A Proper Family Holiday (35 page)

‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’

‘It’s worth doing. That’s what you’ve always said to me. It’s worth getting a proper education. Why don’t you believe the same for you? You know that Dad would support you every step of the way.’

‘Would he?’

‘He told me he would.’

‘Did he? When?’

‘Ages ago. Dad and I talk about lots of stuff. He loves you and he wants you to be happy. He hates that you have to do that job at the undertaker’s; he’s been doing everything he can to get more hours so you don’t have to go there. He wants you to have the freedom to do something you really want to do.’

‘Does he?’

Sophie nodded.

It seemed so at odds with what Ronnie suspected of him after reading Cathy’s text. She almost revealed her suspicions to Sophie, but decided her daughter had probably had enough family news to digest for one day.

Ronnie decided she would tackle Mark about their next-door neighbour when they were safely back in Coventry. She’d seen the way he’d swung into action to protect his little girl that night. Mark wasn’t the type of man who would give up on his children easily. Perhaps that meant he wouldn’t give up on Ronnie so easily either. Perhaps there was still hope.

Later that night, the screen of Ronnie’s mobile cast a little square of light on the ceiling of the room she shared with Mark. She had a text. It was from Chelsea.

You OK, sis?

Well as can be expected.

You’ll always be my favourite sister, Chelsea responded.

And you’ll always be mine, Ronnie wrote.

‘Who are you texting, love?’ Mark stretched out his arm and laid it across Ronnie’s stomach.

‘Just Chelsea,’ she said. ‘I’m just letting her know that everything’s OK. Everything is back to normal again.’

‘Mmmm.’

Mark was half asleep. Ronnie turned off her phone and put it back on the nightstand. All Ronnie wanted to do right then was close her eyes and thank God that she had made it through the day. Her daughter was safe and well. She had her whole family around her. She just had to keep them together. That was the only thing that mattered now.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chelsea

Friday

Adam’s parting words about the fancy-dress competition had got Chelsea thinking. It was wonderful that he had turned out not to be such a smug dad after all, but his comment that Jack was a good loser had twisted in her gut. Yes, it was a good thing that Jack was a child who could be unusually gracious in defeat, but Chelsea did not like the idea the word ‘loser’ being appended to her nephew at all. Not one bit.

The fancy-dress competition was important to Jack. No matter how much he had insisted he no longer cared enough to compete, Chelsea knew she could not let the competition pass by. There was only one person who could make sure Jack had a costume worth wearing.

Chelsea dug the little brass lamp out of the wastepaper bin. She rubbed it to clean it off, half hoping that a genie would come out. There was no genie, of course, but as Chelsea made the lamp shine, she knew at last where she was going to find the magic she and Jack needed. She pulled the Mebus dress out of the wardrobe and scrutinised it under the feeble light of the eco-friendly bulb. That blackcurrant stain was never going to come out, but perhaps Lily and Adam had done her a favour.

‘Jack Benson-Edwards, you will go to the ball.’

It was two o’clock in the morning, but Chelsea had no time to lose. She needed a pair of scissors and she needed a sewing kit. Where should she start? She didn’t have high hopes for the hotel reception. The Hotel Volcan was the kind of place where the hairdryers were attached to the walls to prevent theft. It was very unlikely they would have any of those complimentary sewing kits going spare. As it turned out, though, they had something better.

The man looking after the reception that night was using the time to sew buttons onto his shirts. He didn’t just have one of those sewing kits with the ready-threaded needles; he had a full-on sewing box with everything you could imagine inside it.

‘It’s my wife’s,’ he explained with a blush.

‘All the best men know how to sew,’ said Chelsea. It was a pity she had a fairly rudimentary concept of the ancient skill herself. Still, she knew a lot of people who could give her great instructions. Many of them would be asleep at that particular moment, but …

Chelsea telephoned a contact at a fashion house in Los Angeles. It was only seven in the evening there. Miraculously, her friend picked up the phone.

‘Ellie, I need a pattern for a waistcoat, big enough for a six-year-old boy, and I need it faxed through to Lanzarote right now.’

‘Lanzarote? What are you doing there?’

‘It’s actually a very culturally important island,’ Chelsea replied defensively.

‘I know,’ said Ellie. ‘I love the place. But why do you need a waistcoat pattern?’

Chelsea explained the competition. ‘Look, could you do this for me? I promise you’ll be heavily featured in the next issue of
Society
.’

‘Give me the fax number. I’ll see what I can do. How tall is the boy?’

Chelsea made a guess. ‘And the waistcoat needs to have something of the East about it. The theme is
Arabian Nights
.’

‘Oh my God,’ Ellie exclaimed. ‘That’s Angelo’s inspiration for next season. This is fate.’

‘Maybe,’ said Chelsea. ‘Could you hurry up?’

‘Your wish is my command. See? You’ve even got me talking like a genie. What’s your fax number?’

The pattern came through to the fax machine in the hotel reception on four sheets of A4.

Chelsea hadn’t picked up a needle and thread since she was thirteen years old and had to make a dirndl skirt of the type that hadn’t even been fashionable when her mother was a child. She laid the pattern on the hotel’s front desk. Because it had been faxed through, some of the pieces had to be taped together. It should have been easy, but in Chelsea’s hands, it was like one of the harder puzzles in
The Krypton Factor
. Eventually, with the help of the guy on reception, she thought she had it.

Chelsea smoothed out the dress, spread the skirt to maximise its area and started to pin on the pieces of the pattern. At last she was ready to make the first cut.

‘Please don’t let this be the worst mistake I’ve made in my life.’ Chelsea closed her eyes and prayed as she brought the blades of the scissors together.

The Mebus dress had been a goner anyway. After a week of marinating in blackcurrant juice, it was already beyond the help of even the very best dry-cleaners. Now it was fit for nothing but the rag bag. Or the fancy-dress box. Chelsea dreaded finding out how much she would have to pay to recompense the designers, but she dreaded Jack’s disappointment more. Jack was right: the fabric of the dress was the very essence of
the Thousand and One Nights
.

Snip, snip, snip. Chelsea cut out the four panels she needed. She pinned them together as per Ellie’s instructions and tacked them into place to make the actual sewing easier. The receptionist helped with the tacking before he went off-duty.

Slowly, the little waistcoat began to take shape. It needed a button. There was one on the back of the dress. That would have to do.

With the waistcoat finished, Chelsea fashioned a sash and a turban out of a wide swathe of fabric from the ruined dress’s hem. The turban looked good enough, but it was missing something. She knew what it was: in the illustrations, a fabulous jewel always fastened Aladdin’s turban. Chelsea opened her vanity case and pulled out the jewellery pouch she had hidden inside it. She knew she had something that would be perfect. She found a Lanvin necklace with a huge fake cabochon centrepiece. The necklace itself was a sort of fabric bib. It was easy to take apart. It wouldn’t be so easy to put back together, but for now that was the least of Chelsea’s concerns. She had a wish to fulfil.

It was six o’clock in the morning before Chelsea finished her mammoth task. She hung the little waistcoat over the back of the chair in her bedroom and placed the sash and the jewelled turban on the seat. The outfit looked as though it was awaiting the arrival of a fairy-tale prince, who would doubtless fly in through the window on a magic carpet. Chelsea couldn’t help but grin at the result of her handiwork.

‘I did it,’ she murmured, as she lay back on her dirty pillow and finally fell asleep.

Chelsea didn’t sleep for long, however. She had left the window open for some air and it was less than an hour before the first of the guests gathered in the pool restaurant for breakfast. Their voices drifted in through the open window, pulling her from her dreams. For once she didn’t mind. When she saw again the costume she had created, she couldn’t wait to get up and find her young friend. She looked out. She could see Jack and Ronnie walking by the pool.

‘Jack!’ Chelsea shouted down from the window. Jack didn’t look up. Either he hadn’t heard or, more likely Chelsea thought, he was still in a mood about the competition.

Chelsea called Ronnie instead.

Ronnie did look up. ‘Don’t hang so far out of that window!’ she yelled back.

‘Sorry.’ Chelsea took up a less precarious position. ‘Ronnie, can you bring Jack upstairs, please? I’ve got a surprise for him.’

Chapter Fifty-Five

Bill

‘Auntie Chelsea! You are the bestest of the very best!’

‘That
is
pretty impressive,’ Ronnie agreed when she saw what Chelsea had created.

‘Crikey,’ said Dave, who had joined them to see what the fuss was about. ‘Our Chelsea can sew. Perhaps she’s not totally unmarriageable after all.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

Jack was busy climbing into his costume. Chelsea helped him to arrange the matching turban.

‘It’s got a real ruby,’ Jack gasped.

‘It probably is real, knowing your auntie,’ said Ronnie. ‘Make sure you don’t lose it.’

Ronnie and Chelsea shared a look, but for once Chelsea knew her sister’s comment was meant affectionately.

Like a veteran actor, Jack immediately inhabited his costume as though it were a second skin. He struck a pose in front of the mirror. ‘I need a sword,’ he said.

‘Done,’ said Chelsea, handing him the sword she’d fashioned out of a piece of cardboard she had pinched from the reps’ display in the lobby.

‘Did Aladdin have a sword?’ asked Ronnie.

‘God knows,’ said Chelsea. ‘But it sort of looks right, don’t you think?’

Jack drew the sabre across his body, fluttering the fingers of his free hand in the other direction. He crouched low.

‘Would you look at Laurence bloody Olivier,’ said Dave.

‘He needs a moustache,’ said Chelsea, brandishing a Chanel eyeliner pencil. Jack stood still while Chelsea drew him a moustache with a handlebar flourish at each end.

‘Brilliant!’ Jack breathed, when he saw his reflection. He wrinkled his nose to see the drawn-on moustache move.

‘Thanks,’ said Ronnie. ‘You’ve really made his holiday.’

‘He’s made mine,’ Chelsea admitted.

‘I can’t believe you cut up that dress, though. I bet it was really expensive. How much did it cost you?’ Ronnie asked.

Chelsea shrugged. ‘It may yet cost me my job.’

The fancy-dress competition was not to take place until the afternoon, before they all met up for Jacqui’s birthday dinner. Chelsea managed to persuade Jack to take off the costume – ‘You don’t want to ruin the element of surprise when you walk into the Kidz Klub’ – but he insisted on keeping his moustache. He also insisted that he be allowed to draw some stubble on his chin.

‘I could do with one of these pencils back home,’ Jack mused as he scribbled in some thicker eyebrows. Chelsea resigned herself to losing yet another item from her make-up collection – Sophie had kept the lipstick. Jack was delighted to be able to wear his new face down to lunch.

The rest of the family had already gathered at their usual table in the Jolly Pirate, but this time two interlopers had joined them.

‘It’s that horrible lady,’ Jack whispered. ‘The one who likes Granddad Bill.’

‘We’ve got to be polite,’ Chelsea reminded him.

‘I don’t want to be polite. I want to be truthful.’

‘If you can’t say anything nice …’ said Chelsea.

‘Say it behind someone’s back?’ Jack suggested.

‘That’ll do for now,’ said his aunt.

There were just two spots left at the table. One was between Ronnie and Jacqui. The other was next to Gloria.

‘Oh! Look at your funny face, Jack! You look ever so grown-up.’ Gloria patted the empty seat next to her as Jack and Chelsea approached. The boy’s eyes grew wide in terror and he quickly skittered into the seat next to his mother instead.

‘He’ll get used to me,’ Gloria assured Chelsea, who had no choice but to take the empty seat next to her. ‘How has your morning been?’

‘It’s been lovely,’ said Chelsea.

It was about to get a whole lot worse.

Chelsea soon noticed that there were two bottles of cava on the table and a wineglass had been set at each place. That hadn’t stopped her father and Mark from setting themselves up with beers, of course, but it still suggested that something strange was afoot. The Benson family were not great wine drinkers.

‘Mark,’ said Gloria, ‘will you please open the
champagne
and pour everybody a glass? It’s my treat.’

Something was definitely up.

‘Shall I do it now?’ asked Granddad Bill.

‘Wait until everybody has a full glass,’ Gloria instructed.

‘Can I have some?’ asked Sophie.

Gloria nodded. ‘Of course! Jack too, if he likes it. He can have a little sip.’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Jack quickly. He turned his head away from her.

‘He’ll grow into having more refined tastes,’ Gloria assured Ronnie.

‘Not if he takes after his dad,’ Ronnie replied.

‘OK, everybody.’ Gloria clapped her hands. ‘Up you get, Bill.’

Bill got to his feet. He’d been having a good couple of days, but still he swayed dramatically without his stick and had to grip on to the edge of the table to remain upright.