A Proper Family Holiday (12 page)

‘This will help you be awake more quickly,’ he said. ‘Mummy always opens the curtains when it’s time to get up for school.’

‘Well, there’s no school today. Worse luck. What time is it anyway?’ Chelsea asked. She dared not look at her watch. Whatever time it was, it was too bloody early. ‘Look, why don’t you go and knock on Mummy and Daddy’s door? Maybe they’ll be awake by now.’

‘Because I’m not allowed in the corridor on my own,’ said Jack. ‘Except in an emergency like last night. It’s in case of baddies.’

‘Baddies? Really?’ Chelsea rolled her eyes. What kind of horrors was Ronnie filling Jack’s head with? ‘I don’t think there are any baddies here in the Hotel Volcan.’

‘I know. I told Mummy I could get them with my sonic screwdriver anyway, but she said it wouldn’t work against baddies on Earth. I told her that’s stupid, because the sonic screwdriver works everywhere. It even works in outer space. Have you been to outer space, Auntie Chelsea?’

‘I haven’t,’ she had to admit.

‘I want to go there for my birthday. Do you know when my birthday is? It’s the sixteenth
OF
May. That’s after Granddad’s birthday, but before Grandma’s and Sophie’s. When’s your birthday, Auntie Chelsea?’

‘Not today, it seems,’ said Chelsea. She realised with a sinking feeling that Jack was not going to go back to sleep. If there was no chance of that, she had to get rid of him pronto. The clock on her phone said it was six forty-five, and Chelsea had had nowhere near enough shut-eye. If she was going to waste a week of her annual leave in Lanzarote, then she at least wanted to spend a significant part of it asleep.

‘Just run down the corridor and knock on their door. You know where it is. You’ll be OK.’

‘I’m not allowed to. I’ve got to have an adult.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Then wait there for a minute while I put on some clothes and I’ll take you to your parents.’

Chelsea didn’t want to get out of bed at all, but she would do whatever it took to pass responsibility for Jack straight back to his mother as soon as humanly possible. She made a halter-necked dress from a Melissa Odabash sarong and slipped on her flip-flops. ‘Come on. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to see you.’ Chelsea would certainly be delighted to hand him over so that she could go straight back to sleep.

‘Excellent,’ said Jack. He reached for his aunt’s hand to hurry her along. Chelsea reluctantly took Jack’s little paw and tried not to look too disgusted at the unmistakeable sensation of a bogey stuck between their palms.

Ronnie and Mark were not answering their door.

‘Knock harder,’ Chelsea instructed.

‘They might be asleep.’

‘I don’t care.’ If Chelsea was awake, she wanted her sister to be awake too.

Jack rapped double hard.

Still no answer.

Losing patience and eager to get back to bed, Chelsea went ahead and simply opened the door. As soon as she did so, she was greeted by the smell of vomit and something far, far worse. Instinctively, she blocked Jack from going any further in as she put her own head round the door. This was looking bad.

‘Why can’t I look?’ Jack asked her.

‘Mummy and Daddy might not be dressed.’

‘I’ve seen them when they’re not dressed before.’

‘I don’t want to think about that. Just stay there,’ said Chelsea. ‘Ronnie?’

There was a moan from one of the two mounds of clothing on the bed.

‘Ronnie?’

‘What is it?’ Ronnie groaned at last. Jack pushed at the back of Chelsea’s legs when he heard his mother.

‘It’s me, Mummy! Me and Auntie Chelsea.’

‘Wait there, Jack,’ Chelsea insisted. She stood Jack next to a plant pot in the corridor while she stepped into the room to talk to his mother. Jack set his sights on an imaginary baddy and fired off a couple of rounds.

‘Ronnie,’ Chelsea hissed from the furthest point of the room from the bed, ‘what’s going on? It smells like something died in here.’

‘I
am
dying,’ Ronnie announced.

‘Me too,’ said Mark.

‘Great. I hope you’re joking, because I’ve got your son in the corridor. What am I supposed to do with him?’

Ronnie struggled to pull herself upright against the headboard. Chelsea’s mood fell further when she got a good look at her older sister’s face. There was no way that Ronnie was faking how ill she felt. She looked as though a mad professor had reanimated her after she’d been lying dead for a week. She was actually the exact pale shade of Colefax and Fowler green on the walls of the
Society
office.

‘You’ll have to look after him,’ said Ronnie. ‘The doctor is coming to see us later on. We must have a twenty-four-hour bug.’

‘What?’

‘A twenty-four-hour bug.’

‘No. The bit before that. The bit about looking after Jack.’

‘You’ll have to. I’m sorry. Just give him some breakfast. I wouldn’t ask, but– we can’t–’

Chelsea protested. ‘Are you expecting me to amuse him all day?’

‘I don’t know, but he can’t come in here,’ Ronnie told her. ‘I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have to, Chelsea. Please, you’ve just got to take him away while we get a bit better. I can hardly keep my eyes open.’

At the same time, Mark let out a fart so noxious that Chelsea couldn’t have stayed in the room to argue even if she’d wanted to.

Chelsea wasn’t going to leave it at that, though. There had to be someone better qualified at knowing what to do with Jack than she was. Looking after her nephew had never been part of Chelsea’s holiday plan. Alas, as soon as she opened the door to her parents’ room, she knew she was going to get no joy there either. Chelsea’s mother, though she made more effort to get up than Ronnie had, still looked like death warmed up. Her father, being a man, was suffering far more dramatic-ally. He waved a floppy arm in Chelsea’s general direction.

‘We’re not moving. And your granddad couldn’t help even if he wasn’t shitting for Great Britain,’ Dave announced with charm.

‘You can’t ask Sophie,’ Jacqui added. ‘She’s not well either. In any case, I don’t think a fifteen-year-old can be left in sole charge of a minor.’

‘But,’ Chelsea tried again, ‘I don’t know what to do with him all day.’

‘It’s easy,’ Jacqui echoed Ronnie’s opinion. ‘Jack’s a lovely, easy child.’

Chelsea looked back down the corridor to where Jack was fiddling with the handle on a fire extinguisher.

‘I’m sure he is, but – are you sure this is just a twenty-four-hour bug?’

Twenty-four hours suddenly sounded like a very long time indeed.

‘Just get him out of here,’ said Jacqui. ‘Get him away from all these germs. Give him some breakfast. Take him out into the sunshine. There’s no point the two of you hanging around us and ending up with what we’ve got. It’s a lovely day out there. You can still enjoy yourselves.’

As far as Chelsea was concerned, babysitting Jack and ‘enjoying herself’ were mutually exclusive activities.

‘Mum, this is ridiculous. I don’t know what to do with him. And what if it isn’t a twenty-four-hour bug we’re looking at? You don’t seem to be taking this seriously. What if you all end up going to hospital?’

‘Then it’s a good job we’ve got you here to help us,’ said Jacqui, attempting a smile. ‘You’ll work it out, love. Just get out of here before you get sick too. Take Jack down to breakfast. He’ll tell you what he wants.’

‘I can’t–’

But Jacqui was already sinking back into the pillows.

‘Mum?’

Jacqui feigned sleep. Dave was snoring.

Chelsea closed the door on her parents’ room and stood with her hand on the handle for a moment, taking in the horror of the task ahead. So much for her plan to stay in bed until midday, then spend the afternoon reading. She really was going to have to look after Jack. She turned to find him, catching sight of him again just as he knocked the fire extinguisher off the wall. It fell with a clatter, missing his feet by a matter of millimetres.

‘Jack!’ Chelsea called to him. ‘For goodness’ sake, you could have broken your toes.’

Jack stood in the middle of the corridor, hands behind his back, the very picture of innocence.

‘I was only reading the instructions,’ he said. ‘I need to know what to do. In case there’s a disaster.’

‘The disaster has already happened,’ said Chelsea.

‘Is Grandma going to look after me?’ Jack asked.

‘Unfortunately Grandma is not going to look after you. She’s not very well.’

‘What about Granddad?’

‘He’s not well either.’

‘Sophie?’

‘Nope.’

‘Mummy and Daddy?’

‘You know they’re not well.’

‘Granddad Bill can’t look after me. Granddad Bill’s a dementor.’

‘You mean he has
dementia
.’

‘Does that mean you are looking after me?’ Jack couldn’t keep the excitement off his face.

‘Seems that way,’ Chelsea sighed.

‘It’s the best thing ever!’ said Jack. ‘We can go in the swimming pool. We can play cricket. I can tell you some more about
Doctor Who
.’

‘
Doctor Who
? Please, no …’ Chelsea groaned.

‘Yes. Hang on. What have I done with my sonic screwdriver? I’ve left it in your room. We need to get it, Auntie Chelsea. Come on!’ He grabbed her by the hand.

Chelsea felt exhausted already.

Chapter Sixteen

Chelsea

Breakfast in the Jolly Pirate looked no more appetising than the previous evening’s dinner, and given the state of every other adult member of her family at that moment in time, Chelsea was rather disconcerted to see several items she thought she recognised from the night before back beneath the greasy heat lamps. Jack wanted Rice Krispies, thank goodness. They were in an individual mini-box. Couldn’t go too wrong there. Still, Chelsea sniffed the milk before she let him have it. The milk was UHT. Chelsea had no idea whether it was off or not. Wasn’t UHT supposed to be bug-resistant? She let him have just a little.

Chelsea herself stuck to a piece of dry toast. She’d never heard of someone contracting food poisoning from toast, especially if you eschewed butter and the marmalade pot that had been stirred by a thousand dirty knives. Chelsea shuddered. People really were disgusting. The guy behind the counter offered Chelsea a spoonful of scrambled eggs. Chelsea saw them as though in one of those advertisements for germ-killing bathroom cleaners. The eggs were crawling with bacteria. They might as well have glowed radioactive green to show exactly how quickly the bugs were proliferating.

‘It’s all-inclusive,’ the chef reminded her, as the yellow mass wobbled on the spoon.

‘No, thank you,’ said Chelsea. She was tempted to add, ‘My family will be suing as it is.’

With their breakfast tray loaded, Chelsea and Jack found themselves a spot at the only empty table in the restaurant, which was sticky with spilled coffee. Ugh. The whole hotel was filthy. If the Bensons did decide to sue for contracting food poisoning, it would surely be a slam dunk.

All the while he was supposed to be eating his Rice Krispies, Jack kept up a ceaseless monologue regarding the characters of a children’s action adventure series that Chelsea had never heard of. Captain This. Princess That. King So-and-So battling the baddies. Chelsea felt her brain softening with every potted storyline he offered her. Meanwhile, she kept an eye on the comings and goings by the lift that led up to the hotel bedrooms. At about nine o’clock, a man in a smart suit arrived. He was carrying a large briefcase. Must be the doctor, Chelsea decided. Not even the hotel manager wore a proper suit. Chelsea continued to watch the lift for his return. He was only upstairs for twenty minutes in total. That had to be a good sign. Especially if he had visited all six patients in that time. Jack finished his Rice Krispies.

‘Right,’ said Chelsea, abandoning what remained of her toast. ‘Let’s go and see what the doctor said to your mum.’ There wasn’t a moment to waste. Chelsea had been awake and in sole charge of her nephew for less than three hours, but she already knew she would go insane if she had to listen to another episode synopsis of
Captain Tim and His Space Bimbo
, or whatever that kids’ show was called. If there was a chance to hand back Jack, she was going to grab it. She practically ran to the lift. Jack followed, still talking about space dust. Though he had to sprint to keep up with her, he didn’t even draw breath.

By now Ronnie and Mark were sitting up in bed with the sliding doors to their balcony open, so the room smelt slightly less fetid. It was still pretty disgusting, but Chelsea decided that Jack could go in there.
Should
go in there. Even breakfast with Jack had been enough to convince Chelsea that if they spent all day together, she would end up going more than a little insane. Perhaps if Ronnie saw her son, she would be encouraged to get better and take him off Chelsea’s hands much more quickly.

‘It’s a twenty-four-hour bug,’ Ronnie confirmed. ‘The doctor said it’s nothing to do with the hotel food, though. It’s all round the resort: hotels and self-catering places. We might have picked it up in the toilets at the airport, he said. People flush with the seat up; the germs go all over the place. You might as well spray the walls with diluted poo.’

Jack squeaked his horror at the thought.

‘Too much information,’ said Chelsea. ‘What else did he say? When will you be able to come downstairs?’

‘He said we’ve got to stay in bed until lunchtime at the very earliest and drink Diet Coke to get our electrolyte balances right. We can’t eat anything but dry toast. The hotel doesn’t do room service, but they’re making an exception. I don’t think we’ll be up before dinnertime, to be honest.’

‘And what’s Jack supposed to do until then?’ Chelsea came straight to the point.

‘What he’d normally do,’ suggested Ronnie. ‘You can take him down to the pool, but you have to keep an eye on him. You don’t have to go in with him, but don’t let him out of your sight. Seriously, do not let your attention wander for a moment. I’m not kidding, Chelsea. You’ve got to watch him all the time. It’s not just the danger of drowning; it’s the—’

‘Baddies,’ Jack elaborated.