The Happy Glampers

by Daisy Tate

  Emmzzz to Izzledizzle: Not staying in cottage full of deadly mould even if it is your mother’s love shack. I’ll book for you and Luna, too. My treat. She eats grown-up food, I presume?

  Izzledizzle to Emmzzz: Yes, she’s not lost that many teeth! Looks super cute! Natch. #TotesPrejudiced

  Izzledizzle to Emmzzz: Been googling. There’s a castle down the road with rooms! How cool would that be?

  Izzledizzle to Emmzzz: And a Premier Inn just off motorway. They take dogs. Not the castle.

  Izzledizzle to Emmzzz: Just stay here at the cottage. Luna and I aren’t dead. Yet. *mwah ha ha ha haaaaa*

  Emzzz to Izzledizzle: You’re sick.

  Izzledizzle to Emmzzz: That I am.

  Emily conked her head against the wall. Hard. Trust Izzy to find the funny side.

  Izzy was trying to read Emily’s expression, but it was difficult. After the taxi driver had dropped her off and they’d had one of their exceedingly awkward hugs, weirder this time because – for the tiniest fraction of a second – Emily had leaned into it, Emily had on her neutral face. She had yet to leave the doorway, her dark eyes travelling along the ceiling of the cottage.

  ‘Well … what do you think?’ Izzy held her hands out and twisted side to side, a bit like Luna did when she’d said something clever and was waiting for a reaction. Izzy had sent Luna outside with Bonzer to practise his newly acquired trick of rolling over. She didn’t want Luna to get freaked if Emily was freaked. Then she would freak and it would all be very bad.

  ‘It’s a death trap waiting to happen.’ Emily wasn’t one to mince words.

  ‘Seriously? C’mon. You haven’t put anything in a beaker or … whatever. Did you bring a microscope?’

  Emily smirked at her and pointed at her rather swish but compact Burberry handbag. ‘Yes. I brought two.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ Cow. Lovely cow. But seriously. She’d brought her daughter here. Emily could at least fake it a little. ‘Hey! Did you know there’s an actual village called Mouldsworth?’

  ‘I did not,’ Emily said distractedly.

  She was staring at the rather unseemly dark splodges that Izzy had clocked advancing across the ceiling from the windows. Maybe it was pretty bad and she’d just gotten used to it. Like the leaking roof in their rental in Hawaii. She hadn’t had the energy to move and, as they were a bit behind on their rent those last few months before the business sold, she’d decided bugging the landlord would be a bad thing. She and Luna had made a game of it. Dodge the bucket.

  After a few more seconds inspecting, Emily made a call. ‘Izz. You can’t stay here.’ She said it in a voice that went straight through to Izzy’s ‘this is actually happening’ department. As much as she hated the place, denial kicked in instantly.

  ‘I’ll scrub it off. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘No. You can’t. Experts have to do that, otherwise you’ll be practically mainlining the spores. You’ve probably already …’ Emily took a step forward onto the swirly 1980s pub-style carpet then realized what she’d done and ducked back into the doorway. Izzy stared at the carpet forlornly. It probably should be ripped out, but her mother had written a poem about it. Published it in her final collection.

  ‘Listen, Izz … for you? Toxic mould is the last thing you should be around.’

  ‘We don’t know if it’s toxic.’

  Emily huffed. An obvious display of her frustration at Izzy’s persistent need to be optimistic. ‘Izz. Mould is bad. Chances that that gunk up there is the toxic variety? I dunno. But even the normal stuff could mean asthma, pneumonia, reduced lung function. It can cause irritation in your eyes, skin, nose—’

  ‘Stop! I get it. What about Luna?’ Izzy already knew what she was up against. Luna was who really mattered here.

  ‘Same. Worse maybe, because she’s still growing. Would you like me to tell you about the neurological implications of toxic mould?’ Emily asked in that fake happy voice of hers that was a portent to doom and gloom. Izzy didn’t but Emily told her anyway. ‘Mycotoxins like to kill neurons in the brain. That means confusion, dizziness, hallucinations, tremors. And that’s just the beginning.’

  Oh.

  Emily continued her singsong-y lecture on all the things that would start to go wrong unless she were to get the situation sorted. Izzy slumped onto the sofa.

  She’d had similar lectures. Ones that she and her mother before her had done their best to ignore. Swelling, skin irritation, pain. Scaliness. Izzy and her mum had scoffed at that one. They had African blood coursing through their veins. They were the queens of moisturizing. Scaliness. Bah.

  Izzy ran a finger along the fuzzy edging of the faded peach and cream sofa. The one her mother had stretched out on forty-odd years ago when it would’ve been new, or near as, no doubt reading poetry aloud to her Scandinavian lover. Izzy wondered what her own Scandinavian lover was doing now. Still chasing waves? Or, now that he was forty-odd, perhaps he’d changed. The website bio didn’t give away much, other than that he worked at the family boat-building company. Did he hate it as he’d feared? Or was he properly settled back in Copenhagen with a beautiful wife and a pair of blonde, blue-eyed children who were destined for great things. She teared up a bit. This was precisely why she never thought about him. The man had wanted freedom, not a child. In between torrid sessions of lovemaking he’d told her he craved independence like air. That surfing was his escape from an upbringing that threatened to nail him to Copenhagen and the family business for ever. So, when she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d told him she’d met someone else and they’d gone their separate ways. Him none the wiser about a child born to shoulder a rather different set of burdens.

  ‘Is there mould in the bathroom?’ Emily poked her in the thigh.

  She nodded and batted Emily’s hand away.

  ‘The bedrooms?’

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘And the kitchen. Happy?’

  Emily looked as though she was going to say something but Izzy beat her to it. ‘Yup. As usual, Dizzy Izzy has made a complete hash of everything. C’mon.’ She did the ‘bring it on’ beckoning gesture. ‘I can tell you’re desperate to say I told you so.’

  Emily sat down beside her, trying not to look as repulsed by the sofa as she was by the ceiling. ‘Look, Izz. I’m not trying to be evil or bossy or tell you what to do, but … you can’t live here. Not until you get professionals to sort it, anyway.’

  Izzy bit down on the remains of her scowl. She knew. It was just … it had taken so much energy to get here in the first place and now they’d have to leave? What was the universe trying to tell her? That she had been wrong to come back? She stared at her fingers, willing the whorls and lines to turn into oracles and point her in the right direction.

  Suddenly she couldn’t bear being in the little cottage any more. It wasn’t cosy, it was cramped. It wasn’t twee. Or picture perfect. Or anything like a chocolate box. It was a cheap, two-up, two-down terraced house in Nr Cardiff that had missed the regeneration memo. A postage-stamp garden for Looney and Bonzer. If four squares’ worth of paving stones counted as a garden. Bonzer would probably take up all of the floor space in the lounge once he was fully grown. Whenever that happened. Next week? The one after?

  ‘Should we go and find a hotel?’ This wasn’t Emily being smug. She was trying to help.

  ‘Yes,’ Izzy said, then, ‘But!’

  ‘But what?’ Emily’s eyes narrowed. She knew when Izzy got an idea it was difficult to deter her. Emily knew her very well for a friend she rarely saw.

  ‘I think it should be near the girls. Freya and Charlotte. They wanted us to come camping, right?’

  ‘I am not camping.’ Emily got up from the sofa and balled her hands into grumpy little fists on her teensy-tiny hips. Emily was hilarious when she was being belligerent. How could someone so petite be so fierce! ‘It’s out in the middle of god knows where. I doubt there’d be a dog-friendly anything out there.’

  ‘There’s bound to be an Airbnb or something.
’

  ‘Fine.’ Emily glared at her. She hated Airbnbs. Less control over germs. ‘And if you think I’m riding out there in that sorry excuse of a van of yours, you have another think coming.’

  Izzy smiled. There was the Emily she knew and loved. The one who leaned into hugs – even fractionally – and then freaked out.

  ‘Right then! I’ll get me and Looney packed and ready to go.’

  ‘Charlotte?’

  She put the book down, using a dandelion Regan had given her earlier as a bookmark, and was shocked to see the sun was already setting. She really had been miles away. ‘Sorry, Freya. What can I do? Washing up? Chopping?’

  ‘No. Not a thing. Done it.’ Freya had increasingly been in two modes as the week progressed. Frantic or asleep. Frantically scrubbing up dishes. Chopping up kindling. Cutting apart sausages. And then, abruptly, she would sort of – pfffzzzt! – short-circuit and go to bed.

  ‘I just got another text from Izzy and Emms.’

  Charlotte couldn’t tell if Freya was happy or angry about it. She chose a neutral response. ‘Oh, good! How are they? Did they sort out that mould problem? It sounded horrid.’

  Freya shook her head. ‘Doesn’t look like it.’ She chewed on the inside of her cheek. ‘They’re driving up. Tonight. Emily said she’s hunting for a hotel but I know for a fact she won’t find one.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There aren’t any. It’ll take them another hour or so.’ She scrubbed a hand through her hair and gave Charlotte a forlorn smile. ‘How many more people do you think you could fit inside that tent of yours?’

  Two and a half hours, and one rather dramatic arrival by tow-truck later, Emily, Izzy, Luna and an astonishingly large Bonzer were in situ. Izzy, of course, came running at them like a rubber starfish – all limbs and smiles and ‘hey, girlies!’ This, whilst Emily went straight to the van the driver had unceremoniously deposited at the edge of the field and produced one very large, very clanky box. ‘Time to get this party started!’

  Freya, who’d been undecided as to whether or not she was entirely pleased with the turn of events, was suddenly flooded with relief. The back-up team had arrived.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Right everyone!’ Freya clapped her hands until she had the entire group’s attention. A feat, considering the children were on sugar highs and Monty was knee-deep in an instruction manual on how to download the footage from the mini time-lapse camera he’d taped to the top of one of the windbreaks to chronicle their holiday.

  ‘Here’s the plan for today!’

  Monty shouted, ‘Boo! I thought the whole point of camping was that there were no plans. Isn’t that right kids?’ He tried to start a ‘No plans, no plans’ chant, but Freya shot him a look and the children knew better than to side with Monty when Freya unleashed The Look.

  For once, it was rather pleasant being She Who Must Be Obeyed, because this time she wouldn’t be telling anyone off. When Izzy, Luna, Emily and Bonzer had arrived the night before, that elusive cure-all she’d been trying to plumb from deep within her had finally surfaced. Me-time. Not alone time as such, but she had to get her head around her insanely overdrawn life, and having her girlfriends to bounce ideas off – or at least listen to her vent – seemed critical if she were going to sort herself out. With no money to pack her family off to a hotel, or a theme park, or anywhere else for that matter, she’d been absolutely floored when Charlotte had said she would like to give Freya a belated fortieth by doing just that.

  As uncomfortable as she was accepting hand-outs, Freya had been twisting into an increasing tailspin all week, her failures and Monty’s accumulating like tiny little daggers.

  It seemed too generous a gift seeing as all she’d given Charlotte were some linen napkins. Pukka, but … not quite on a par with paying for her whole family to have a play-day. After Charlotte intimated that she could do with some girlfriend time every bit as much as Freya could, Freya relented.

  Charlotte’s first suggestion had been for a spa day. But Freya loved it here at the beach, so when they thought up a few options for the children, Charlotte had gone Grouponing. The gesture felt like a lifeline. A friend who could see she was cracking at the seams throwing her a suture kit in the nick of time.

  One day. One entire day alone with her and her girlfriends. They needed it. Charlotte’s life was in crisis. Freya’s life was in crisis. Izzy’s sounded pretty up in the air. Even Emily seemed a bit unsettled. Something about things not working out the way she’d thought with Callum. Which, Freya had to admit, hadn’t come as much of a surprise. Not that she would ever ever broach it with her, because Emily could be so damn uptight, but Callum had been rather … fashionable, and there was always the thing that had niggled away at her: that maybe just maybe Emily might want to be looking at people of another persuasion?

  Anyway. She pictured wine. She pictured snacks. Smelly cheese the children would never eat. There would be giggling. They could talk openly and honestly without worrying about Monty appearing at exactly the wrong moment. A full twenty-four hours of purging the bleurghhh. Then everything would be fine and they could all go back to their real lives without having a mental breakdown.

  ‘You lot,’ she pointed at the children and Monty as if she were a drill sergeant, ‘are going on an adventure today.’

  ‘Oh, Mum …’ Felix wilted onto one of the stump stools. ‘If it’s one of those seashell things, I’ve got, like, only twenty-seven chapters before I’m done.’ Felix held up his book. It was a wonder the boy’s arms weren’t bulging with muscles from the weight of the things.

  ‘Unh-unh! No whining. I think you’re going to like this. Ready girls?’ Izzy was sniggering behind her. Izzy loved a surprise but could rarely keep one. ‘On … onetwothree!’

  The girls popped out from behind her in the sequence they’d practised in the shower block.

  ‘Paintballing!’ Charlotte sprayed them all with invisible paint pellets.

  The children cheered.

  ‘Off-road Segway tour!’ Emily used motorcycle movements instead of Segway movements, but it still elicited a whoop.

  Monty was as wide-eyed as the children. He’d wanted to go on a Segway tour for years. Literally. Since they’d been invented.

  ‘And … drum roll please, girls.’ They all obliged. ‘The longest zip wire in the Northern Hemisphere!’ Izzy put her hands in the air and raced round the group, making a vrrrrrooooom noise, then abruptly pulled her arms down and cradled her ribcage. She must’ve pulled something surfing. It was the second time Freya had seen her do that.

  Oblivious to Izzy’s moment, the children and Monty were literally jumping up and down with excitement.

  ‘Hey wait!’ Monty quirked his head to the side and asked Freya, ‘Isn’t all of that stuff further up the coast?’

  ‘Yes.’ Freya nodded gravely. ‘Much further.’

  ‘Sooo … won’t that take for ever? Getting up there, paint-balling … Segway tour … feeding and watering the children. You sure you’re happy trusting me with them for all of that?’

  Well. That was a loaded question.

  He flicked his thumb to the children who were busy discussing just how cool a turn of events this was. ‘Won’t they be a total nightmare tomorrow? We won’t get back until well past midnight and you know what Regan’s like if she doesn’t get her requisite ten hours.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ Charlotte crossed to Monty and pulled out her phone. ‘Look. I’ve got you all booked into a log cabin up by the zip wire.’ Charlotte quickly continued, ‘Since my own children aren’t here to spoil, I hope you don’t mind me splashing out on yours.’ Monty didn’t. ‘There’s a café on site that does takeaways. There’s also a mobile pizza truck—’

  The children tuned back in at ‘pizza truck’, whooped and immediately began negotiating toppings.

  Charlotte continued over the din, ‘There’s a small shop if you need anything else. All you need to do is pack a change of clothes and you�
�re all sorted.’

  Luna asked if she could bring Bonzer. Izzy gracefully covered by pulling out the koala toy that Freya remembered seeing at Sittingstone. From the smile on Luna’s face, it was clear she knew her daughter very well. Freya had a proud mum moment when Regan put her arm around the little girl and promised to look after her. Luna smiled at her as if she were a princess.

  ‘What about you lot?’ Monty finally remembered to ask. ‘Don’t you want to come, too?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Freya said, putting her arms round Charlotte and Izzy’s shoulders as Emily propped her chin on Freya’s shoulder. ‘We’re going to stay here and drink wine.’

  ‘Frey?’ Emily held the bottle aloft over Freya’s cup. They’d polished off the Pimm’s an hour or so ago and had, on Emily’s lead, moved on to Prosecco with strawberries.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Freya grinned. The day was feeling deliciously sinful, but her family seemed to be happy, if the selfies she’d just received from Regan were anything to go by. Plus she’d eaten some melon and remembered to take her turmeric supplement earlier, so – balance.

  Freya took a swig of the icy-cold Prosecco. It was from one of the gorgeous bottles Emily had brought. Miles better than the stuff she’d got from Aldi. Not that Aldi was anything to sneer at. They had all sorts of brilliant things, it was just … Oh, who was she kidding? Her principles were dear to her and, given their finances, of course they didn’t need fancy fizz in their lives, but it would be nice to splash out on indulgences every now and again. Shop at Waitrose, like Charlotte! It wasn’t as if Bob Geldof lived in a hovel and ate gruel to maintain his moral integrity. Maybe if she stopped washing her hair and held a globally lauded couture event to save the rainforest, she could start paying the mortgage again. Sting might come. Or Bono. Gisele Bündchen should, seeing as she was Brazilian.

  ‘So … Charlotte.’ Izzy, characteristically, didn’t bother beating around the bush. ‘What happened with Oli?’

  Three sets of eyes trained themselves on Charlotte.

  ‘Oh, we’re having such a lovely day,’ Charlotte put her cup into the special compartment in her chair and scrunched her nose. ‘Do we have to talk about this now?’