A Proper Family Holiday (24 page)

‘For ever?’

‘For ever. I’m your auntie. You’ll never get rid of me. Even if you get fed up.’

‘I’ll never get fed up of you.’

‘Good,’ said Chelsea. She gave him a hug.

Now that Jack was finally asleep, Chelsea crept into the bathroom to purge. When she came out, feeling so much better for it – God knew why she had eaten a burger that night – she stood for a moment next to Jack’s bed and looked down at his sleeping face. She found herself thinking about the conversation they’d had by the paddling pool that afternoon, when Jack asked who looked after her. Chelsea was not overly shocked to find the amusement she had felt earlier that day had dissipated and been replaced by a feeling that was almost an ache. In the centre of her chest, Chelsea had a sensation of actual emptiness. Jack’s question seemed to have uncovered a big hole in her heart.

Who was there to look after her? No one. No one. That was who. Even when she and Colin were together, she’d always been the one offering the cups of tea and the back rubs. It was so unfair. The French have a saying that in any relationship, there is the lover and the loved. There was no doubt in Chelsea’s mind which role she had taken with Colin. In all of her relationships, in fact. She was always the one dancing attendance, trying to be perfect, trying to be good enough to be loveable. No one seemed to take her needs into consideration at all. And judging by the way things had gone with Adam, the universe wasn’t about to send her a change in luck any time soon.

Chelsea lay back down on her bed. The backs of her eyes prickled. She tried to shake the sensation off, but eventually she could hold it back no longer and the sob she had been struggling to keep inside came out in an enormous snorting honk.

Jack was immediately awake.

‘What was that?’ he asked.

It had indeed been an unearthly sound.

‘Nothing,’ said Chelsea unconvincingly.

‘You were crying,’ said Jack.

‘Only a little bit.’

Chelsea heard him get out of bed and pad across the bare lino between them. He sprang onto the middle of her bed, landing so that he squashed the air right out of her. Chelsea struggled to sit up. Jack sat cross-legged on her outstretched legs and looked straight into her face as though examining her for hidden clues. He shone the torch part of his sonic screwdriver in her eyes.

‘Tell me what’s making you sad,’ said Jack.

‘Who are you? The Gestapo?’

‘Are they in
Doctor Who
?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tell me what’s wrong with you.’

She could hardly tell him the truth. Jack’s world was as yet untainted by the mysteries of love and the agonies of its demise.

‘I was thinking about a dog that your mummy and I had when we were little,’ Chelsea lied, as she gently directed the glare of the sonic screwdriver away from her pupils.

‘What kind of dog?’

‘It was a small brown dog, made up of all sorts of bits and pieces. It was a bit Alsatian, a bit collie and a bit sausage dog.’

‘Sausage dog?’

‘Yes. It had sausages instead of a tail.’

‘That’s just silly.’

‘OK. It didn’t really have sausages for a tail, but we loved it just the same. We called it Pebble.’

‘Have you still got it?’

‘No,’ said Chelsea. ‘Pebble would be very old by now.’

‘What, as old as thirty?’

‘In dog years, yes. But she got run over by a car when she was very young. That is why I was crying.’

‘Did she just pop into your head?’ Jack asked.

‘Yes,’ said Chelsea. That much at least was true.

‘That happens to me sometimes too. Mummy says if something bad pops into my head, I should think about SpongeBob until the bad thing goes away.’

‘If only I knew who SpongeBob was,’ said Chelsea.

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Jack. ‘He’s a cartoon and—’

‘It’s OK. You don’t have to tell me,’ Chelsea assured him. ‘I’ll think about … um … Garfield instead.’

Jack touched Chelsea’s cheek with careful little fingers.

‘Your eyes have been leaking,’ he said.

Chelsea wiped her cheek dry with the back of her hand. ‘Better now.’

‘When I grow up, I’ll get you another dog,’ said Jack.

‘You’re a very thoughtful boy,’ said Chelsea, ‘but now you should go to sleep.’

‘And I’ll always look after you,’ Jack assured her.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ronnie

Wednesday

Mark was especially contrite the following morning, not least because he had the kind of hangover he deserved. It was so bad he couldn’t even face a cooked breakfast, and Mark had never knowingly turned down a cooked breakfast. Especially a cooked breakfast that was part of an all-inclusive package. Still, as bad as he claimed he was feeling, Mark dragged himself from bed at nine, by which time Ronnie had been up and about for two hours. Her activity made him feel very guilty indeed.

While Mark was busy trying to regain some kind of balance, Ronnie composed and deleted at least twelve texts to Cathy Next Door, in an attempt to get to the truth.

‘What are you doing, Mum?’ Sophie asked her. ‘I’ve never seen you and Dad so, like, stuck to your phones before.’

Evidently Sophie had noticed Mark was doing a lot of texting too.

‘I’m just making some notes for things I’ve got to do when we get back home,’ Ronnie lied.

‘Why don’t you use a pen and paper?’

‘Because I couldn’t find a pen and paper,’ Ronnie snapped.

‘All right, keep your hair on. God, I was only making conversation.’

‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.’ Ronnie was horrified that she had ruined a chance to actually have a conversation with Sophie. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a lot on my mind.’

Ping!

Mark made another comical dive for his phone. This was ridiculous. Ronnie had to know who was keeping him on his toes. Could it really be Cathy? She had to get hold of his phone. When Mark sank back down on his sunlounger, though, he had his phone tucked in his shirt pocket. Mark, who once upon a time was absolutely convinced that putting a mobile phone in the front pocket of your jeans could lower your sperm count, was wearing his phone next to his heart.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chelsea

There was much excitement at the Kidz Klub that morning. As the parents dropped their children off, they were asked to sign slips saying that the Kidz Klub coordinators had permission to take their children across the quiet road from the hotel complex to the scrubby strip of grey sand that passed for a private beach. The children were going to have a picnic by the sea, because today – cue the fanfare – was the day of the Kidz Klub sandcastle competition.

‘Amazing!’ breathed Jack.

‘Yep,’ said Chelsea. ‘You could say that.’ She wished she had Jack’s enthusiasm for the little things in life.

‘We’re going in for it, aren’t we?’ he asked.

‘We most certainly are,’ said Chelsea. Building sandcastles didn’t sound too difficult, and an organised activity would at least remove the opportunities for free association and fighting that clearly came from the children being allowed to run wild in the playground. Chelsea and Jack went back to their room to gather Jack’s sandcastle equipment. Jack had brought a bucket all the way from Birmingham Airport. It had come in a kit along with two different-sized spades and a rake. The rake was already broken when Jack got it out of its packet, but that was not to put him off.

‘I can use my sonic screwdriver to make it brilliant,’ he told Chelsea.

Chelsea nodded. She knew better than to question the plastic screwdriver’s powers by now. She’d even let Jack hold it to the bruise that had developed on her forehead.

At the appointed time, Jack and Chelsea joined the other Kidz Klub members on the sand where they were appraised of the rules of the competition. There were to be two classes of competitors: children competing alone and children competing with their accompanying adults. Despite Chelsea’s assurance that he would certainly come up with a castle worth shouting about on his own, thus saving his aunt’s nails, Jack insisted Chelsea help him. They would be building their castle together in the ‘accompanied’ group.

When they had worked out how many people would be competing for the Kidz Klub sandcastle prize, the two coordinators on duty that day set to work on dividing up their part of the beach accordingly. Using a broom handle, they drew out a grid and allocated numbered spaces by pulling names out of a hat. It was all very democratic. Chelsea and Jack were allocated a patch near the water’s edge.

Jack was not best pleased.

‘Our castle will get washed away before we’ve finished it!’ he said.

‘No,’ said Chelsea. ‘This is a fine spot. The tide doesn’t come up this far, see, and it’s good to be close to the sea in case we need some water.’

Jack was quickly mollified.

Lily and Adam were late to the party. They chose a patch well away from Chelsea and Jack, thank goodness, though Jack kept craning over his shoulder to look at them. Chelsea reminded Jack that he had promised he would ignore Lily. Just as she would ignore Adam. She was still smarting from that crack about self-help books and her single status. As far as she was concerned, there was no point trying to mend that bridge. In any case, they had building to do.

‘You’ve got an hour,’ said the Kidz Klub coordinator.

‘An hour! Oh no!’

Jack went into a frenzy, jumping up and down as he tried to work out where to start.

Chelsea had not built a sandcastle for over two decades. The theory was simple enough, but it soon became clear that filling the bucket with wet sand and banging it out again was not going to be good enough to win the Kidz Klub competition that day. The neighbouring father-and-son team spent the first five minutes of their building time deep in a huddle discussing their plan. After that, they sketched out a blueprint on the sand and actually dug foundations with perfectly straight sides, using the handle of one spade as a guide.

In contrast, when Jack came out of his frenzy, both he and Chelsea had gone for a manic bout of bucket-filling and they now had eight crumbling turrets on their patch. Chelsea thought they looked good in an arty, Stone-Age settlement sort of way, but she had a feeling the judges would not be so impressed. The castle next door was growing steadily. Chelsea suggested to Jack that they start again.

‘Why?’ Jack asked.

‘I don’t think the coordinators are as artistically minded as we are. We see perfection. They’ll see eight random mounds.’

Jack was nonplussed.

‘We need to think about a real castle and model ours on that,’ she said. ‘We’ve got time for a rethink.’

‘Yes. We need a drawbridge that will go up and down!’ said Jack.

‘Going to be difficult with sand,’ said Chelsea, ‘but we could shape something that looks like a drawbridge.’

‘Will we be able to open it?’

Chelsea shook her head.

‘Then that’s rubbish.’

‘How about we go for something more like … like a cathedral?’

‘What’s that?’

‘You know, Jack. You’ve got one in Coventry. A big church. How about St Paul’s Cathedral in London? That shouldn’t be hard. We need an oblong base and then we’ll put a dome on top.’

‘But I don’t know what it looks like,’ said Jack.

‘Hold on,’ said Chelsea. She fired up her iPhone and within seconds she had a picture they could use as a handy template.

Jack studied the picture gravely.

‘But it isn’t a castle.’

‘Sand
castle
is a generic term,’ Chelsea assured him. ‘It just means a sand
building.
This is going to be so much more original than anybody else’s. No one else will think to build a cathedral. No one else will have a dome. We’ll have the only dome on the beach. It could be a winner.’

‘OK.’

Jack was convinced. They smushed the eight average-looking turrets into one big mound of sand that Chelsea set about shaping into the base. She had Jack put another two buckets’ worth of sand on top of that and showed him how to create a passable dome. They carved windows and doors into the sides of the building using a lolly stick. Chelsea mused on the possibility of using little bits of plastic found on the beach – crisp packets, for example – to make ‘stained glass’.

‘We could use this,’ said Jack, handing Chelsea the bright red wrapper of a condom. Chelsea buried the wrapper deep in the sand and covered both herself and Jack with hand-sanitiser.

It wasn’t long before the St Paul’s sandcastle was finished. Even if Chelsea said so herself, it looked fantastic. It was certainly a one-off. Without exception, everyone else had gone for old-school castles with square towers, crenellations and lollipop stick flags. Boring. Boring. Boring. They had to be on to a winner.

Chelsea suggested she and Jack use two lolly sticks to represent the cross on top of the cathedral as a final flourish. Jack agreed that was a great idea. Chelsea used a bit of blue nylon string – why was there always blue string on beaches? – to tie the lolly sticks together. Jack was delighted. But calamity was to accompany the placing of the lolly-stick cross. By this point in the competition, Jack was so excited he could barely keep still. He was certainly incapable of doing anything slowly. The base of the castle was so wide that Jack had to stand on tiptoes to lean far enough to place the sticks on top of the dome. And of course, as he did so, he toppled forward.

Unlike the dome of the real cathedral in London, which survived the Blitz of the Second World War, the dome of the sandcastle St Paul’s did not survive this unfortunate aerial attack. Jack put his knee right through it. The sandcastle was ruined in an instant.

‘Oh no!’ Jack was so shocked that at first he couldn’t cry.

‘It’s OK,’ Chelsea told him. ‘We can fix it. Quick, quick.’

‘But I’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined our cathedral!’

He wasn’t wrong. Together they surveyed the wreck of their afternoon’s efforts. Chelsea thought it could be salvaged but right then there was no point trying to smush the castle back into shape. The Kidz Klub coordinators had blown the whistle to announce the end of the hour and they were already beginning the judging. A minute later, the coordinators passed right on by the damaged dome without even stopping to commiserate. Jack would not be consoled.