by Bloom, Tracy
He turned round and sank back into his chair.
‘Just calm down, will you,’ said Katy.
‘He just took them off me,’ he told her incredulously. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, turning to Ruth.
Ruth just shrugged. ‘No bother. I’ve had worse flights. We forgot to get the duty-free at all once.’
‘Let me buy you all a drink to compensate,’ said Daniel.
‘Are you mad? It’ll cost a fortune,’ replied Ruth.
‘Least I can do,’ muttered Daniel, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. ‘Now, what are you drinking? Shall we see if we can drain them of vodka before we land?’
Chapter Six
‘How you all doing over here?’ asked Braindead, appearing in the aisle next to Abby forty-five minutes after they had taken off. Ruth had made everyone move around after take-off, which had delighted Abby as she was now sat next to two girls called Fi and Rachel who were an absolute scream. She couldn’t believe how well this holiday was starting.
‘We thought we’d come and say hello, didn’t we, little chap?’ Logan was walking between Braindead’s legs, grasping both of his hands.
‘Great,’ nodded Abby vigorously. ‘This is Fi,’ she said, turning to her left. ‘She’s on a hen do with Cassie. They’ve been sharing their vodka with us,’ she giggled, raising her cup up to show him.
‘Oh,’ said Braindead. ‘Great. Glad you’ve found someone to talk to. Logan is loving flying but Millie has thrown up twice and Silvie won’t stop crying.’
‘You on a hen do as well?’ asked Fi, lurching forward. ‘Is it drunk crying or emotional crying? Happens on most hen dos. But not normally this early into the trip. Usually by day two someone will be a screwed-up mess in a toilet of a tequila bar, telling anyone who will listen that she is never going to get married and no-one loves her.’
Braindead stared back at her. ‘Millie is five and ate too many sweets at the airport. Silvie is a baby and it’s her first flight. I don’t think she likes airline food,’ he told Fi.
‘This is my husband,’ explained Abby.
‘And this is our son Logan,’ announced Braindead, picking up his son so Fi could have a better view. ‘Say hello, Logan.’
Logan gurgled.
‘Man,’ said Fi to Abby. ‘You never said you had a kid. You don’t look old enough.’
‘Well, thank you,’ grinned Abby. ‘Very kind of you to say so.’ She raised her paper cup and took a swig of vodka.
‘So, are you okay over here?’ asked Braindead. ‘I can swap if you want, if you want to sit with Logan?’
‘No,’ said Abby quickly, shaking her head. ‘You’re fine. Seriously, I’m okay here.’
‘Right,’ said Braindead, nodding slowly. ‘Well, as long as you’re all right. We’ll go back to our seats. Say bye-bye Mummy,’ he said, pointing Logan towards Abby. Abby leant forward and gave him a peck on the cheek.
‘See you soon,’ she said, giving him a little wave.
* * *
Katy had found herself sitting next to the bride-to-be and the tumbling of vodka down her throat had led her to offer all the wisdom she could muster on marriage and weddings to the learner wife.
‘Ours was a lovely wedding,’ she told Cassie. ‘But if I had my time again then I’d do it like you. You know, in the right order for a start,’ said Katy to the wide-eyed young woman as they continued to graze on neat alcohol. ‘I hate telling people that we got married after we had Millie. You can see that look on their faces – you know, “Oh, so you had to get married then,” that’s what they’re thinking, but it wasn’t like that at all. We didn’t plan Millie but she has been the best thing that has ever happened to us and when Ben proposed in the labour ward, well, you can’t get more romantic than that, can you? I mean, I looked my absolute worst! Naked from the waist down, bodily fluids everywhere, a belly the size of Africa. It can’t have been pretty and yet he wanted to marry me. Amazing, really.’
‘How soon did you get married after that?’ Cassie asked Katy.
‘Oh well, it took a while and well… er, well, in the end I sprung a surprise wedding on him but that’s a whole other story.’
‘A surprise wedding?’
‘Yeah, relationships are complicated, aren’t they? You see, to cut a very long story short, I had a one-night stand not long after we got together and, well, as you can imagine it caused complications, but we’re all good now. Never been better, in fact. Two kids, homeowners, jobs, solid as a rock we are. It was a rocky start but, you know, we were meant to be together. We’ve had tough times but I always knew we were destined.’
‘How?’ asked Cassie.
‘What do you mean, how?’
‘How did you know?’
‘You just know.’
‘But how?’
Katy let out a long sigh and took a large swig of her drink.
‘It’s just a feeling,’ she said eventually. ‘A feeling that overrides all your worries and concerns. That’s how you know.’
Cassie didn’t say anything, just stared into space.
‘How did you meet your fiancé?’ Katy asked her eventually.
‘We had a one-night stand,’ she said.
‘Really!’ said Katy.
‘Well, I didn’t know it was a one-night stand until I found out he had a girlfriend so I refused to see him again,’ Cassie added. ‘Then he dumped her for me and she tracked me down. Said he was the love of her life so I had better be worth it. That was three years ago. We got engaged last year on New Year’s Eve in Paris. He already had the ring. It was his grandmother’s. It’s a sapphire.’
‘So you are the opposite of me,’ replied Katy after she had looked at Cassie’s ring, considered Cassie’s story and drunk some more vodka. ‘You stuck with the man you had a one-night stand with whereas I didn’t.’
‘I guess you could say that’s right,’ replied Cassie.
They sat in silence for a moment.
‘Does your husband worry that you might have a one-night stand again? You know, because you did it once already?’ asked Cassie.
‘No!’ cried Katy. ‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t. It was a one-off. I’m not a cheater. Ben knows that.’
‘Right,’ said Cassie, gazing down into her paper cup.
‘Anyway, we shouldn’t be having this conversation now, it’s your hen party! You don’t need to be listening to me blithering on. You need to let your hair down. Have fun. That’s the downside of throwing a surprise wedding. You don’t get to have a hen party. I kind of regret that so you need to make the most of it.’
‘You should join us,’ said Cassie. ‘Come out with us one night.’
Katy shook her head and laughed. ‘No, I’m way too old for all that kind of stuff now. It’s a lovely thought, but no.’
‘Oh please,’ said Cassie, looking slightly desperate. ‘I… I’m a bit scared of what they’re going to do to me.’
Katy looked at her in shock. ‘But they’re your friends. You’ll be fine.’
‘I know,’ replied Cassie. ‘But they go a bit wild and, well, it’s just not me. I wanted to go and stay at a National Trust property and do one of those behind-the-scenes tours – you know, when you learn about the real history of the place and drink sherry. I suggested it to Ruth and she said she’d never heard anything so ridiculous in her life.’
Katy felt sorry for Cassie. Fortunately when all Katy’s friends got married, hen parties had still largely been about doing what the hen wanted, whereas these days that didn’t seem to be the case. It seemed to be all about who could plan the most outrageous holiday possible.
‘Ruth is unstoppable,’ continued Cassie. ‘If I get home in one piece it will be a miracle. The store where we work couldn’t open once after a hen do because so many people rang in sick.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ said Katy, patting her hand whilst thinking she was so glad she was too old to go on hen parties any more. ‘Just drink plenty of water.’
‘Well, i
f you change your mind,’ said Cassie, reaching into her bag and pulling out her phone. ‘I’ll give you my number, just in case you fancy a break from the kids one night?’
Now that did sound vaguely tempting, thought Katy.
Chapter Seven
‘How many hours have we been on this coach now?’ asked Daniel.
‘It’s a sixty-minute transfer time,’ replied Katy. Then she whispered in his ear. ‘Have you got any paracetamol? I think I can feel a headache coming on.’
‘Here,’ said Daniel, shoving a packet into her palm. ‘I’ve just had two. I should know better than to drink vodka on a plane next to a woman called Ruth. She was a really bad influence. I cannot tell you right now how much I need ice-cold water and a darkened room.’
‘Do you think the guys spotted that we had a bit too much to drink on the plane?’ asked Katy.
‘Gabriel is a saint, as we all know, and smiled at me as we got off the plane in an “aren’t I lucky to have a crazy mad English husband who makes friends with hen party on a plane” kind of way.’
‘Ben gave me a stern look so I grabbed Millie and Jack and told him he was a saint,’ replied Katy. ‘He said he knew and was looking forward to me being up in the night with Jack.’
‘Braindead looked kind of oblivious when Abby fell down the stairs of the plane,’ said Daniel, raising his eyebrows. ‘Good job she was drunk or else that could have been nasty. She’s fast asleep now, look. She’s going to feel like death when she wakes up. I cannot wait to lie down. What with the early start and the early hangover, all I want to do is go to sleep.’
* * *
‘I am not sleeping in that,’ announced Daniel when he finally saw his room some time later. ‘Is it because we are gay?’ he asked Gabriel. ‘Is that why they have done this? Is this what they do these days? These passive-aggressive little protests designed to make us feel like second-class citizens. Is this what we are up against?’
‘You have a hangover. You need to calm down,’ said Gabriel.
‘I do not need to calm down, it’s just not right. They cannot do this to us.’
‘It is just twin beds, Daniel. It is not the end of the world. You can survive for one week.’
‘But… but… I come on holiday to be close to you, not look at you across six yards of chipped white tiles.’
‘Then we shall push the beds together. See, it is easy. Not a problem. Now are you going to unpack or bath Silvie?’
Daniel knew he should bath Silvie. Gabriel had taken care of her all day without any protest. He sighed. This was going to hurt.
‘I’ll bath her,’ he said, holding out his arms and taking her from Gabriel. He held his breath. She could smell his fear, he was sure. He carried her through to the bathroom. The minute he shut the door the wailing began and for the second time that day he regretted ever meeting Ruth as his head throbbed with a daytime hangover.
* * *
‘Ring them again,’ said Katy, pacing the room.
‘But I only rang ten minutes ago,’ said Ben, lying back on the bed and looking very interested in the Spanish soap opera that was on the TV.
‘But they aren’t doing anything, are they?’ she shrieked. This was a disaster of epic proportions. She had been so clear when they had booked the holiday what was required. What were they going to do if they didn’t resolve this? Absolutely no-one would be getting any sleep whatsoever. They would be returning home as zombies.
‘I’m going down to reception,’ she said at last. ‘Whoever is answering the phone clearly doesn’t realise the seriousness of the situation.’
‘Okay,’ shrugged Ben.
Clearly Ben did not understand the seriousness of the situation either. Or was it just that he wasn’t suffering with a hangover like she was, and therefore was dealing with the issues of ensuring their room was a safe, calm environment for them to be in for the week much better than her?
It had started with the balcony. She’d checked that it had a child lock on the sliding door that accessed it and then had a fit when she discovered that there were chairs and a table dangerously close to the rail. Millie or Jack could have climbed onto them and then jumped off the balcony and died! Ben had told her to calm down but she refused until he had removed the table and chairs from said balcony and now they were cluttering up the already quite tight room.
Then there had been no plug for the bath. How on earth was she supposed to bath two children without a plug? A plug in a bath wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Having discovered the lack of plug, she then realised that there were only two double beds in the room. They were missing the cot they had been promised for Jack and that was essential for their sanity. The cot that would keep him out of danger and out of their bed whilst they slept. There was no way they could deal with this holiday without a cot.
It was after eight o’clock when Katy walked up to the reception desk, trying to stay calm. Her headache was just about at its peak and she was so tired, she could have cried.
‘We were promised a cot,’ she blurted out to the first person who became free behind the desk. She was ready for them to say they had run out, at which point she would kill someone.
The lady looked blank for a moment.
‘We were promised a cot and we don’t have one in our room,’ Katy said.
‘Which room, madam?’
‘Room 204.’
The lady tapped at a computer. Katy poised ready to pounce should she give the wrong answer.
‘I am sorry, madam,’ she said looking up. ‘I will call housekeeping and have them send one up to you.’
Katy took a breath. She had been ready for this answer as well.
‘My husband has called twice in the last hour and both times been promised that a cot is on its way and it has not arrived.’
The lady looked back at her steadily. She picked up a phone and spoke rapidly in Spanish. She put the phone down.
‘Our porters are all busy transferring luggage but there should be one free in half an hour and they will be asked to get a cot to you immediately.’
Half an hour. Half an hour before she could lie down and switch off.
Katy leant forward on the desk and stared at the woman behind it.
‘Do you have children?’ she asked.
‘No,’ replied the woman.
‘When you have children,’ she began, ‘you will understand that half an hour can be a very, very, very long time. Imagine listening to someone scrape their fingernails down a blackboard for half an hour. That is the equivalent of the last half hour before you know you can put your children to bed. The clock literally slows down before your eyes, never has time gone slower. In fact, I truly believe that the world stops, yes, stops, whilst you are waiting to put your children to bed, so that finally for the first time that day you can hear yourself fucking think!’
She paused for what she hoped was dramatic effect.
‘If that cot is not in our room within the next ten minutes I will be down here and I will sit here and scratch my fingernails down that charming little blackboard you have perched on this desk telling me that the weather today has been amazing but tomorrow it will be cloudy with a chance of showers until my husband calls me and tells me that the cot is in the bedroom and my son is in said cot. Do you understand?’
The lady nodded grimly but didn’t move. Katy looked pointedly down at the phone and waited until she had picked it up and was dialling a number before she turned round and walked wearily back to the lift.
* * *
‘Ben’s on the phone,’ said Braindead to Abby, who was lying on the bed with a wet flannel over her forehead. ‘Wants to know if we have a cot for Logan in our room?’
Without opening her eyes Abby pointed to the cot that was plainly sitting in the corner.
‘Yes, mate, we have,’ said Braindead. He went quiet for a minute.
‘Well, you can borrow ours if one doesn’t turn up. We’ve got two b
eds in here. Logan can bunk up with one of us if need be.’
Abby began to shake her head vigorously.
‘Well, he can bunk up with me at least,’ he continued. ‘No bother. Right, see you in the morning, mate, but let me know if you need the cot.’
He put the phone down, chuckling.
‘Katy’s downstairs apparently ripping the head off the receptionist because they haven’t put a cot in the room for Jack, and Millie’s kicking off because she hadn’t realised that there wouldn’t be Disney Junior on the TV in the hotel room. She says Spain is the worst country she’s ever been to. Ben actually sounds a bit stressed. The joy of two kids, I suppose.’
Abby said nothing. Braindead watched her chest rise and fall.
‘Must be nice though,’ he said as he settled himself next to Abby on the bed with Logan in his arms. ‘When you know you’ve completed your family and they’re all well and that and you’ve got the next eighteen years to enjoy them, touch wood. Always felt a bit sorry for those who have twins or triplets because it’s all condensed, isn’t it? You’re not stretching it or anything. They’re born and you go through it all at the same time. No thinking, well, when one leaves at least I’ll have the other one for a few years longer. Mind you, I guess if you have triplets then you only need to go through pregnancy and childbirth the once, which I imagine would be quite appealing. So would you rather have triplets and get it all over with or be pregnant and give birth three separate times?’
Abby didn’t answer.
‘Abby, did you hear me?’ said Braindead, turning towards her. ‘Would you rather have triplets or be pregnant three times—’
‘Yes, I heard you,’ said Abby, suddenly pulling herself up on her elbows. ‘And the answer is no!’ She got off the bed and staggered into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
‘Oh,’ said Braindead, looking down at Logan. ‘Looks like you’ll only be getting one more brother or sister,’ he told him. He kissed the top of his head. ‘But we might change her mind, hey?’ he added. ‘We might even persuade her to have a football team. You never know.’