Five minutes later Dan opens the nursery door and comes in sighing heavily.
“Go on, then,” I look at him. “What did she have to say?”
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he says, and my heart plummets. Shit. I can see it’s going to be something really bad.
“Oh, God. It’s the holiday. They can’t be canceling. We’re going tomorrow, for Christ’s sake. I don’t believe this,” I start muttering, shaking my head. “I’m going to kill them.”
“No, no. Relax,” Dan says. “We’re still going. That’s the good news.”
“So what’s the bad news?”
“They’re going to be there too.”
It turns out that the yacht they were going on had an accident and somehow ran aground, and so they’re now staying on in the house, but we shouldn’t worry, they won’t get in our way at all, and think of it, won’t this be fun, having a proper family holiday?
“Are you bloody kidding me?”
Dan shakes his head sadly.
“But that’s insane. That’s not a holiday, that’s a nightmare. I don’t want to stay with your parents. We’ve got to find somewhere else. Go somewhere else. Something!”
“I don’t know what to say,” Dan says. “We can’t change the flights and honestly we can’t afford somewhere else, not to mention that it’s highly unlikely we’d even find anywhere for the last two weeks of August in the south of France. The place is probably booked solid.”
And I start to cry, disappointment and frustration simply overwhelming me.
“Oh, darling.” Dan crouches down and puts his arms around me. “I know it’s not what we expected, but we can still have fun. And who knows, maybe they’ve got loads of things planned and we’ll hardly see them.”
“Let me phone the others,” I sniff. “God only knows what they’ll say.”
I leave a message on Trish’s mobile, then call Lisa, leaving a message on her home machine, subsequently catching her on her mobile.
“Where are you?”
“Just doing some last-minute shopping in Selfridges. I suddenly realized Amy doesn’t have a bathing suit and while I was here I saw the most gorgeous Missoni bikini, which will be perfect.”
I wait for her to finish telling me about her latest acquisitions—oh, to have a wealthy ex-husband—and then hit her with my bombshell. “Listen, I’ve got some bad news.”
“More bad news?” Just last week Andy had told her that he wouldn’t be able to join us. A last-minute job had come up that coincided with the trip, and he was really sorry but the job was paying so much that he couldn’t turn it down, and work would have to come first. There was a possibility, he said, that he might be able to make it out for the last weekend, but he wasn’t sure.
I’m not sure who was more relieved. Us or Lisa. Trish and I were thrilled, even though naturally we couldn’t tell Lisa that, but even she admitted that things hadn’t been going that well between them and she was probably better off having a holiday without him.
Part of the problem, she said, other than his general arsiness, was Amy. He just wasn’t the slightest bit interested in Amy, so he was never a long-term proposition and they were reaching the point where the relationship was probably coming to the end of the line.
Her only disappointment was that she’d be, as she put it, the odd one out.
“You’ll probably pick up some millionaire on his yacht in the harbor,” I’d said half jokingly, because Lisa was exactly the sort of woman you see on the arm of those European playboy millionaires.
“Hmm,” she’d said. “Now there’s a thought. Maybe it won’t be such a bad thing after all.”
“No, this is really bad news,” I say to her now on the phone. “Dan’s parents are going to be there. Can you believe it?”
“What do you mean, they’re going to be there? I thought they were going on a yacht?” And so I explain and Lisa starts to laugh.
“Oh, darling, that’s not so terrible. I thought you were going to say the holiday had been canceled. I’m sure his parents will be fine and I bet you we’ll hardly see them. They must feel awful about it—they’ll probably be out all the time.”
“That’s what Dan said.”
“See? And they’re his parents; he knows them better than anyone. Anyway, your mother-in-law won’t dare be a battle-ax with Trish and me on your team. If she’s horrid to you, I’ll punch her. How’s that?” I start to laugh. Maybe Lisa’s right. Maybe it won’t be so bad after all.
“Look on the bright side,” Lisa continues. “We’ll have onsite babysitting every night and we’ll all be able to go out for dinner. I promise you, it’s going to be great. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Heathrow is packed, filled with the hustle and bustle of excited holidaymakers and excitable children. Tom is, thank God, being exceptionally well behaved for a one-year-old, despite the fact that we had to get him up at five o’clock this morning. He dozed off again in the car, but now seems to be quite happy being pushed in his stroller, clutching on to his rabbit—rather unimaginatively called Rabbit—eyes wide at all the noise.
I’m in a Gap sweatsuit, which I swear looks exactly like the much more expensive Juicy Couture version, and new Puma trainers, and I’m feeling pretty good, if I do say so myself, feeling as if I look rather like Victoria Beckham striding through an airport, minus the baseball hat, sunglasses, and hair extensions of course.
I can’t believe we’re actually going on holiday! To the sun! Relaxation! The disappointment of Linda and Michael’s being there too seems to have disappeared overnight, and now I just feel a bubble of excitement that we’re finally going away.
Holidays have never really been part of my vocabulary. I never traveled as a child—my mother’s relationship with the bottle made her a dangerous traveling companion—and I’ve never seen the point of wasting hundreds of pounds to lie around a beach when there are plenty of other more important things that money could be used for.
And although I understand the concept of needing a holiday, I’ve never quite caught on to it myself, and have rarely, if ever, felt that I needed it.
That was all before having children. Now that Tom has arrived and sleepless nights are no longer twice-yearly events as a result of a great all-nighter but weekly, and sometimes nightly, events as a result of simply being a parent, I fully understand the concept of needing a holiday.
But even before this morning, before arriving at the airport and catching the general buzz that fills the air, I hadn’t known quite how excited I could be.
So I’m feeling great, and then I catch sight of Lisa, on the opposite side of the departures hall, standing astride a Louis Vuitton holdall, talking animatedly into a mobile phone, wearing tight white trousers, high-heeled mules, a bright swirly Pucci print shirt, huge dark Jackie O sunglasses, and gold hoop earrings.
Suddenly I feel all wrong. There I was, admiring myself in a shop window not three minutes ago, and now I feel like a dowdy suburban housewife trying to be trendy. Oh, God, how I wish I looked more like Lisa, who looks very much like Elizabeth Hurley right now, only blonder.
And Amy is the perfect accessory, beautifully dressed in an old-fashioned rose print dress, reclining in a Bugaboo Frog, the very latest designer strollers on the market. The pair of them look as if they’ve just stepped out of a magazine ad.
Just as we reach them, Trish and Gregory veer in from the left, Trish all a-fluster trying to push the stroller, hold an armful of jackets, and simultaneously attemp to pick up the trail of Cheerios Oscar is leaving behind him.
She gives me a hug, kisses Dan, then turns to Lisa, who clicks her phone shut and hugs all of us.
“Lisa!” Trish shakes her head when we disengage. “How on earth do you manage to look like such a glamourpuss at this god-awful hour of the morning? Why can’t I look like you? Tell me how you do it!” Lisa laughs and I relax—how silly to be intimidated by such a good friend, and we all check in and go through security to
wait in the lounge.
The boys watch the kids as we three hit the bookshop for our beach reads, then the duty-free shop for what Lisa calls the obligatory bronzing powder, and we get back just as our flight is being called.
Air France stewards manage to ignore Trish and me, give Gregory and Dan a perfunctory nod, and then practically gush all over Lisa, who, it turns out, speaks more than passable French. I should have known, although once we sit down she swears that she has a crap vocabulary but a great accent, so everyone thinks she speaks the language far better than she actually does.
We’re settling into our seats, getting the babies comfortable, as Dan sits next to me eyeing all the passengers filing on to the plane.
“Why are you giving them all the evil eye?” I ask after a while.
“Just trying to figure out if any of them are terrorists,” Dan says seriously as I splutter.
“Oh. Fine. So what are you looking for? Someone with a bomb strapped around his waist? Telltale wires hanging out of his T-shirt?”
“Oh, ha ha.” Dan breaks his evil-eye assessments to look at me. “They say these days that you should know who your fellow passengers are.”
“So why aren’t you introducing yourself? Finding out their life stories?” I can’t help snorting.
“Okay. Great idea. I’ll just go and introduce myself to her.” He smiles, gesturing at a gorgeous model type who’s making her way up the aisle, sunglasses perched prettily on top of her head.
“Calm down, calm down.” I rub his arm and lean over to give him a proprietary kiss. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, big boy. If you think she’s gorgeous, wait till you see all the topless babes on the beach.”
Dan grins. “Why do you think I’m so excited about this holiday?”
“Not the prospect of my going topless, then?” I raise an eyebrow as Trish leans over from my other side.
“Okay,” she says. “I admit it. I’ve been eavesdropping.” And she looks at me in amazement. “You’re not seriously going to go topless, are you?”
“I very much doubt it. Before Tom I might have, but now that my boobs are swinging somewhere around my ankles, I need all the support I can get.”
“Oh, good. So I’m not the only one, then. You know Lisa had them done.”
I nod as Dan’s eyes light up. “Done?” he says. “You mean a boob job?”
“Yup.” I nod. “She had them lifted, and implants. Stop panting, Dan, I’m sure you’ll get to see them.”
“I’m surprised she’s not topless on the plane,” Trish says, and I laugh, because Lisa’s openness never fails to amaze me.
She had the operation a couple of months ago, not that there seemed to be any need for it, and as soon as she was healed she stripped off in her living room and insisted we feel them, which Trish and I both did, rather gingerly. It was hard to be objective when one of your best friends is standing half naked in front of you insisting that you feel her breasts.
But I have to say I did feel rather envious. Her breasts were spectacular, even if they did feel rather hard. I have no doubt that Lisa will be wearing nothing more than bikini bottoms, and that Dan and Gregory will be enjoying every second of it.
“Lisa!” The model type with the sunglass hair band reaches us, and her eyes widen as they alight upon Lisa.
“Kate!” Lisa passes Amy over the aisle to me and stands up to give her a hug. “Oh, my God! What are you doing here?”
“We’re staying with Jonathan and Caro in Grasse! There’s a whole gang! Me and Sarah, and Mark and a couple of others! You’ll have to come up and see us. But what are you doing here?”
“We’ve got a house in Mougins, a stone’s throw from you; you’ll have to come and see us too!” I overhear these words and feel a flush of anger at my in-laws again. If they weren’t there, we could gladly host whomever we want; but they are there, and I think it highly unlikely they’ll want hordes of people trooping in.
“Oh,” Lisa says, turning to us, “these are my friends,” and she introduces us all as we smile and lean over to shake hands, and I wish I were in jeans and a white T-shirt, even though I’d have to be at least fifteen pounds lighter to look half as good as this Kate.
“Okay,” I whisper to Trish once Kate has disappeared down the aisle. “I know this sounds ridiculous but why do I always feel so inadequate next to Lisa and her friends?”
“Why do you care?” Trish shrugs. “Remember, you mustn’t judge books by their covers. I know Lisa looks like a model, but we wouldn’t be friends with her if she wasn’t genuine and lovely. And that Kate’s probably lovely too.”
“How do you always manage to see the good in people?”
Trish shrugs. “Just the way I am. Although I’m not averse to a little bad. For instance, Lisa, lovely as she is, does sometimes astound me with her love of designer labels.”
“Are you trying to say she’s superficial?” I say, grinning.
“Absolutely. Anyway, we’re not bitching. Part of the reason why we love her is because she’s superficial. And anyway, we wouldn’t say anything that we wouldn’t say to her face,” Trish says earnestly, and we both burst into laughter.
“What are you two laughing about?” Lisa leans over from across the aisle, where Amy is perched delicately on her lap.
“We were just saying we wish we knew as much about clothes as you,” I say, figuring that it’s probably as close to the truth as I’m ever going to get.
As soon as we step off the plane the warmth hits us, and I take Dan’s hand and squeeze it hard. It feels so long since our honeymoon, so long since we were hit by the blazing warmth of a hot sun, that it is completely transformative, as if warmth and happiness were bound up in one.
Dan smiles at me, reading my mind. “It looks like we all really needed this holiday.”
“Doesn’t it feel good?”
“You’re feeling better about my parents being here?”
I nod. Because now that I’m here I’m sure it won’t make the slightest bit of difference. I need this break a lot more than they do, and I’m going to have a good time, in-laws be damned.
We swap numbers with Kate at the airport, amid promises that we will all get together, and I am vaguely disorientated when she insists on giving us all a double air kiss, even though she doesn’t know us.
“When in France…” Lisa laughs as we walk off toward the car rental. “At least we’re not in Paris,” she continues. “The last time I was there they were up to about five kisses. It went on forever. Jesus, saying good-bye to three people would take about an hour.”
Two Renaults are waiting for us, and within fifteen minutes we’ve left the airport and have started the drive up the coast from Nice Airport, through Cagnes-sur-Mer and up toward Mougins.
“Look! Palm trees!” I keep saying, turning round to Tom to point them out, though he probably hasn’t the slightest idea what I’m saying. I read somewhere once that the brightest children are the ones whose parents talk to them a lot, even about the most inconsequential things, and of course Tom is a genius in the making, so I do my best to nurture that by chatting to him all day long, usually about complete rubbish.
Dan once caught me asking Tom’s opinion about whether to wear the black trousers or the brown. At the time Tom was propped up on our bed with pillows, chewing mercilessly on a rubber teething ring, although he did look at me as I held the trousers up for him to view.
“Um,” Dan said from the doorway as I jumped, “I think perhaps you’ve been spending too much time with Tom. Something tells me you need a little bit of adult company,” and we had both laughed.
But it’s a hard habit to break, and not one I’m particularly interested in breaking just yet, and so I point out everything we see to Tom. I even do the odd translation from French, which I strain to remember from school.
On the outskirts of Mougins we veer up a steep hill as I try to follow the directions Dan’s parents faxed us a few days ago, Trish, Gregory, and Lisa in the rental car
behind us, laughing at us through their open windows as we keep taking wrong turns and having to do three-point turns in strangers’ driveways.
And finally we find Rue des Oiseaux and drive on a potholed dirt track that seems to lead to nothing until at the top the track becomes smooth gravel, and then we pass through stone pillars and into a wisteria-covered carport.
We climb out and rush around the old pathway to the front of the house, where we push open a heavy oak door to find a note lying on the doormat.
Dan, Ellie, and the gang,
Have gone to village for some food. Make yourselves at home.
Towels at side of pool. Enjoy!
Love, Mum and Dad
“Right,” says Gregory, dumping their bags just inside the front door. “How about a swim?”
Trish raises an eyebrow and turns to him. “How about finding our room so we can unpack, put our stuff away, and put Oscar down for a much-needed nap?”
Oscar, right on cue, starts to wail, which sets off first Tom and then Amy.
“Good idea, Trish,” Dan says. “Let’s get the kids out of the way so the grown-ups can have fun.”
“Charming!” I shake my head. “If your son and heir could only understand what you were saying.”
“Even if he could understand, he wouldn’t be able to hear, not with all that screaming.”
“Well, how about helping us all find our bedrooms so we can get the travel cots unpacked?”
“Okay, okay,” Dan heads up the stairs with some bags. “I’ll go first. Let’s try to figure it out.”
16
I might have known that Linda and Michael would keep the master bedroom for themselves. For the last two months I’ve been flicking through the photo album, looking at the house and romanticizing about lying in the huge king-sized bed with the French doors flung open as sunlight streams in, washing over the breakfast tray perched on the bed, piled with hot, fresh croissants, pain au chocolat, and steaming café au lait.