banner banner banner
The Little Christmas Kitchen: A wonderfully festive, feel-good read
The Little Christmas Kitchen: A wonderfully festive, feel-good read
Оценить:
Рейтинг: 0

Полная версия:

The Little Christmas Kitchen: A wonderfully festive, feel-good read

скачать книгу бесплатно

The Little Christmas Kitchen: A wonderfully festive, feel-good read
Jenny Oliver

'You know you're in for a treat when you open a Jenny Oliver book' Debbie JohnsonFrom the top 10 best-selling author of The Summerhouse by the Sea‘A perfect holiday read.’ – The Sun‘Leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.’ – Books with Bunny‘Intelligent, delightful and charming! The writing is exquisite.’ – What’s Better Than BooksElla Davenport is turning her world upside down. She’s ditching her cheating ex, swapping Carnaby Street for Corfu and heading back to the bustling family restaurant of her childhood. but returning home won’t be as easy as she thought…Meanwhile, her sister Maddy has always loved the quiet pace of island life but now she’s longing to escape. So when Ella arrives in Corfu, she jumps at the chance to trade places and soon she’s exploring the snowy streets of London in search of her own adventure.But thousands of miles apart and struggling to adjust to their new lives, Ella and Maddy are about to find out that all they want for Christmas is each other…Combining Jenny Oliver’s trademark warmth and mouth-watering bakes, you’ll devour this is one sitting.

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 (#uf7fb221c-a86c-573f-af6c-b81296a8345f):

The Vintage Summer Wedding

The Parisian Christmas Bake Off

The Little Christmas Kitchen

Jenny Oliver

Copyright (#uf7fb221c-a86c-573f-af6c-b81296a8345f)

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Jenny Oliver 2014

Jenny Oliver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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.

E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9781474007795

Version date: 2018-07-23

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 (http://twitter.com/JenOliverBooks)

Contents

Cover (#ud89d8f03-7b76-5ec7-a16e-22b4ef314ac2)

Blurb (#u2ca26cc5-2c7d-5124-893e-c42d362a4cd3)

Book List

Title Page (#u228adeb4-fa49-5ed0-b84a-deca503cb019)

Copyright

Author Bio (#uf7ad88a4-79c2-5582-98c9-aed842588e07)

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

Extract (#u25ace585-d76c-5c35-8c56-a38f3f142d00)

Endpages (#u0709799c-3f63-54fb-8470-d95fc79a9f0b)

About the Publisher (#u24fe4537-2164-532e-8e10-1baf5c1e81ca)

CHAPTER 1 (#uf7fb221c-a86c-573f-af6c-b81296a8345f)

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 bracelet 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.