An Almost Perfect Holiday

by Lucy Diamond

  Lily rolled on some dark-brown lipstick and pouted glossily at the screen. ‘Go on. What happened to that bikini selfie anyway? Or even a kiss?’ She peered at herself critically. ‘What do you think of this colour, by the way?’

  ‘Nice,’ said Izzie. ‘But I’m so not going to kiss him. That is just not happening, all right?’

  And then she heard it. A giggle from outside her bedroom door. The room seemed to lurch around her as she glanced back in horror to see that the door was open a crack and there was a small Seren-sized person lurking, in order to eavesdrop on the conversation. Izzie’s stomach plummeted. Shit. How much had she heard?

  ‘Got to go,’ she said quickly, ending the call, before leaping off the bed and striding over to the door. ‘Hey! Don’t spy on me,’ she snapped.

  Seren didn’t seem bothered to have been discovered. She looked excited in fact, hopping from foot to foot, her long hair swinging around her pale face. ‘You were talking about kissing,’ she said gleefully. She was holding a Sylvanian Families cat in each hand and pushed them together in a grinding clinch. ‘Have you got a boyfriend? Have you done sex with him?’

  Izzie felt like throttling her. ‘None of your business, you little shit,’ she growled before she could stop herself, at which point Seren’s eyes became big and round and her expression went from gleeful to positively thrilled.

  ‘That’s a very bad word,’ she said severely. ‘You said a bad word to me.’ And then she turned and was hurrying off downstairs as if she couldn’t wait to broadcast the news. ‘Izzie said a bad word to me,’ she announced at the top of her voice. ‘And she was talking about kissing. I heard her!’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ Izzie blustered, thudding after her. ‘Stop being an annoying brat.’

  ‘And she called me an annoying brat,’ Seren added immediately. ‘Daddy?’ She had reached the ground floor by now and went racing into the kitchen. ‘Daddy! Izzie said I was an annoying brat and said a bad word and was talking about kissing. And she said—’

  ‘And you were eavesdropping on a private phone conversation between me and my friend,’ Izzie yelled hotly. The last thing she needed was for Seren to work out exactly who they had been talking about and dob her in for that, too. Had the little girl actually heard Izzie say the words ‘He’s my mum’s boyfriend’? If so, it was surely only a matter of time before she put two and two together and rumbled Izzie to the adults. And how utterly excruciating would that be?

  Storming into the kitchen, Izzie saw that George was washing up while Em was tracing a route on a map at the kitchen table. Jack, meanwhile, was finishing a mid-morning bowl of cornflakes with enough milk to have turned it into soup. They all looked round at the noisy entrance of the two girls.

  ‘Whoa,’ cried George, hands in the sink. ‘Seren, calm down and stop shouting.’

  ‘Izzie, what’s going on?’ Em asked, her finger still on the map.

  ‘I want to know about the kissing aspect,’ Jack teased. ‘Has someone got a mystery boyfriend? Or girlfriend, come to that?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Jack,’ said Izzie, her hands curling into impotent fists as the blood rushed to her face.

  ‘I think she said it was somebody else’s boyfriend,’ Seren said, head cocked slightly, eyes glittering, but her face unreadable.

  Oh, crap. Did that mean she had heard?

  ‘No way! Izzie, you bad girl,’ said Jack, smirking. ‘What happened to sisterhood?’

  ‘Yes, I hope that’s not true,’ Em said with a frown.

  Izzie thought she might throw up. Christ, if only Mum knew the half of it. But what did Seren know? Had she heard Izzie’s actual words or just the boyfriend bit? ‘It’s nobody’s business!’ she shrieked, whirling out of the room, trembling with embarrassment.

  ‘And she said “shit”,’ she heard Seren add with a note of triumph as she pounded back upstairs again. ‘That’s a bad word, isn’t it, Daddy?’

  ‘I hope you didn’t say that in front of a child, Isabel,’ her mum’s voice followed her up, disapproval loud and clear with every syllable.

  Izzie said several even worse words under her breath as she threw herself back on her bed, punching the pillow a few times. ‘AAAAARRGGHHH!’ she screamed into the mattress.

  Aaarrgh, thought Em, rolling her eyes and mouthing ‘Sorry’ to George. Why were their kids so intent on sabotaging this holiday? First it had been her two, swigging alcohol down at the harbour in Falmouth, lucky not to have ended up in the nearest police station following the gallery debacle. Then, first thing that morning, Seren had made a comment over breakfast about hearing some funny noises in the night. ‘It sounded like you, Emma, saying, Ooh ooh ooh!’ she had said, wide-eyed, within everyone’s earshot. Izzie had groaned. Jack had looked distinctly revolted. George, meanwhile, had laughed unhelpfully as Em had to think fast and explain: Ah yes, that was probably when she’d stubbed her toe, nothing to worry about. And now the two girls had had a bust-up, and Izzie had gone off, slamming doors in her wake, just in case anyone was in doubt as to her feelings. Fabulous!

  It’s going to be a great holiday and everyone will get on brilliantly, she remembered herself saying to the mirror back home, channelling her wise friend Kathy. Well, she’d got that one wrong.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell her off?’ Seren was demanding now, hand on hip. She had luscious pink lips, Seren, and the bottom one was currently sticking far out in extreme indignation.

  ‘Well, if you were eavesdropping on a private conversation, then I can see why Izzie got annoyed with you,’ Em replied. In other words, no, she wasn’t about to tell her off. Not that she would spell that out quite so specifically. ‘So don’t do it again, okay?’

  ‘I’m sure Izzie will say sorry to you later, poppet,’ George said, glancing over at Em as he put the frying pan in the draining rack.

  Jack snorted. ‘I’m sure she won’t,’ he muttered, ambling over towards the door.

  ‘Er – bowl in the dishwasher, please,’ Em reminded him, feeling her fuse becoming shorter by the second. ‘Anyway. Who wants to go to the beach today? I’ve found one that sounds lovely. Come and see, Seren,’ she added, holding up her iPad, where she’d found the description online.

  Seren didn’t move, though. ‘I want her to say sorry now,’ she whined, leaning against George at the sink. ‘Daddy,’ she prompted when he didn’t react. ‘I want her to say sorry now. She upset me.’

  ‘Here we are,’ Em persisted, reading aloud from the iPad. ‘Gyllyngvase Beach is one of only five beaches in Cornwall to be awarded the Blue Flag. There’s great swimming and rock-pooling, beach volleyball nets, a café . . . Ooh, and sometimes you can see dolphins, apparently.’ She read a little further. ‘Ah. If you have binoculars, it says. Anyone brought any binoculars? No, me neither. Well, anyway, we can sit on the sand and imagine the dolphins out there, which will be nearly as good, won’t it?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Jack, kicking the dishwasher door shut, which sent everything rattling inside. He’d been in a proper grump since yesterday, when bad-influence Amelia had gone off to Devon on an impromptu visit to see her dad, or something. (Unlike her son, Em wasn’t terribly sorry about that little departure.)

  ‘And,’ she went on, ignoring this unhelpful interruption, ‘it’s only a few miles away, so there’s no boring long car journey. We can make up a picnic, grab our swimming things and towels – and Bob’s your uncle. One fantastic day coming up! Who’s with me?’

  Jack had sloped out of the room and Seren was staring petulantly at the lino, but at least George was twinkling his eyes and smiling. ‘Right behind you, Captain,’ he said, with a soapsud-speckled mock-salute.

  ‘Ooh, good, I hope so,’ she replied flirtatiously, feeling marginally better. She got to her feet and then bawled, ‘Going in fifteen minutes’ up the stairs to her bad-tempered teens. ‘Brush your teeth, find your swimming things, shout me any sandwich requests. Let’s get this show on the road!’

  Em put every single fun thing she
could think of in the car – cricket set, Frisbee, buckets, spades, flippers, snorkels, you name it – and tried to gee herself up as they set off soon afterwards. Who didn’t love a day at the beach? Everyone would get over their differences and enjoy themselves, she told herself bracingly.

  It felt as if the universe was on their side for once, at least: there was an easy parking space on arrival at Gyllyngvase, the clouds obligingly melted away from the sky as they stepped onto the sand, and there was a busy, happy atmosphere with people enjoying themselves, but not so many crowds that they couldn’t find a good spot to lay down their towels and beach mats. Perfect choice, Em, she congratulated herself. Maybe, just maybe, this could end up being one of those rare days when everything just clicked smoothly into place, as if all part of some very carefully and expertly engineered design.

  George suggested a game of Frisbee and Izzie and Jack were both enthusiastic, while Em seized the chance for some bonding with Seren by helping her make sandcastles. Kneeling beside the little girl on the warm sand, the sun casting freckles on her shoulder-blades, Em felt a new optimism wash through her. This was going well, she told herself proudly, scooping sand into a red bucket. Everyone was having a nice time. She and George were bonding with each other’s children. They would look back on this day as the turning point of the holiday, after which—

  ‘My mummy is prettier than you.’

  Ouch. Was Em’s deep-seated paranoia making her hear voices now? ‘Sorry, what, darling?’ she asked, taken aback. She turned the full bucket upside down and plopped it onto the sand. ‘Do you want to bang the top with your spade to make sure the sand doesn’t stick?’ she asked pleasantly. Surely she’d misheard. Of course she had!

  ‘My mummy is really pretty. And kind. She makes very good sandcastles,’ Seren said, her face unnervingly blank as ever. ‘And,’ she went on, with a glance at Em’s pale dimpled thighs, ‘she’s not fat.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Em. Double-ouch. ‘Well, that’s nice,’ she managed to say evenly. Do not rise to it. ‘Good for Mummy. But we’re going to make some great sandcastles ourselves now, aren’t we? We’re going to make an absolute palace!’ She gave her best and kindest smile as she patted the bottom of the bucket and then slowly lifted it, to reveal the moulded sand shape beneath. ‘Ooh, that’s come out well,’ she said, feeling rather pleased with herself. Let it not be said that Em Hughes was an amateur sandcastle-maker, she thought with a flash of triumph. She’d certainly had a few more years practice than . . . ‘What are you doing?’ she yelped in alarm as Seren, without warning, picked up a yellow plastic spade and smashed in Em’s sandcastle, with all the ruthless abandon of a psychopath.

  ‘I want to do the castles,’ Seren said, chopping the blade of her spade through the sandy wreckage.

  ‘Right,’ Em said weakly, unsure what else to say. She actually felt quite taken aback at the ferocity Seren had just displayed. Don’t take it personally, she told herself. Cut her some slack. She’s testing boundaries, that’s all. Seeing what she can get away with. ‘I’m going to build a moat,’ she announced after a moment, deciding to act as if the sandcastle-pulverizing hadn’t just occurred. ‘What are you going to build next?’

  From where they were sitting on the sand, they could see the Frisbee game in full swing and both turned their heads as Izzie’s whoops of triumph drifted over on the sea breeze. Em smiled to see her daughter doing this strange little victory dance with the orange Frisbee held aloft, before she sent it skimming across to her brother. ‘They’re having fun,’ she commented, when Seren didn’t answer her question.

  Seren had a rather tight look about her face as she began arranging a group of Sylvanian Families foxes on the coolbox, then dumped spadefuls of sand into a purple bucket. ‘My mummy is in another country now, because she has a very important job,’ she said grandly.

  Great, back to everyone’s favourite subject: George’s wonderful ex-wife. ‘Wow, that’s exciting,’ Em replied, marking out the edges of her moat. ‘What job do you think you might want to do when you’re older? Let me guess . . . A lion tamer!’

  ‘No,’ said Seren, and just for a moment, Em thought she was on the verge of provoking a giggle for once. A scowl was forthcoming instead, though. ‘That’s not a proper job.’

  ‘An astronaut, then. A robot designer. Um . . . An ice-cream tester.’ Her own children had loved this game back when they were little, coming up with their own wild fantastical ideas amidst gales of laughter. Not Seren, apparently.

  ‘No! Those are silly jobs.’ She sat back on her haunches and eyed Em with a patronizing air, as if she was far too old for such childish nonsense. ‘I need some shells,’ she announced.

  ‘Right,’ said Em, whose ideas of cutting children a bit of slack did not extend to allowing them to boss her about like a minion. ‘You’d better get some then, hadn’t you?’

  ‘You get them,’ Seren countered.

  Over my dead body, love. ‘I’m busy digging my moat,’ Em said sweetly. ‘Why don’t you look for some in the rock pools over there? I bet you can find some really cool ones.’

  Seren’s nostrils flared. ‘My mum would find the best shells,’ she said.

  Charlotte was obviously a woman of many talents. ‘I’m sure she would,’ Em replied, deadpan. She glanced longingly at the folding chairs they’d brought, wishing she could retreat into her novel now, thus escaping this interminable conversation about Seren’s amazing, highly skilled mother who was better than Em in every way. She turned back just in time to see Jack leaping athletically to get the Frisbee further down the beach. ‘Good catch!’ she yelled as he snatched it out of the air. George went over and clapped him on the back and Em smiled at the scene, but Seren meanwhile had a face like thunder. ‘My daddy,’ she growled under her breath.

  Okay, so not everyone was having a perfect day on the beach, Em thought wearily. But she wouldn’t let one small mardy person spoil everything. Absolutely not. ‘Ah, here’s Izzie,’ she said, as her daughter appeared, apparently in need of a hair bobble. ‘Izzie, do me a favour, love, and take Seren for a shell hunt, will you? Just for two minutes? Thank you. See who can find the best one.’

  Izzie glanced back longingly at the Frisbee game. ‘Do I have to? Can’t she go on her own?’

  ‘It appears not,’ Em replied before she could stop herself. ‘Go on,’ she cajoled. ‘Make an effort, please. Be nice.’

  Izzie shot Seren a murderous glare, but acquiesced. ‘Come on then,’ she muttered to the younger girl.

  ‘Daddy Fox is coming with us,’ said Seren, plucking him from her little woodland line-up, while the other figures stared blankly on.

  ‘Whoopee-doo,’ growled Izzie, stalking away.

  Em sank gladly into her chair and retrieved her sand-speckled book. The sun was dancing on the sea in front of her. Jack and George were shouting with laughter as they attempted diving Frisbee-catches nearby. The girls would hopefully forge a friendship over some rock-pool discoveries. Meanwhile she could indulge in what the glossy mags called ‘me-time’, which in Em’s eyes meant doing bugger all for anyone else. For a change.

  Barely five minutes later, though, a high-pitched shriek ripped through the air. A high-pitched shriek, moreover, that came from the direction of the rock pools. Em whipped her head round just in time to see Seren clambering out of a pool, dripping wet and in floods of tears. Oh Lord.

  Snatching up a towel, she went running straight over. George too charged across at once. They just needed the red swimming togs to go the full Baywatch. ‘Are you okay?’ he called to his daughter.

  Seren stumbled towards him. ‘She pushed me,’ the little girl accused through gasping sobs. ‘She pushed me in!’

  Izzie looked stricken. ‘What? No, I didn’t,’ she cried hotly, meeting Em’s eye. ‘I did not!’

  ‘And she said she didn’t want to collect stupid sh-sh-shells with me,’ Seren sobbed. ‘She said it was babyish and she wanted to play Fr-Fr-Frisbee!’

  This did, admitte
dly, have the ring of truth about it and Em felt her face suffuse with heat. Izzie had been peevishly reluctant about looking after Seren, but all the same, she wasn’t the sort of girl who pushed little children around. Was she? ‘Did you say those things?’ Em demanded of Izzie, while draping the towel around the younger girl’s shoulders.

  Izzie’s face reddened. ‘Well – yeah, but I didn’t push her. She’s lying!’

  ‘Hey,’ George gave her a stern look. ‘That’s a very serious thing to say, young lady.’

  ‘I’d say it was pretty serious for someone to make a false accusation too,’ Izzie retorted, glaring.

  George’s face stiffened as he bent over his daughter. ‘All right, Noodle,’ he soothed, wrapping the towel more tightly around her. ‘You’re all right. Did you bump anywhere? Tell me what hurts.’

  ‘I bumped my head,’ Seren said plaintively. ‘And my leg hurts a lot. There’s blood!’ She broke into fresh sobs. ‘Daddy Fox got wet too,’ she sobbed.

  ‘He’s probably drowned,’ Izzie muttered meanly.

  ‘Iz—’ warned Em, frowning.

  ‘I want Mummy!’ howled Seren.

  Em and Izzie looked at each other. ‘I didn’t push her,’ Izzie said again, folding her arms across her chest. ‘You do believe me, don’t you, Mum?’

  Em hesitated, feeling George’s eyes on her too. Did she believe Izzie? The two girls had already had one spat that morning, after all. ‘I didn’t see what happened,’ she said after a moment. This is what it must be like being a politician, she thought, her mind scrabbling for the right words. The most delicate of balancing acts required, to keep everyone sweet. ‘If there was a push, then I’m sure it was an accident and nothing deliberate, so—’

  ‘There wasn’t a push at all. She’s making it up!’ Izzie said.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said George in a voice Em didn’t recognize, as he scooped Seren into his arms and began carrying her towards their towels and bags. ‘Come on, poppet,’ they heard him say as he walked away. ‘We can dry Daddy Fox back at the house, don’t worry.’