A Proper Family Holiday (17 page)

‘He’ll never eat all that,’ said Chelsea. ‘Surely?’

‘No,’ said Mark, ‘but it’s all-inclusive, isn’t it? So it doesn’t matter. You order what you want, Jack. Go wild.’

Mark ordered a twelve-inch American hot for himself. Bill followed suit.

‘Pepperoni gives you wind, Bill,’ Jacqui reminded him.

That prompted Bill to give a demonstration of his prodigious ability to fart to order anyway, pepperoni or not.

‘My old man’s a dustman … Thrrrruuuppp … He wears a dustman’s hat … Parp,’ Bill farted at the end of every line.

Wanting with all her heart to be able to sink under the tablecloth while her grandfather broke wind at will, Chelsea stared at the menu as though something that didn’t have a dough base might suddenly appear. There was a salad. She ordered that. When it arrived, it comprised a small breakfast bowl filled with iceberg lettuce topped with grated carrot and a teaspoon of tinned sweetcorn. It was the least appetising salad Chelsea had seen in a long time. She hated tinned sweetcorn, and the grated carrot looked as though it had been in the dish for a week. At the same time, Jack’s twelve-inch pizza appeared. It was glorious. The smell filled Chelsea’s nostrils and set her mouth watering. Worse still, Jack asked her to cut it into segments for him.

‘You can have a piece,’ he told her.

Chelsea could not resist. She hadn’t eaten pizza in a good four years, but that night, she was unable to hold herself back. Jack gave up after three slices, leaving more than two-thirds of the pizza on his plate. While he tucked into an ice-cream sundae, Chelsea found herself finishing off the pizza. She told herself it would have been obscene to leave so much food uneaten. It was flat out wrong to order something that would end up in a dustbin half an hour later.

‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d eat pizza,’ Ronnie commented. ‘Not the best way to keep slim.’

‘Well, you can’t eat pizza every day and expect to keep the weight off, but every once in a while—’

‘I don’t eat pizza every day.’

‘I wasn’t saying you do. I didn’t say anything about you. I was talking about me.’

‘It’s impossible, you know, to make a meal that everyone in the family will eat. I’ve got one who says she won’t eat meat, except her father’s bacon sandwiches, and another one who won’t eat fresh fruit or vegetables.’

‘That’s Dad,’ Jack chipped in.

‘The only thing they will all eat is chips and pizza. What am I supposed to do? Cook four different meals every night?’

Chelsea shrugged.

‘I do the best I can.’

‘Nobody’s judging you,’ said Chelsea.

‘Well, that isn’t how it sounds.’

‘It was you who said
you
were surprised I ate pizza.’

‘Well, I am. Still, I suppose you’ve got time to go to the gym. I haven’t.’

‘I don’t have that much time to go to the gym. I’ve got a full-time job, and trust me, no one in my office knocks off at five.’

‘Magazines like yours make life hard for people like me,’ said Ronnie. ‘You keep banging on about “having it all”. Well, the truth is, that’s impossible. You can’t have children and work
and
stay a size ten. Not unless your husband’s a banker, like the kind of blokes you seem to go out with.’

Chelsea felt a small stab of pain at the thought of Colin, the only banker she had ever been out with. Colin was engaged. He had well and truly moved on. Even so, a part of her, even now, wanted to keep the door open for him, just a crack.

Ronnie carried on. ‘I suppose you’ve got to keep yourself a size ten to be with a man like that or he’ll trade you in for a slimmer model.’

Chelsea had not told her sister that was exactly what had happened as far as Colin was concerned. She’d been traded in. Having said that, it was a long time since Chelsea had been a size ten. She had got herself down to an eight, a six in some brands, some five years earlier and she never wanted to see double figures on the label of one of her outfits again.

‘I like my job,’ said Chelsea, carefully avoiding the subject of her single status. She wasn’t sure Ronnie even knew Colin was no longer on the scene. ‘And I like to think our readers are intelligent enough to pick and choose the things that apply to their lives from each issue we produce.’

‘What about all those PhotoShopped models making young girls think they’re fat?’

‘I can’t believe there’s a single woman left on the planet who doesn’t know what PhotoShop is. But people want to see beautiful pictures. Whatever they say to the contrary, they don’t want to see fat models, and they don’t want to see their celebrities with spots.’

‘I do,’ said Ronnie.

‘Which celebrities have spots?’ asked Sophie, suddenly interested.

‘Some of them. Quite a few of them.’

‘Name names.’

Chelsea thought about Eugenia Lapkiss, who wore so much make-up over her acne scars she could barely move her face. She didn’t share the thought. She did not want Sophie to post the information straight into the cyber-world.

‘I still think what you do is irresponsible,’ said Ronnie. ‘I don’t see how it adds anything to the greater good.’

‘The fashion and beauty industries employ hundreds of thousands of people,’ said Chelsea, trotting out her usual justification. As her adrenaline rose in anticipation of having to defend herself yet again, Chelsea folded the last piece of Jack’s pizza into her mouth. Feeling attacked always made her hungry. She hated that about herself and often wished she could be like Carola, who dropped a dress size if anyone so much as looked at her funny on the Tube. Carola had almost physically vanished when her husband left her for the nurse. ‘The one consolation is that I can wear sample sizes again,’ she’d confided to Chelsea.

‘The arms industry employs hundreds of thousands of people as well,’ Ronnie carried on the argument.

‘I really don’t think you can compare women’s magazines with making guns.’

‘They both cause misery,’ said Ronnie. ‘People die starving themselves to look like models.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Chelsea. ‘Eating disorders have all sorts of causes, and I doubt that most sufferers would say reading
Society
magazine was the main one.’

Ronnie would not give up. She continued to harangue Chelsea about the magazine world’s irresponsibility for what seemed like another hour. Sophie watched in awe. Jack tried to change the subject to one of his kids’ shows, but Ronnie wasn’t having it.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Chelsea at last. ‘I’ve had a long day.’

‘Are you taking me up?’ asked Jack. He jumped off his chair.

‘I don’t think you’re staying with me tonight,’ said Chelsea, ‘not now your sister’s better.’

‘Awwww,’ said Jack.

‘Actually –’ as if on cue, Sophie clutched at her stomach – ‘I don’t think I should have eaten that pizza, Mum. I don’t think that bug is completely out of my system. I think eating pizza might have reactivated it.’

‘Sophie’s going to be sick again,’ said Jack, unable to disguise his glee. He knew exactly what Sophie was trying to engineer with her display of gastric distress. To maximise his chances of benefiting, he made a shot for his own Oscar nomination. ‘I’m afraid she’s going to be sick on me!’

‘Oh, Jack,’ said Jacqui. ‘You’ll be all right, dear. Your sister isn’t going to be sick.’

‘I don’t know that for sure,’ said Jack, with plenty of vibrato. ‘I’m frightened.’

‘She’s just having a twinge, aren’t you, Sophie?’

‘I don’t know, Mum. I think …’ Sophie covered her mouth and started to heave.

‘Oh no!’ Jack wailed as Sophie made a run for the nearest loo.

‘All right, your mum can bring you up to my room in half an hour,’ Chelsea told her nephew.

‘Thanks,’ Jacqui mouthed at her. Ronnie just nodded.

‘But I need half an hour, OK?’

What had Chelsea been thinking? Why had she said that Jack could share with her again when Sophie was so obviously faking? She needed some space for herself. The pizza seemed to have stuck halfway down Chelsea’s oesophagus as though it knew it would be coming straight back up the moment she was alone. She stuck the handle of her toothbrush down her throat to help it on its way. She didn’t have long before Jack came upstairs.

Chelsea knew her desire to stay thin had nothing to do with an early love of fashion magazines. She wasn’t a slim teenager, but she’d not been particularly bothered by her weight. The moment she decided she was going to do something about it came when Ronnie got pregnant with Sophie. The news soon spread around school and subsequently the whole neighbourhood. Chelsea still flushed hot and cold as she remembered the afternoon a neighbour had stopped her in the street to ask when the baby was due. Chelsea could tell that the woman thought she was being so ‘right on’ about it, talking to Chelsea as though she were a fellow adult rather than a teenage girl.

‘You must be very tired,’ the woman said, ‘still having to do all that schoolwork. When I had my first, I hardly showed at all but your—’

Chelsea didn’t let her finish the sentence. She didn’t want to hear her say, ‘Your stomach is so fat.’ Chelsea ran home to find her mother and sister in the kitchen, making baby plans. They were always making baby plans. No one seemed interested in what Chelsea was up to any more, not now Ronnie was pregnant. Chelsea could have got a tattoo on the middle of her forehead and she didn’t think Jacqui would have noticed.

Ironically, at six months gone, Ronnie was still scarcely showing. Chelsea blurted out the source of her pain. Her mother tried to put a positive spin on it.

‘She’s just a silly old woman, and your school jumper is a bit baggy.’

It didn’t help Chelsea feel any better. She went upstairs to her bedroom and cried for a while. Then she stood in front of the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door for hours, turning this way and that, examining her body from all angles. Every angle said she was fat. The mirror in the hotel room in Lanzarote still said exactly the same.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ronnie

Chelsea’s sudden departure had brought that evening’s family dinner to an end. Jacqui was upset that Chelsea seemed to have left in a mood. Ronnie was indignant. As far as she was concerned, Chelsea had been picking on her.

‘She’s got so superior since she’s been at that magazine.’

‘She can’t help what her job is,’ said Jacqui.

‘She’s not interested in anything that doesn’t come out of London. She thinks hanging out with her family is beneath her. She’s not interested in her niece or nephew.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Jacqui. ‘She helped you out today.’

‘I’d have done the same for her,’ Ronnie protested.

The men didn’t dare say anything. Sophie buried herself in texting. Jack played with his DS. Only Bill seemed entirely oblivious to what was going on.

‘Now I’ve had my dinner, I want that pint Dave promised me,’ he said. Bill’s memory was perfect when it came to remembering who owed him a drink.

Quick as a flash, Mark volunteered to help Dave chaperone the old man in the hotel bar.

‘Fine,’ said Ronnie. ‘I suppose I’ll take Jack up.’

‘Dave needs some support,’ Mark explained.

‘And I don’t?’

‘Oh come on, Ronnie, we’re on our holiday.’

‘You’re on
your
holiday. I’m continuing to do everything I do back home here abroad, and more.’

‘Chelsea doesn’t want me in her room while Jack’s cleaning his teeth and that,’ said Mark.

‘I don’t think Chelsea wants me in there either, but that’s what she’s going to get while you’re otherwise occupied with another bloody pint. Jack, say goodnight to your grandma.’

Exactly thirty minutes after Chelsea went up to bed, Ronnie knocked on her bedroom door. She was surprised when Chelsea opened it with a bright smile on her face, though perhaps that smile was more for Jack than for Ronnie.

‘All right, Auntie Chelsea?’

‘Hello, Jack. I’ve made up your bed. I bet you’re tired after such a busy day,’ Chelsea said. There was hope in her voice.

‘Not really,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t want to go to sleep yet.’

‘But you
are
going to go to sleep,’ Ronnie reminded him, ‘because otherwise you’ll be miserable in the morning. OK? You know how you get when you don’t have enough sleep. No chatting.’

‘No chatting,’ Jack promised, but he attempted an ostentatious wink in Chelsea’s direction that suggested he had other ideas.

‘Don’t let him chat,’ said Ronnie to Chelsea.

‘I’ll do my best. He does seem to like to talk.’

‘Go and get yourself sorted out in the bathroom, Jack.’

Jack took his toothbrush from his mother. She had already squirted a squiggle of paste on the bristles.

‘Make sure you clean every single tooth!’

Jack started running the taps.

While Jack was cleaning his teeth, Ronnie sat down on the end of Jack’s bed and let out a deep sigh. It was the kind of sigh that spoke of decades of disappointment. Ronnie lay back on his mattress and covered her eyes with her arm.

‘Mum thinks I was picking on you tonight,’ she said.

‘Really?’ said Chelsea, voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘I didn’t notice.’

‘I know you can’t help what goes into every magazine, but I worry for Sophie, you know. She’s really changed over the last few months, and I don’t think she eats as much as she should.’

‘She looks OK to me.’

‘Yeah? That’s because you spend every day surrounded by anorexic models.’

‘Right,’ said Chelsea.

‘Look, I’m sorry if you think I was unreasonable back there, but I’ve got a lot on my mind. I still feel bloody awful from that stomach bug, and I’ve been getting it in my ear left, right and centre. Mark doesn’t seem to understand Sophie is at that difficult stage. He thinks he can still joke with her the way he used to, but she takes everything anyone says so personally and she vents her frustration on me. It’s driving me mad.’

Chelsea’s iPhone buzzed. Her attention was immediately diverted.

‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you this anyway,’ said Ronnie, clocking that Chelsea was distracted. ‘You’ve obviously got more interesting things to think about.’