Summer Holiday

Her mother. Where to start? She had got to that age where every action was accompanied by an equal and inapposite reaction. Bending resulted in a little exhalation, a ‘pah’ of effort. Sitting down occasionally concluded with a full-blown ‘aaaah’. Was it legitimate, she wondered, to say that she loved her mother but didn’t like her very much? That seemed churlish when Miranda knew how much effort it took to raise a child.

A few hours later, in the unforgiving daylight of the glass-domed room, her hair newly highlighted and blow-dried (such a treat after two days of it being sweaty and itchy), she watched as her mother ever so slightly touched her tongue to the cup while sipping the Lady Grey. It was just one of the habits that irritated her. Mothers. Couldn’t live with them, couldn’t shoot them. Although there were those who did, obviously. Her parents had loved Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em – if Miranda ran the BBC (or was it ITV?), she would commission a show called Some Children Do ’Ave ’Em. It would feature a mother who was constantly at you about everything and a father who forgot your name but remembered the hamster’s.

She had a forlorn hope that she would never look like her mother, but was very aware that at some stage she probably would. In which case, she was heading for a mouth like a sucked lemon and long earlobes.

Nigel had cloyingly called her mother a stunner, and it was true that photographs from her youth showed some similarity to Diana Dors. But for half a century she had been married to a philandering workaholic and the stress had left her features crabby and disappointed.

‘What are you going to do with that boy of yours?’ her mother asked, reaching for the pot of clotted cream.

‘Jack is perfectly all right, Mum. He phoned me the other day from Indonesia. He’s on his way to Borneo and I think he said he was volunteering to help at an orang-utan centre. It sounds like he’s having a great time and getting work experience,’ she lied.

Her mother spread a large dollop of strawberry jam on her creamed scone and then consumed half of it. At least I’ll have inherited excellent teeth and digestion, thought Miranda.

‘He needs a sense of direction,’ said her mother. ‘If you hadn’t got divorced, he might have stayed on the straight and narrow. Been working in the City now and saving for a house.’

Miranda listened to the well-trodden rant and continued to sip her tea. Thank goodness for Jack. Weird how Lucy had become so like her father. She had been such a sweet child. Rather like a stuffed squid when she was going through the terrible twos, with dimpled arms and legs that didn’t seem to bend in the middle, but she had turned into a pretty little girl.

‘Did I ever have a comfort blanket, Mum?’ she suddenly asked.

Her mother looked disgruntled at being interrupted just as she was getting into her stride about feckless youth, but finally said, ‘No, not a blanket. There was that stuffed polecat you had from Uncle Ben. You used to suck its ears and scream like a banshee if we didn’t have it with us. Why?’

‘I was remembering how Jack used to take a funny little bear everywhere until he was about eleven. And Lucy had that pink satin blanket from a doll’s cot. I found it the other day when I unpacked a box of odds and sods that’d been in the cupboard under the stairs. She must have lobbed it in there years ago – terrible reek of mothballs. I think I’ve finally found her sentimental streak.’

‘She’s a wonderful girl, Lucy …’

Before her mother could begin a new strand involving her beloved granddaughter, Miranda cut her off by enquiring sweetly if she wanted a top-up because she was definitely having more Darjeeling, and waved over a waiter.

‘Did you have a good weekend?’ asked her mother, searching for a neutral topic.

‘Er, yes, actually. I did some volunteer work at a canal in Oxfordshire,’ she said, clasping her hands together and giving her mother a challenging look.

‘Did you?’ her mother asked, horrified.

‘Uh-huh. It was really good fun. Thought I needed to get out more – do something constructive. It’s a precursor to getting a job. Yes. After all these years. And before you ask, no, I don’t think it will be in the acting world – I’m far too long in the tooth. I don’t know what kind of job, except it won’t be lap-dancing, circus work or anything else that will embarrass the children. Although I quite fancy burlesque … Mum, you should see your face! Anyway, I went to Oxfordshire and met some very nice people.’ Not a total lie. One of them was very nice.

‘Really?’ her mother asked in disbelief.

‘Yes, Mum. They were. Perhaps not the sort of people you’d meet at the Rotary Club, but good sorts.’ What on earth was she saying? She’d be using expressions like ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk’ next.

She pressed on, ‘I enjoyed it so much I’m going to go again.’ So there.

‘Well, it’s very singular of you, Miranda,’ her mother said. ‘If you’re going to do charity work, why not do proper charity work? Doesn’t Lydia do something with disadvantaged children?’

‘Yes. I think she knits them into socks for the army. But I wanted to do something energetic.’

‘You never used to say that at school.’

‘That was rather a long time ago. And I was utterly hopeless at hockey and netball. It’s very dispiriting to be the last person to be picked for the team and it puts you off doing anything energetic. If you remember, I was only good at shot-put, and nobody wants to be good at shot-put unless they’re lesbian.’

‘Miranda!’ Her mother’s eyes darted to the next table.

‘Oh, all right, not lesbian, then,’ said Miranda, wanting to voice the L-word again. ‘Fat.’ What was it about being with her mother that always made her sound like she was seven? ‘The point is, I’m going to go and volunteer again – and I met a rather scrumptious man, who I’m going to have dinner with on Wednesday.’ There. It was out.

‘From canal clearing?’

‘Mum, you’ve done that face where you look like Lamb Chop eating a pretend carrot.’ She laughed. ‘I think he might be mixed race. He’s got dreadlocks. Down to here.’ She gestured to her waist. ‘And now you’re doing what Butter and Marg did when they wanted feeding,’ she said, talking about the goldfish she had won at a fair. They had lived in a bowl that eventually went a livid green and killed its occupants.

‘Does Nigel know?’ she eventually asked.

‘Mum, I’m not married to him any more. I’m a free agent, just like he is. He doesn’t have to tell me about his latest floozy, and I don’t have to tell him what I’m doing.’

‘Have you told Lucy? Or Jack?’

‘Nope. They’ve left home. It’s nothing to do with them.’ Yet. ‘And it’s a dinner date, not a wedding.’

‘But mixed race.’ Her mother shook her head.

‘Mmm.’ Miranda reached for the teapot. ‘He might not be, though. I have no idea. Doesn’t matter either way, though, does it? I think he lives in a camper van. Or that seems to be what he lives in. I don’t know very much about him. I will by Thursday, if you want me to keep you posted?’

Her mother tightened her lips, realising she was being baited and refusing to capitulate.

Miranda left the Lanesborough feeling rather as she had on leaving school, a combination of exhilaration and trepidation. Her dad wouldn’t approve of Alex either. He approved of Nigel and men like Nigel. He read the Daily Telegraph and believed there was too much immigration and that too much of what he paid in tax went to social-security scroungers. On the other hand, they had a cleaner from the Philippines and he kept quite a lot of his money in offshore accounts. ‘If it wasn’t for the stupidly generous state handouts encouraging people to sit at home watching television and producing more children, there would be people available to do the jobs,’ he would declare, to anyone who would listen. ‘As it is, we allow thousands of people to come here and most of them are instantly able to access stuff that we pay for. Why should they be able to go to our hospitals for treatment when they’ve contributed nothing, and send their children to our schools when they don’t even speak English?’

Who was it who said you were only an adult when your parents were no longer around?

Maybe she was having a mid-life crisis. How do you know whether it’s a mid-life crisis or something you’d have done anyway? A friend’s husband had done a classic: he’d run off with a twenty-year-old Norwegian student, spent all his money on renting a smart flat and buying a Porsche, and started wearing low-slung jeans and tight-fitting shirts that looked ridiculous with his mini pot-belly. He’d come crawling back two years later, wanting to be part of the family again.

But Miranda had always had a nice car. And she tried to be on trend if not trendy – maybe she’d have a look for a funky top in one of the high-street shops for Wednesday. Aha, and that’s how the mid-life crisis starts. She smiled. ‘You can drop me here on the corner.’ She handed the cabbie a twenty-pound note. ‘Keep the change.’ It was odd, she thought, how you tipped cabbies and hairdressers, waiters and waitresses, but not gas fitters, car mechanics, salespeople, hospital porters. All of them did you a service, but only some got a little extra cash. And, actually, the waiters and hairdressers she tipped were often bloody annoying.

She would have liked to be the sort of person who had the balls only to tip those who deserved it – the sort of person who took the service charge off the bill or demanded to see the manager. She had done it once and got so hot and sweaty that in the end she had meekly paid up.

Her mobile rang as she was searching for her house keys. Wedging the phone between shoulder and ear, she carried on rifling through her enormous handbag.

‘Hi, Miranda. Wondered if you fancied going to a play tonight? I’ve been let down at the last minute so I’ve got a spare ticket.’

‘What play?’

‘I think it’s called Spurt of the Moment or something like that. Written by some young person. You know me, I book them up so far in advance. Check on the Internet. It’s at the Royal Court. Should be good.’

Amanda Drake was one of Miranda’s closest friends. They had met at antenatal classes when having their first children and done instant bonding, having constantly answered to each other’s names. Amanda’s house was Miranda’s second home, the place where she felt most comfortable. It was full of squashy sofas, huge televisions, palatial bathrooms and a light, airy kitchen where much gossiping was done over bottles of wine. It had been there that Miranda had done her sobbing before, during and after the divorce.

‘I’m desperately trying to get into my house, and can’t find my keys in this stupidly large bag. I’ll call you in a moment,’ Miranda mumbled, unaware that her chin had hit the mute button. She put her bag on the doorstep and took out its contents one by one. It was only when the objects were strewn around her that she remembered she had put the keys in the tiny front zipped compartment while she was in the taxi, so that she could reach them easily.

She piled everything back in and semi-shuffled into her house, turning the alarm off with concentration. She had set it off again the week before, and if there was one more accident, she would lose her police response. No one had told her that, had they, when she’d spent a fortune putting it in?

Miranda was on her way to the bin in the kitchen to throw away drooping roses from a vase on the dining-room table when Amanda rang back.

‘Oh, sorry. I was going to phone you. Got sidetracked by a bunch of past-their-sell-by-date flowers. Is there anything sadder than a wilting rose?’

‘Erm. A child with its leg blown off by a landmine?’

‘Oh, make me sound callous, why don’t you? I meant is there a flower sadder than a wilting rose?’

‘A depressed daffodil? A weeping willow? A lethargic lily? A suicidal scarlet pimpernel?’

‘Oh, enough of the aliteration!’ laughed Miranda. ‘And is there truly a scarlet pimpernel? I thought it was an eighteenth-century spy.’

‘That too.’

‘Let me look at my diary. I’m flicking through the pages as we speak. I’m almost sure I haven’t got anything on … fnaw, fnaw …’

‘Naked at four thirty of a Monday afternoon, eh? Who have you got round there, you saucy minx?’ asked Amanda, in a raunchy voice.

‘Ha. No one. But remind me to tell you of a rather naughty prospect which may be coming up. Literally. On Wednesday. Now. Diary. Here it is.’

‘No. You can’t do that. Tell me about the naughty prospect first.’

‘Shan’t. I’ll check my diary, and if I’m seeing you tonight, I’ll give you all the gory details later. And here we are. Nope. Totally free for – oh, look – the rest of my life. That is shabby. Really. Nothing in the diary apart from tea with Mother, and some dreary dinner party at Sally Thurston’s next week.’

‘Why do you say yes?’

‘Habit. She means well. She’s kind.’

‘Kind of boring, you mean,’ said Amanda.

‘You’re right. How do I get out of it, though, when I’m not doing anything else?’

‘Start doing things.’

‘Okay. You can give me this lecture later. What time tonight?’

‘It starts at seven thirty or seven forty-five. How about we meet at six thirty in the restauranty bit of the bar downstairs?’

‘Fine. Are we having dinner or just a vat of wine?’

‘Maybe a light nibble. And you can tell me exactly what kind of light nibbling you’ve been up to.’

CHAPTER FIVE

The theatre was rammed with people drinking bottles of beer and eating olives. ‘That’s how you can tell we’re in Kensington and Chelsea,’ said Amanda. ‘If we were in Streatham we’d be drinking full-fat Coke with a hot dog.’

‘And in Camden, we’d be having a line of coke and an energy bar,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s all healthy crack chic there now.’

‘It’s not like when we were young, is it?’ Amanda put on an old-crone voice. ‘When Camden was all fields and we had to walk three miles to school.’

‘And you’d get seventeen gobstoppers for a penny and drink dandelion and burdock floats from a passing milkmaid,’ finished Miranda.

‘Oh, yes, I remember it well. Actually, I do remember when Notting Hill was a dodgy area. Now it’s full of bankers and sleek women with fantastic teeth and shiny hair … because they’re worth it.’ Amanda did the L’Oréal advert voice.

‘That’s why I moved there. I fit right in.’

‘Well, you are a yummy mummy, so I actually think that, despite your protestations, you do fit in.’

‘And you’re a yummy mummy, too, so don’t come the raw prawn with me, matey. How are the offspring?’ asked Miranda, scoffing a pickled garlic clove and a piece of cheese.

‘I’ve got serious empty-nest syndrome. It’s okay when I’m at work, but when Peter’s not around, I rattle about in that big house looking for something to do. No feeding of the five thousand. No unloading the dishwasher every night. No sewing on name tags or helping with homework. I miss them, don’t you?’

‘Well, I miss Jack a lot because I haven’t seen him for so bloody long, but Lucy’s still around. A mouthpiece for Nigel half the time, but that’s fine.’

‘Anyway. Enough of that,’ said Amanda, draining her gin and tonic noisily. ‘I’m going to get another of these and then you’re going to fill me in about your date.’

Miranda always used to tell her children to stop wishing their life away when they said they wanted it to hurry up and be their birthday, but she had secretly wished away the days until Wednesday, and finally it had arrived. And even more secretly, as she stretched and wriggled in the cotton sheets and thought about getting up, she was wishing it was this evening. It was ridiculous – she had umpteen things to do, like finding a proper job (Amanda had suggested someone she could call about PR work), going to the bank to see exactly what amount of money she had to spend, and sorting out a man to fix the leak in the shower room.

It was strange how she had started to get calls on her mobile about advice on debt. How did they know? She cleansed her face and smothered on hydrating cream while phoning a plumber recommended by Lydia – she assumed Lucy had not phoned her the other night since there’d been no angry call.

Then she did what she had told her children never to do: she went shopping, knowing that there might not be enough money in the bank to cover it. But, she reasoned, the money would be there in about nine months when the scheme she had invested in came to fruition. And it was looking like 10 to 15 per cent interest at the moment, possibly even higher, according to Lucy. By two o’clock, she was practically dead on her feet, and some unkind mirrors with nasty overhead lighting had made her dread the evening ahead. She could only pray he had early-onset cataracts.

She wondered if Alex was running round his camper van right now, trying things on, polishing his natty dreads – if that was what you did with them – buffing up his feet.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers, she thought, as her breasts almost burst the seams on a red shirt, and went for a sit-down and a bowl of soup at a communal deli – she was definitely the fattest person there. A text pinged through. Lucy: still on the trail of the bloody books. She would have liked to tell Nigel to do his own dirty work, but that would involve a tetchy conversation with him. Not that it would start tetchy …

It was strange to reconcile the toady countenance he now had with the handsome young man he had been when she married him. On really bad days he looked like a bilberry, all swollen and purply. He would be easy to draw in a life class, just a series of massive circles. His attractiveness in every way had disappeared in direct proportion to his wealth. Peculiar how some women out there were prepared to allow such an abundance of flesh to land on them in the bedroom in return for a few baubles. At least she had had an excuse: youth, silliness and lack of ambition. Other men had been available, but she felt she had been unduly influenced by the approbation of her father. Yes, she’d blame it on him.

The leaves on the lime and plane trees lining the roads were barely moving in the sultry weather. Miranda felt hot and leaden as she walked back to the house empty-handed, debating what to eat so that she didn’t look too bloated later. At least it was the sort of day when she didn’t want to eat chocolate – it melted so quickly it reminded her of poo.

Earlier that day, a little orange Volkswagen camper van made its way towards Cirencester, Alex was feeling clammy. His father had insisted he go to see him that morning on a matter of some importance, and Alex assumed it was about his mother, who was periodically threatening to end it all.

He drove up to the gates and got out to tap in the day’s code on the pad. It was his favourite time of year for the garden in front of the house. It was vast, but sectioned off into smaller areas, including a walled garden where hollyhocks and ornamental thistles poked above lamb’s ears and lady’s mantle. By summer, it would be a riot of colour, but now everything was quietly budding.

Belinda, the housekeeper, let him in and he made his way to his father’s study where the wood-panelled walls gave the ticking of the eighteenth-century clock a pleasant bok sound. A tall, slim man with close-cropped silver hair and tanned skin was standing by the window pouring two glasses of sparkling water. One already rested on a filigree coaster on the walnut side table.

‘Hi, Dad,’ said Alex, sinking into the red leather chair and accepting a glass. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve bought a small island off the coast of Spain,’ his father said, ‘to build a luxury hotel, a spa and a golf course – yes, I do know how you feel about golf courses, before you give me a lecture – and I happen to know that a number of people are going to be very unhappy about that. No, not the golf course,’ he added, as Alex opened his mouth to speak, ‘about me owning the island. Right now, it’s used as a very handy stopping-off point for drug-runners getting their stuff from Africa to Europe. I intend to stop that, obviously. I’ve been told they could make things nasty for us because we’re talking about a lot of money. I myself am hiring a couple of personal bodyguards, possibly for the next couple of years, and putting in a little more security here at the house.’

‘And you think I could be at risk too?’ Alex asked bluntly.

‘In a nutshell, yes. Let’s face it, you’re hardly difficult to track down in that orange van of yours. And not difficult to, say, kidnap. As my only son, you would be the perfect way for them to get at me and persuade me to allow them to continue. I don’t want that to happen. In fact, I won’t allow it to happen.’

‘I can see that you might not like it, Dad, but why not let them carry on with it, and get the police involved?’

David Miller took a sip of his water. ‘I have it on good authority that the police may be taking backhanders. As for letting them get on with it, you know I can’t. Can you imagine the headlines if an island I own is used for drug-running?’

Alex grinned. ‘Yes. Right. But won’t they find somewhere else if you make it uncomfortable for them?’

‘No. I think they’d try to make it uncomfortable for us by maybe shooting anybody who saw what they were doing. An innocent builder, for example.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I need you to take a lot more care than you do now.’

‘All right, I will,’ Alex said.

‘What will you do?’

‘Take more care,’ Alex said jauntily, raising his eyebrows.

‘As in?’

‘Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to do, Dad, like you always do?’

‘I’d like you to employ a bodyguard.’ The clock ticked, and the leather chair creaked as he leant forward. ‘I know you’d hate it. I know it’s not your …’ he paused ‘… style. But it’s not for ever. I’ve never asked you to change your way of life, have I?’ Alex acknowledged that. ‘Even though I do think it’s about time you started thinking about laying down foundations for the future.’

Alex nodded. ‘Yes, I know you do, Dad. And actually,’ he said, ‘I was going to wait and tell you this in a few months’ time, but I may as well tell you now. Today I signed on the dotted line for my range of organic freeze-dried soups to go into Waitrose. For a not insubstantial amount of money.’

David let out a crack of laughter. ‘Bloody well done, Alex. Congratulations. I know how much that means to you.’ He got up from his chair and came round the desk to give his son a handshake and a clap on the back. ‘Do you want a celebratory drink?’

‘No, thanks. A little early for me. But now you come to mention it, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’

David picked up the phone. ‘Belinda, a cup of tea for Alex, please, and a glass of champagne for me. Thanks.’ The sun was shining between the slats in the blinds and he walked over to alter the angle. ‘To get back to the security issue, what do you want to do? Obviously, since it’s entirely my, er, fault, if you like, that the situation has arisen, I’m willing to put it through the company.’ He raised a hand to Alex’s instant objection. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word “willing”. It should go through the company, since otherwise I could be facing all sorts of problems if you were to get kidnapped. Including raising the ten quid needed to free you.’

Alex smiled wryly. ‘I don’t know, Dad. It just seems a little over the top. You’ve done deals before where dodgy people have been involved.’

‘That’s the point. I’m not doing a deal with these “dodgy people”, as you describe them. I want them off the island.’

‘I still don’t understand why they won’t go and find another island. Yours can’t be the only one, surely.’

‘It’s the most useful. Not many others are virtually uninhabited. Point is, I’ve taken advice, and the advice is, we need professional protection.’

‘Is it worth the deal?’ Alex wrinkled his nose.

‘It most assuredly is. And before you ask, I’m doing as much as I can to make it ecologically aware. Solar panels on the roof, et cetera. However, it’s going to be a five- or six-star hotel, and I refuse to have the sort of ecological bathrooms where you throw earth into the lavatory and occasionally lob in a hundredweight of worms. So don’t even ask it of me.’