I Heart Christmas, Part Three, Chapters 13-18 by Lindsey Kelk

Author:Lindsey Kelk [Lindsey Kelk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In my secret, quiet, keep-them-to-myself dreams, I had imagined that Monday might have gone quite well. I’d imagined the magazine going to press without any drama. I’d even fantasised about a bite of a sandwich or something, a little sit-down and three or four seconds to gaze upon my beautiful Christmas tree as a reward for a job well done. It was silly of me really.

Of course I wasn’t going to get any of those things. Of course I was going to be running around Times Square without my coat on because I was too much of a twat to grab it on my way out the office, searching for a psycho blonde who had gone AWOL with my goddaughter and was presumably also holding the fashion pages of my magazine hostage. The magazine pages were replaceable. Megan had already got a fresh set to Chloe, who had only sulked and moaned a little bit, before I’d even run out the door. Replacing Louisa’s daughter, however, was likely to be a little bit more difficult. Yes, there were a lot of blonde children running around Times Square but I felt a bit weird about picking one up off the street and legging it. Presumably because I wasn’t Cici.

I’d left everyone in the office on red alert to call me if the two of them showed up but I’d been running around Times Square in the snow like a headless turkey for nearly twenty minutes and nothing. I’d been to Starbucks but no one had seen them. They weren’t in Toys R Us when I pelted around there at top speed, checking everywhere from the Ferris wheel to Barbie’s Dream House and quietly congratulating myself for all the recon work I’d done in there in the past, even if I hadn’t known it was recon at the time. After that, I found myself stood outside M&Ms World, ready to slap myself. Of course they wouldn’t be in there – that’s where I would go, not where Cici would go. As if she would spend a second inside an establishment that did nothing but celebrate tiny chocolate nuggets of joy. She was an utterly joyless human being. I couldn’t shake the idea that she and Jesse were somehow in on this together, that they had been plotting this all along – to fuck up the magazine and get me fired and then nick off with Grace just to scare me and Lou. There were no lengths that Cici wouldn’t go to once she’d developed a plan – she’d proven that more than once before – and I couldn’t imagine involving a pre-verbal toddler in her schemes would give her that much pause for thought.

With no better idea, I began to head east, towards Radio City Music Hall. The streets were packed, limiting me to an angry hop, sprinting every fifty metres or so before coming to halt behind some old dears in furs, rattling on about kids today. What should have

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.