A Proper Family Holiday (6 page)

She fell into bed.

‘I think we’re going to have a good week here,’ said Mark, as he flumped down on the mattress beside her.

‘Hmmmph,’ said Ronnie from the depths of the pillows. It was all right for Mark. The minute he stepped off the plane, he’d shed his responsibilities. Meanwhile, Ronnie already felt as though she wanted to go back to work for a rest. She may have travelled almost as far as Africa to ‘get away from it all’, but she’d brought her biggest stressors with her. If only Chelsea were the kind of sister whose arrival would make everything easier.

Chapter Seven

Chelsea

Sunday

Chelsea’s free day at Gatwick had actually ended up being another workday. When Davina finally woke up and looked over the changes Chelsea had made to the Eugenia Lapkiss article, she had plenty of suggestions of her own, which Chelsea had to implement from the dressing table in her hotel room. There were other pieces to be worked on too. Chelsea’s boss obviously hadn’t registered the fact that it was a Saturday, or that Chelsea was technically on annual leave. When another email from Davina titled ‘Just one more thing’ appeared on Chelsea’s iPhone, she almost responded by pointing out that she was on holiday, but she didn’t. Until she could find the time and energy to apply for a new post, she still needed her job at
Society
, so instead she responded with her usual efficiency and ended her email by wishing Davina the lovely weekend she didn’t deserve.

As soon as it seemed decent, Chelsea treated herself to a couple of glasses of wine in the hotel bar. Two glasses of wine turned into three. They were big glasses and so, without even really noticing, Chelsea had soon drunk the equivalent of a whole bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Rough Sauvignon Blanc with extra sulphites, at that. No wonder she felt like something the cat had sicked up when she was woken by her alarm the following morning. Sunday. Still half asleep, she climbed back into the outfit she had been wearing since Friday night and headed for the shuttle bus.

When Chelsea had been buying her replacement ticket, the check-in girl had offered her the chance to have ‘priority boarding’ for an extra £50 on top of the eye-watering fee. ‘It’ll save you having to scramble in the queue,’ the girl had said. ‘There are three hundred people on the flight, but we only sell sixty of these passes.’ Chelsea had declined.

Standing at the gate with her fellow passengers, however, Chelsea wished she’d forked out the extra money. Though she could be pretty damn sharp-elbowed on the first day of the Harvey Nichols sale, Chelsea didn’t fancy her chances with this gang. They were, to a man, woman and child, the most horrible bunch of people she had ever laid eyes on. Nearly all of them were dressed in football shirts. How different they were from the Boden-clad queue waiting to board the flight to Pisa, which departed from the gate next door.

As the crowd shuffled towards the desk, Chelsea found herself behind a hen party, all wearing pink T-shirts saying, ‘Lanzarote 2014. Lock up your sons.’ They handed round two large plastic cups filled with cava from the terminal bar. It wasn’t long before they started singing. Worried that it was just a matter of time before one of those plastic cups of cava was spilt in the direction of her borrowed dress, Chelsea decided her best strategy was to wait until everyone else had boarded. She stepped out of the queue and sat back down on a bench, trying to block out the horror of her flight-mates by starting
From Booty Call to Bride
(carefully tucked inside a copy of the weekend
FT
magazine). She had her boarding pass, so there would definitely be a seat for her, right?

‘There’s room at the back of the plane,’ the steward explained when Chelsea finally boarded.

‘Where?’ Chelsea looked down the cabin. She couldn’t see a single empty spot.

‘By the toilets.’

Of course. But at least the whole row was empty. That was much more than Chelsea could have hoped for. She wriggled her way down the length of the aisle and squeezed herself into the window seat. There was no room for her luggage in the overhead locker, so she dragged her wheelie case into the row alongside her, risking the wrath of the steward and. Still, Chelsea told herself, as soon as the plane took off, she would be able to put her bag on the empty seat beside her as a kind of barrier against the people queuing for the loo. All she wanted now was to get this flight over with.

But Chelsea was not to have a whole row to herself after all. Just as she was settling in, a final passenger was hustled on board.

Chelsea felt slightly better when she noticed that the man walking down the aisle towards her was a dead ringer for Hugh Jackman. He was over six feet tall and looked as though he was no stranger to the gym, so he wasn’t going to spill over the armrest. He was dressed pretty well, in a blue linen shirt, and he looked half-intelligent. Tired and fed-up as Chelsea was after twenty-four boring hours at Gatwick, she found herself straightening up a little in anticipation of her good-looking row-mate’s arrival. She quickly hid
From Booty Call to Bride
in her handbag, pulled out the new Malcolm Gladwell instead and surreptitiously checked her reflection in the screen of her phone. Maybe Chelsea and this handsome stranger would get talking.

What Chelsea didn’t realise was that the man was not alone. His travel companion was too small to be seen over the headrests, but the Hugh-alike ushered ahead of him a blonde-haired child, about six years old. She had the sweet and gentle face of one of Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies and was dressed in a pink party dress and a pair of silver tulle wings. As she walked the length of the plane, the little girl dispensed fairy luck with her pink plastic wand. Everyone was charmed. You could hear the cooing that followed her progress. Then at last the girl stopped level with the row she and her father would be sharing with Chelsea. She looked at Chelsea. She looked up at her dad. She looked back at Chelsea and her big blue eyes narrowed alarmingly.

‘You told me that
I
would have the window seat.’

‘Lily,’ said the Hugh-alike, ‘that lady is already in the window seat. Go in the middle. Quickly.’

‘No.’ Lily stood her ground in the aisle. She folded her arms. ‘You said I could go by the window.’

‘That was when I thought we would have more choice,’ said Lily’s father. ‘These are the last two seats left on the whole aeroplane. Everybody is waiting to go on their holidays. Get in.’

‘I won’t,’ Lily insisted.

‘
Lily
,’ Her father tried a different tone of voice. It didn’t work. The girl pushed out her bottom lip and stood her ground.

‘Is there a problem?’ a steward asked.

The passengers in the rows to the front and side strained to get a better view of the unfolding situation.

‘No,’ said Lily’s father, ‘there isn’t a problem.’

‘Yes,’ said Lily, ‘there is.’ She turned to the steward with all the confidence and entitlement of Anna Wintour discovering a civilian in her front-row seat at Chanel, then pointed back at Chelsea with her wand. ‘She’s in my seat. I was promised the window seat. I was told I would be able to see my house when we flew over it.’

‘Aaaah.’ The steward at least seemed to find Lily’s truculence charming. ‘You want to see your house, do you?’

‘I do,’ said Lily. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it all week.’

Chelsea smiled but didn’t move. She really did not want to be on the aisle for three hours. No way. This princess Lily would doubtless want to get up and down the whole flight long and Chelsea didn’t want to have to keep getting up and down herself to let the little girl out. But Lily was not about to quit. She folded her arms and gave Chelsea a death stare. Lily’s father and the steward also looked at Chelsea now, though in a slightly more imploring way. The steward cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows. It took less than ten seconds for Chelsea to cave.

‘OK,’ said Chelsea. ‘I’ll swap.’

Chelsea dragged her luggage out from beneath her seat and shuffled out into the aisle. Lily sprang past her without so much as a ‘Ta very much’ to acknowledge her sacrifice. Still, Lily’s father at least seemed grateful.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Really, thank you. It’s just that … I know I shouldn’t have promised her, but …’

‘It’s OK. I understand,’ said Chelsea.

‘It’s very good of you.’ The dad smiled at Chelsea as he squeezed himself into the middle seat. The pitch between the rows was so tight, he had to fold himself like a collapsible umbrella. ‘Saved me a whole lot of earache.’

‘I bet.’

‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right in the aisle?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll make sure I don’t nick your armrest.’

‘I think that middle armrest is technically yours,’ said Chelsea.

‘We can share,’ said Lily’s dad with a grin that left Chelsea surprisingly flustered. Chelsea noted his perfect, straight teeth. This guy really was impossibly handsome, which made Chelsea all the more disappointed that her one hope of an airborne flirtation had turned out to be a dad. Chances were, there was an older version of the entitled little blonde now in the window seat sitting further forward on the plane.

‘Madam, if you’d just stow your luggage,’ said the steward to Chelsea as though this last-minute hold-up was entirely her fault.

With Lily’s dad’s assistance, Chelsea crammed her handbag into the overhead locker, but they failed once again to get her wheelie case put away. The steward took it from her with a sigh.

‘This should have been checked in,’ he said, ‘but I suppose I’ll take it to the front of the plane. Then we can be on our way.’

‘Why aren’t we on our way already?’ Lily asked. She occupied the window seat like a queen on her throne.

‘The pilot has to make sure everyone is safely in their seats,’ her father explained.

‘I would have been in my seat ages ago,’ said Lily, ‘if that silly lady wasn’t already in it.’

‘Lily,’ said her father, ‘that’s not kind. You mustn’t say that sort of thing.’

‘But it’s true,’ Lily insisted.

Chelsea smiled as brightly as she could. ‘Children say the funniest things.’

Chapter Eight

Ronnie

In Lanzarote, the rest of the Benson family were gathering for their first holiday breakfast. It was a beautiful day. The wispy clouds over the sea were purely decorative and the wind was as warm as a lover’s caress. The view from the restaurant terrace was picture postcard perfect.

Ronnie had woken in a much better mood than she went to bed in. Amazing what a difference a good night’s sleep could make, and it had been a very good night’s sleep, considering. The bed was comfortable, and Ronnie had been tired enough to fall asleep
before
Mark started snoring. Jack, of course, was always full of beans, but even Sophie seemed transformed that morning. She’d decided that she was speaking to her mother again. Well, grunting to her at least.

Breakfast, in the hotel’s poolside restaurant, was a buffet affair. Ronnie’s stomach rumbled appreciatively as she saw and smelt the vast vats of fried eggs and bubbling beans. She took two bits of toast from the counter and piled them high with bacon and sausage and cooked plum tomatoes. She loved plum tomatoes, but no one else in her family would touch them, so she rarely had them. Anyway, sod the calories. This was her first holiday breakfast and she was going to enjoy it. Meanwhile, Mark was assembling a sausage sandwich for Jack and Ronnie was glad to see Sophie wasn’t skimping on breakfast either. Lately, Ronnie had been concerned that Sophie didn’t seem to be eating as much as she used to. She had grown almost ten centimetres in height the previous year but did not appear to have put on any weight. That morning, however, she had perched two fried eggs on top of two pieces of fried bread. Ronnie didn’t say anything in case drawing Sophie’s attention to her eating habits sent them haywire again. Back at the table, Sophie picked up a fork to break an egg yolk. Everything was right with the world until …

‘Look at that,’ said Granddad Bill, pointing at his great-granddaughter’s carefully laid out breakfast. ‘Sophie’s made a model of her chest.’

‘Oh my God!’ Sophie screeched her indignation. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. You’re so disgusting.’ Sophie pushed her plate away from her and got up so abruptly that her chair fell over. She didn’t pick it up. Instead, she stormed out of the restaurant, almost knocking over an unattended toddler as she thundered by.

‘Granddad Bill,’ said Ronnie, ‘what did you have to say that for?’

‘I was only having a laugh,’ he said.

‘For God’s sake. You can’t say that sort of thing. She’s sensitive. She’s a teenage girl.’

So much for a quiet breakfast. Ronnie got up to go in search of her daughter. Meanwhile, Mark just shrugged and dipped a piece of toast into the yolk of one of Sophie’s discarded eggs.

‘She’ll get over it,’ he said, catching Ronnie by the hand as she passed him. ‘Leave her be.’

‘Mark, she’s really upset.’

‘Leave her to calm down for a bit. She’ll see the humour. It’s only the dementia talking. Eh, Bill?’

‘All right, Mark.’ Bill raised his cup of tea. He’d already forgotten what he’d said.

‘I’m going to find her,’ said Ronnie.

‘You’ve got to take her less seriously and she’ll take herself less seriously too. It’s you who makes her so moody by indulging her. It was only a joke. If the rest of us don’t take any notice, she’ll get it into perspective that much quicker.’

‘What?’ Ronnie snarled. ‘What do you know about parenting teenage girls?’

‘I’m just trying to make your life easier. I’m saying you don’t need to take responsibility for her feelings all the time.’

Ronnie glared at Mark while she formulated a stinging reply.

‘I like these sausages.’ Jack broke the silence.

‘They are nice, aren’t they?’ said his grandmother, leaping on the opportunity to talk about something other than Granddad Bill’s faux pas.

‘So, what are we going to do today?’ Jack asked. He was the consummate diplomat, always ready with small talk.