Sunlounger - the Ultimate Beach Read (Sunlounger Stories Book 1)

by Belinda Jones

  It was a text message.

  Rosa, if you want to know how Joe lives on, how you can best remember him, then come to Marina Bay within the hour.

  It gave the name of the restaurant they were at, and was signed simply: ‘A Friend’.

  Carys frowned in confusion. ‘This wasn’t me. I didn’t send this.’

  Rosa looked towards Carys’ mother, who was reading the message for herself.

  ‘Well, don’t look at me!’ Mum shook her head defiantly.

  ‘Then who…?’ Rosa turned to Carys again.

  Carys felt strange, and suddenly very warm. Xavier’s dark features danced through her head. ‘I don’t think it matters,’ she said quietly. ‘I think what matters is that you came.’

  Perhaps Rosa wouldn’t believe her denials. Perhaps she would think she was lying about sending the text. But Carys didn’t think Joe’s sister would care either way, because at the end of the day it didn’t make any odds.

  Rosa’s hand fumbled across the table and gripped Carys’. Her bracelets jangled. ‘I let it go too far,’ she said. ‘Everything. The argument. I blamed you, Carys, and it wasn’t your fault. He was always talking about you, though. Sending me pictures. He loved you so much, and blaming you was just the easiest thing for me to do. Easier than accepting Joe had made the decision for himself.’

  ‘You practically raised him,’ said Carys. ‘You were bound to feel protective.’

  ‘It was hard enough letting go when he left for university…’ Rosa rubbed a hand over her face, as a lone tear escaped. Her gaze came to rest on the mound of Carys’ stomach. ‘Did he know?’ she asked softly. ‘Did he know he was going to be a father?’

  Carys wished she could tell Rosa that he had. She wished that he hadn’t gone cycling to the village store that ill-fated morning for bread and milk. She wished that the Land Rover which struck him hadn’t been going so fast over the old stone bridge. But Carys knew those particular wishes were futile.

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I didn’t know myself till just after the accident…’ Her voice broke.

  ‘Joe’s baby.’ Rosa sighed, and this time she couldn’t halt the flood of tears. ‘I won’t push him away, I promise you, Carys. Not like I did Joe.’

  ‘Or her,’ said Carys. ‘If it’s a boy, I’m calling him Joseph. If it’s a girl – Josie.’

  Rosa nodded emphatically. ‘That’s nice. That’s good.’

  A waiter sidled up to the table.

  ‘Stay and have tea or coffee with us, Rosa,’ said Mum, in a voice that left little room for negotiation. ‘We’ve come a long way from Wales, and everything is still very raw, but it won’t be long before Carys will be too far along to fly. So, while we can, let’s put the worst of the past behind us. Let’s have some closure.’ Mum hesitated. ‘Or disclosure. I always get the two muddled up.’

  And so they sat for another hour, Carys, her mother and Rosa, remembering the man they had loved, each in their own way, as husband, son-in-law and brother.

  The evening was warm. Seagulls cawed and boats creaked, and somewhere out there, across the dark rippling water, so faint it was barely audible, Carys thought she could hear Joe laughing.

  *

  Later that night, after a soak in the bath, Carys sat propped against her pillows in the hotel room, her hands resting lightly on her belly. The second trimester was supposed to be the best, but she hadn’t really felt as if she was blooming until this point.

  Echoes of the local nightlife drifted up from the street below through the shutters. Voices, tooting horns, snatches of music. All oddly comforting, when you considered the peace and quiet enveloping the cottage back in Wales.

  Mum sat on the other twin bed, sorting through her bags. Faffing as usual. ‘So who do you think sent that text?’ she said at last, as she examined her new brass lamp. Carys had given it to her just before they went out to dinner.

  Carys was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Maybe we’ll never find out.’

  ‘Someone who knew we were at that restaurant,’ Mum pressed, frowning absently at the lamp. ‘They must have followed us there.’

  ‘I guess…’

  ‘That man you met, up on the Rock – Xavier, you said his name was? Could he have known Rosa, after all?’

  Carys hesitated. Pregnancy hormones were obviously screwing with her brain as she imagined something far more fantastical. She recalled the Barbary macaque, rubbing the lamp earlier that day. ‘Maybe,’ she said, and shrugged.

  Mum turned the lamp around in her hands. ‘It’s not the prettiest for my collection, but there’s something about it…’ She smiled. ‘Thank you, cariad. It was a lovely surprise.’ About to wrap it up again, she stopped. ‘There’s something rattling inside… Strange. I didn’t hear anything before.’

  Carys sat up straight, and found herself holding her breath as Mum prised off the lid. What she expected her mother to find, she wasn’t quite sure, but it defied logic at the very least and might have involved a puff of green smoke, or similar.

  ‘Oh my…’ Mum turned the lamp upside down, and something shiny and silver dropped into her open palm. Carys caught her breath as her mother held up the lost charm bracelet. ‘Cariad! I thought you said—’

  ‘I did!’ Carys instantly snatched at the bracelet, a cocktail of relief and joy rushing through her, the like of which she hadn’t known in weeks. ‘The monkey took it over the edge. I didn’t imagine it. It happened! There’s no way it could have got into that lamp…’

  The women gazed at each other. Carys didn’t know what was going through her mother’s head, but she wanted to find out. ‘Mum, you remember when I was little, and you read Aladdin to me, and I said the genie was really fickle for switching his allegiance to whoever rubbed his lamp?’

  ‘You didn’t quite put it like that.’ Mum’s voice had a quaver to it now. ‘You were only about eight.’

  ‘You know what I mean. You told me a true genie would always latch on to the person closest who was most in need, even if that wasn’t the person who’d summoned him.’

  Her mother smiled, a little quizzically. ‘Yes, but – you’re not eight any more, Carys, love...’

  ‘And you’ve collected those battered old lamps for as long as I remember. You’ve polished each and every one. Why, Mum? What for? Just so they shine and look nicer on your shelves? Was that the only reason?’

  Carys held up the bracelet to the light. A jolt went through her. There was a new charm, silver like all the others, but exactly the shape of her mother’s new lamp. ‘Mum, look.’

  They both stared at it, mesmerised.

  Suddenly, her mother fished about in another bag and pulled out the square cloth she used to clean her reading glasses. Carefully placing the lid back on the brass lamp, she was about to start rubbing it when Carys grabbed her hand and stopped her.

  ‘No, Mum. Don’t.’

  ‘But…’ Her mother hesitated, and her Orphan Annie perm quivered again as she shook her head. ‘It’s dirty, love. I only want to clean it. You don’t really expect a genie to pop out… do you?’ She gave a nervous giggle that tailed off into a sigh.

  But then, who wouldn’t potentially want to meet a kind, handsome stranger who bought you a cup of tea without expecting anything questionable in return? Carys didn’t know many women who could resist the temptation.

  ‘Let’s save it for a rainy day,’ she said firmly, and took the lamp from her mother.

  About the Author

  Valerie-Anne Baglietto was born in Gibraltar, but came to England when she was three. She wrote and illustrated her first book when she was four. It was pure fiction, about a little boy whose mother's nose was incredibly long and spiral-shaped. The writing bug had bitten! In 2000 she won the Romantic Novelists' Association's New Writer's Award for her first novel THE WRONG SORT OF GIRL. After three more romantic comedies published by Hodder & Stoughton, her favourite being THE MOON ON A STICK, life with her young family took over. These days she's writing contempora
ry fairy tales set in picture-book Welsh villages inspired by her gorgeous surroundings. ONCE UPON A WINTER reached #1 in the Amazon UK Fairy Tale chart. Her latest release is THE TROUBLE WITH KNIGHTS IN SHINING ARMOUR.

  Valerie-Anne lives in North Wales with her husband, two sons, one daughter, two cute but perpetually hungry guinea pigs and a headful of plot lines.

  Website: www.valerie-annebaglietto.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/Valerie-AnneBaglietto

  Twitter: @VABaglietto

  Visit the Sunlounger website at www.va-va-vacation.com/valerie-anne-baglietto

  We have everything you need to make this your Best Summer Ever!

  You can also chat with the authors on the Belinda Jones Travel Club Facebook page.

  Return to the contents list.

  ICE, ICE BABY

  ***

  Rosie Blake

  Destination: Iceland

  I am smiling at EVERYBODY. It is way too early for this kind of good cheer but I don’t care – I’m off on holiday and I am happy. Scratch that – ecstatic. Four days in Iceland. The country not the supermarket. Every time I think the words I grin. I have also had a double espresso so I can’t actually control a lot of my facial features.

  And fine, it’s a work training holiday where we all have to attend seminars on how to assert ourselves and stuff but WHO CARES? There’ll be a hotel and those little toiletries and maybe a fluffy hooded dressing gown and those slippers that come in cellophane bags that you can mooch around your room in and pretend you’re Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman. And I BET the hotel has Sky TV and room service will be a total must. There is something about drinking vodka out of a really, really tiny bottle that makes it feel even naughtier.

  I realise I am skipping which is really hard to do when you are dragging a sizeable suitcase behind you.

  Heathrow is eerily quiet; in fact, it feels like it is just me and that man pushing an enormous metal cylinder around that polishes the floor. I flash my smile at him but he continues to manoeuvre his machine about and doesn’t respond. This is probably because he’s not going to Iceland for four days on a work training holiday but working at 6.30 am in a London airport, so is not as full of JOY as me.

  The enormous departures board announces the various destinations in big yellow letters. I scroll the list: Reykjavik, Iceland, check-in desk: 10. That’s meeeee! Wheeling the suitcase around I head towards the British Airways desk and spot a couple of people already there. I join the queue behind an absurdly elegant woman in a pencil skirt and kitten heels, (yes we are in an AIRPORT), a full face of make-up in place (how does she DO this? I thought lip salve at 5.30 am in the morning was decadent) and another woman who appears to be pretty nonplussed and wearing some kind of poncho (are they coming back? have they ever in fact been here?).

  I nod at them and then say, ‘Cooee,’ which I am fairly confident is the espresso talking.

  Neither reply.

  I wonder if they work for Princeton Houses too. The company arranged for sales reps from branches all over the UK to spend four days together doing some corporate bonding. I smile at them both just in case.

  The queue moves quickly and soon I am being handed my passport. ‘One ticket for Iceland,’ the check-in girl says as she places it on the counter. Her lipstick is the most startling shade of pink. Mesmerising. I take both, nodding silently.

  I look down at the details on it: ‘Seat K3: Martin, Imogen’ and move away, gripped by a memory of the last time I'd been in an airport. Me standing in a ridiculously over-sized sunhat giggling as Ben insisted we spend the entire journey pretending to be Portuguese. I smile briefly but then my shoulders sag and I rummage for my mobile phone.

  I wish Ben was here. I take my mobile out of my bag and scroll down to his name. Lingering I turn it off again and throw it on the top of my handbag. It’s not even 7am. That is no time to wheedle yourself back into someone’s good books. That kind of conversation is more appropriate post-breakfast.

  We’d had one of those weird arguments where five minutes before the argument your life is marvellous and you’re sitting, cuddled up to each other, wondering whether to make dinner or get a Chinese takeaway, and the next thing you know you have gone from rowing about whether or not to get chicken with cashew nuts to where your relationship is headed, if anywhere.

  We had both woken up at 5 o’clock. I’d had to be at the airport and Ben had to be at an early meeting. Neither of us are keen early-bird types at the best of times so we usually find grunting at each other will suffice in the morning. Grunt once for ‘milk’ and twice for ‘sugar’: you get the idea. Sometimes we do try words, very sparingly, but mostly passing various items to each other (cartons of juice, a spoon, the free toy from the cereal box) seems to be enough. This morning, however, I’d been raring to go. Perhaps it had been the thought of four days out of the office, the clean air of Iceland that awaited me, the prospect of full board, the adventure, but I could easily have passed as an over-enthusiastic breakfast-TV presenter.

  ‘Morning,’ I’d sing-songed, practically slapping my thigh in my joie de vivre.

  Grunt.

  ‘I’ve been reading yesterday’s paper,’ I chattered, pointing needlessly at said item which was laid out in front of me.

  Grunt.

  I then preceded to share all my thoughts about the article I’d been reading, something about a woman who had worked in a supermarket who had won the lottery at a really young age, spent it all and was now back to working in a supermarket insisting that she was so much happier being poor.

  I’d babbled about this woman, the supermarket, what I thought about her spending all her money, what I would do if I won the lottery, whether I would quit work. Would we both? Would we travel? Does he think he WOULD be happier? Or gutted he’d spent all the cash? Didn’t Ben think it was fascinating? Etc., etc., etc.

  Ben had finally geared himself up to speak as my barrage of thoughts came to an end. ‘That’s interesting’, he commented, his voice a little croaky.

  I looked at him suspiciously. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I queried.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why are you being so sarcastic? It is interesting,’ I insisted.

  ‘Yes I know,’ he said slowly. ‘That is why I decided to select that word to describe it.’

  ‘So why are you using that tone?’ I asked.

  ‘What tone?’

  ‘That tone.’

  ‘I haven’t got a tone.’

  ‘Oh you “haven’t got a tone”’, I repeated, parroting his words back to him before pushing my chair back and standing up.

  Before Ben knew it I had stalked out of the room, up the stairs, cleaned my teeth (so furiously my gums had started to bleed), banged my suitcase back down the stairs, refused to kiss him goodbye and stormed out of the house yelling that I hoped he would have an ‘interesting day’. He had been left looking blankly at his Frosties and wondering what had just happened.

  By the time I’d marched down the street, heels click-clacking noisily, and descended into the tube I’d wanted to apologise but with no reception, and no caffeine-fix in sight, I’d put it off.

  I’ll ring him now: I want to say I'm sorry. I hate arguing with him. I picture his bewildered face as I press his name. The screensaver of us at Brighton Pier pops up as it rings. It goes straight to answerphone. I can’t help smiling goofily at the sound of his voice. ‘You've reached Ben's phone, leave a message.’

  It beeps and I'm still smiling, thinking about Brighton, buying toffee apples and swinging our legs over the side of the pier as we share my iPod. I’m left suspended, realise the answerphone is running and then start gabbling, ‘Oh, well, I’m off now, I love you, see you er…well when I’m back I suppose. It’s Iceland. The destination. You knew that but, well you might have forgotten. I imagine it might be cold ha, ha, and I have packed a lot of bikinis but there’s probably a spa. There’s always a spa on these holidays. I know you probably don’t care…’ WHY A
M I STILL TALKING? THIS IS AN ANSWERPHONE, IMOGEN, AN ANSWERPHONE, ‘… because you don’t like Jacuzzis. The way the water moves. Fair enough. But I love them. Oh, that wasn’t meant to be a criticism by the way…’ (I’m thinking of this morning's argument. I imagine he is now too. Or he has dozed off because IT’S AN ANSWERPHONE, IMOGEN.) ‘… I imagine lots of people feel the same way about them. So, okay, bye.’ I hang up really quickly, staring at my phone in my hand. This is all your fault, phone, I think.

  The coffee is wearing off as I move through the security checks, into departures and head to Gate 19. I yawn, hoisting my handbag onto my shoulder as I move down the tunnel to the plane. The hostess points me in the only direction it is possible to walk in and I squeeze myself down the aisle, waiting for loitering people and starting to feel irritated. Looking along row K for seat 3, I inwardly sigh as I see a man spilling over both sides of the middle seat, the window passenger lost behind him, if indeed they do exist. I sit carefully, bottom perched on the edge of the aisle seat next to him and inch backwards. I hear the sound of a crisp packet opening (IT IS 7.20 am) and the smell of cheese and onion crisps pervades every pore of my body. Brilliant.

  The hostess moves down the carriage closing the overhead lockers and checking seatbelts left and right. She stops by me, leans down and says, ‘Excuse me, Miss Martin isn’t it? I’ve been told to tell you that you’ve been upgraded, madam.’

  I lean forward, assuming I’ve misheard, but she is smiling and pointing at the enticing blue curtains that have been pulled across to shield the first-class people from us mere mortals.

  My mouth moves slowly into an enormous grin. ‘Ooh,’ I breathe, in the most smug way, and turn to repeat to the man wedged into his chair. ‘An upgrade,’ in case he hadn’t heard the announcement, which he had because he's now scowling at me. There is a bit of crisp stuck to his lower lip.