A Proper Family Holiday (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ronnie

Around lunchtime, Ronnie caught Jacqui staring at her again. It wasn’t exactly annoying, but it was certainly unnerving. Her mother was looking at her in such an odd way, as though trying to form a mental picture of Ronnie’s face that would last for ever. When Ronnie looked back at her, her brows dipping in a questioning way, Jacqui just smiled.

‘Is everything OK, Mum?’

‘Of course.’

Then why was she being so odd? Ronnie wondered.

Perhaps she was just feeling nostalgic. Perhaps Jacqui really had been thinking about her own mother more than usual lately. But Ronnie did not consider her mother to be an especially nostalgic sort of woman. Jacqui was loving but practical. She wasn’t much given to sentimentality. After thinking about it for a little too long, Ronnie decided there had to be a reason behind Jacqui’s sudden spate of soppy gazing and she could only come up with bad ones. She wondered exactly when her grandmother had passed away. Had they inadvertently missed the anniversary? Perhaps it had happened in August.

‘Mark,’ she said later on, ‘have you noticed my mum being a bit, well, odd these past couple of days?’

‘What, odder than usual?’ Mark responded. Ronnie swatted him with a newspaper, though she knew he only ever thought about her mother in the most affectionate terms. Ronnie had always been grateful for the fact that Mark and her parents liked each other. She knew that was relatively rare.

‘I’m serious, Mark. Don’t you think she’s been acting a bit funny? She keeps grabbing hold of the children and kissing them.’

‘Isn’t that what grandmothers do?’

‘I mean she’s been doing it more than usual, and I keep catching her looking at me in a funny way. It’s as though she thinks that after this holiday she’s never going to see us again or something.’

‘If only that were true. Your mum’s round so often, I’ve been thinking of asking her if she wants our garage converted into a granny flat.’

‘Mark, be serious.’

Mark merely looked blank. Ronnie pressed him for a more considered response to what she’d just said.

‘So?’ she asked. ‘Why do you think she keeps doing that?’

Mark shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe she wasn’t looking at you. Maybe she needs new glasses. Maybe you’re getting paranoid. It’s all the formaldehyde you’re inhaling at work.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Ronnie. ‘I don’t know why I ever bother to talk to you about anything serious at all.’

‘Well, what was I supposed to say?’

‘How about something thoughtful? Or useful?’

‘Bloody hell, Ronnie. Sometimes talking to you is like doing an exam. I don’t know why your mum keeps looking at you. I don’t know why anyone does anything. I’m just a man. Everything you women do is a mystery to me.’

‘Fine,’ said Ronnie. ‘I’m going to see what my sister is doing with our son.’

‘She’ll come and find us when she’s ready to hand Jack back.’

‘Assuming she hasn’t lost him in a cave.’

‘Ronnie,’ said Mark, ‘you’ve got to learn to delegate. Trust your sister. You’re on holiday. Make the most of it. Accept help when it’s offered.’

‘Like it’s ever offered.’

‘Chelsea offered to babysit this morning and that’s what she’s doing. I’m always offering to help around the house. You can’t say I never ask what needs doing. You just keep turning me down.’

‘Because I’d only have to do everything again when you’d finished.’

‘If you think I’m that useless, I don’t know why you bother with me at all,’ Mark sighed. He turned back to his paper. Then his phone chirped.

Ronnie glared at Mark’s mobile. Once again, Mark scrambled to pick it up with the kind of speed that instantly betokened guilt.

‘Who’s texting you now?’ Ronnie asked. ‘No one ever texts you. Now you’re getting texts all the time.’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Mark. ‘It’s just one of those texts that tells you to remember it’s expensive to call from abroad.’

Ronnie snorted. ‘You’re sure it’s not from Cathy next door?’

‘It’s a bloody marketing text,’ said Mark, waving the phone at her. ‘See?’

‘Then why did you look so guilty when your phone beeped?’

‘I did not look guilty,’ said Mark.

‘Could have fooled me.’

‘I’ve got nothing to be guilty about,’ Mark protested, lodging more firmly in Ronnie’s mind than ever before the idea that he must have reason to feel very guilty indeed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chelsea

Chelsea and Jack were back from the coach trip. Though Chelsea had only offered to look after Jack for the morning, she found she was unable to resist when he asked if she would take him to lunch. After that – Jack had a chip butty – they had gone to investigate the slightly smaller playground at the other end of the complex from the Kidz Klub. It was nowhere near as exciting. It was really a playground for toddlers. Chelsea and Jack ended up sitting with their feet in the paddling pool, discussing that morning’s events as they stirred the sand that dirtied the pool’s bottom with their toes.

Jack wanted to talk about the ice-cream incident again. He simply could not understand why Lily had taken against him in such a big way.

‘I don’t think you should take it personally,’ Chelsea assured him. ‘She spilt a drink all over me on the aeroplane.’

‘But that was an accident,’ said Jack.

‘I’m not so sure.’ Then, realising that she probably shouldn’t be quite so judgemental about a child, Chelsea added, ‘Perhaps Lily isn’t very happy, or perhaps she’s just been badly brought up and doesn’t know right from wrong like you do.’

Jack nodded in satisfaction. ‘She definitely doesn’t know right from wrong, and I do, but I still feel like I want my revenge,’ he said.

‘There will be no revenge,’ said Chelsea. ‘This isn’t
Doctor Who
. You just have to try to forget what happened. And avoid the Kidz Klub for the rest of the week.’

‘But why should I avoid the Kidz Klub? Why should I have to go in the rubbish playground instead?’

Chelsea’s heart went out to him. The hotel’s other playground was indeed rubbish. Even the toddlers were turning up their noses at the battered old plastic slide. Why should Jack be the one who suffered because Adam couldn’t keep his daughter under control? Chelsea felt her blood pressure rise as she remembered their altercation outside the coach back from the caves. He was such an idiot. Either he reacted badly because he was truly mortified his parenting skills were leading straight to an ASBO or he really was so blinkered he couldn’t see that his beloved daughter was a proper little madam. Chelsea wondered where the child’s mother was. She was almost certainly as much to blame. Or maybe she had left Adam because he was so spectacularly wet he had turned their only child into a monster.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Jack asked.

‘Nothing,’ Chelsea lied. At least, for once, she wasn’t thinking about Colin or her horrible boss at
Society
. Adam had given Chelsea a new focus for her bile. She winced as she thought of their exchange in the car park at the Blue Lagoon.

‘If we can’t have revenge,’ said Jack, ‘then we could beat them in the sandcastle competition?’

‘There’s a sandcastle competition?’

‘At the Kidz Klub. They made an announcement.’

‘I didn’t hear it.’

‘You were probably on your iPhone. The sandcastle competition is tomorrow and we could win a prize … but you said we can’t go back there.’

Jack’s shoulders slumped.

‘Well, maybe we can if there’s a competition,’ said Chelsea. She realised as she said it that she’d unwittingly signed herself up for more babysitting. She was surprised to find she didn’t mind.

Jack was delighted.

‘Auntie Chelsea?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can I ask you another question?’

‘Not if you’re going to ask me if I’d rather be a rhino or an elephant again.’

‘I wasn’t going to ask you that.’

‘Good,’ said Chelsea. ‘Because I don’t know how I’m supposed to get the answer right.’

‘It’s the rhino,’ said Jack. ‘Of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘But, Auntie Chelsea?’

‘Yes?’

‘Who lives at your house?’

‘I do.’

‘Yes, but who else?’

‘No one, Jack. I live on my own.’

‘No,’ Jack laughed as if the very idea were absurd. ‘Who lives in your house really?’

‘Me. Just me.’

‘But Grandma’s your mummy?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Granddad’s your daddy?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So why don’t you live with them like I live with my mummy and daddy?’

‘Because I’m a grown-up and I live on my own.’

‘People don’t live on their own,’ said Jack.

‘I assure you, Jack, they do. Hundreds of millions of people live on their own. The man who lives in the flat downstairs from me lives on his own. The lady across the corridor lives on her own. Lots of my friends live on their own too.’

Jack was silent for a while.

‘Auntie Chelsea?’

‘Ye-essss?’

‘Do you really live on your own?’

‘I really do.’

There was another pause while Jack took on board this unlikely news.

‘But who looks after you?’ was what he said at last.

Chelsea laughed. Jack sounded so very grave. She explained to him that she looked after herself and had been doing so for years, long before he was even born. She went to work to earn the money she needed. She paid the rent on her flat. She paid the bills. She did her own washing. She bought her own food and knew how to cook it. OK, so perhaps the cooking bit was a stretch, but yes, she was perfectly capable of looking after herself.

‘Will I have to look after myself one day?’ Jack asked her. He didn’t seem too happy at the prospect.

‘I expect so,’ said Chelsea. ‘Unless you find yourself a nice wife.’

‘I’m going to do that. I’ll get a nice wife. I know! You could be my wife,’ said Jack. He sounded very pleased with the idea. It was the perfect solution. ‘I will get the money and you can do the cooking.’

‘Sounds like a deal,’ said Chelsea. ‘Except it’s not allowed.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m your auntie.’

‘But you’re a lady and you haven’t got a husband already.’

‘I’m your relation, though.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s just the rules, Jack.’ Chelsea did not want to have to get into an explanation of the real reasons with a six-year-old. ‘It’s basically because I’m too old.’

The thought of Colin’s much younger fiancée popped unbidden into Chelsea’s mind.

‘You’re not too old, Auntie Chelsea.’

‘I’m thirty.’

‘Oh. That is quite old,’ Jack had to agree. He flippered his feet in the water to move a dirty seagull feather out of the way. ‘How long is it until you’re a hundred?’

‘Seventy years,’ said Chelsea.

‘Ha! You’re nearly a hundred!’

Jack seemed to have a loose concept of numbers.

‘I don’t know why you find that funny,’ said Chelsea. ‘When I’m a hundred, you’ll be seventy-six. That’s much older than Grandma is. That’s nearly as old as Granddad Bill.’

‘I’m never going to be that old,’ said Jack.

‘I hope you will be,’ Chelsea told him. ‘I hope you will be.’

Chapter Thirty

Ronnie

Seeing Jack and Chelsea so deep in conversation by the paddling pool, Ronnie had decided not to disturb them. What she’d seen had been more than a little surprising. They looked so happy in each other’s company. As Ronnie watched, Jack said something that made Chelsea rock backwards with laughter. Chelsea was obviously enjoying herself. As soon as she got bored, she would bring Jack back. Until then, Ronnie decided, she should try to do what Mark suggested and enjoy the peace and quiet. She took herself for a walk. It was ironic. All those days when Jack’s constant yakking did her head in and now she was finding it difficult to relax without the soundtrack of his high-pitched chatter in the background. She missed the constant whine of ‘Mummyyy’ going up like an air-raid siren every half an hour. Though she couldn’t have put it into words, Ronnie needed to be needed.

Sophie certainly seemed to need Ronnie less and less. She had changed quite dramatically over the past eighteen months. Ronnie had known it would happen, of course. It was inevitable. Every mother of daughters she had spoken to said the same thing – girls hit their teens and became strangers – but Ronnie still missed the little girl who was interested in what she had to say about life. Being the constant target of Sophie’s scorn was making Ronnie feel old. And God knew she wasn’t really old. She’d become a mother almost two decades earlier than many women did these days.

Sitting on the sea wall, Ronnie was stung by the sudden unbidden memory of Sophie, aged three, coming out of playgroup clutching a picture she’d drawn especially for her mum. She was such a sweet toddler. Very sensitive. Always thinking of others. It had really helped that she was such a loveable child because it hadn’t been easy, being a mum at such a young age.

There were so many things Ronnie had had to give up to become a mother. Not only did she have to give up her academic ambitions, she had quickly found herself losing her social life too. The friends she’d had all through school started to fall away when Ronnie could no longer be relied upon as a fixture in their gang for girls’ nights out. For a while, some of them would come over to the Benson family’s house. Baby Sophie was a novelty, like a new puppy. Unfortunately, like a new puppy, the baby could only hold their attention for so long, especially when she refused to be treated like a living, breathing doll and instead screamed her lungs out when someone tried to change her outfit for the third time in an hour. That was no fun for anyone. So gradually, Ronnie’s old friends moved on with their lives. They went off to university, left Coventry and didn’t come back except at Christmas.

The truth was Ronnie felt a bit lonely now that Sophie seemed to need her less and less. She also felt as though she was disappearing. Seeing Sophie blossom into a beautiful young woman was like a cruel cosmic joke when Ronnie felt herself becoming increasingly invisible with age. Even Jack didn’t need her so much any more. He had quickly transferred his affections on to Chelsea. Ronnie realised to her shame that she had half wanted Jack to have a miserable time with his aunt and come running back to her as soon as he could. That was messed up.