluffy inside…

  ‘I’ll leave it out for the birds,’ Lizzie said, taking it towards the patio doors and their small patch of decking, leading to grass and then her dad’s man-cave where he kept his dart board and homebrew kits.

  ‘What? Wait!’ Keeley said. ‘That’s my breakfast!’

  Lizzie stopped, crumpet between thumb and forefinger like it was a land mine she had unearthed from the kitchen tiles and she needed to keep really still in case it exploded in her face. ‘Keeley, come on, don’t be difficult, darling.’

  Difficult? Keeley pushed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and pressed hard into her palate. She could already feel where this was going. It would start out as caring, then move swiftly on to running down a tick list for those people living a heavily monitored life. It would end up with Keeley feeling incredibly guilty.

  ‘Lizzie, love…’ Duncan began, slowly descending the ladder, the ball above his head turning the kitchen into something akin to a Eurovision stage. Keeley wasn’t sure it was rotating as evenly as it would have if Bea were still here.

  ‘No, Duncan, don’t you get involved now. You never usually want to be involved. It’s always me who has to do the tough love while you stand behind me encouraging our daughter to put her health in jeopardy.’ Lizzie made a face, crumpet still dangling. ‘“Nothing wrong with Dominos in moderation as long as you avoid the stuffed crust”. “You are what you eat… and no one ever wanted to be a guava”. It’s not funny! None of this is funny! I’ve lost one daughter. I don’t want to lose another one!’

  The crumpet crumbled and Lizzie crumpled, folding her body in on itself like she was an origami swan someone was making very badly.

  ‘Mum,’ Keeley said, rushing forward and putting her arms around Lizzie’s slender frame, drawing her close. ‘It’s OK. I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine,’ Lizzie said, the words rushing out through the tears, voice muffled against Keeley’s bright red festive jumper. ‘And you definitely won’t be fine if you eat giant crumpets and sugary jam.’

  ‘Is the jam that sugary?’ Duncan asked. ‘Because if that’s the case I’m not sure Tommy Forrester needs the boost. He’s stopped playing squash completely now, you know. Something to do with a frozen calf.’ He put a finger to his temple. ‘At least I think that was his injury. Although, thinking about it, it might have been what he had planned for Christmas dinner…’

  ‘Mum,’ Keeley said softly. ‘I do watch what I eat. All the time.’ She caught a look from her dad then and rephrased. ‘Most of the time.’ She sighed. ‘More often than not. But… it’s Christmas.’

  ‘It’s November,’ Lizzie countered, raising her head from Keeley’s shoulder. ‘People who say “it’s Christmas” the moment Halloween is over should be… tied to a chair and made to listen to… Piers Morgan.’

  ‘Lizzie!’ Duncan exclaimed.

  ‘Well!’ Lizzie remarked. ‘This is Keeley’s life we’re talking about. And she’s ready to play chicken sticking steel into electrical appliances and gorging on food stuffs that are going to stick to her arteries like… like…’

  ‘If you say Piers Morgan again I’ll have to tell your father,’ Duncan warned. ‘He has a framed photo of him in his study.’

  ‘Like…’ Lizzie continued.

  ‘Like the chocolate cake Bea used to make.’

  Keeley finished the sentence, tears filling her eyes. Someone had to actually say her sister’s name instead of skirting around it like the word ‘Bea’ would curse them for the rest of the decade. Still now, just over a year on from the devastating traffic accident that had taken Bea from them, the pain was still so raw. This was the second Christmas without her. During the first Christmas without her everyone was reeling from the trauma and Keeley was still in hospital.

  Everything was suddenly quiet. A tear snaked down Keeley’s face and she dashed it away with the back of her hand. She couldn’t chance getting any kind of dampness on her newly coloured hair. Her best friend Rach said the ‘light brown with copper highlights’ was legit from a subsidiary company of L’Oréal, but Keeley suspected she had got a whole pallet of them from Adie at Price Squash. She apparently wasn’t allowed to shower until at least tomorrow.

  ‘That cake,’ Duncan said, finally on ground level and licking his lips. ‘It was good. We should make it again. As a family.’ He paused briefly before adding, ‘Bea would like that.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the same,’ Lizzie remarked.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Duncan replied. ‘Until we try it.’

  ‘It might be nice,’ Keeley suggested. ‘My kidney and I promise not to actually absorb any.’

  Lizzie sucked a breath in through pursed lips. ‘Oh, that’s right, make fun of me!’

  ‘Mum, I wasn’t. I…’ Keeley started. But it was too late. Lizzie had turned away and was marching from the kitchen, loose-fitting yoga pants creating a breeze.

  ‘Can you smell burning?’ Duncan asked, sniffing.

  ‘Dad, I don’t really smell anything,’ Keeley answered.

  Duncan dashed forward, taking hold of the pan on the hob. Keeley leaned over his shoulder, looking inside. The red cranberries had done more than reduce. They now resembled hard black rabbit droppings and the sauce was less coulis and much more tar.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Duncan said, also looking into the pan. ‘Your mother’s not going to be happy. That was meant to be turning into a cranberry and jalapeno salsa to pep up her book club’s nibbles this afternoon.’

  ‘Dad,’ Keeley breathed, as
her dad put the pan down on a ring that wasn’t hot. ‘Is Mum OK?’

  Duncan put a hand to his short grey beard and mused for a moment. ‘Your mum hasn’t ever really done “OK”,’ he answered. ‘She generally ranges from “pallbearer” to “Elton John in his heyday” and nothing in between.’

  ‘I know,’ Keeley answered. ‘But she’s more “pallbearer” at the moment, isn’t she?’

  ‘Well,’ Duncan said, ‘it’s the time of year, isn’t it? The anniversary… of losing Bea… and you… getting up on your feet and getting your strength back… and… Christmas coming and…’

  ‘And?’ Keeley asked. She sensed her dad was holding back on her amid the fumes of cranberry and whatever possibly lethal lung-burning gold spray her mother had been trying to coat the fir cones with. She could feel her throat furring up.

  ‘Well,’ Duncan said again, ‘I think, as much as she does seem to love all these festive coffee mornings and nibbles with the neighbours, it’s all a bit of a… time filler.’ He looked directly at Keeley. ‘If you want my opinion, which your mother makes very clear she rarely does want… she keeps herself busy so she doesn’t have time to think.’

  Keeley nodded. She knew exactly what her dad meant. Since Bea had died Lizzie had more hobbies than I’m a Celebrity had witchetty grubs. If it wasn’t Krav Maga, it was yoga. If it wasn’t yoga, it was fundraising. If it wasn’t fundraising, it was dinner or tea parties with people who had never had much to do with the Andrews family until Lizzie needed them to fill a blank diary…

  ‘Listen,’ Duncan said, putting a hand on Keeley’s shoulder. ‘This isn’t your worry to bear. It’s mine. And, as her husband, the one that’s meant to know her best, I’m keeping a close eye and—’

  ‘Hiding in the man-cave any chance you get?’ Keeley suggested.

  ‘No,’ Duncan said. ‘I’m just… hoping it will all run its course. It’s not been that long and she can’t keep this pace of hobbies up forever.’

  ‘Mum has always been very determined,’ Keeley reminded. ‘It could really actually last forever.’ Particularly when no one could predict exactly how long you got with forever…