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  When she gave birth to Jake, two and a half years ago, she promised him three things: her unconditional love and support, that she would never allow him to own a motorbike while he lived under her roof, and that he would have a childhood full of brilliant Christmases. Although this was his second, it was the first he was old enough to appreciate. As a result, Stephanie’s living room ceiling was thick with paper chains, streamers and balloons. In the alcove next to the fireplace stood a garish, overdressed, six-foot-tall Norway spruce, whichsince there was no husband or boyfriend to do it for herStephanie’s father, Harry, had insisted on schlepping back from the greengrocer’s around the corner, on the strict understanding it was to be referred to as a Hanukkah bush. Deciding that she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Stephanie agreed.

  SHE LOOKED DOWN at her watch. Almost three. Time for her break. Although she loved Christmas, she loathed her Mrs. Claus getup. What she hated even more was walking through the store wearing it. She didn’t mind the short skirt so much because it showed off her longand even if she did say so herselfshapely legs, as did the long stiletto-heeled boots she’d been given. No, what she loathed was the earphones wig. It made her look like that woman in The Sound of Music who, having been handed second prize at the Salzburg Music Festival, refused to stop bowing.

  Women who noticed the earphones tended to smile in sympathy, but blokes always made some kind of smart remark. “Can you get the football on ’em, then?” Yesterday a shaven-headed youth in a Manchester United football shirt, loitering suspiciously with his mates by the watches, had yelled out: “Whassit like shagging Santa, then?”

  “Not that good, actually,” she’d replied, grinning. “He only comes once a year.” Ho bleeding ho.

  What worried her most about being Mrs. Claus was the thought of being seen by somebody who knew her, such as her parents’ rabbi, or an ex-boyfriend, or perhaps some girl from school she hadn’t seen for years and who now looked like Gwyneth Paltrow and was in mergers and acquisitions. It wasn’t just the costume she would have to explain away. Far more important was why, more than ten years after leaving university (English, honors) and a successful stint at drama schoolnot to mention her great singing voiceshe could aspire to nothing more elevated, careerwise, than a temp job as a cheesy, piano-playing Mrs. Claus in a middle-market chain store.

  Stephanie finished with a quick burst of “Jingle Bell Rock” and then stood up. The place was teeming with the fraught and the frazzled. A few feet away, a middle-aged couple seemed to be having a major fight about driving gloves. Then: “Coooeee.”

  Her heart sank to her stiletto boots. It had finally happened. Somebody had recognized her. OK, she could always say her dad played golf with Mr. Debenham and she was just helping out because the store’s regular piano player had come down with Ebola.

  She turned toward the voice. Instant relief. It was only the tweedy woman bent on electrocuting her sister-in-law in Stoke Poges. She was holding up a Debenhams carrier bag.

  “Mini carpet bowls,” she cackled. “Byeee. Merry Christmas!”

  “You too.”

  Stephanie gave her a small wave and watched the woman disappear into the crowd. She was just trying to work out whether she had time to go to the loo and get to the toy department to buy Jake his main presenta Bob the Builder tool belt, on which she was entitled to a 20 percent staff discountwhen she saw someone even more embarrassing than Rabbi Nodel.

  She recognized Frank Waterman at once. Dark, swept-back hair, eyes the color of conkers, just a hint of well-tended stubble. They’d been in Cabaret together at the Nottingham Playhouse, six or seven years back. Stephanie had been in the chorus and he’d played Cliff Bradshaw, the romantic lead. During their time together, she developed the most almighty crush on him, but nothing ever happened between them. They exchanged hellos at rehearsals, went drinking with the same gang after the show, but since he was so resoundingly A-list to look at and always had stacks of women (not to mention a couple of blokes) sniffing round, she’d never plucked up the courage to flirt with him.

  The show had been on for a couple of weeks when the message filtered down to London that the production was particularly excellent and a theater critic from one of the broadsheets turned up. He raved about the show and Frank’s performance in particular, saying he possessed that indefinable quality common to all great actors and that celebrity undoubtedly beckoned. Frank had never looked back. These days, he was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s rising starand she was Mrs. Claus with earphones.

  Now he was coming her way, but since he was busy chatting to the woman with him, Stephanie was pretty certain he hadn’t noticed her. Plus it had been years since they’d last met and it wasn’t as if they’d had much to do with each other back then. Chances were that even if he saw her, he wouldn’t recognize her. Nevertheless she sat back down on the piano stool and buried her head in her music book.

  “Steph?” Bugger. OK, play it cool. Do not let him see you’re flustered. She looked up and forced her mouth onto full beam. “Frank? Frank Waterman?”

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I knew it was you. I said to Anoushka”glorious cheekbones, Fulham highlights“I’m sure that’s Steph from Cabaret. God, it must be what, four, five years ago?”

  “Nearly seven.”

  “No. As long as that?”

  “Yup. Time flies.”

  “God, doesn’t it? So, you’re Mrs. Christmas.”

  He was looking at the wig and smiling. Her hand sprang self-consciously to her left earphone. “A bit Heidi, I know.” A smirk of agreement from Anoushka. “Still, it’s only until Christmas Eve. Pays the bills.”

  “But what about the singing? Don’t say you’ve stopped. You had such a fantastic voice. You were into blues and jazz, if I remember. Ella, Peggy Lee, that sort of stuff.”

  “That’s right.” She was gobsmacked. Utterly astounded that he remembered. He turned to Anoushka. “One night in the pub when we were touring, Steph got up and sang My Melancholy Baby.’ She was outstanding. Had us all in tears.”

  “Really?” Anoushka said with a brief, polite smile.

  There was a moment’s silence. “Wow, stunning earrings,” Stephanie said to Anoushka, noticing the glistening pinkish-red stones. “I love rubies.”

  “They’re pink diamonds, actually.”

  “Anoushka designed them herself,” Frank said. “She runs her own jewelry business.”

  “Oh, right.” Stephanie nodded. Then the penny dropped. Anoushka didn’t run a mere business. It was a full-frontal corporate empire. “God, of course, you’re Anoushka Holland. I read that piece about you in last month’s Vogue. Didn’t your company just get bought out by Theo Fennell for eleven million quid?”

  “Eleven point five,” Anoushka corrected. Having been put in her place, Stephanie didn’t quite know what to say next. Frank picked up on her awkwardness.

  “So,” he said to Stephanie, “are you still singing?”

  “Yes. I do a couple of gigs a week at the Blues Caf in Islington. And I’ve had the odd bit in Chicago and Les Mis. Nothing major, though.”

  “Oh, it’ll happen one day,” he said. “With a voice like yours, it has to.”

  “But what about you? The critics loved you in Othello.”

  He blushed ever so slightly. Before he had a chance to reply, Anoushka broke in: “We really ought to be going, Frankie. I need to pick up a few bits at the General Trading Company.” She put a proprietorial arm through his. “We only popped in to buy that Dustbuster thingy your grandmother was after.” That last remark was clearly for Stephanie’s benefitto explain why the likes of Anoushka, her highlights and her eleven point five million, were slumming it at Debenhams.

  “And don’t forget,” she went on, “we’re due at the wedding planner’s at six.”

  “Tying the knot in the spring,” Frank explained.

  “Wow, congratulations.”

  “Thanks. We’re off to discuss harpists and doves. Bit bloody ca
mp if you ask me. Plus I’ve got visions of two hundred guests turning up to the reception covered in bird turd.”

  “Frankie,” Anoushka said, laughing, but Stephanie could tell she was cross, “how many more times? Otto has promised faithfully they don’t feed the doves for three hours before the ceremony. Now then, we really must get going.”

  “Yes, we must,” he said. “Sorry, Steph. It’s been great seeing you.”

  “You too.”

  “Sweetie,” Anoushka simpered.

  “Perhaps Anoushka and I could catch you at the Blues Caf one night?”

  Anoushka had already started walking away. “Yeah. That’d be good,” Stephanie said.

  “Catch up on old times.”

  “Excellent.”

  He gave her a soft smile.

  “Bye,” she said. A moment later he had caught up with Anoushka, who turned her head and gave a little wave. “Bye Beth, lovely meeting you.”

  ORIGINAL CYN

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  “Elizabeth Taylor died? Ah. Still, the old girl was getting a bit past it.” As Cyn switched her mobile to the other ear she felt the taxi slow down and turn left. “Are you sure you’re OK?” her mother asked tenderly. “I know how much she meant to you.”

  “I’m fine,” Cyn said, rubbing at the condensation on the rain-speckled window and peering out. “I mean, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

  “The vet did all he could,” her mother was saying. Cyn’s mind immediately conjured up a frantic scene in pet ER. She could hear the vet instructing everybody to “Stand clear” as he turns poor Elizabeth onto her shell and shocks her scaly chest with two tiny tortoise-sized resuscitation paddles. Half a dozen attempts later he wipes his brow and announces, “OK, I’m calling it. Time of death, ten after four.” His face etched with failure, he snaps off his rubber gloves and throws them into the bin. Meanwhile, a tearful nurse sniffs and covers Elizabeth with a tiny white sheet.

  “I remember the day I found her,” Cyn’s mother went on. “It was February 1981. The Canadian cousins were over and I’d gone to the garage to get some vol-au-vent cases out of the freezer. And there she was, hibernating inside a pile of sunlounger covers.”

  Elizabeth Taylor was by no means the only animal her mother, Barbara, had “rescued.” In the years before and since the tortoise joined the Fishbein household, there were assorted stray cats, lost budgies and the odd hamster. There had even been an actual lame duck, which, having been attacked—probably by a fox—had somehow managed to waddle the half mile from the park pond to find sanctuary in the Fishbein kitchen. Barbara found homes for all the other animals. Even the duck was nursed back to health and eventually, with much ceremony, released “back into the wild” of the local park. She wasn’t so lucky with the tortoise. Despite “tortoise found” notices stuck on virtually every lamppost in the neighborhood, nobody came to claim her. In the end the Fishbeins adopted her, but it was Cyn who loved her. It was Cyn who spoiled her with slices of tomato and painted ET Fishbein on her shell in Wite-Out, and it was Cyn who worried obsessively every winter about her not waking up from hibernation.

  CYN CARRIED ON looking out the window, vaguely aware of her mother chortling to herself. She was pretty sure the car showroom was about half a mile farther down on the right. Her heart rate started to pick up. Her very own shiny, freshly minted, brand-spanking-new Smart Car was sitting there, waiting for her to claim it. What’s more—and this was the truly amazingly fabulous bit—she was getting it for free.

  Cyn was a junior copywriter at a cutting-edge and very much on the up advertising agency, Price Chandler Witty. Occasionally, companies whose accounts they handled would, after a particularly successful campaign, express additional gratitude and appreciation by offering the agency a car for an employee to have on long-term loan. The “long-term” bit was fairly ambiguous, but it pretty much meant that unless the recipient left the agency, nobody would ask for it back. The deal was that the car would carry advertising for whatever it was the donor company manufactured. Of course nobody at the agency minded, since it was generally thought that driving around advertising a sleek PalmPilot, digital camera or laptop was a pretty fair exchange for a new car.

  Whenever a car came up—usually once or twice a year—the names of all the agency staff, from the directors to the cleaners, were put into a hat. The draw always took place in the function room at the Bishop’s Finger across the road and afterward there would be a bit of a party. Last week there had been a couple of cars up for grabs. Although they were from different companies, both happened to be Smart Cars.

  Cyn took no more than a passing interest in cars. It was partly that like many women she found the subject less than fascinating and partly that taking a proper interest would have led to yearnings, and yearnings ended up costing money. She had just bought her first flat. What with the mortgage payments and the loan on her new Ikea kitchen, she couldn’t even contemplate replacing her old Peugeot. Nevertheless she adored the Smart Car. Its tiny, almost cartoonishly cute wedge shape made her laugh. She liked the way its straight back gave the impression that it was in fact the front end of a much larger, longer vehicle from which it had somehow been severed. Even though it looked like the transport of choice of a circus clown, there was no doubt that the Smart Car had style. She was aware, of course, since it was the coolest, most must-have two seater on the market, that everybody who drove one looked like a fashion victim; but that night, as she’d sat in the pub drinking with her little gang from the office, Cyn had decided that if she were ever lucky enough to own one, she would find a way to live with the shame.

  Until last Friday Cyn had never won anything in her life, apart from the Yardley lavender bath soap selection box, which didn’t count because she’d secured it in the school fete raffle when she was nine.

  The first name out of the hat was Chelsea Roggenfelder. Chelsea was from New York and another junior copywriter at PCW. Since she had only been with the agency six months, it was spectacularly good luck. Chelsea managed to look utterly bowled over. A few meaningful looks were exchanged among PCW employees. Everybody knew she was loaded and that deep down she probably wasn’t feeling much more than mild amusement. The truth was that had she the inclination, Chelsea could have afforded to go out and buy a dozen Smart Cars. Chelsea’s father was Sargent Roggenfelder, the Madison Avenue tycoon who had been behind the advertising for a successful presidential campaign and several gubernatorial contests. Although she never said as much, it was perfectly clear that he paid the rent on her Sloane Street flat and had bought her the BMW Z4, the perfect zipping-down-to-the-country accessory.

  Her face on full beam, Chelsea stood up and pulled at the cuffs of her exquisitely tailored black jacket. With a flick of her Nicky Clarke highlights, she sashayed over to the tiny podium where Graham Chandler, one of the CEOs, was standing at the mike waiting to present her with her car key. On her way she stopped for a few seconds to smile and wave at everybody. One of the blokes sitting next to Cyn mumbled something about Chelsea’s performance reminding him of Catherine Zeta-Jones dispensing largesse at the Oscars.

  The applause was trailing off when Cyn heard her mobile ringing. She rushed outside where she could hear, only to discover it was somebody flogging plastic window frames. As she walked back into the pub she was met by loud cheering. It was a few seconds before she realized it was being directed at her. She frowned and looked questioningly at one of the temps from the office, who happened to be standing next to her. “It’s you! You’ve won the other car!”

  “Geddout.”

  “No, really.” Then she saw Graham Chandler nodding and laughing.

  After Graham had kissed her on both cheeks and handed her the car key, and Natalie, one of the PAs, had come rushing up to her, thrown her arms around her and made her do that jumpy up-and-down thing like kids in the playground, she went back to her table and just sat there with a daft grin on her face, completely overwhelmed. She was suddenly aware of how good new
s can be as much of a shock as bad news. Chelsea, on the other hand, was swanning around doing her best to convince people how stunned and delighted she was and that she simply couldn’t believe her luck. “This is just too perfect,” she simpered to Cyn, at one point. “Now I can keep the Z4 for driving to the country on the weekend and use the Smart Car in the city.”

  “Lucky old you,” Cyn said, with just a hint of sarcasm.

  “Yes. Lucky old you.” The slurred Welsh accent belonged to Keith Geary, another copywriter. Keith, who was lanky and awkward, with jutting-out hips and shoulder blades, had been brought up in a small mining town. He liked to think of himself as a Marxist and was forever taking the piss out of what he described as Chelsea’s Saks and the City lifestyle, particularly after he’d had a few, like now. Chelsea always gave as good as she got, though. “You know, Keith,” she said, making use of her elegant nose, which had been perfectly engineered for looking down, “in you, I really do see a face unclouded by thought.” Her tone made Camille Paglia sound affectionate.

  “And on you, Chelsea,” he said, “I see a head so big that your ears have separate zip codes.”

  Ouch, Cyn thought, suppressing a giggle. For once Chelsea was lost for words. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, goldfish-style. Then she turned on her long, spiky-toed Kurt Geiger heels and walked away.

  “That showed her,” Keith snorted, digging Cyn in the ribs. Then he staggered off, back to the bar.

  Chelsea had come to advertising relatively late in life. She never talked much about herself, but a couple of people had found out that after university, she’d spent ten years in L.A., trying and failing to make it as a screenwriter. Finally, she decided to make a fresh start in London. There was no doubt that she had found her niche at Price Chandler Witty. Even though this was her first job in advertising, she was creating a considerable reputation for herself among PCW’s clients. When it came to thinking up advertising slogans or designing campaigns, witty, razor-sharp ideas seemed to spill out of her like jackpots from a slot machine. It was quite obvious that she had inherited her father’s talent.