A Proper Family Holiday (3 page)

‘I don’t know how you can stand not using your brain,’ Chelsea had said the last time she and Ronnie were together. It was at that barbecue to celebrate their grandfather Bill’s eighty-third birthday (Bill was celebrated every year now, just in case). That was the comment that sparked the discussion that became a full-blown row that ended with Chelsea accusing Ronnie of having become a mummy martyr and Ronnie accusing Chelsea of having turned into a self-obsessed snob, and subsequently led to the sisters’ two-year-long estrangement.

‘
Not using my brain!
’

Mark had become used to hearing Ronnie exclaim those four words at random moments during their week. It was usually when she had finished overseeing Sophie’s maths homework or had finally deciphered an incomprehensible instruction in a letter sent home from Jack’s school. Ronnie would then segue into a rant about how Chelsea had no idea how taxing family life could be. Ensuring that two children and one other adult were fed, dressed, happy and healthy, all on the kind of budget that would have been tight enough for a singleton? That was no mean feat. And now Ronnie was working part time as well. She never had a minute to herself. From time to time, she really did feel as though she was running an army battalion. Chelsea did not have a clue what a mother’s life was like.

Perhaps that’s why she didn’t see the need to apologise for her remarks, Mark occasionally dared to suggest. Only when Chelsea had a family of her own – assuming she could ever hang on to a man for long enough – would she realise the gravity of the insults she’d delivered over a chargrilled sausage in a bun.

‘I don’t care. I won’t ever forgive her,’ Ronnie claimed.

Jacqui’s birthday wish was to change all that. Ronnie had to promise their mother she would put her anger to one side for just this week. For what might be their last ‘proper family holiday’.

‘The best birthday present you could ever give me is for you girls to be friends again, like you used to be.’

As though to emphasise her point, Jacqui looked towards that ancient photo of the sisters building a sandcastle on Littlehampton beach.

‘All right,’ said Ronnie. ‘But Chelsea has to make an effort too.’

‘I’m sure she will,’ said Jacqui.

If only Ronnie could believe that. As it was, about a month before the trip, when Ronnie picked up the phone to offer the olive branch so that their first face-to-face meeting would not be too strange, Chelsea acted as though those two years of radio silence hadn’t even happened. She just went straight into a story about some fancy cocktail party she had attended for work. As Chelsea twittered on about the guest list, Ronnie was mortified to realise that while she had been nursing the mother of all grudges, Chelsea had carried on regardless, not questioning her sister’s absence because her swanky London life and career were just
so
fulfilling. She simply hadn’t noticed she and Ronnie were not on speaking terms.

Reading Chelsea’s text from Gatwick, as she stood in the check-in queue in Birmingham, Ronnie fumed. She was certain that her snooty sister had missed her flight deliberately. Next thing, Chelsea would claim she couldn’t get another flight. Ronnie would have put money on Chelsea not coming to Lanzarote at all.

Chapter Three

Chelsea

Of course, Chelsea hadn’t missed the flight deliberately. Here’s what led up to her oversleeping and forgetting her passport.

On Friday – her last day at work before the flight to Lanzarote – Chelsea made careful plans to ensure she would be at the airport on time come Saturday morning. She arrived at the
Society
office a whole hour before the rest of the team to finish off all those jobs she could not safely leave to someone else in her absence. She worked through her lunch break with the intention of leaving the office at five on the dot, giving herself plenty of time to pack and prepare and get a reasonably early night in anticipation of the painfully early morning ahead. Getting to Gatwick in time to check in would mean leaving her flat at six thirty at the latest. Why did charter flights always leave so early?

By five o’clock on Friday afternoon, Chelsea was feeling quite pleased with herself. She was almost looking forward to getting back to her flat and starting the packing. Perhaps this week in Lanzarote would not be so bad after all. The weather had to be better than it was in London, and a sneaky Web search suggested there were cultural depths to the island that would give Chelsea a break from non-stop beer and karaoke at her parents’ chosen resort. She was just looking at some pictures of an idyllic naturally turquoise lagoon worthy of a fashion mag swimwear shoot when Davina,
Society
’s editor, poked her head out of her office door and barked that Chelsea should join her
pronto
.

There had been a catastrophe. Eugenia Lapkiss, the actress who was to adorn the cover of the next issue, was upset about the article written to accompany the sumptuous photo shoot that would fill ten pages of the magazine. She was furious, in fact, and her PR was threatening to rescind permission for the article altogether if it wasn’t rewritten in a more flattering light. Unfortunately, the piece had been written at great expense by a famously difficult artist who could not be asked to make the edits himself because a) he was on holiday and b) he would almost certainly refuse to do them anyway. No one touched his work.

‘You’ll have to do it,’ said Davina. ‘And you’ll have to do it now.’

‘I’m going on holiday first thing tomorrow and I’ve still got to go home and pack,’ Chelsea tried.

‘Oh, darling. I’d consider it a personal favour. We’re going to lose the cover if you don’t help.’

Chelsea didn’t even bother to protest further. She knew that there wasn’t much point. Davina had already turned back to her computer screen as if to signal that the conversation was over. It was left to Chelsea to work out how to put the damage right without offending the actress or the artist.

‘What was she offended by?’ Chelsea asked in vain hope of an easy answer.

‘All of it,’ said Davina. ‘I know you can do it, sweetheart.’

So, instead of going home just after five, as she had planned, Chelsea went back to her desk. She spent the next hour and a half on the phone to Eugenia’s PR, who explained in great detail exactly the image Eugenia hoped to convey with this ‘in-depth’ portrait in
Society
. Unfortunately, the list of things that could not be mentioned was far, far longer than the list of attributes and achievements Chelsea
was
allowed to write about. For example, Chelsea could not mention the three mega-grossing slasher movies that had catapulted Eugenia to fame, despite the fact that she’d only appeared in one other film. Admittedly that other film was a great film, but Eugenia’s three-line part was generally considered to be its low point. Neither was Chelsea to mention Eugenia’s love affair with the director who cast her in that three-line part. Or her brief early marriage to an adult-movie star. Or her current relationship with a huge Hollywood name widely rumoured to be gay. Chelsea should not mention Eugenia’s religious conversion (lapsed Methodist to fervent Scientologist). Or her nose-job (which she had to have because she was born with a deviated septum, not because she’d sniffed it to pieces with cocaine). Chelsea should not mention the landlord who had sued Eugenia for wrecking his Hollywood condo while on a drug binge, and she should definitely not go anywhere near Eugenia’s shoplifting conviction (as she had been confused into leaving a boutique without paying by the store’s fire-alarm test). In short, Chelsea should not mention anything that made the young starlet slightly more interesting than the average cookie-cutter LA blonde.

‘I will need approval,’ the PR finished.

‘Of course.’

Chelsea could see why Eugenia (or rather her PR) had been upset by the original piece. It was snide, and where it wasn’t snide, it was damning with faint praise. But there was the added problem that the artist who had written the piece to form part of a whole issue based on the theme of ‘art and beauty’ had an even bigger ego than Eugenia. How to change his words without him actually noticing …

‘He won’t notice,’ Carola, the assistant fashion editor, assured Chelsea when they met in the staff kitchen. ‘He won’t read it. I very much doubt he wrote it in the first place.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Serena. ‘Don’t you remember what happened when someone moved a comma in that haiku he wrote to celebrate the Olympics?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Carola. ‘That was bad.’

‘Thanks, girls,’ said Chelsea. ‘You’ve been really reassuring.’

‘You’ll be OK. You just have to make it so good that he won’t
want
to say it’s not his own work. Come and have a drink when you’ve finished?’ Serena suggested.

Chelsea had a feeling she was not going to be finished before last orders.

She delivered a first draft of the rewritten piece to Eugenia’s PR within an hour. The PR sent it back covered in red edits. Chelsea made herself another cup of tea and started again. The second draft fared no better. Meanwhile, the office emptied out. Carola and Serena went for their traditional Friday-night cocktail at Browns, where they hoped to bag themselves a couple of hedge-fund managers, except that all the hedge-fund managers were in private jets on the way to their supermodel wives in the South of France. Davina, the editor, swept past in a cloud of Chanel at seven without even saying goodnight, on her way to a Michelin-starred dinner somewhere. The lowly intern left as soon as Davina was safely out of sight. Soon Chelsea was alone in the office, waiting for the film star’s PR to make yet more comments. Or should that be complaints?

This was not the first time Chelsea had changed her plans to sort out a potential disaster at the magazine. And heaven knew losing a cover so late in the month would be a serious disaster. When she started at
Society
, Chelsea had stepped into the breach gladly, eager to make her reputation as a hard worker, but lately she was beginning to think all she’d actually managed to do was set a dangerous precedent. Now Davina didn’t think twice about asking Chelsea to stay late or blow off a long-standing arrangement to do something Davina probably should have done for herself, but that didn’t translate into any greater rewards. No pay rise. No promotion. Chelsea couldn’t help wondering if it was because there were aspects of herself she could never change through pure hard work: a state-school education and a family line that could only be traced back as far as the coal man. Among the daughters of aristocrats and generals who adorned the pages of the magazine and its office, Chelsea’s face just didn’t quite fit. In her heart of hearts she knew she would have to leave
Society
to progress. Go somewhere more egalitarian.

For now, though, she was stuck, waiting for copy approval, while the rest of London started its weekend. She used the time to browse the job ads in the
Guardian
’s media pages, making a note of a position on another mag. It was in the fashion department. Chelsea had always been in features, but she would love to be in fashion instead. That part of her teenage ambition still persisted.

More changes came through. By eleven o’clock, Chelsea had rewritten the piece eight times.

‘This is hopeless,’ said the PR when Chelsea finally got her to return a call. ‘Eugenia says why don’t you come to the restaurant and she’ll tell you what she wants face to face.’

‘What? Now?’

‘Yes.’ The PR gave the address of one of the hottest new places in town.

Thinking quickly, Chelsea grabbed a sundress from the fashion cupboard. It wasn’t strictly kosher to raid the cupboard without express permission, but she was sure that Carola would understand. Carola wore clothes from the fashion cupboard all the time. There was no way Chelsea could turn up at that restaurant to meet a film star in the jeans and sweater she had been wearing all day. The dress was perfect: a floral-patterned silk sundress by a new designer called Mebus. It looked like something Audrey Hepburn might have worn.

As she took a taxi to the address she had been given, Chelsea felt her excitement rising. Perhaps it had been worth staying late after all. Perhaps this would be the moment that made her career. She was going to get a face-to-face exclusive with the biggest rising star of the year. Hopefully she was going to get something nice to eat as well.

In the end, Chelsea did get a face-to-face exclusive, but only after having waited in the restaurant lobby for another hour, suffering the pitying stares of the reception staff, who would not even let her sit at the bar. When Eugenia, accompanied by her bulldog PR, finally deigned to come and speak to Chelsea, she added nothing whatsoever to her mystique. She was stupid and vain. Mostly stupid. She misquoted several religious leaders and philosophers, attributing the words of Homer Simpson to Socrates. Finally, she dismissed Chelsea with a wave of her manicured hand.

‘I know you’ll do me justice because I can tell you have a kind heart,’ were her parting words.

Tired and hungry, Chelsea felt anything but kind. She finally got home at two in the morning. She worked on the article until three. She had to be up again at half past five.

‘I better not miss my flight’ was the last thought that ran through Chelsea’s mind before she fell onto her mattress without removing her make-up. ‘I better not miss my flight’.

But of course she had missed her flight, and now she had twenty-four hours before the next one with nothing to occupy her but her sister’s increasingly accusatory texts.

Mum is so disappointed you’re going to be late.

Dad wants to know how you managed to sleep through your alarm clock.

And best of all …

How did you miss that flight? Why weren’t you USING YOUR BRAIN?

Needless to say, Ronnie’s texts didn’t make Chelsea any more excited at the prospect of spending the best part of a week in her company. Though Ronnie had made that olive-branch phone call, it was clear that she was still holding a grudge about the row Chelsea only vaguely remembered. What was all this stuff about ‘using your brain’? Annoyingly, Chelsea couldn’t even share the real reason why she wasn’t going to be in Lanzarote on time. Up until three writing up a half-witted film star’s philosophy on life? Once upon a time, Ronnie would have leapt on the possibility of celebrity gossip, but these days she would just think Chelsea was showing off. Sitting in Starbucks on the wrong side of security, Chelsea deleted Ronnie’s hectoring messages. Then she laid her bone-tired head on her arms and had a small cry at the thought of the money she’d had to spend on another flight, another early start and seven nights in a hotel where you couldn’t even flush the loo paper.