[Escape 01.0] Escape for the Summer

by Ruth Saberton

  “Stop pulling faces; you’ll get stuck,” warned Angel. “Cal’s well fit and I think it could be fun. Anyone who’s anyone spends the summer there. London’s practically empty. Who knows who we’ll meet and what could happen?”

  “Rock’s really expensive,” Andi said doubtfully. “How will you afford it?”

  “Stop looking for all the negatives!” Angel shook her head. “Sis, you need to chill. We’re not about to sleep on the streets! Gem’s from Bodmin, remember? She knows somebody with a caravan in Rock we can have really cheap. We’ll get summer jobs and have a right laugh.” She paused and her face went all dreamy. “You never know, Prince Harry might be about! Maybe he’ll take me to Rick Stein’s?”

  Andi laughed in spite of her despair. “Or perhaps he’ll just moor his superyacht next to the windsurfing school, catch one look at you in your wetsuit and fall head over heels in love?”

  “That’s exactly it! Of course he will! Oh Andi, you should come too! It’s about time you had some fun. You’d love it! We had some good times in Rock, didn’t we? Before Mum died?”

  Andi nodded. She didn’t tend to look back much – it was too painful – but when she did think of those endless summers they were framed in her mind like golden snapshots of another life, a life before illness, grief and the misery of boarding school. She wasn’t sure how she’d feel about going back. There were too many memories there, some happy and some painful. Her past wasn’t so much a foreign country as another planet entirely.

  “Stop being such a stick-in-the-mud,” said Angel dismissively when Andi didn’t jump at the offer. “I’ll get a tan, do some wakeboarding and meet some hot guys.” She grinned at this before adding as an afterthought, “Anyway, enough of me going on. Why weren’t you in the office? Are you bunking? Or are you ill?” Her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You look bloody awful.”

  That was hardly surprising because “bloody awful” was exactly how Andi felt – but Angel was so optimistic about her summer plans that Andi couldn’t bear to start banging on about her own woes. Anyway, Angel had drunk most of the misery cocktail and if Andi lost her composure now there’d be nothing to blot out the pain. Maybe she’d go to M&S and buy a great big slice of Death by Chocolate instead? There were worse ways to go.

  “It’s nothing,” Andi said.

  Her sister gave her a hard stare. Angel knew Andi inside out. Nothing bonded sisters more than losing a parent and having to survive a concentration camp of a boarding school.

  “Honestly, I’m fine,” Andi fibbed.

  Angel snorted. “You’re a worse actor than Tom. By the way, why is he outside with his arm down the drain?”

  Andi half sobbed, half laughed at this image. “It’s a long story.”

  “I don’t have to be anywhere,” her sister said firmly. “I’m officially unemployed now, aren’t I?” She sat on the sofa and patted the space next to her. “Come on, spill.”

  So Andi spilled. She took a big gulp of her revolting cocktail and proceeded to tell her sister all about the money going missing, Slimy Alan and losing her job – while Angel spat “bastard” and “git” at suitable intervals. But when Andi got to the part about Tom cheating, Angel was so incensed she snorted sludge-coloured liquid all over the sofa and Andi had to slap her hard on the back.

  “I can’t believe it! He was shagging fat Gina in your bed? And then he had the nerve to try and blame you?” Once she had got her breath back Angel shook her head in disbelief. “What a tosser! He stole your money and he was cheating on you? Bastard! What on earth did you ever see in him?”

  Andi swallowed back tears. “I’ve no idea, but from this point on I swear to God that the only man in my life is Mr Kipling.”

  “I blame Gemma,” said Angel. “If she hadn’t introduced you in the first place none of this would have happened.”

  Andi smiled. “I don’t think we can pin this one on Gemma. Messy flats and bad-for-us food, maybe, but she didn’t force me to go out with Tom.”

  “Hmm.” Angel was unconvinced. Andi had met Tom at one of Gemma’s famous parties where the booze flowed, food was piled high and the most eclectic mix of people tended to appear and socialise. Gemma was a brilliant hostess: generous, warm-hearted and so sociable that people she randomly met at the bus stop or in the shops soon felt like treasured friends. They flocked to her like she was a partying Pied Piper. Tom had worked with Gemma on Heartache High, a teen school soap that had lasted for one season. He had ended up at one of her parties, where he’d made a beeline for Andi. The rest, unfortunately, was history.

  “Don’t blame me!” Gemma had wailed on the countless occasions when Angel berated her for inviting him in the first place. “I hardly knew the guy. He was only in two episodes and he played a teacher, so I didn’t have any scenes with him. Anyway, I’m sure he wasn’t such a tosser back then.”

  As far as Angel was concerned the jury was out on this one. In fairness to her friend, Tom had been working steadily in the early days of his relationship with Andi. But as the roles had dried up he’d taken to pitying himself and hanging out with a dope-smoking crowd who modelled themselves on Withnail and I – although when it came to work ethics they actually had more in common with the characters in Shameless. Angel had been to enough parties where she’d seen Tom stoned and maudlin to have made up her own mind about him. Maybe he had been talented once. Maybe not. In any case, the talent was draining away and all Angel saw was a parasite making her tender-hearted sister feel guilty. How many times had she heard him tell Andi that he’d given up his flat to move in with her and put his career on hold so that they could be together? Far too many times, was the answer, and it was all nonsense.

  Angel might have been the younger sister but sometimes she felt about a hundred years older than Andi. Andi still believed in fairy tales and happy endings, whereas Angel was a firm believer that a girl made her own luck. That was why she was so excited about Gemma’s plan to go to Rock.

  “Well done for flushing that watch down the bog,” she said admiringly. “Shame you couldn’t stick Tom’s head down after it and hold him under until the bubbles stopped.”

  Andi laughed in spite of herself. “Have you been hanging out with Mr Yuri?”

  Angel grinned. “There’s more to being a beautician than just giving facials! You’d be surprised what I’ve learned.” She jumped up and, grabbing Andi’s wrists, pulled her sister to her feet. “And one of the things I do know is that when a man does the dirty on her, the last thing a girl should do is sit and mope! Revenge is needed! Can’t we dump tonnes of manure on his doorstep or something?”

  Andi smiled. “Nice thought, but if he’s at Gina’s we share the same doorstep!”

  “OK, bad idea,” Angel agreed. “Here’s a better one. How about we tip this disgusting drink down the sink, go to the pub and get hammered? Celebrate losing our jobs and having new adventures?”

  Andi shook her head. All she wanted was to be left alone and allowed to have a good cry in peace before she started to rummage through the rubble of her life. There was a landlord to appease, a bank to plead with and an employment agency to call. The last thing she could afford to do, literally or metaphorically, was go on the lash with Angel.

  “I don’t feel like going out.”

  Her sister put her hands on her hips and fixed Andi with a determined look. It was the same look that over the years had seen Andi part with her dolls, do Angel’s homework and, lately, dish out money. “There’s no way I’m leaving you here breaking your heart over a knob-end like Tom. You’ve given him nearly two years. He doesn’t deserve another second.”

  It was a valid point. Besides, what was left of Andi’s misery cocktail was curdling in the jug. Goodness only knew what it was doing to their stomachs. Suddenly the idea of a cold glass of white wine was very appealing.

  “Maybe just one then,” she agreed.

  “Fantastic!” Angel said. “Grab your purse, sis: I’m skint. I’ll text Gemma and she can meet
us. I think it’s time we all put our heads together. Look on this as your lucky day – how do you fancy joining us in Cornwall?”

  Andi stared at her. Could she really do it? Leave London and the flat, and step away from everything for the summer? At the thought of going back down to Cornwall her heart rose like a paper lantern. A break by the coast promised mental elbowroom, bright light and the sting of sea salt against her skin.

  “Come on,” urged Angel. “You know you want to be a Rock chick!”

  Andi’s bank account was empty, her boyfriend had left and she’d lost her job. Why on earth not? What did she have to lose? At that moment a Rock chick was exactly what she wanted to be.

  Chapter 10

  “Oh my God! Oh my God! I can see the sea!”

  Angel’s shriek in Andi’s left eardrum was just about enough to make her weep. Her head was already pounding from listening to Gemma’s Lady Gaga CD all the way from London to Cornwall; now it was ready to explode. By the time they’d joined the M4 Andi already knew the lyrics so well that she was confident she could put on a meat dress and double for Gaga should the star ever require a break; by the Tamar Bridge she was starting to wonder whether it was a new kind of torture. Death by “Poker Face”. Add to this the roaring Beetle engine only inches behind her backside and the constant squeals and giggles from Angel, and it felt like a pneumatic drill was boring into Andi’s brain. She’d popped so many painkillers she was in danger of developing a Nurofen addiction.

  “The sea! The sea!” echoed Gemma, bouncing up and down in the driver’s seat and craning her neck to glimpse the small slice of glittering blue nestling between hills that resembled Jordan’s boobs.

  “I can’t believe we’re nearly there!” Angel cried. She pogoed in her seat, the glimpse of Atlantic blue whizzing her back to her six-year-old self faster than you could say “tardis”. Andi couldn’t help but smile even though her neck was aching and she probably had deep-vein thrombosis. It was hard to move when you were sharing the back seat of a car with three suitcases, a hatbox and more pairs of shoes than you could count. And that was before she added in the endless chocolate wrappers, empty cans and sweet papers that had been constantly lobbed into the back seat. It had been like sitting in a skip for five hours.

  Turning to her, Angel said excitedly, “Oh my God, Andi! We’re back after all this time! Can you believe you’re going to be in Rock for the whole summer?”

  The short answer to this question was a resounding and heartfelt no, because Andi couldn’t quite believe that she was in Rock. Normally on a Wednesday morning she was sitting at her desk, frantically hoping Zoe would leave her alone for just one day and trying to wrestle figures into submission. By lunchtime she would be cross-eyed from staring at the screen and only able to make it through the day by emailing PMB for a chat. Andi wondered who had taken over her role and whether PMB would miss chatting to her? Probably not, she told herself sternly. He probably had a life. She hoped Zoe hadn’t told him that Andi had been sacked for taking credit for another colleague’s work. That thought made her skin prickle with mortification. Apart from the fact that it was untrue, she couldn’t bear the idea of him thinking badly of her. Somehow she had to clear her name. Maybe once she was away from the city and had some thinking space she’d come up with something? At the moment, though, her brain felt as if it had turned to cottage cheese.

  As the car began the descent towards the seaside town, Andi thought about how her life had taken a very odd turn. A week ago she was an accountant at a prestigious company, working on the figures for Britain’s answer to Microsoft and living with her long-term boyfriend in a small but comfortable flat. Fast-forward a week or so and here she was, suddenly homeless, penniless, unemployed and on her way to Rock to share a caravan with her sister and her sister’s bonkers friend.

  Even Russell Grant couldn’t have seen this coming.

  Andi was just contemplating, for the umpteenth time, the horrifying and gut-churning discovery that Tom had not only cheated physically but also emptied all her accounts and maxed out her credit cards to boot, when Gemma slammed on the brakes with such force that several bags flew off the parcel shelf and walloped Andi on the head.

  “Ouch!” she gasped. There was something really hard in that fake Louis Vuitton holdall. There was probably a dent in her skull now. Maybe she had concussion too? She could hear a really weird buzzing sound…

  “Gemma! Don’t look at the sea! Look where you’re going!” cried Angel, her hands over her eyes. “We’ve got all summer to look at the view!”

  “Oops! Sorry!” giggled Gemma. She ground the gears; the Beetle kangarooed forwards and another bag smacked Andi on the head.

  “I can hear buzzing,” Andi said, wrestling the holdall back into position. “Either I have a head injury or else your electric toothbrush has been set off.”

  Gemma chuckled. She caught Andi’s eye in the rear-view mirror and winked.

  “I hate to break it to you, but that is not my toothbrush!”

  Andi recoiled from the bag as though scalded while her sister and her best friend cackled with mirth. She felt about a hundred and ninety. She was thrilled to be back in Cornwall, and the moment they had crossed the Tamar her stomach had pancake-flipped with excitement – but for the life of her she just couldn’t summon up the exuberance and energy that fizzed from the other two. Andi supposed this was hardly surprising. She’d just broken up with her long-term boyfriend, and although she wasn’t breaking her heart over him she was bound to be a bit flat.

  Andi had never seriously intended to join the girls on their westerly pilgrimage to find sunshine, fame and millionaires. It had been a wonderful slice of escapism for a few hours on that blackest of black Mondays to listen to Gemma and Angel planning their summer and how they would be bound to find Callum South in one of the cafés or maybe running along the water’s edge. As the white wine had flowed and the pain of the day had begun to blur around the edges, Andi had almost believed that she too would be journeying westwards and spending the summer by the ocean. In her mind’s eye she’d seen herself wearing frayed denim cut-offs and deck shoes, her hair caught up in a simple knot at the nape of her neck; she’d be sitting on the edge of the pontoon, bare legs dangling as she watched the flotilla of boats bobbing on the estuary. She had almost felt the warm sunshine on her skin and heard the slap of waves against hulls. But of course reality was different. Deep in her heart Andi had known that she would have to wake up the next day, take two Alka-Seltzers and then deal with the car crash of her life. She’d ended up moving in with Gemma and Angel because she’d shortly afterwards discovered that landlords didn’t take “my cheating bastard boyfriend stole all my money” as a valid reason for not being able to pay the rent.

  Living with the girls had certainly been an education. Slugs roamed free in the kitchen, dirty plates festered in the sink and all Andi could find in the fridge was nail varnish and rotting veg. When she lay on the sofa at night, alternating between sobbing over her finances and worrying about Tom’s threats, she could practically hear the listeria and E. coli having a chat from the sticky work surfaces. After a week with the girls Andi felt as though she needed to bathe in disinfectant and dreaded to think what they’d do to a caravan. Public Health would probably condemn it after a week. But she didn’t have a choice.

  Andi had no money and no job. Tom had been given access to her banking details, so the bank wasn’t obliged to compensate her – and there was no hope of ever seeing a penny back from him. It was a truth universally acknowledged, that a young woman in possession of sod all must be in want of a place to live. Andi couldn’t afford the Balham/Clapham flat, Tom had nicked her cardboard box on his exit, and so she had ended up on the sofa at Angel and Gemma’s place. A bed of nails would have been more comfortable, but at least she’d had somewhere to go while she attempted to decide what to do next.

  Andi sighed. It had probably been easier for Einstein to figure out his theory of relativity. At the mom
ent she couldn’t see much further than either panicking or ranting or, when she wasn’t engaged in those activities, eating all the cakes Gemma insisted on baking. For a girl who was always on a diet Gemma had some very odd ideas about what was healthy. Andi was pretty certain that carrot cake couldn’t really be classed as one of your five a day. Still, there was no doubt about it, Gemma Pengelley was an amazing cook and Andi had enjoyed comfort-eating every calorific mouthful. She figured she deserved a lot of comforting. She might as well add getting fat to her list of woes. Maybe Callum South could hire her for his show? Andi smiled in spite of herself: if you couldn’t beat them, join them.

  Anyway, now Angel and Gemma had quit their flat and were out of Tooting on their wild goose chase to Cornwall. Andi hadn’t really any choice but to throw her lot in with them and come too. She had contemplated contacting her father for some help but the thought of his silent disappointment seeping down the phone line had frozen her finger every time she almost called him. Andi had spent the past twenty-nine years feeling as though she was a big letdown to her father. No matter how hard she tried, she was never able to please him. She hadn’t achieved the A-level grades he’d expected; she hadn’t followed in his footsteps to Magdalen College in Oxford; and her job, although steady, wasn’t something he could boast about at embassy soirées. If she asked him for help he would probably loan her some money, but Andi knew she’d be paying it back in more ways than one. Sharing a caravan with Angel and Gemma was definitely the lesser of two evils. At least she could keep an eye on Angel. Surely her sister couldn’t get up to much in a quiet Cornish seaside town?

  The car breasted the top of a hill, then coasted downwards – and suddenly they were in Rock. The road dropped away steeply to the turquoise ribbon of the Camel Estuary twinkling in the sunshine and braided on each side with egg-yolk yellow sand. Moored boats danced on the tide, Padstow glittered across the water and a RIB zipped by, leaving a paper-doily wake across the shimmering surface. To her left and right, chunky Range Rover Sports, BMW X5s and Porsche Cayennes lined the streets while impossibly skinny women with golden tans, tortoiseshell hair and huge shades meandered along the road. There wasn’t a clapped-out banger or scruffy person in sight. Suddenly conscious of her own lank hair and soggy jeans, Andi sank back into the seat.