Staying Out for the Summer

by Mandy Baggot

  Also by Mandy Baggot

  One Last Greek Summer

  My Greek Island Summer

  One Christmas Star

  That First French Summer

  Summer by the Lake

  Safe for Summer

  One Summer in Nashville

  One Night on Ice

  A Perfect Paris Christmas

  STAYING OUT FOR THE SUMMER

  Mandy Baggot

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Mandy Baggot, 2021

  The moral right of Mandy Baggot to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN:

  eBook: 9781800243071

  Paperback: 9781800243095

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  To our NHS staff and everyone all around the world in the health and care sector who are working tirelessly to save as many lives as possible during this Coronavirus pandemic. And also to the keyworkers keeping essential services and supplies accessible and putting themselves at risk for us. THANK YOU all for your amazing service!

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Dear reader,

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  One

  Hampshire, UK

  Sticky. Slimy. It was impossible to forget the sensation of latex against your skin when you had been covered top-to-toe in it for months. But this didn’t feel quite the same…

  Lucie Burrows made a concerted effort to turn her head on the pillow, in a bed that didn’t feel quite as comfortable as it should. Whatever had occurred last night had somehow been worse for her sleep pattern than the utter exhaustion of tending to the patients on Abbington Ward. What had happened after she’d finished her shift? She didn’t remember landing here… wherever here was. She really should open her eyes but her brain seemed to be saying ‘not quite yet’.

  Was it even morning? Surely it had to be morning. She sniffed. And what was that smell? It was a combination of maybe shaving foam meets the perfume counter at Boots. God, the perfume counter at Boots. Even now, months on, it still felt a little bit edgy being able to pick up things other people might have touched. Yes, everyone still carried hand sanitiser and had masks but still… Lucie sighed, shifting position. Ow, that really hurt. Despite all her senses suggesting caution, maybe now was the time to open her eyes and find out exactly how bad her hangover really was…

  ‘Arrrggghhh!’ The scream was high-pitched, hysterical, and not coming from her.

  Flicking open her eyelids, hangover pulling into her brain station like it was a high speed to Manchester that wasn’t scheduled to stop, Lucie’s gaze met her best friend, Gavin Gale. All of him. Naked. Apart from one of the too-short unusable hospital aprons that stopped above his midriff and a pair of disposable gloves. That was the rubber she’d been sensing.

  ‘Argh!’ Gavin wailed again, gloved hands going to his head, then to the apron – that no amount of tugging was going to elongate – then lastly, finally to his penis. ‘Luce, what have you done with my clothes?!’

  Lucie suddenly remembered she should probably close her eyes. Not that she hadn’t seen Gavin in his entirety before. Her friend had a bit of a reputation for flaunting his fruit cluster. At one particular work party, one of Abbington Ward’s other nurses, The Other Sharon Osbourne, had actively encouraged using the hydrotherapy pool for skinny dipping and Gavin hadn’t thought twice about the consequences. That official warning was still on his record, as far as Lucie knew.

  ‘Gavin,’ Lucie began. ‘Think about what you just said.’ She clawed her way up her double bed – at least it was her bed she was in – facing away from Gavin’s extremities, that ache in her head thumping back and forth like it was a machine gun in the hands of Chris Hemsworth. ‘All the words.’

  She heard Gavin make a sharp inhale. ‘Cher came in and took my clothes?’

  The sound of his pleasing exhalation hit the still-scented air as, amid an open packet of paracetamol (Gavin’s), an empty packet of Doritos (again, Gavin’s) and a wrapper containing a half-eaten Snickers (hers), Lucie found a hair scrunchie on the nightstand. She went to tie back her long dark wavy hair…

  Oh. My. God. Where was her hair?!

  ‘Luce!’ Gavin screamed. ‘Cher took your hair!’

  Sheer white-hot fear booted away the now lesser-spotted-still-drunk and Lucie wobbled up and off her mattress, not knowing what the mirror was going to reveal, but feeling utterly terrified about it. How had this happened? What had they done after they left work? She needed to t
hink while she tried to maintain her balance. They had gone to a Mexican to celebrate. Yes! They were celebrating because all the nurses and doctors on duty yesterday had clapped out fifty-seven-year-old Peter from the designated Covid ward. After three weeks and six days of treatment he was finally well enough to go home to his wife and his Pekingese called Trevor. There had been fajitas, sombreros and definitely tequila but… then what?

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Gavin called.

  Was he dressed yet? Lucie gently turned her thankfully pyjama-clad self towards the wall that supported a bookcase of memories – and clutter – plus her full-length mirror. She braced herself. It couldn’t be as awful as she was imagining. She leaned a little, then made a bold step right in front of the glass.

  Lucie’s scream was even louder than Gavin’s had been. ‘Oh my God! Gavin!’ She clamped her hands to the few inches of little more than dark brown stubble, now covering her entire scalp. ‘Gavin! What happened?! My hair! I was… I was… always getting called Sandra Oh and now I’m… I’m—’

  ‘Sandra Oh No?’ Gavin offered unhelpfully.

  ‘Is your penis covered yet?’ Lucie snapped.

  This was a disaster! Her hair had always been her best asset. Everyone said so. And now, now her hair was close to non-existent. Almost Gru from Despicable Me.

  ‘Shall I use your pants?’ Gavin asked. ‘Or this undefinable blanket/throw/shawl?’

  ‘Not my pants!’ Lucie ordered. She was still turning her head left and then right to see if there was anything salvageable about this look. Could she gel it up so it looked even slightly longer? And how, how had her night gone from beefy burritos to barely-not-bald?

  ‘I’m tying it like a sarong,’ Gavin replied. ‘One sec.’

  Did she have any hats that wouldn’t make it look like she was either trying to hide a bad haircut or waiting to knock off someone at a cashpoint? The baseball cap was out. As was the snood that doubled as a face covering when she went to Aldi.

  ‘All done,’ Gavin announced. ‘You can look now. Well, you know, at my face.’

  Lucie turned around. Gavin was still wearing the gloves and apron, but his bottom half was now shielded by an artisan-embroidered Peruvian wrap she’d been planning to give her Aunt Meg for her birthday along with the tights she liked that made you cool if you were too hot and warm if you were too cold.

  ‘Jesus! It looks worse from the front!’ Gavin clamped a gloved hand over his mouth. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I meant it looks… even more… jaw-dropping from that angle.’

  Lucie laughed then, her own hands going over her lips as her body bent double in a happy release. She straightened up the second she began to feel nauseous and her backache kicked in too.

  ‘What?’ Gavin asked, hands on his hips.

  ‘Oh, Gavin,’ Lucie said through more laughter that was rattling her ribs now.

  ‘What? Tell me, Sinead O’Connor!’

  ‘I think you need to look in the mirror.’

  Sashaying around her bed, Lucie watched Gavin slowly, perhaps a little hesitantly, swaying towards the mirror in the makeshift sarong like he might be a backpacker in Goa shifting up to a holy shrine.

  Trying not to laugh, Lucie realised that Gavin and his love of beard oil was the reason for the high scent of perfume in the room and this other vision in front of her was responsible for the smell of shaving foam.

  Standing in front of his reflection, Gavin yelped and took a leap closer, surveying the damage.

  ‘Christ, Luce!’ he exclaimed, gloves meeting forehead. ‘Someone took my eyebrows!’

  Two

  ‘No one noticed, did they? No one, right?’

  Lucie couldn’t help grinning at Gavin as they both sat on her sofa ready to devour bacon and egg rolls they had purchased from the local café. Ordinarily, still enjoying the novelty of being able to, they would have sat in to have a full hangover curing breakfast. But today, given the hair crisis they were both having, they’d opted for a dash, grab and speedy retreat back to Lucie’s flat. Gavin seemed far more self-conscious about the demise of his eyebrows than Lucie was about the loss of her luscious locks. This past year had taught her many things and one of them was definitely what was important and what really wasn’t. Her hair would grow back… somewhen. And, at least the crop was the same length all over. A major miracle.

  ‘Gavin,’ Lucie said, unwrapping her bap. ‘It’s really not that bad.’

  ‘I have no eyebrows!’ Gavin wailed. ‘None!’

  ‘At least we found your clothes,’ Lucie countered. ‘I’m not sure why you took them off in the first place or why you ended up in my bed with me but…’ She took a bite of the bacon, egg and fluffy Scotch morning roll and rested her back against a cushion as comfort food heaven headed south towards her grateful stomach.

  ‘Name one famous actor without eyebrows. One.’

  ‘Whoopi Goldberg,’ Lucie answered, egg running down her chin. She reached for the kitchen roll on the coffee table and mopped up.

  ‘How do you know that?!’ Gavin complained.

  ‘Your eyebrows will grow back,’ Lucie reminded him. ‘Probably really quickly. Unlike my hair.’ She put her roll down on the plate. ‘Why aren’t you as concerned about that? Seeing as it was you who obviously made it shorter than… than… one of Cher’s Eighties outfits!’

  ‘Oh! The absolute shade!’ Gavin said, hands – now gloveless – going to beard.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lucie began, shifting on the settee as her shoulders gave a twinge. ‘You aren’t a famous actor, you’re a nurse. Once you’ve got your hair covered and your face shield on, no one is going to see your eyebrows.’

  Still none of the patients saw very much of their features. Albeit slightly more than they had at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. There were still masks, face shields, gloves and full-length gowns, just thankfully with less of a volume of new admissions. But still they celebrated every single victory against the silent viral assassin. Hence the obvious need to let off steam last night…

  ‘People will see if we go on holiday though,’ Gavin said, waggling the space that would have housed his eyebrows if his eyebrows were still there.

  ‘Oh, Gav, I thought you’d dropped that plan,’ Lucie said, balancing her plate on her knee.

  ‘What gave you that idea?’

  ‘Maybe the fact you asked me about it and I said I didn’t want to?’

  ‘You do want to though.’

  ‘I said I didn’t.’

  ‘But you don’t mean that. You can’t mean that.’

  Did she mean it? Lucie sighed and put her plate on the coffee table, picking up her two-spoon-black coffee. Why was she so opposed to having a break? She, Gavin and the rest of their clinical team had worked their butts off for the past year, surviving on little sleep, little food and only the weeks of clapping from the nation’s doorsteps during the peaks of the crisis to spur them on. If anyone deserved a holiday now things had eased a little bit, it was them. But there was her Aunt Meg. Yes, she was still currently independent, but at sixty-five, having suffered a small stroke two years ago, she wasn’t quite how she used to be. Not that Meg would be told she ought to slow down. This was a woman who had played bingo three times a week over Zoom last year when she couldn’t get out to the social club. But there was also… everything. Yes, the whole wide world was out there, but it was all a little bit different than before. And Lucie was, by nature, always a little hesitant about putting distance between herself and home. There was this little voice inside her head that sometimes suggested breaking a pattern, doing something different, could lead to bad times. And no one wanted any more of those.

  ‘Let me paint you a picture!’ Gavin said. He sprung off the sofa, all wild arms and too much enthusiasm for this time on a Sunday morning when she was feeling flatter than a bottle of week-opened lemonade.

  ‘Haven’t you done enough of the creative?’ Lucie asked, pointing a finger at what was left of her hair.

  ‘Sun so hot
it could sear off a tattoo,’ Gavin began, waving a hand like he was more illusionist than artist.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s selling it to me.’ But Lucie was enjoying Gavin’s floor show. It was amazing he still had the moves if they really had drunk as much as her body was telling her they had.

  ‘OK,’ Gavin corrected. ‘Sun, deliciously warm… like… being whispered into a nap by Tom Hardy reading a bedtime story.’

  That was better. Lucie felt her shoulders twitch in some kind of recognition of that notion being relaxing.

  ‘Sky, the same colour blue as… as… The Other Sharon Osbourne’s eyeshadow.’

  ‘You’re killing it now, Gavin.’ Lucie made to get up. Perhaps a little stroll to the kitchen to top up her coffee would help her feel better. Her back was telling her it needed a change of position anyway.

  ‘Wait! Wait!’ Gavin ordered, barricading her path with his body. ‘Soft sand running through your toes like you’re walking through… talcum powder.’

  He really didn’t have the persuasive techniques and imagery of travel agents.

  ‘No, not talcum powder… better than that… how about…’ Gavin pointed a finger like he’d just discovered a new vaccine that could beat all the variants. ‘Flour. Yes! All that finely milled stuff people had to pay a fortune for just to make white bread during lockdown.’

  ‘Didn’t you unfriend people on Facebook if they baked more than once a week?’ Lucie said.

  ‘Blocked them if they grew tomatoes.’ Gavin pulled a face. ‘I was driven to it. Big, fat, foodie show-offs.’

  ‘I’m going to get more coffee,’ Lucie said, winding herself around Gavin and the magazine he was now waving like it was a flag and he was in the audience at Eurovision.

  ‘Wait, Luce, come on. Think of… all the wild nights and the cocktails.’

  Lucie’s stomach actually lurched then. ‘Not a great selling point when I have gut rot and would rather drink my own pee than a cocktail right now.’ She really wished she hadn’t said that. She felt sicker than ever. She didn’t even feel like going back to the bacon and egg roll.