What I Did On My Holidays

by Chrissie Manby

  Well, it would certainly liven things up a bit.

  Now that I didn’t have to pretend I wasn’t in the flat when my sister came round to water my plants, I could look after them myself. I spent a few minutes picking off dead leaves. I put my shoes back in the wardrobe and re-hung the favourite skirt that Clare had just tossed onto the floor. I gave my wardrobe a bit of a reshuffle while I was at it, making sure that everything was in colour order. Then I got out the vacuum cleaner. I took the brush off the nozzle and, without looking, I sucked that dead mouse straight into the bag. Ugh. Thank goodness my cleaner was an old model that didn’t have a see-through cylinder. With the mouse safely inside the bag, I saw to it that the carpet underneath the bed was every bit as clean as the rest of the room. I would never let it get quite so filthy again. Talking of filthy . . . I wiped some dust from the top of the wardrobe with my index finger.

  Perhaps Clare was right. There was plenty to keep me occupied at home. That day I kept myself busy until the wee small hours of the morning, polishing each piece of cutlery in the kitchen drawer one by one. After that, when I couldn’t resist for a moment longer, I logged on to Facebook – nothing about Callum’s profile had changed, thank God – and then Twitter.

  ‘Thinking about my brave girl on her own in Majorca. What kind of man dumps a woman right before a holiday to celebrate her 30th birthday?’ my mother had tweeted. I buried my face in my hands with shame. Couldn’t she have been more subtle? Hannah and Alison had tweeted that they were right behind me all the way. Minutes after that, my mother had tweeted about another natural cure for vaginal dryness. Funnily enough, Hannah and Alison had no comments to add on that subject.

  When I finally got into bed at around half past three, I was almost tired enough to fall straight to sleep. Once my head hit the pillow, however, I couldn’t help thinking about the way Callum and I used to text each other ‘goodnight’ when we weren’t spending the night together. That had been our habit from very early on. Now that habit was broken.

  It’s such a strange thing, breaking up with someone. When someone has been in your life or at least in your mind every day for any period of time, getting used to their absence takes some doing. Instead, you end up with something approaching phantom-limb syndrome. You know, that sensation that amputees sometimes get that the missing limb is still very much there and in need of a scratch. How long would it be before my heart got used to what my mind already knew and I stopped rolling over in bed and expecting to see the dark shape of Callum’s body on his side of the bed?

  Alone in my bed for yet another night, I cursed Callum’s absent bulk and forced myself to stretch out like a starfish. This was my bed and there was no one in it but me. Why did I always confine myself to one side of it, as though I were sleeping on a park bench? There was enough space for three of me on the mattress. I was going to make the most of it. Limbs akimbo, I shut my eyes and started counting sheep.

  I might have fallen asleep like that, but next morning, I woke up in my usual position, curled up in the far right corner with my arms wrapped tight round me to protect me from the big, bad world. The thought of Callum brought a lump to my throat as soon as my brain kicked in. If I’d had to spend another day alone in the flat, it might well have been the day I cracked up. Maybe it was a good thing my sister was coming.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Clare arrived, as promised, just after seven in the morning. She told me she’d got a taxi to take her all the way to the Gatwick Express entrance at Victoria, where she made a show of going down the escalator to the platform before dashing through the station, avoiding the CCTV cameras – ‘Just like that scene in The Bourne Ultimatum’ – then coming up a different escalator and getting into another taxi to come to my flat via the garage with the mini-supermarket at the end of my road. Her complicated route was intended to put Evan off the scent, she explained. Even though he was, in theory, getting ready for work the whole time Clare was travelling, subterfuge was essential. As was her disguise. She was wearing a pair of huge sunglasses and a brightly coloured silk headscarf wrapped round her curly hair.

  ‘In case anyone sees me,’ she said.

  ‘Right. You don’t look especially anonymous in those big sunglasses,’ I pointed out. ‘You look more like someone trying desperately hard to be noticed. A wag, for example.’

  ‘Just help me with these, will you?’

  She indicated her two enormous suitcases. The driver had, with a distinct lack of grace, just about deigned to haul them out of the taxi’s boot, but he would not bring them even as far as the gate. He told us he couldn’t.

  ‘I’m on incapacity benefit,’ he said.

  I couldn’t blame him for being unwilling to take on the challenge of Clare’s baggage. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to it. ‘What on earth have you got in those?’ I asked, when I saw Clare’s mammoth haul. The larger of the two cases could have contained a whole cow. You wouldn’t even have needed to chop the cow up first. ‘You’re only coming to my house for a few days.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Clare, ‘but as far as everyone else is concerned, we’re in Majorca, aren’t we? And Evan would be suspicious if I travelled with less luggage than usual.’

  ‘If Evan saw you take all this through the door, he probably thinks you’re running away for ever. Is this what you usually take when you go away?’

  ‘No. If I’m going for anything longer than a weekend, I usually take a bigger wheelie case.’

  I goggled. She had a bigger case than the one that could hold a whole Friesian?

  ‘But the handle fell off on the flight back from Ireland. Personally, I think the baggage handlers wrecked it deliberately. They covered it in that “heavy load” tape and it ruined the leatherette.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I hope I haven’t forgotten to pack anything important.’

  ‘The kitchen sink?’ I suggested.

  A micro-expression of panic crossed Clare’s face.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got one of those. I really can’t imagine you’ve left anything important behind, but if you have, I’m sure I will have something you can borrow.’

  ‘It’s so hard to plan for the so-called summer weather in England,’ Clare said, taking off her sunglasses to peer at the grey sky above. ‘One minute the sun’s out; next minute you’re back to wearing three jumpers and bed socks.’

  ‘Clare, we’re staying indoors,’ I reminded her. ‘There will be no weather where we are going. The flat will be kept at a steady twenty-two degrees. I have no intention of changing out of my pyjamas.’

  Clare slapped a hand to her forehead.

  ‘Pyjamas! I forgot my pyjamas. I knew it. There’s always something. Do you think I could go back to my place without Evan noticing?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You can borrow mine.’

  I made a grab for the smaller case and wrenched my back in the process. That case could not have been any heavier had it contained nothing but solid gold bullion.

  ‘This weighs a ton!’ I complained.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Clare. ‘I should have said. That one’s got my shoes and heated rollers in it. And my travel iron. And my hairdryer.’

  Heated rollers? Travel iron? Sheesh.

  ‘You take the bigger one,’ she suggested.

  It was slightly lighter, but all the same, by the time I got it into the bedroom, I felt like the losing strongman in a competition to see who can pull a lorry for half a mile.

  Clare’s enormous amount of luggage reduced the floor space in my already tiny flat by 25 per cent. As she unpacked those two huge cases, which could have contained all my worldly goods and then some, I marvelled at the things she had brought for the purpose of spending just under a week in my ground-floor flat in Clapham: five bikinis (one for each day, she explained); five pairs of shorts; five T-shirts; four sundresses – three of them mini, one maxi; three cocktail dresses – one white, one black, one red; five pairs of high-heeled shoes – one to match each co
cktail dress, one silver and one gold, which would go with everything. ‘Metallics are fabulous neutrals,’ she explained; four pairs of flat sandals; a pair of cowboy boots; and some trainers.

  ‘In case we go for a walk.’

  ‘One thing we definitely won’t be doing this week is going for a walk,’ I reminded her. ‘We’re in hiding.’

  ‘I know, but when I was packing my case, Evan said he’d heard that the walking is really good in Majorca. I could hardly ignore his tip, could I? That would have made him suspicious.’

  ‘Do you usually like to go walking?’

  ‘Well, no, but . . . there’s a first time for everything.’

  In addition to all those clothes, she had enough toiletries to set up her own counter in the cosmetics department of John Lewis. There were five bottles of suntan lotion. That’s right – not one but five. They ranged from SPF5 to SPF30. Then there was aftersun. There was aftersun with aloe vera. There was aftersun with added tan extender. I had no idea there were so many variations of aftersun. Then there was exfoliator. A bottle of St Tropez. Another bigger bottle of St Tropez.

  ‘In case the weather’s no good,’ she explained.

  ‘Of course the weather’s going to be no good,’ I pointed out. ‘We’re staying in south London. Indoors. Is this your entire bathroom cabinet? You’ve brought more stuff than I would use on a year away.’

  ‘I know,’ she said impatiently, ‘but I had to make it look as though I’ve really gone abroad. Where can I put these?’ She waggled two bottles of suntan lotion.

  Clare arranged her toiletries on the shelf above the bathroom basin and all around the edge of the bath. She had also brought an enormous bottle of shampoo and matching conditioner. They were of a brand that claimed to be especially good at washing salt out of beach hair.

  ‘Did you buy this specially?’ I asked.

  Clare confirmed that she had. ‘Well, I’ll use it one day. Maybe Evan will take me somewhere nice on honeymoon. If it fits with his five-year plan.’

  Having taken over my bathroom, she unpacked her hand luggage. She’d brought six paperback books. She really was intending to get some reading done. I had a look through them.

  ‘Wolf Hall.’ I picked up the Hilary Mantel monster book. ‘This isn’t your usual kind of thing. I am impressed.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not going to read it. Look at this.’ Clare flicked the book open. ‘Evan hollowed it out to make a secret hiding place for my foreign currency.’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’m even more impressed by that.’

  Clare piled up her paperbacks on the coffee table.

  ‘Now, I could really kill a cuppa . . . One of the best things about holidaying at home,’ she observed, as she made some Earl Grey, ‘is that you can have a cup of tea whenever you like. You couldn’t get a cup of tea like this in Majorca.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘I really don’t know what I thought was missing.’

  At around midday, when she calculated that her ‘plane’ must have touched down at Palma Airport and its passengers all cleared immigration, Clare turned on her iPhone and straight away set it so that her calls would divert to voicemail without giving her location away with a UK tone. She sent a text to Evan to let him know she’d landed safely. She did the same for Mum, telling her that I had been waiting in the airport arrivals lounge as promised. Mum responded at once with a request to know whether I had been looking after myself since the split. Had I been eating? she asked.

  ‘She looks like she’s been stuffing ice cream,’ Clare confirmed. ‘There, that should shut her up,’ she said to me.

  ‘Tell Sophie to stay off the saturated fats,’ was Mum’s response. ‘It will only make things harder when she gets to my time of life. I’ve just tweeted about a new menopause diet that you girls might want to try.’

  ‘How old are we?’ Clare asked me.

  When Clare had finished contacting all the people who would want to know that she had arrived safely (our mum, Evan, Evan’s mum and her temp controller, Beryl, who had become a good friend over the years Clare had spent avoiding a permanent job), she suggested that perhaps it was time I answered some of my workmates’ emails.

  ‘How many have they sent?’

  ‘Must be getting on for a hundred.’

  I had still not responded to a single one, but Hannah and the others kept writing and asking for more details about how I was getting on, and it was true that their tone was becoming increasingly concerned. I couldn’t hope that they would continue to read only good things into my prolonged silence.

  ‘You don’t have to say much. Tell them you’re having a wonderful time,’ said Clare. ‘Tell them your sister has arrived to take care of you and you’re looking forward to having a great few days with her.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. I didn’t want to lie to them, as we were already lying to our parents and to Evan. It seemed too risky. Mum and Evan . . . well, it appeared they were inclined to believe just about anything. Hannah and Alison were a different story. It was best to give them as little ammunition as possible. But Clare pointed out that I couldn’t stay silent for ever, because then someone really would start to worry. And if someone started to worry, then someone might try to track me down at the hotel. All people needed was the odd text or one-line email to let them know I was still alive. They didn’t really want any detail. They didn’t really care, Clare assured me. In any case, I didn’t have to lie much. My sister really was with me. I could say just that and be telling the God’s own truth if it made me feel any better.

  Clare had an answer for everything. She always did. And ultimately the little sister in me couldn’t say ‘no’.

  ‘OK,’ I said. Against my better judgement, I sent an email to Hannah, copying in everyone else at Stockwell Lifts who had wished me well so far, telling them I was especially fine and happy now that my sister had arrived to spend a few days with me and that I would let them know more as it happened.

  ‘Good,’ said Clare. ‘That’s sorted.’

  The response was pretty much immediate. Hannah confirmed that the girls at Stockwell Lifts had indeed been starting to worry. She had been thinking about sending a message to my mum via Twitter. Then she asked for more details. How was the hotel? How was weather? Had I met any interesting people? By which she meant ‘men’, she added, in case I hadn’t guessed.

  ‘See.’ I showed the email to Clare. ‘Now she wants to know even more.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Clare. ‘You don’t have to respond. You’re too busy having a marvellous time. Let Hannah conjure up a picture of you on the beach with Juan Carlos the deckchair attendant. You’re drinking mojitos and he’s rubbing suntan oil into your shins . . . Let Hannah’s imagination run wild.’

  ‘She’ll certainly come up with a more interesting scenario than the real one,’ I said, as I cleared some of Clare’s books and magazines off the sofa so that I could sit down too. ‘Five days in my flat. What are we getting ourselves into?’

  ‘An adventure. Are you hungry?’ Clare asked.

  ‘You know what?’ I found myself saying. ‘I am.’

  I was surprised to discover that I was feeling properly hungry for the first time since Callum dropped his bombshell.

  ‘What shall we have for our lunch?’

  Outside, it was cold and grey again and the dampness seemed to have seeped through the walls into my flat, which was ridiculously chilly for a summer’s day. I put the gas fire on in the sitting room; then we made ourselves a lunch of mashed potatoes, frozen fish fingers and baked beans. It was hardly holiday fare, but it did the job. You really can’t beat fish fingers.

  ‘I bet you can’t get these in Majorca,’ said Clare. ‘Pass the brown sauce.’

  We ate our lunch in front of Jeremy Kyle. That day’s show was all about warring sisters. One pair traded real, live blows on screen as they argued over a rat-faced man who had been cheating on both of them.

  ‘I hope we don’t end up like that by t
he time I go home,’ said Clare, giving me a playful punch on the arm.

  ‘Are you glad you came?’ I asked her. ‘I mean, do you really think we’re going to get through this without going mad and ending up hating each other? A whole five days stuck in my flat?’

  ‘We are going to have a lovely time,’ Clare insisted. ‘I’m going to make sure of it.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Clare did seem determined to have a lovely time. She quickly got into holiday mode. After lunch, she unpacked her suitcase, filling my wardrobe to bursting point, and then changed into a pair of my pyjamas. She chose the newest pair. Then she went back to reading her book with a cup of tea by her side and her iPhone plugged into my speakers, playing the type of music she claimed Evan wouldn’t let her listen to at home. (To be honest, I agreed with Evan. Clare’s taste in music was pretty bad. Lots of screeching emo and death metal.) Meanwhile, I continued the spring-cleaning frenzy that I had begun the previous night. While there was so little in the freezer, it seemed like the perfect time to defrost it. So when I should have been on a sunbed, I was on my hands and knees chipping ice out of the freezer with a blunt knife.

  After fifteen minutes or so, Clare wandered through the kitchen in search of a biscuit and told me that I wasn’t exactly helping her to find her holiday mood.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The sound of that knife against the ice is putting my teeth on edge.’

  ‘This is keeping my mind off Callum,’ I told her.

  ‘In that case, feel free to mess with my nerves.’

  Of course, the defrosting wasn’t really helping to keep my mind off Callum at all, but it kept my hands occupied and away from my iPhone while I waited for the regular bulletins from the office.

  ‘Callum just asked Alison if she had any spare Nurofen,’ Hannah wrote at about four o’clock. ‘The stress of breaking up with you is really telling, if you ask me.’

  The thought that Callum was suffering too gave me enough energy to descale the shower head, which was the chore I had chosen to do next.