A Proper Family Holiday (27 page)

‘Because I love you and I want to know you’re home safely,’ was Mark’s reply.

Well, maybe the rules could be stretched a little that week. They
were
on holiday. Sophie didn’t have to go to school for another three weeks, so a couple of late nights now wouldn’t do her any harm. And she had heard her mother commenting that it seemed really safe in Playa Brava. Certainly it had to be safer than the centre of Coventry on a Saturday night. Plus, it wasn’t as though Sophie would be on her own. She would be with Luca. He would know the right places to go.

With all her arguments carefully worked out, Sophie plastered on her best smile and headed down to the poolside, ready to ask her mother if she could stay out until midnight.

Ronnie’s mind was on just about anything but her daughter that morning.

Cathy’s text to Mark had blown a hole in every certainty Ronnie ever held. It was a double betrayal. Mark was supposed to be her partner. Cathy was supposed to be her friend. She could hardly believe that Mark would have fancied Cathy in the first place. Cathy was loud-mouthed and dumpy and smoked fifty cigarettes a day. (Mark claimed he hated smoking.) Then there was the way that Mark hadn’t even bothered to lie about who the texts were coming from. He must think Ronnie was an idiot.

Added to that, Ronnie still had to talk to her mother about her concerns for her health. There just hadn’t been a moment. That day, Jacqui and Dave had taken advantage of Gloria’s curious insistence that she wanted to hang out with Bill and gone on a wine-tasting trip before Ronnie had a chance to say she needed to talk.

Ronnie’s stomach churned as she thought about the conversations ahead of her. She would need her mum so much if Mark really was having an affair. She felt sick in this limbo. Nothing confirmed and so much to fear.

The only silver lining was that Ronnie and Mark wouldn’t need to waste money on getting divorced because somehow they had never got round to getting married. They had the children; they had the joint mortgage; but they had never tied the knot. When you were inextricably linked in so many different ways, what was one more piece of paper?

‘Exactly,’ was Mark’s response whenever Ronnie suggested how simple it would be to legalise their relationship. ‘It’s just a couple of signatures. Why bother?’

Even so, over the years it had gnawed at the back of Ronnie’s mind that Mark’s resistance to commitment was down to something more than a hippyish aversion to convention. Now, having read Cathy’s text, she thought she knew for certain.

Ronnie’s anguished inner dialogue was interrupted by the appearance of her daughter. Sophie was carrying a bottle of water, which she handed over with a smile. Ronnie plastered on a smile of her own. She had a feeling she was going to be doing a lot of pretending everything was OK for the sake of the kids in the near future.

‘I thought you might want a drink,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s hot out here.’

‘It is. Thank you.’ Ronnie regarded her smiling daughter with suspicion. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘What do you mean? You think something’s wrong because I brought you a drink?’

‘You look very happy all of a sudden.’

‘Mum, I’m allowed to look happy, aren’t I? I’m on holiday with my family.’

‘I thought you would rather have stayed in Coventry with Skyler and your mates?’

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t know what it was going to be like out here, did I? I thought it would be really boring and stuff, but the hotel’s all right, and the people are friendly.’

‘They are,’ Ronnie agreed.

‘And I’ve made a new friend,’ Sophie said then.

‘Oh?’ This was the first Ronnie had heard about it. She had assumed that when Sophie disappeared on her walks, she was just mooching around on her own, plotting revenge for having been made to come away with her parents, her grandparents and her doddery great-grandfather.

‘Yeah. A local kid who works in the arcade,’ she said.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. He’s my age. He’s working in his school holidays.’

Ronnie nodded. That didn’t sound too bad.

‘He’s been teaching me some Spanish. I’ve been thinking I could do a GCSE.’

‘That’s a great idea,’ said Ronnie. Previously, Sophie had resisted the idea of having anything to do with languages. Whoever this local kid was, he was obviously working some kind of magic: Sophie was talking about her education. Ronnie had never managed to engage her on that subject before. Never. God knew she had tried to. It wasn’t long before Sophie had to make some decisions about whether or not she would stay on to do A-Levels.

‘It’s really good to have an extra language,’ Ronnie went on. ‘It gives you so many other options. Half of America speaks Spanish for a start.’

‘That’s what I thought. It would be so useful for me to have some languages, and meeting people from other countries is the best way to learn really quickly, right? So, I was wondering …’

And here comes the punchline, thought Ronnie.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘My friend’s invited me to go to a club with him tonight. Him and some of his mates. I really want to go. It starts at ten o’clock.’

‘Nine o’clock is when you have to be home,’ said Ronnie.

‘In England, yes, but we’re not in England now. We’re in Lanzarote, and you said yourself that you think Playa Brava is really safe, and I’ll be with a big gang of people and so everything will be fine.’

‘No, Sophie. Not after nine.’

‘But it’s not as though I have to be at school tomorrow morning.’

‘It’s not you getting up in the morning that I’m worried about. Ten o’clock is too late to go out. You’re only fifteen years old.’

‘I’ll be sixteen in December.’

‘That doesn’t make any difference. What kind of mother would I be if I let you go out at night in a strange town in a strange country with a whole bunch of people I haven’t even met?’

‘The kind of mother who lets her daughter have her independence?’ Sophie tried.

‘You’ll have all the independence you want soon enough.’

‘When?’

‘When you’re old enough to use it properly. I can’t just let you go out unsupervised with people I don’t know. I’m sorry, Sophie, but that’s the end of it.’

‘You never let me do anything!’ Sophie quickly lost her cool.

‘The only things I don’t let you do are the things I think will get you into trouble. I’m only looking after you. You’re my little girl.’

‘I am
not
a little girl.’

‘Sophie, I don’t want to get into an argument about this. You’re not going clubbing tonight and that’s final. I don’t mind you going off on your own a bit during the daytime, but you are not going out after dark.’

‘You treat me like I’m some kind of idiot! I can look after myself.’

‘Perhaps you can, but until you’re sixteen, I’m not going to take that chance.’

‘You’re being so unfair.’

‘I’m not trying to be unfair, Sophie. Look, how about you ask your friend from the arcade to come and meet you here? He could hang out with you in the games room. I’m sure that’s allowed. Then your dad and I could meet him and perhaps we’d let you go out until ten.’

‘That’s no good. He won’t want to meet you.’

‘Why not? Are we that embarrassing?’

‘No one else’s parents vets their friends. Skyler’s mother doesn’t. She doesn’t keep tabs on her every move.’

‘Of course she does. You think Skyler’s mother doesn’t text me to make sure Skyler’s round at our house when she says she is?’

‘You spy on us?’

‘No, we just make sure you don’t get lost on the bus,’ said Ronnie. ‘We need to know where you are.’

‘I’m asking Dad.’

‘Look, you know your father is going to say the same thing as me. We don’t want you hanging around after dark with people we don’t know.’

‘He’s really nice.’

‘Then he must be willing to come and meet us.’

Ronnie thought this was a reasonable concession, but Sophie was not happy with the idea at all. She continued to rage, accusing Ronnie of behaving like Big Brother, monitoring her every move, word and thought. Sophie concluded that there was no way she would make her new friend do something so ‘lame’ as meet her parents.

‘Well, I can only think that your new friend is not the kind of person you want me to meet. Who is he really? Are you sure he’s your age?’

‘What does it matter if he isn’t?’

‘I thought so. You’re definitely not going clubbing with anyone older than you,’ said Ronnie. ‘Who is he? Where did you really meet him? What are you up to?’

‘Why do you always have to accuse me of being up to something?’ Sophie raged.

‘I’m just trying to make sure you don’t make the same mistake I made.’

‘You mean having me? I’m a mistake?’

‘Sophie, you know that isn’t what I meant.’

‘You’re full of shit,’ Sophie told her. Then she was gone. Back inside to sulk. Leaving Ronnie with yet another thing to worry about.

Chapter Forty-One

Chelsea

Back at the Kidz Klub, there was much excitement as the adults taking part in the parents’ race gathered at the starting line.

‘Is this all the entrants for the parents’ race?’ one of the female coordinators asked. ‘Come on, there must be some more ladies out there willing to stand up for the girls.’

The female coordinator had failed to notice that Chelsea was actually the only female adult holidaymaker in the whole Kidz Klub. The rest of the children’s female relatives had very sensibly delegated the childcare to their husbands and boyfriends, who were probably usually as hands-off as Ronnie claimed Mark was.

‘OK,’ said the coordinator to Chelsea. ‘We’d normally have one contest for the men and another for the women, but—’

‘It’s fine,’ said Chelsea. ‘I’m happy to race the men if they don’t feel they’ll be disadvantaged.’

The two fat fathers laughed. Adam remained stony-faced. He was taking this competition very seriously indeed. He stood on one leg while he pulled the other foot close to his buttock to stretch out his quadriceps. He did a couple of squats and a few bounces on the spot. Chelsea, not to be outdone, raised her arms high above her head and bent from the waist. She was pretty damn flexible. She hoped that would translate into speed. She bent from side to side. Click. Something cracked. Maybe she wasn’t as flexible as she thought …

‘All right, everybody!’ The coordinator blew her whistle. The two fat dads leapt into action. ‘Stooooppp!’ the coordinator called. ‘That was just the whistle to tell everybody to pay proper attention. You make a false start, you are disqualified. Like Usain Bolt.’

‘For crying out loud,’ said Fat Dad One. ‘It’s the Kidz Klub, not the bloody Olympics.’

‘No swearing, please. You can also be disqualified for swearing.’

Chelsea shook her head in sympathy.

‘
Lady
and gentlemen, get into your places, please. As you know, the first lap is a straight sprint. At the end of the sprint, you get into the sacks; you jump in the sacks back to this end of the racecourse; then you pick up your potato and spoon.’

‘Potato and spoon?’ said Fat Dad Two. ‘I ask you.’

‘Salmonella,’ the coordinator explained. ‘So you pick up your potato and spoon, and you race to the other end. Then you pick up your hoop for the skipping. After that, you jump into the pool and swim two lengths. The race finishes when the first person gets out of the pool and rings that bell.’ The co-ordinator indicated an old-fashioned desk bell, which had been placed on the middle of the see-saw. ‘Providing they have completed every stage of the race correctly, the person who rings this bell first is the winner.’

‘Got it,’ said Fat Dad One.

‘All right. Is everything clear?’

‘Except the potato,’ said Fat Dad Two.

‘Everything’s perfectly clear,’ said Adam.

‘You’re going to win, Daddy,’ Lily piped up from the sidelines.

‘My auntie Chelsea is going to win,’ said Jack. His teeth were gritted, his eyes narrowed with determination. Chelsea silently promised him that she would do her very best or die trying. She conceded to herself it was more likely she would die trying.

‘On your marks …’

Chelsea and the two fat dads adopted the standing start position that the children had been using all morning. Only Adam crouched down in a proper racing start. Chelsea raised an eyebrow at that. They were going to run for barely fifteen metres. Lily’s dad would probably have driven his head straight into the fence before he had time to straighten up.

‘Get set …’

‘Hang on,’ said Fat Dad One. ‘I’ve got something in my shoe.’

‘He’s stalling for time,’ one of his mates complained from the audience. ‘Don’t take any notice of him.’

‘I can’t run with something in my shoe.’

‘You can’t run anyway, you fat bastard.’

‘Language!’ said the coordinator. ‘Contestant number one is disqualified.’

‘You can’t disqualify me,’ said Fat Dad One. ‘It weren’t me what said it.’

Adam straightened up again while coordinator and contestant argued the toss. Fat Dad One was allowed to stay in the race.

‘On your marks …’ the coordinator began again.

Chelsea and the fat dads assumed their positions. Adam dropped to the ground again.

‘Get set …’

Adam rocked in his racing-start posture. Chelsea fixed her eyes on the fence at the far end of the Kidz Klub where her potato sack was waiting.

‘Go!’

All four contestants left the starting line in a flurry of pumping legs and flailing arms. Adam was way ahead of the others within seconds. Of course, he was a runner back home. He’d proudly told Chelsea about his time in some half-marathon back when they were on friendly terms. Well, she may not have been a runner but Chelsea got to the fence second and managed to claw back some time by being quickest into her sack. A decade of struggling in and out of skinny jeans had left her with some transferable skills after all.

Moving in the sack was a little bit harder than putting it on; however, Chelsea had the edge here as well. Adam tried to shuffle forward, but Chelsea knew that the only way to cover ground and not get the sack twisted round your ankles was to jump. One of the fat dads gained a little on Chelsea and Adam with his own jumping technique, but it was Chelsea who was first back to where the race had started.