A Proper Family Holiday (26 page)

Having cleaned her teeth and taken off her make-up, Ronnie listened at the door for clues that it was safe to come out. She could hear nothing. Mark hadn’t switched on the television, which was a good sign, but neither could she hear him snoring. It didn’t take long for him to start snoring once he shut his eyes.

Ronnie took a deep breath. She couldn’t stay in the bathroom all night. She turned the door handle as quietly as she was able and pushed the door open slowly so that it emitted just the slightest of squeaks. Even a dog would have had trouble hearing a squeak so very tiny.

‘All right?’ Mark piped up.

Damn, thought Ronnie, he wasn’t asleep.

‘What are you creeping about for?’

‘I was trying not to wake you,’ Ronnie explained. ‘I thought you might have already nodded off.’

‘Not tonight,’ said Mark. He had stripped down to his boxer shorts. He was propped against the pillows with his hands folded across his ample stomach. He patted the empty side of the bed.

‘I’m not feeling great,’ Ronnie told him before she even sat down. ‘I think it must have been something I ate from the buffet.’

‘Again? What did you have?’ Mark was immediately concerned.

‘I don’t know. The chicken curry? I had some of that.’

‘I did too,’ said Mark. ‘I feel all right.’

‘Well, it won’t have been the whole batch that had something wrong with it. It might have been just one piece of chicken.’

‘Do you want me to call for the doctor?’

‘No, I’ll be fine. I’ll just lie down. I’m sure it will pass.’

‘We ought to tell somebody. If you’ve got that bug again, like your mother thinks she has, then somebody needs to know. We might get compensation.’

‘I don’t want to think about that now. I just want to go to sleep.’

‘Do you want me to rub your stomach?’

‘That’s the last thing I want,’ Ronnie snapped. ‘I mean, just because it’s feeling a bit tender. That’s all I meant. Thank you, love.’

Mark stood up. He pulled on a T-shirt.

‘I suppose I’ll get ready for bed, then.’

He shut himself in the bathroom, leaving his phone on the bedside table.

Ronnie wrestled with her conscience for a matter of seconds. She knew she shouldn’t check the messages on Mark’s phone, but how could she possibly resist this opportunity? Besides, there were so many uncertainties in her life at the moment, not least her mum. It would be good to get at least one of them straightened out. In all probability, Mark had been texting some competition line or something like that. That would be a stupid thing to do, given that it was probably costing him a fortune, but it wouldn’t be so bad. Slowly Ronnie reached for the phone.

The phone was locked, but luckily Mark was not the kind of person who bothered to change the passcode from the factory setting. Four zeros gave Ronnie access to everything. She started with his call log. Mark didn’t seem to have called anyone except Ronnie and his boss for the past two weeks. At least he hadn’t been calling another woman, assuming he wasn’t having an affair with his boss’s wife, the dowdy fifty-something who ran the office. But his texts …

Ronnie went into Mark’s text messages. The majority were from Ronnie herself or from Sophie. There was nothing in his inbox more recent than a week old. Ronnie scrolled down, down, down. Mark must have been deleting the messages he’d been receiving all week. She could find nothing incriminating and yet someone other than Ronnie or Sophie had obviously been texting him. Ronnie didn’t know whether finding nothing was worse than finding screeds of love notes. In Ronnie’s case, it was probably worse. Her imagination knew no bounds. And then it happened. Mark got another text.

Ronnie immediately jabbed to open the message. It was from Cathy, their neighbour back in Coventry. What did she want this time?

Have you done it yet? Cathy’s text asked him. I’m in your house, feeding your cat, looking at a photo of the pair of you with your arms round each other and wondering when you’re going to put me out of my misery.

Oh God. Ronnie covered her mouth. She heard Mark flush the toilet. Quickly she went to mark the text as ‘unread’ but managed to delete it in the process. Had Mark heard the text alert sound? Ronnie put the phone back on his bedside table and prayed he had no idea that an SMS had come in.

Mark did not look in the least bit shifty when he emerged from the bathroom. Neither did he rush to look at his phone. Ronnie lay on her side, turned away from him, her mind racing as she tried to remember exactly what the text had said. It was unbelievable. Right then, Cathy, the woman Ronnie considered her friend, was in her house, staring at her photos, wondering when Mark was going to tell Ronnie he was leaving her so that he could move in next door.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chelsea

Thursday

Chelsea had not much sleep. Jack had kept her awake until late, endlessly replaying the sandcastle disaster. It had taken her a long time to persuade him that he wasn’t the loser he seemed to think he was. He’d just been unlucky. When he finally fell asleep, Chelsea leapt from the bed with relief. She held down the back of her tongue with her toothbrush and got rid of that evening’s dinner: fish and chips from the Jolly Pirate, followed by half an ice-cream sundae. Jack’s ice-cream sundae.

Jack’s late night did not stop him from waking up early. Once again, Chelsea woke to find him standing over her, examining her for signs of life. He reminded Chelsea of a cat the Benson sisters had shared when they were little, after Pebble the mongrel dog died. At first, Chelsea had found it endearing the way that cat would stand on her chest when he wanted her to wake up. Then she saw some horror film in which a cat sucked a baby’s breath out of its lungs. She felt very differently after that.

‘Jack,’ she said to her nephew, ‘you really can’t just stare at someone to make them wake up.’

‘It works on you,’ was Jack’s rationale.

That much was true.

They went down to breakfast. Jack had two sausage sandwiches. By now, Chelsea knew how to do the spread ‘properly’ and Jack pronounced her sandwiches ‘perfect’. After that, they discussed their entertainment options for the day. Chelsea was keen to keep Jack well out of Smug Dad – as she had come to think of Adam – and Lily’s way. She suggested another day trip. They could go to the volcano. As they were discussing the merits of going before or after lunch, one of the Kidz Klub coordinators came through the restaurant, trying to drum up custom for the day. Jack didn’t even look up, but then—

‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, today it’s the Kidz Klub Olympics!’ the coordinator announced. ‘We’re going to have races and team games and plenty of prizes, but we need contestants. Who’s going to join us? Who thinks they’re fast enough to be a Kidz Klub winner?’

The coordinator looked around. Several children were already getting to their feet. The triumphs of the London Olympics were still relatively fresh in their young minds. Chelsea was suddenly aware that Jack was standing up too.

‘It’s another competition, Auntie Chelsea, and this time we could definitely win!’

Or perhaps not. An hour later, and against Chelsea’s better judgement, they were back in the Kidz Klub, and unfortunately, Jack was not much of an athlete. Chelsea’s heart ached to see him attempting to take part in a potato and spoon race. (Of course,
egg
and spoon races had been banned on the grounds of health and safety.) It took him for ever to get the potato properly balanced, and when he did, there was no chance he would be able to move an inch without dropping it, let alone run to the finish line. The same three children seemed to be winning everything. They were covered with cheap plastic medals. The only consolation was that the races were split by sex, so Jack didn’t have to compete directly with Lily, who was cleaning up in the girls’ contest.

It would not have been so heartbreaking had Jack not been too bothered, but Chelsea knew that he was trying so desperately hard. Why couldn’t they have had a competition that played to his strengths, like solving a puzzle? Jack was so much brighter than the other kids, she was sure.

‘That’s it,’ said Jack, as he limped home from a race that had involved skipping with a hoop. Jack could not seem to get through the hoop without bashing himself on the forehead each time. ‘I didn’t win anything. Lily won more sweets.’

‘She had less competition in her races,’ Chelsea tried. ‘The girls’ races were much slower.’

Jack shook his head. That didn’t matter to him.

‘Shall we go and find Grandma?’ Chelsea suggested. ‘We can see if she wants a walk on the beach.’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘The Olympics haven’t finished yet.’

There was one more race to go.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the parents’ race.’

‘Jack, I’m not a parent,’ Chelsea pointed out.

‘Please,’ said Jack. ‘No one will know. You could win it, Auntie Chelsea.’

‘I’ve never won a race in my life. Your mum was the athlete in the family.’

‘Mum can’t run,’ said Jack flatly.

‘She could,’ Chelsea assured him. ‘Once upon a time, she was the fastest girl in school.’

‘Then you must be the second fastest. Auntie Chelsea, please. The winner gets a massive prize.’

Chelsea looked at her nephew. She looked at the prizes on the Kidz Klub coordinators’ desk. They didn’t honestly look worth breaking into a sweat for, but Jack … It was worth breaking into a sweat for Jack, wasn’t it?

‘Pleeeeeeeese?’

His eyes were big and round, just as they had been that first night, when Mark dumped him in her room. Chelsea felt her own eyes prickle. How had he managed to get so far under her skin?

The chief coordinator explained what was required for the parents’ event. It was quite simple, he assured them. Except that it wasn’t so simple at all … The challenge had been honed over many years. The parents’ race would encompass each of the various disciplines in which the children had competed that afternoon: swimming, sprinting, skipping with a hoop, balancing a potato on a spoon and jumping in a sack.

‘I can’t do all that,’ said Chelsea to Jack. ‘I’m sorry. There’s really no point. You know I’m not going to win. I’m hopeless at sport.’

‘But you’re good at cricket,’ Jack protested, remembering that long-ago barbecue. ‘That’s sport. And look at everyone else. They’re fatter than you are. You could totally be the winner.’

‘Jack, please—’

Jack pushed his aunt towards the coordinators.

Family honour was at stake.

So Chelsea found herself lining up at the starting line with the three other parents who had been unable to think of a plausible reason why they shouldn’t make fools of themselves in this pantomime pentathlon. Chelsea regarded her competition. All three of the other contestants were men. Two of them looked as though they got most of their exercise lifting a pint glass between table and mouth. There was a chance Chelsea would leave them both standing. The third contestant was Adam. Adam caught Chelsea looking at him and returned her stare impassively. He was trying to psych her out. Well, he’d have to try harder than that. It was Adam who made Chelsea realise exactly what she had to do. Her heart actually squeezed as she remembered the previous night’s conversation with Jack.

‘Maybe we’re just not meant to be winners,’ was what he’d said at one point.

How could a six-year-old think that? Six-year-olds were supposed to be full of irrepressible optimism and enthusiasm. They were meant to think they would grow up to be astronauts and movie stars. No ocean was too wide for a six-year-old to swim. No mountain was too high for a six-year-old to climb. And yet Jack had allowed the thought of failure to enter his tiny, pure mind. It was all downhill from there until he wound up failing all his GCSEs and ended up on benefits. Chelsea could not let that happen to her nephew. She was going to have to show him that determination and true grit still counted for something. She was going to run this stupid parents’ race as though it was possible to win it.

Jack was standing to the side of the starting line with his fists curled into little balls through the strain of it all. Chelsea winked at him.

‘Think, “winner”,’ she said, making her thumbs and index fingers into the shape of a W.

‘Winner,’ Jack responded in kind, though he had a bit of trouble with the thumb-and-forefinger thing. He got it close enough.

Chapter Forty

Sophie

While Jack had spent the morning exerting himself in the sunshine, his sister, Sophie, had not moved from her room.

Sophie was extremely happy with how the room arrangement had panned out that week in Lanzarote. She felt very grown-up indeed as she lazed in the bedroom she now had to herself. She held her iPhone at arm’s length and captured herself luxuriating against the pillows on her bed, wearing nothing but her bikini. She pouted and turned her head, regarding the lens through downcast eyes and long lashes. The photo looked fantastic.

Sophie attached the picture to a text message for her new friend and pressed ‘send’.

He responded at once. U R so hot. Come see me tonite.

What time? Sophie responded.

6. Outside the bar. Clubbin later?

Yeah. Sure was Sophie’s reply.

Sophie hoped her response had seemed suitably casual, but in reality she felt anything but casual about the arrangement she had just made for that night. Forget about Harrison Collerick back in Coventry. As far as Sophie was concerned, Skyler could have him now. Sophie wasn’t going to waste her time on little boys like Harrison any more, not when she knew she was attractive to a real man. A grown man. A man who had a job, a car and a place of his own. At least, that’s what he’d told her that afternoon in the back of the currency exchange. Harrison was just a baby by comparison. A kid.

The only problem was that Sophie would have to get permission to stay out late enough to go clubbing. Her curfew back at home was nine o’clock. Ten o’clock on very special occasions only, and even then her father would insist on picking her up, which always cramped her style. Why couldn’t he be like Skyler’s father, who preferred to stay home in front of the TV rather than act as his daughter’s taxi service?