What I Did On My Holidays

by Chrissie Manby

  ‘Mum’s tweeting!’ Clare called from the sofa while I was getting busy with the limescale remover. ‘She says she’s thinking of both her girls in Majorca and looking forward to this evening’s Urban Goddess group.’

  ‘Urban Goddess group?’ I echoed.

  ‘Hasn’t she told you about it? It’s about sitting in a circle, eating biscuits and harnessing the power of your menopause,’ Clare informed me.

  ‘There’s power in the menopause?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Dad told me. It’s like nuclear PMT . . . You should respond to her tweet.’

  ‘My @liftlady account is for work. I only tweet about Stockwell Lifts-related business.’

  ‘Then tweet that you’ve been admiring the lifts in your Majorcan hotel.’

  ‘Clare,’ I said, ‘I’m sure my workmates already feel sorry for me . . . If I tweet about the lifts in the hotel, they’ll think I’ve gone insane.’

  ‘Go back to the defrosting, then. Oh! Mum’s just tweeted again.’

  ‘What this time?’

  ‘The perils of HRT. She calls it horror-repression therapy.’

  I could safely ignore that one.

  So the first day of Clare’s stay in my flat was OK. At least I didn’t have to make every cup of tea I drank. But in the evening came the first indication that a holiday at home wasn’t going to be quite as easy as I hoped. For most of the day Clare had been quiet and relaxed, reading her book and following our mother’s embarrassing outbursts on Twitter, but that wasn’t going to be quite enough for her.

  ‘Now you’ve done all the spring-cleaning, perhaps you could just chill out and get into the spirit of things?’ suggested Clare as we washed up after supper.

  ‘The spirit of things?’

  ‘Yes. The holiday spirit. Let your hair down. Let’s have a drink.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m in the right place to be getting into the spirit of things,’ I told her. As the clock ticked past six and night drew in, I was back in limbo. The working day was over and there would be no more news about Callum from my workmates that day. In fact, there might be no more news until the office opened on Monday. A whole sixty-four hours away. ‘I’m not really on holiday, Clare. I am staying in my flat with the curtains drawn, thinking about the fact that I have been dumped by the man that I love. There’s nothing about that to put me in the holiday mood.’

  ‘That, I accept,’ said Clare, ‘but really, what good is it going to do if you sit here moping for the rest of week? You should try to have the best time you possibly can.’

  ‘How can I? I’m still trying to digest the fact that Callum has dumped me. It’s three days later and he hasn’t even texted to see if I’m OK. How is it possible that we were together for eighteen months and now he doesn’t even care if I’m dead or alive?’

  ‘Of course he cares if you’re dead or alive,’ said Clare. ‘But don’t you see that he doesn’t need to text you to find out how you’re doing? I’m sure Hannah is giving him a running commentary on your great holiday in Majorca. You don’t need to be in touch with him directly. She’s doing all the work for you. As far as Callum is concerned, remember, you’re having a wonderful time without him. What’s he going to do? Text and ask you if you’re OK only to have you text back telling him about the beach and remind him what he’s missing? He’s not on holiday, is he? He’s back behind his desk. If you ask me, right now he’s worrying more about his own heart than yours.’

  It was hard to believe, sitting as I was with my sister in that dingy flat I had so longed to get away from for just a little while. And we had another four days to go, with my birthday at the end. Was I really going to celebrate my thirtieth birthday like this? Behind drawn curtains in Clapham? I asked Clare what I had done to deserve such a blow at such a crucial point in my life. The point at which it would become clear that I was a loser who would never achieve life’s milestones: the husband, the mortgage, the kids and the dog. Turning thirty in the midst of a break-up was just about the worst thing I could imagine.

  ‘Come on,’ said Clare. ‘Don’t feel so sorry for yourself. Turning thirty isn’t so bad. I’ve done it three times already,’ she added with a wink. ‘I know this isn’t what you wanted, but it’s the best that we can do for now. And it just might work. Every day you can pretend to be in Majorca is a day that Callum will spend agonising over his decision to break up with you. I promise. All you can do in the meantime is try to see the funny side. And have a cocktail or three.’

  Clare waggled a bottle of Dooley’s in my direction.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Toffee vodka. I found it in the cupboard under the stairs.’

  ‘My cupboard?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t tell me you didn’t know you had it. That’s a very bad sign.’

  I certainly didn’t recall having bought it. Perhaps it was left over from the party I’d had when I first moved into the flat.

  Clare poured out a caramel-brown slug for each of us.

  ‘Nightcap?’ she suggested. ‘A toast to our happy holiday.’

  ‘Just a little one,’ I agreed.

  ‘That’s better. It’ll help you sleep.’

  Heaven knows I would need more than a shot of Dooley’s to help me to sleep that night. One of the things I had forgotten about my sister in the decade and a half since we last shared a room is that she is what one might call an ‘active sleeper’. By day, she sometimes managed to be still and quiet for hours at a time. At least, that’s what I always assumed, since she worked as a legal secretary (albeit on a temporary basis. Perhaps that was a clue). Anyway, let’s assume that my sister could stay in one spot for more than five minutes. By night, it was a different story. All I remembered from that time twenty years ago, when she and I were last bedmates, was that Clare, who, at two years older, was considerably bigger than me, had stolen all the bedclothes. Her favourite game back in those days was to sing ‘Ten in the Bed’ and push me onto the floor when it got to the bit about ‘They all rolled over and one fell out.’ Sometimes she pushed me out of bed twenty-five times in a row, even if I was, theoretically, the ‘little one’, who should have stayed on the mattress until the end of the song.

  Anyway, having investigated all the options available regarding sleeping arrangements in my flat, my sister plumped for sharing my double bed. The sofa was too short and saggy to be comfortable. ‘I dread to think what it would do to my back,’ she shuddered.

  I had a pump-up bed that our father had insisted I take to London after one of his garage clear-outs. Dad was always cleaning out the garage, but he couldn’t bear to throw things away. ‘You never know when you might need it,’ he’d say. In the past four years so far: never. But now that its hour had come, we discovered why it been relegated to the garage in the first place. The stupid thing was full of holes and would only stay inflated while the electric pump was actually running. The moment we turned the pump off, the mattress sank back to the floor in an uncanny impression of my broken heart.

  So the only realistic solution was for my sister to bunk down with me. And I was fine with that, at first. When Callum and I started going out, he had insisted I swap the standard double mattress that came with the flat for something bigger. (He was tall and broad-shouldered.) Two relatively skinny girls sharing that same bed, lying head to tail like sardines in a tin, should be easy, right?

  Wrong. The moment my sister’s head touched the pillow she was asleep. Seconds later, she was kicking my back as her leg muscles twitched involuntarily. Shortly after that, she started snoring so noisily I could only be thankful that her head wasn’t right next to mine. I would have perforated an eardrum. I gave her a shove, to try to persuade her to roll over onto her side. She didn’t roll over. She stayed fast asleep and gave a loud and indignant snort that suggested she was possessed by the ghost of a wild boar. I sat up and bodily hauled her into the recovery position. Still she snored. How on earth was it possible that my sister could snore in the recovery position? Surely nobody s
nored when they slept on their side? It seems that my sister was the exception to the rule.

  It was no good. Clare wasn’t going to stop snoring no matter which position she lay in. In the end, I gave up and took myself back to the living room with the solitary blanket I had managed to pull from my sleeping sister’s clutches. When she wasn’t kicking like a donkey or making a noise like a stricken Jumbo coming in to land, my sister was busy rolling herself up in the covers like a caterpillar preparing to turn into a moth. I retreated to the sofa, which, since these days I was a good two inches taller than Clare, was no better suited to me than it would have been to her. But, hey, who was I kidding? I wasn’t going to be getting any sleep anyway. The cinema of my mind was playing a non-stop marathon screening of the best bits of my relationship with Callum, followed by a special audio presentation of the phone call that finished it all.

  What was he doing right now? I wondered. Probably fast asleep and dreaming like a baby. I could only hope that he was on his own. Was there any chance that he was thinking about me? I closed my eyes tightly and tried to wish myself into his dreams.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The following morning, which was a Saturday, I felt as though I had spent the night on a pub crawl with a victorious women’s rugby team. My head hurt so much that part of me wished I had just gone for it and finished off that bottle of Dooley’s after all. At least then I would have a damn good reason to be feeling like something that even the cat wouldn’t drag in. My eyelids were swollen into slits. My lips were cracked and dry, and I could feel a mouth ulcer coming on, right on the end of my tongue so that it stung with every word I tried to speak. I was definitely not at my best.

  Clare, by contrast, looked as though she had slept very well indeed. Destination spa-style well. She came into the kitchen stretching luxuriously, wearing my best silk dressing gown over an entirely different pair of pyjamas to the ones she had gone to bed in. My pyjamas. She’d brought all those clothes with her and she was going to spend the whole time in my PJs. Typical Clare.

  ‘What time did you get up?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been here for most of the night,’ I said pointedly. She didn’t rise to it. Instead, she flopped forward to touch her toes and continued to speak to me from between her knees.

  ‘It is so nice to have a night without Evan. He takes up so much space. We need to get a bigger bed, but he says it’s out of the question when we’re still paying for the new kitchen. I should have insisted on a bigger bed. I’d rather spend my time in there than at the induction hob.’

  Clare straightened up and put the kettle on.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Make mine a strong one.’

  ‘Can’t get tea like this in Majorca,’ she said, raising her mug to me.

  ‘Are you thinking of making that your catchphrase?’ I asked her. ‘Because I am so not in the mood for catchphrases.’

  ‘I hear ya. Now, what are we going to do today?’ Clare went to open the curtains. I stopped her just in time.

  ‘We’re not here, remember?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ The curtains remained closed. ‘Can we at least turn the lights on?’

  The lights were on. I explained to Clare that my landlord had replaced all the old bulbs in the house with super-long-life energy-savers that basically saved energy by not giving out any light at all. God, it was dingy in that flat. Still, it was pretty dingy outside too. I peered out through a crack in the curtains and noted the usual grey sky and drizzle so fine you could hardly see it. It was the type of drizzle that could nonetheless soak you to the bones if you stepped out in it. It was faintly heartening to know that we weren’t missing much out there. It was even better to know that Callum was spending his weekend under this grey sky too.

  ‘London is miserable,’ Clare sighed.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘But miserable suits me today.’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ said Clare. ‘We’re on holiday.’

  ‘If you’re going to say that once more,’ I warned her, ‘I may not be able to get through the next few days without committing murder.’

  We ate toast for breakfast, together with poached eggs (which Clare managed to get all down the front of my dressing gown) and a chaser of All-Bran. We drank the only orange juice Clare had been able to find at her emergency stop-off at the garage en route to my house. It contained just 8 per cent orange juice. Everything else was oil and additives. Oil? I squinted at the small print on the label. Since when did orange juice have oil in it? It was a far cry from the freshly squeezed orange juice the Majorcan hotel had promised on its website. I felt my mood drop another notch as I imagined the people who would have been my fellow holidaymakers enjoying their breakfast in the sun while the light played on the crescent-shaped pool. It really wasn’t fair.

  ‘Any news?’ I asked as Clare turned on her iPhone. I had been monitoring my own email traffic constantly. There was nothing. Not even from Hannah. But it was a Saturday, so there was really no reason why she should be in touch at all. She wouldn’t be seeing Callum. Neither would Alison. Unless . . . I shoved that thought from my head.

  ‘Just Evan,’ said Clare, as she checked her phone. She spoke without much excitement. ‘He wants to know if I had a good night’s sleep,’ she said. ‘He hopes you’re well.’

  She texted him back confirming that we were both having a wonderful time, breakfasting on the terrace.

  ‘The terrace! Ha, ha.’ I picked at a chip of loose Formica on the kitchen table.

  There was a pause of a few minutes while we loaded the dishwasher; then Evan texted again.

  Clare frowned as she read this new message.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Now he wants me to send him a picture of the hotel.’

  How on earth were we going to do that?

  How easy it must have been to pull off a grand lie such as we hoped to in the days before mobile phones and PDAs existed. Back then, if you’d decided to hide out at home rather than go on holiday, all you had to do was draw the curtains, refuse to answer the landline and claim that the postcard you sent from Magaluf must have got lost in the post.

  As we were quickly learning, however, in the twenty-first century you couldn’t really be incognito for any length of time without raising suspicions. Information was king. Mum was on Twitter. Dad knew how to text. Even our grandmother had a mobile phone with a built-in camera. She frequently sent me pictures of her ancient smelly Yorkshire terrier wearing some new and hideous knitted dog coat. So of course Evan expected some photographs. In an age where people updated their Facebook pages from delivery rooms and tweeted from freshly dug gravesides, not bothering to post a couple of holiday snaps from your deckchair would have looked a little odd. But we weren’t anywhere near a deckchair and Evan’s request had sent us into a panic.

  ‘You’ll have to tell him the camera on your phone is broken,’ I said.

  ‘And have him call up the CEO of Apple and demand that a new one is couriered to our hotel at once?’ said Clare. ‘He’d do that. I know he would. Then our cover would be absolutely blown.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have a phone sent to the hotel,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t think so? He once called Clapham Junction to ask someone to find me on the platform and make sure I got into one of the front three coaches of the train to Southampton. He described what I was wearing and everything.’

  ‘Did someone check for you?’

  ‘Of course they didn’t. But those are the lengths he would go to. Sometimes I think he believes I’m a total incompetent. In any case, if my phone’s broken, he’d expect me to use yours instead.’

  ‘Say they’re both broken?’

  ‘What are the chances of that?’

  Clare paced the kitchen. She looked at her iPhone as though it might reveal the answer of its own accord. She sent Evan a text to tell him she’d send him a picture later in an attempt to buy us time. She sat back down at the table while we thought some more.


  Later Clare switched her phone to camera mode and focused on the back of an All-Bran box while we racked our brains for a solution. As it happened, the back of the All-Bran box featured a photograph of a laughing couple enjoying a healthy All-Bran-based meal on a beautiful sunny terrace. In the background, beyond a colourful row of terracotta tubs overflowing with bountiful geraniums and bougainvillea, the azure sea met an equally bright blue sky. Eat this cereal, said the picture, and you too will have the confidence to wear a red string bikini to breakfast with your handsome, white-toothed lover on your exotic honeymoon. Clare focused in on the man’s cheesy grin.

  ‘I hate having to face her in her bikini every morning,’ I said, turning the picture away from me. ‘Nearly puts me off eating altogether.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Clare, as she idly clicked a snap of the overly happy couple. ‘Why don’t they put jokes on the back or something? Pictures of fluffy animals. Lolcats would be great. Anything but Mr and Mrs Glee and their ridiculously flat stomachs.’

  I agreed.

  Suddenly, Clare sat up straight. ‘Where’s your laptop?’

  ‘What do you want it for?’

  ‘I’ve got an idea. Look at this.’ She showed me her photograph of the back of the All-Bran box. ‘Pretty good, huh?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I think we can work with this picture, or . . .’

  Clare fired up my Mac. Soon she had logged on to the website of the hotel where she and I were supposed to be staying. The Hotel Mirabossa. She clicked on the photo that had persuaded me all those weeks ago that this was the hotel where Callum and I would reaffirm our love after our long month apart. It was a great photograph, which claimed to be a view from one of the bedroom windows. Along the top of the balcony was a window box full of bright geraniums just like on the All-Bran box. The pool down below was the perfect summer blue. The sea in the distance was dotted with white sails. Happy days. I sighed just to look at it. It was beautiful.