Summer Holiday

To Rob, Hilary, the man from the Danish biscuit commercial and the wife of my dentist.

Contents

Chapter One

When Miranda Frayn was little, she’d wanted to be a…

Chapter Two

On Saturday, having told nobody about her new career as…

Chapter Three

It felt very politically incorrect to get into a Jaguar…

Chapter Four

While he was at his minor public school, Nigel had…

Chapter Five

The theatre was rammed with people drinking bottles of beer…

Chapter Six

The newspapers were full of the freak heatwave that the…

Chapter Seven

It was the weekend, and Miranda decided it was time…

Chapter Eight

The text said eight o’clock for dinner, Somewhere small –…

Chapter Nine

There were days when Miranda felt that nowhere could be…

Chapter Ten

It was as though Walt Disney had decided to turn…

Chapter Eleven

Driving to his house in the country, Alex had one…

Chapter Twelve

The Mediterranean Sea is almost completely enclosed by land and…

Chapter Thirteen

The days unfurled in glorious azure and yellow, with Becky…

Chapter Fourteen

The yacht La Maritana was twinkling like the Orion constellation…

Chapter Fifteen

‘And then, as if my week ’adn’t been bad enough,…

Chapter Sixteen

The atmosphere on board La Maritana was at mercury-bursting-out-of-the-thermometer point.

Chapter Seventeen

For many of those holidaying on the Costa del Sol,…

Chapter Eighteen

Some pieces of music are unhelpful when you’re in a…

Chapter Nineteen

Swimming-pool attire differs depending on what country you’re in. Katie…

Chapter Twenty

Normally on a drizzly Sunday evening, Lucy would have been…

Chapter Twenty-One

There are a number of sights guaranteed to strike fear…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Heat in another country is subtly different. The temperature can…

Chapter Twenty-Three

There are days you can pinpoint as being pivotal days…

Chapter Twenty-Four

At the age of eight and three-quarters – when every…

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘They’ve got your age wrong, Mum,’ said Lucy, as she…

Read On…

About the Author

Other Books by Penny Smith

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

When Miranda Frayn was little, she’d wanted to be a vet, an astronaut or someone who got lots of free stickers and felt-tip pens.

At around twelve years old, she decided that being a vet was not a good job, since it seemed that all they did was put down hamsters, massage Minty, her Jack Russell, up her bottom, and get scratched by cats. Astronauts did not spend their days bouncing round the moon and far-flung planets, but instead did tedious experiments with seeds and rubbishy-looking rocks. She no longer wanted free stickers and felt-tip pens, but instead yearned to be famous and get married to Luke Skywalker or Han Solo.

With that in mind, she put her name forward for every school play and, by dint of hard work and the non-stop badgering of the drama teacher, managed, the year before she left, to achieve the giddy heights of Maria in The Sound of Music. The boy who wrote the review in the school magazine described her as radiant, moving – a star in the making. Miranda had discovered early that if you wanted something badly enough, you had to be prepared to kiss really unattractive people – sometimes more than once. If she had not virtually sucked his head off at the back of the cinema, he would have written a very different critique. He would have said that as a nun she was unconvincing, and as a singer she’d made his ears bleed. He would have said that she should take up any other career but acting.

But, once caught, the performing bug is difficult to shake off, and there are any number of people willing to take your money for everything from head shots to acting lessons.

Luckily for the viewing public, fledgling starlet Miranda Frayn fell in love and decided that what she really, really wanted to do was get married and have babies. In her dreams, she imagined combining a career in film with bringing up children, but MGM failed to come knocking at the house in Oxfordshire, and instead she trod the boards in amateur plays, where the costumes were creaky, the sets were wobbly, and there was always a sweaty man playing fourth lead who wanted to have an affair with her.

It was all so dispiriting that, eventually, Miranda settled on acting the part of the devoted wife and became a passionate advocate of scarf knitting. She would have liked to create something a little more advanced but, frankly, with two small children and a man who wore Savile Row suits and cashmere from Brora, that was never going to happen.

Nigel Blake, her husband, was everything she had wanted: smart, funny, handsome and rich. She hadn’t realised she wanted rich but, increasingly, it was the only thing he still was. When she divorced him after two decades, having discovered his long standing shag-fest, as she called it, with his secretary, she would have described him as fat, boorish and rich. Or Knobhead, for short. But he was the father of her two children, so she reserved such comments for evenings when she was out with friends and for phone calls with the man himself.

Meanwhile, she was living in London, back on the dating scene and hating it. It was like constantly seeing bad films. She had started off excited about the prospect and then, over two years, a sort of malaise had crept over the whole thing and she had stopped worrying about matching underwear – or even matching outerwear. And as for her friends’ view of what constituted handsome …

Here she was, for example, on yet another night out with an allegedly suitable man. Passers-by glancing into the little restaurant would have seen a couple who had probably been married for an eternity – they weren’t speaking.

Miranda was bored again. She imagined her date as an icon on her computer that she was deleting.

And while she was at it, she might delete some of her friends’ numbers. How on earth they could think that this pompous tit was her cup of tea … And her steak was tough. Still, at least it was giving her teeth a workout.

‘Sorry?’ She raised her eyebrows at her dining partner.

‘I asked if you wanted more wine.’

‘No,’ she responded baldly. ‘Thank you,’ she added. No point in adding rudeness to the patronising she had already been. Mind you, he deserved it. Right-wing. Fascist. Fat. Twat. She smiled as she thought it.

‘What?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Nothing. I was just thinking silly words. Rhyming words. How much better they are than when they’re on their ownsome.’

‘As in?’ he queried, trying to get on to her wavelength, although he had almost given up. He was not a man who struggled to get women. He was rich and lived at a very expensive address in Mayfair.

Miranda knew, as she opened her mouth, that it was going to be a hopeless conversation. The man had no imagination, the verbal dexterity of a Clanger and she honestly couldn’t be bothered to try to explain what she found amusing about rhyming words. And of course she couldn’t articulate the words she’d come up with to describe him, so she had to make up two more. ‘Numpty and flumpty,’ she said, off the top of her head.

‘Which means?’

‘Nothing. It’s the rhyme that amuses me.’ Oh, God. Now she was going to have to explain. Or feign partial death and get out of this place.

‘What – so Humpty Dumpty’s funny?’ He wrinkled his nose.

As if I’d done a trouser cough, she thought, and smirked.

‘Is it?’ he asked, mistaking – again – her expression.

‘I think you either find words funny or you don’t. Have you finished? Shall we get the bill?’ He looked at his very expensive watch, clearly hoping she’d clocked its exclusivity. ‘I know it’s a bit early,’ she added, ‘but I’ve suddenly remembered I have a five o’clock start tomorrow, and perhaps tonight wasn’t the best for organising a long dinner.’

‘A five o’clock start? What for?’ he asked.

‘Erm. Flight. Early flight. Late booking. I needed to get away. Going to …’ her eyes fell on the tablecloth ‘… the Czech Republic,’ she said brightly. Like I care whether or not you believe me. She tried to look innocent and apologetic at the same time.

To give him his due, he asked promptly for the bill, then insisted on paying. That was the one good thing about the blind dates: they hadn’t cost her anything. But they were all bankers or company directors, so she felt guilt free. In fact, with the bankers, she was practically doing the country a service.

She was barely home and through the door before she was entirely disrobed and in front of the television. What a waste of an evening. What a waste of a lot of evenings.

Miranda realised she was accidentally watching the news and it was all too depressing. She clicked it off and wandered up to the bathroom to wash her face and moisturise. After she’d cleaned her teeth, she looked at herself in the mirror. Put her hands to either side of her face and pulled them back to see how she’d look with a face lift. Would she have the guts to let someone literally take off her face, trim the edges and hem it again to smooth out the wrinkles? At least her eyesight was starting to go a bit. It was a relief not to be able to see the crow’s feet quite so clearly.

She sighed and padded through to the bedroom. Odd, she still couldn’t get used to sleeping alone. For almost a quarter of a century, another body had slumbered beside hers, getting larger, taking up more space, and snoring louder as the years passed. It was such a luxury to do a starfish impression and not touch flesh.

Tomorrow is the day I take control, she thought. Life has got to perk up, big-time. She lay between the cotton sheets trying to decide what control needed to be taken.

Her friends would have described Miranda Blake first and foremost as a laugh. Pressed to expand, they would have said she was attractive, with a penchant for extremely high heels. Her parents would have described their daughter as wayward but tamed by a decent man, whom she had divorced for no good reason (after all, everyone has a little dalliance on the side). Miranda herself would have said she was all right, considering the alternatives. Everything was heading south and hairs were starting to sprout in strange places, but it could have been a lot worse. She had friends with prolapses, fallen arches, bad backs or bunions.

Early in their relationship, Nigel would have described her as a cracking bit of totty. The two had met at a party in Fulham where neither knew the host. Miranda was dressed for success in a little blue dress and very high black heels, which she found surprisingly easy to walk in. Nigel was wearing what she later came to describe as his out-of-hours uniform – a Pink’s shirt and corduroy trousers with Gucci loafers. His thick brown hair fell in messy abandon to his shirt collar and his amber eyes looked admiringly into her sparkling blue ones as they shared the bottle of Château Latour he had brought, having mistakenly thought it was a dinner party.

He had looked around for a corkscrew and she had handed him one wordlessly – she’d been on the lookout for a semi-decent bottle since she’d arrived ten minutes earlier with a girlfriend. He had walked her home afterwards and they had kissed fervently on the doorstep of her minuscule studio flat. Within a year, they had married in a picturesque church in the Cotswolds and Miranda got pregnant on honeymoon. Lucy’s birth was followed two years later by the arrival of Jack.

It wasn’t until the children were on the verge of leaving home that Miranda realised she categorically loathed her husband. The sound of his key in the front door of the smart stuccoed building in fashionable Kensington filled her with a horrible ennui. It didn’t help that he now resembled an overstuffed pork sausage. Maybe he had actually absorbed a whole other person. Watching him tie his shoelaces was a lesson in physics: how did he bend in the middle when the middle was so much bigger than either end?

When she’d brought up the subject of divorce he had been stunned. ‘On what grounds?’ he had demanded.

‘My unreasonable behaviour? Your unreasonable behaviour? Bird molestation? Giraffe bothering? I don’t really mind, but I do want a divorce,’ she had said, in a reasonable tone.

‘Are you having an affair?’ His eyebrows had come together.

‘No. And I assume you aren’t?’ she asked, her eyes on his paunch. When a paunch got that big, did it become a super-paunch?

He went pink around the ears, and it dawned on her, with a shock, that he was. And as the conversation (now a shouting conversation) continued, she discovered that it was of long standing and with his secretary. She remembered yelling at some stage that he was a cliché. It was strange that even though she wanted a divorce, wanted never to see Nigel step out of his trousers ever again, it was still awful.

It was the division of the spoils that did it. There were days when she had cried over the toaster for her lost dreams. The things they had bought together when she had imagined herself in love. But now she could see that that had been youthful folly, a combination of lust and laziness. Marrying Nigel had relieved her of the need to get a proper job.

Lucy blamed Miranda for breaking up a happy family. Jack had been upset but understanding.

After the decree absolute, Miranda had bought herself a house in Notting Hill and put the rest of the money in the bank. It wasn’t a huge amount, but she had reckoned that, if she was careful, she could have a lovely break before she found employment.

The time had come. But what job?

I need a change of direction, Miranda thought, putting her toes out from under the duvet and wiggling them. Tomorrow I’ll do something to facilitate finding a job. At least it’ll be a change from thinking about sodding dates.

Eventually, as her mind wandered off to variations on a theme of sheep, she drifted into sleep.

The next morning she arose full of purpose. She had a shower, washed her hair and put on a conditioning treatment, then vigorously applied a body scrub, which smelt slightly off. Wrapped in a fluffy new towel – she had thrown out all those that might have touched Nigel – she plucked her eyebrows and moisturised, using industrial quantities of cream. She applied blow-drying serum to her mid-length red-gold hair, then hung upside down to do the roots, leaving the rest to curl naturally.

‘Right,’ she said, as she strode to the wardrobe. She took out a thin pink shirt and a pair of jeans cut off to the knee. Looking critically in the mirror, she was in two minds about whether she was mutton dressed as lamb since she could see her bra through the shirt. But without a husband or children to declare either way, she decided to go with it.

She breakfasted on two pieces of toast, one with marmalade and the other with Nutella, which looked a little funny – she’d probably bought it when Jack was about eight, and a lot of buttery crumbs had gone under the bridge since then.

With a cup of tea in hand, she opened her computer, checked her emails and hovered over the Google search space. What should she put? Maybe, she thought, I should get into the habit of having a job before actually applying for one. It was a bit scary, the idea of an interview. And she was a bit long in the tooth to be asking for work experience.

In the absence of anything springing to mind, she typed ‘Constructive Things to Do’ and clicked on the first result. A list of twenty-five possibilities popped up, including updating your MP3 player and throwing out clothes. Very therapeutic, but not what she was after.

Another suggested learning how to spin a pencil round your thumb. Not now. Although it would be a good trick – and certainly an advance on dating.

An hour later, Miranda had got herself on to a website advertising eco-produce. She went and made herself another cup of tea, and opened the kitchen cupboard to see if there was anything that might help it go down. There wasn’t. That was the flip-side of living on your own – there was never a biscuit when you wanted one.

Back at the computer, she chose a different heading for Google: ‘Constructive Things to Do In Your 40s’.

One word stuck out: ‘Volunteering’.

‘By Jove, I think she’s got it,’ she said, double-clicking on a link. By lunchtime Miranda Blake, divorcee, forty-three, had volunteered for canal clearing in the Cotswolds.

She printed off the list of suggested items to take with her, ticked off those she had, and ringed those she hadn’t. What on earth was a ‘wicking shirt’ when it was at home? She Googled it. Oh, right, she thought. What we used to call Aertex when we were at school and forced to play hockey in inclement weather.

Her mobile phone rang. ‘Hi, Lydia.’

‘Miranda,’ said Lydia, the wife of one of Nigel’s friends. ‘Wondered how the date with James went last night.’

‘Erm. Fine. But I don’t think he’s right for me,’ answered Miranda, suddenly remembering she had told James she would be on an early flight.

‘Oh?’

‘You know. Not really the same sense of humour. And things,’ she ended lamely.

‘Handsome, though,’ stated Lydia, in her clipped way.

‘Yes. Oh, yes. Definitely,’ said Miranda, shaking her head vigorously even though Lydia couldn’t see.

‘And he’s loaded.’

‘Yes.’ She had noticed his very expensive watch and the new Aston Martin.

‘So, are you going on a second date?’

‘Well … no,’ said Miranda.

‘But you’d be perfect together,’ pronounced Lydia.

In what way? wondered Miranda. Perfect together as in chicken and Lego? ‘Mm,’ she said, debating where to go from here. ‘Thing is, I don’t think it would work. He’s sort of similar to Nigel.’

‘To Nigel?’ Lydia almost shrieked.

‘Banker. Square?’ she essayed.

‘Square?’ repeated Lydia.

There was a silence while Miranda tried to form a sentence that wouldn’t antagonise her friend. Or was she a friend? Would a proper friend have set her up with such a – such a muppet? ‘I think what I’m looking for, Lydia, is a change,’ she finally tried. ‘Someone who isn’t in the banking world, maybe. Someone to be silly with. Carefree with. A diversion.’

Lydia of the carefully styled coiffure was not having that. ‘What you need is someone who is going to look after you. And that means a man with a solid career. Money in the bank. James ticks all the boxes – and he doesn’t have any children to get in the way. As I told you, he’s newly out of a long relationship with a concert pianist. Which means he can be arty. And so on and so forth.’

Really! How could she have a friend who would say ‘and so on and so forth’? She typed into the computer: ‘How to End a Friendship with Someone Dull’.

‘Are you typing?’ asked Lydia.

‘No,’ responded Miranda, swiftly, smiling to herself at the options listed. She would read them all later.

‘I think he’s worth a second stab.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ lied Miranda. ‘Leave it with me and I’ll have a little think.’ Anything to end this conversation. ‘Now,’ she added, ‘I have to sort myself out. I’m going on an expedition and I reckon I need some wicking shirts and a pair of gaiters. I’ll speak to you later.’

‘Shall I tell James to call you?’

‘No. I’ll call him myself. ’Bye.’ Why had she said that? Damn. She pursed her lips, then sent a text: James. Thanks for dinner. All the best, Miranda. No self-important alpha male could possibly take that as anything but a brush-off. Particularly not when he found out from Lydia that she was definitely in town and not in the Czech Republic.

She grabbed her list and her bag and left the house with a spring in her step. It was a beautiful day and she decided to walk to Kensington instead of driving. After all, she was going to have to get used to being in the fresh air, and it wasn’t always going to be this sunny.

CHAPTER TWO

On Saturday, having told nobody about her new career as an ecobod, Miranda woke up to the alarm and wondered whether she should cancel. She’d bet loads of people did, what with one bronchitis or another. She lay in bed for a minute, luxuriating in the beauty of being alone under her king-size duvet. No man-smells here, she thought. If Nigel had been there, he would have farted, scratched his scrotum and demanded breakfast in bed. And possibly nudged her with his early-morning broom handle, emerging from below his distended stomach. Urgh. Just the thought of it got her out of bed.

She meandered over to the curtains and threw them back. Damn. Raining. Typical. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to wash her hair, after all. She checked the time. An hour to get ready. She pottered into the bathroom and turned on the shower, catching sight of herself in the big mirror over the bathroom sink as she reached for her toothbrush.

Whoa. What was that? She peered closer. Bollocks. A spot at my age, she thought. That is just so unfair. And then she smiled at her reflection. She was sounding remarkably like her daughter going through puberty. The difference was that Miranda would leave the spot to do its own thing and not fiddle with it, unlike Lucy who would dig and squeeze until it virtually needed stitches and a few weeks to heal. It was amazing that Lucy’s face had survived without a scar.

Miranda stepped into the shower – and couldn’t get out again because of a severe bout of water-induced inertia. She was in the zone, just wanting to stand there for ever letting the water cascade down her back and creep round the front. What would snap her out of it? She had to make a move. Any move. A move that would break the spell. No. It wasn’t going to happen. She’d be found on Wednesday by the cleaner. Blown up from water absorption and with five days’ hair growth on her legs. Would there be maggots? Are there always maggots? ‘Yuk,’ she said, and reached for the shaver.

There was something wonderful about stepping out from a long shower into a warm mist, and it was even better not being able to see herself in the fogged-up mirror. She moisturised every available inch of skin, covered the spot with concealer, then hovered over the perfume. Was there any point? She sprayed some on the back of her neck.

She could just not turn up. Simply call in sick. How wonderfully naughty. Who would care? But she used to push the children into doing things they didn’t want to and they usually came back saying it was the best day they’d ever had. She girded her loins and walked with purpose to the plastic carrier bag from which she had not yet unpacked the requisite items on the list.

My goodness, she thought, when she was dressed. I look like the sort of woman who’s never heard of Brazilian waxing or eyebrow-plucking. In short … a mad feminist. All men are bastards. I’ll take them down with my sharp wit and disused tweezers.

She fluffed up the duvet, threw on the coverlet and the six cushions, then decided she had just enough time for a quick coffee.

Ten minutes later she was wondering why, with all her experience of life, she hadn’t put a dash of cold water into it. The burnt roof of her mouth hurt. On the bright side, there would be that strangely enjoyable peeling away of the skin tomorrow.

The green Jaguar purred into life and she put the postcode into the sat-nav as she waited for the garage door to lift. She drove west towards Shepherd’s Bush and the A40, searching for something to listen to on the radio, finally settling for XFM because it made her feel connected to Jack. Her adorable Jack. Nigel hadn’t been able to make him conform and he was now wandering the world with a clutch of A levels and a backpack. She did worry about his future and, in a secret, locked-away bit of her brain, actually wished he had gone into banking and done the hiking stuff later.