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He looked up and winked. ‘Well, I for one can’t wait!’
‘Poor deluded fool,’ Dad said, noticing India trying to slip a bottle of Angostura bitters in her bag. ‘India, are you going to leave us any alcohol, or are you planning on stealing all of it?’
India went and dropped a kiss on top of his bald head.
‘Oh, Daddy, you can always restock in duty free,’ she said, ‘when you go to Australia.’
‘That’s not for a while,’ he said, taking the Angostura bitters back.
‘So how are the August figures looking, Alexa?’ Mum said.
Right. That just about summed up my life at the moment.
My younger sister had infuriated me all week with her untidiness, her inability to use spellchecker and her cavalier attitude to the appointment book, and now here she was again, dominating the occasion, raiding the drinks cabinet and probably the freezer. We’d spend the rest of the day discussing her wedding dress fitting, the flowers, the cake, the bloody flower girls; but I got asked about the sales figures for the family business.
I felt a noble pang of self-pity. Mum had to talk to me about something, I suppose, and at the moment it certainly wasn’t going to be my boyfriend or dazzling social life. I had neither. I had loads of friends but in the last few years they’d all been getting engaged or married; now they were busy having children.
‘Oh, you know, okay,’ I said, feeling a little proud despite myself. ‘The three properties on the Bainbridge estate have gone and there’s an asking price offer in on Walton House.’
‘Excellent, well done, it’s been a good year despite all the doom-mongers. I was talking to John Thingy at the golf club yesterday. You know, the tall, thin chap from Countryside Property, and he said they’re doing awfully well. He was asking after you. Don’t you think you could fancy him just a bit?’ Mum said airily. ‘You don’t want to be living at the end of our garden for ever, do you?’
I thought of John Foster with his damp hands and the irritating way he wound his legs around like pipe cleaners when he sat down.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Well, it’s a shame. India will be off in no time,’ she said, ‘and then who will introduce you to people?’
I couldn’t remember the last time India had introduced me to anyone significant.
‘I’m quite able to look after myself, you know,’ I said, ‘and I don’t need to be palmed off on John Foster just to tidy things up.’
‘No, I suppose not. What about that nice Ben with the curly hair? You don’t think he might do? Oh well.’ Evidently the subject had begun to bore her and she waved a hand at my father to attract his attention. ‘Do you know, Simon, I think I fancy a cherry brandy with my cheese.’
‘They make a liqueur in Australia from liquorice and chocolate,’ Dad said as he went to find some clean glasses. ‘I was reading about it earlier.’
‘Sounds vile,’ Mum said. ‘We must try it.’
A mobile phone rang somewhere and we all patted our pockets and looked under things on the dining table to find out whose it was.
‘Oooh, it’s me,’ Mum said and prodded at her phone, standing up to take the call and get away from the noise we were all making. ‘Really? Really? Well, that’s fantastic! When? When? Really?’
She wandered off through the patio doors into the garden, still talking, and we went back to the cheeseboard on the table. India wrestled the biscuits away from Jerry and loaded one up with a pyramid of Boursin, which she then pushed on to his nose. Honestly, they were like a couple of babies.
I tutted and rolled my eyes at Dad but he was busy reading the Angostura bitters label and didn’t notice.
‘There’s a flat coming up on the Park you would like,’ I said to my father. He might have nearly retired from the estate agency but he still liked to keep a finger on the pulse.
Dad looked blank. ‘I’m not thinking of moving. Am I?’
‘You could always downsize, have a nice simple place to look after,’ I said. ‘Less housework for Mum.’
Not that she seemed to do any; the kitchen floor was really sticky. But then who was I to talk? I hadn’t looked at a cleaning product since moving into the garden flat.
Down the other end of the long table, India and Jerry were squabbling over the box of chocolates I had brought for my parents as a gift, ripping off the cellophane with glee, India’s dark curls slipping out of the messy chignon she had recently adopted and falling over her face. She had some idea that it might be nice for me to do the same thing when she got married, but my hair – while the same colour as hers – was straight as a poker and unlikely to co-operate.
They looked up as Mum came back in from the garden, her face bright with shock.
She took her cherry brandy and downed it in one.
‘You’ll never guess,’ she said. ‘That was someone called Stephen McKenzie about the raffle.’
We all looked at her blankly, waiting for more details. On these occasions Mum was inclined to spin things out as long as possible.
I cracked first. ‘What raffle?’
‘He had some news; I mean some really unbelievable news that I think is going to make life a bit difficult. I’ll have to check my dates.’
‘God, Manda, you’re not pregnant, are you?’ Dad said, a hazelnut whirl halfway to his mouth.
India pulled a face at me across the table.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Simon. I mean our holiday dates,’ Mum said. ‘I’ll get my diary.’
Dad grabbed her arm. ‘Later. Tell me what’s going on first.’
‘Well, do you remember the golf club dinner we went to in January? The Founders Day Dinner Dance and Fundraising Extravaganza? Bel Goodwin was doing the tombola and you won a bottle of Liebfraumilch?’
‘It was corked,’ Dad said.
‘Yes, but do you remember Jeff Bosbury-Wallace was selling raffle tickets in aid of Cancer Research? It was a nationwide thing, not just for the golf club. Ten quid each or a book of ten for a hundred?’
‘No,’ Dad said, pulling the chocolates towards him as his attention waned. ‘I don’t remember and I hate to break it to you but that’s still ten quid each, by the way.’
‘Well, I bought a book.’
‘What? A hundred quid! You spent a hundred quid on raffle tickets? It’s not as though that club fundraiser doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg already! Jeff Bosbury-Wallace is a bloody bandit! They should have given them to us for nothing.’
‘Have you won something?’ Jerry said, being the perfect potential son-in-law and breaking the tension.
‘I have!’ Mum said triumphantly, sitting back in her chair and sending him a fond look.
Behind her I saw India wander up to the wine cabinet and pick out a couple of bottles. Things like this had started to annoy me over the last few months. I mean, why did she still have to behave like a pigging student? Jerry earned a packet and Dad paid India almost as much as I got. Which was so grossly unfair it was almost litigious.
‘So? Well? Are you going to tell us? For God’s sake, please tell me it’s not more disgusting wine?’ Dad said.
‘It’s not!’ Mum said.
We sat in confused silence for a moment until Dad gave her a wide-eyed look.
‘So? For the love of God, what?’
‘A holiday!’ Mum said. ‘We’ve won a holiday.’
‘Have we? How marvellous!’
‘The first prize was a trip to see Santa in Finland with up to four children. Thank God we didn’t win that. Second prize was probably a trip to see Santa in Finland with eight children. Now I’ll go and find my diary.’
I think India and I drifted off at this point; our parents went on holiday so frequently that it was no longer of any interest to us. We had even been named for holidays they had particularly enjoyed in their youth: Alexandria and India. They were due to take a month-long trip to Australia soon to visit relatives who lived on the east coast in a place that sounded like Boomerang. Mum had shown us pictures of her cousin and his family, red-faced and cheerful, having a barbeque on the beach and probably in imminent danger of skin cancer.
India came out of the kitchen with a supermarket carrier bag filled with swag. Bloody hell, the place would be stripped bare by the time they left! She did this every time.
‘Hey you, that’s a 10p Bag for Life, I’ll have you know,’ Dad said, outraged, not apparently noticing the bacon, tins of baked beans and the dozen eggs.
Mum came back, riffling through the pages of her diary and frowning.
‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘Houston, we have a problem.’
‘What?’
‘Well, we can’t go. We’ll be in Australia.’
‘When we’re married, Jerry and I are going to go to Australia,’ India said, never one to miss an opportunity. ‘We might go for our first anniversary.’
Dad ignored her. ‘Well, can’t we swap the dates of the prize holiday?’
‘No, it’s September 23rd or not at all. Non-transferable, that’s what it says.’
‘Well, how unreasonable – that’s no time at all. Surely we could go a week or so later?’
Mum looked at him over the top of her glasses. ‘I know you’re a persuasive character, Simon, but I don’t think you could persuade the ship to wait for us.’
His face fell. ‘Ship? Oh, don’t tell me I’m going to miss out on a cruise!’
Dad loved cruising even more than Mum did. They’d been on over thirty.
By now India had collected up an unopened pack of paper napkins, some dishwasher tablets and a new bottle of loo cleaner. If this carried on they’d have to borrow Dad’s trailer so they could get all the stuff back to their flat. And it wasn’t as though they didn’t already have their own Toilet Duck. It was just an ingrained habit with her.
Mum and Dad huffed and argued over the prize holiday dates, and Dad was seriously trying to work out if it would be possible to catch up with the ship halfway through their Australia trip until Mum described the sort of jet lag and expense he would be incurring and he thought again.
I went upstairs to see if there was any shampoo I could take down the garden to my place before India nabbed it. I justified this by telling myself I’d been too busy with showings and keeping the family business in the black to make it to the shops. I could hear my parents still rabbiting on, trying to work out a way for them to take two holidays at the same time, a logistical challenge unheard of even for them. I came back down with some of my mother’s overpriced conditioner and a couple of loo rolls. Through the open front door I could see India loading up the boot of Jerry’s car with some barbeque charcoal and a box of firelighters. They have a barbeque on their cool roof terrace. Of course they do.
In the dining room Mum was pushing down the cafetière plunger and looking pensive.
‘I suppose someone could go,’ she said.
‘What? You mean I go to Australia and you go on the cruise?’ Dad said. ‘Well, it’s a thought.’
‘No, you twit, I mean if we can’t go …’ She paused and raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
‘Oh, I see. Well, yes, I suppose so. We might be able to keep some food in the house for longer than a week too.’
‘Simon, come into the garden for a moment,’ she said. ‘Bring your coffee.’
I had another chocolate and looked at my watch; it was half past four and Jerry and India would be leaving soon, God willing. I watched my sister and her fiancé trying to guess the flavours of the chocolates with their eyes closed and making the other one promise not to trick them with the coffee one.
Jerry would drive them home in his groovy car, to their hip, blonde-wood apartment, and unload their ill-gotten gains before India went to have a long soak in the bath, surrounded by Diptyque candles, and he spent the evening playing on his Xbox. You wouldn’t think a hotshot barrister would waste his time doing that, would you? Not that Jerry looked like a hotshot barrister; he was tall, thin and pale, with leather elbow patches on his tweed jacket. I wondered what India could possibly see in him at first, but I had to admit he was extremely funny, very successful, and besotted with her in a way that resulted in extravagant presents and compliments. Who wouldn’t like that?
When they got engaged last year they’d started out wanting a small, cute wedding with a few friends and family. Now it had grown into something Prince Harry might have envied, in a country house hotel with a complete year’s flower produce from The Netherlands, gauze bags of almonds and embossed scrolls. God knew what it was costing.
I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do for the hen weekend. India wouldn’t co-operate and I was sick of thinking about it. I was a bit off that sort of thing at the moment anyway, thanks to Ryan. Bouquets for the mothers, the honeymoon wardrobe, four or five tiers for the cake? Not to mention the three flower girls I was supposed to keep under control while necking back as much champagne as possible. And before you ask, no, I wasn’t planning to cop off with the best man. The best man was Jerry’s cousin Mark, who was delightful, gay, and would probably have done a better job of styling the event than any wedding planner ever could.
‘So that’s settled then,’ Mum said.
We all looked up as they came back in from the garden and India took the opportunity to wedge a chocolate into Jerry’s mouth. He spluttered in disgust and spat it into a paper napkin with a plaintive cry of ‘Bunny, you promised!’
Bunny?
‘What’s settled?’
Mum sat down and tapped on her coffee cup with a spoon.
‘Dad and I have come up with a solution to this holiday problem. We’re going to let you go instead.’
Mum sat back beaming, waiting for our reaction.
‘Jerry and me? To Australia?’ India said, her eyes widening with excitement.
Over my dead body.
‘No, the other one,’ Dad said.
‘Well, I’m not going to Australia with Jerry,’ I said.
Mum tutted. ‘You girls can be dense sometimes. You and India can go on the cruise.’
I had a moment’s wild excitement at the prospect of a break from what I had been doing for the last few months: sulking in the granny annexe at the end of my parents’ garden after that nightmare weekend when my boyfriend, Ryan, and I had broken up and my flatmate, Karen, decided it was the perfect time to go off and find herself in Sri Lanka.
But then work had been so busy recently and showed no signs of easing up, what with showing builders round dilapidated renovation projects or cajoling fussy metropolitan couples who, without exception, thought they wanted country kitchens, wood burners and gardens big enough to keep chickens. They didn’t. I mean, have you smelled a chicken house?
I hadn’t had a holiday for ages. You honestly couldn’t count that trip to Paris last year, when it rained every day and Ryan and I spent the whole time arguing about where to go. Recently I’d been spending most of my time at the office, so this could be the perfect chance for a break, sunshine and perhaps a few cocktails.
This idea was then replaced by the mental image of a boat filled with elderly people, shuffling around a wave-lashed deck on their Zimmer frames.
And finally I registered the utter horror that would be going on holiday with my sister.
Since the engagement we hadn’t been particularly good friends, despite what India thought – she seemed pretty oblivious to everything these days. I suppose somewhere deep down I still had affection for her, but nothing I could dredge up on a day-to-day basis.
India looked at Jerry and then at me. From her expression she seemed to be thinking much the same.
