The Holiday Swap: The perfect feel good romance for fans of the Christmas movie The Holiday. Zara Stoneley
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is there? I’m sure it’ll all seem better in the…’
Flo burst into tears. She couldn’t help herself, she’d held it together at the airport but just couldn’t hold it in a second longer.
‘Oh goodness.’ The sweets came out again, followed by a man-size tissue. ‘Now, now, don’t you be getting all upset. Don’t tell me…’ Flo hadn’t been about to.
‘Sorry, I, I’ve had a bit of a shock.’ The realisation that your life was a disaster didn’t exactly lead to happy-dancing. ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’
Flo’s travel companion finished wrestling the enormous handbag under the seat and sat up red-faced, ‘I’m Carol by the way,’ then beamed at Flo.
‘Florence, Flo.’ Just saying her name seemed normal, and for a moment she forgot about him.
‘Now would you believe it, Flo, we’re about to take off. How about I tell you all about my hols to take your mind off it?’
Flo nodded and after blowing her nose a few times, taking a few deep breaths and letting Carol’s words drift over her she started to feel more like her normal self.
By the time Flo had heard all about Carol’s fun in Paris they were airborne, and the drinks trolley was jangling its way down the aisle.
‘I think we need a little drinky to cheer us up, don’t we?’ She patted Flo’s knee and, ignoring her protests, proceeded to order a mountain of snacks and drinks. ‘Here you are, love,’ she emptied the contents of a bottle into the plastic cup and added a splash of Coke, ‘I got you a couple of bottles of Bacardi. They’re only tiny little things, aren’t they? Cheers, me dears, drink up!’
Flo drank up and blinked, feeling surprisingly light-headed, which could have been to do with the altitude, or the fact that she really couldn’t put the drink away as fast as Carol.
‘Oh, now look at this.’ Carol had moved onto her magazine, and Flo squinted and tried to concentrate on something other than her disastrous life. ‘He’s a looker, isn’t he?’
Flo nodded dumbly at the photograph of George Clooney. Yes, like Oli. He was a looker alright, and a talker.
‘Makes it too easy for them, doesn’t it?’ Carol turned the page round so she could examine the picture more closely. ‘If they haven’t got looks then they have to work at it, makes them nicer, that’s what my mother always said. And those lookers go to seed, you know. Then what have you got left?’
‘George Clooney hasn’t gone to seed.’
‘Well there has to be the odd exception.’
‘Nor has Harrison Ford,’ chipped in dreadlocks girl, who had removed her earphones at some point, ‘he looked hot in Star Wars.’
‘They’re not real life though, are they, duck? You don’t know what work goes into making them look like that. Worse than women they are, all titivated up.’
Flo sighed. Maybe Oli hadn’t been real life, and the idea of him losing his looks and going to seed cheered her up a bit.
‘Oh look, we’re nearly there. I’m quite looking forward to this, like my mam always said, a change of scene works wonders.’
Flo stared out of the window. A change of scene, a complete change of scene, was probably just what she needed right now. She just had to work out what it looked like.
***
As the airplane touched down at Barcelona airport, Flo didn’t feel quite so tearful. The two double Bacardi and Cokes, plus the glass of Prosecco had taken her from the ‘he’s a bastard and I want to cry’ stage, to the much healthier ‘I’m better off without him (maybe) and I hope him and his hussy burn in hell’ stage. After swaying in the aisle of the plane for twenty minutes waiting to disembark, spending ten minutes in a queue for passport control and an impossibly long time (impossibly because her bladder was about to burst) waiting in line for the toilets, her alcoholic haze had lifted and all she wanted to do was go home, get so drunk she couldn’t see straight, and cry.
Chapter 5 - Daisy and Anna. Barcelona
Daisy was wrestling with a wet and very randy Dalmatian, and trying to ignore her hangover, when Anna reappeared the day after ‘the proposal’ – practically bouncing with her news.
‘God, Daisy, what are you doing to that dog?’
‘It’s more a question of what it’s trying to do to me. He wants to bonk everything with a pulse. Just hold him round the neck and look stern can you?’
‘Like a Dalamatrix?’
‘Very funny.’ She grabbed the shower head while the dog was actually still, and soon had him soaked to the skin and lathered up. There were days when she really thought her dog-grooming business should cater for nothing bigger than a poodle, and nothing with balls.
‘Anyway,’ Anna hung on as the dog made a bid for freedom, ‘I came to tell you it’s all sorted. Your big adventure is on; you’re visiting Florence!’
‘I am?’ She stopped mid-lather, which was handy. If she’d still had the shower head in her hand, then Anna might well have been soaked.
‘You are.’
It sounded rather final. ‘Don’t I get a say in this?’
Anna relaxed her hold on the dog in surprise and it was halfway out of the bath, and she was drenched, by the time Daisy made a grab for its collar. ‘Well yeah, of course. I just thought you’d like the idea…’
‘Florence, that’s in Italy, isn’t it? I thought it was expensive there,’ she sighed, ‘you know I’m broke.’ Anna giggled and got a firm hold on the dog again, relief flooding her face. But Daisy hardly noticed. ‘I’d been thinking maybe I should go to France first on the ferry. You know, a little village.’ With cute cafés where she could settle down with a book. ‘And beaches.’
‘Daisy?’
The more she’d thought about going away, the more she wanted to do it. But she was afraid of different, too different. Maybe she needed to think this through – it was fine thinking she needed to live a bit, but she’d been thinking of starting off with baby steps.
‘I was thinking somewhere on the coast, and Florence isn’t, is it?’ She’d only just scraped a pass at GCSE Geography.
‘Daisy will you let me finish, you dafty? You’re going to see Flo the person, not the place. Flo, remember?’
Daisy stopped trying to scrub the spots off the dog and looked at Anna in confusion. ‘Flo? But she lives in Barcelona doesn’t she? Or has she moved?’
‘Yep she does, and no she hasn’t. It was you who mentioned Italy, not me.’
Daisy decided it would be a waste of breath correcting her. ‘That’s Spain.’
‘Genius.’ Anna grinned, pleased with herself. ‘Barcelona’s got a beach, and it’s better than being stuck out in the sticks. Anyhow, December is hardly sunbathing weather and it’ll be freezing in France.’
‘Have you actually mentioned this to Flo? I mean, I’ve hardly spoken to her for ages and I thought she had this hectic high-flying lifestyle.’
Totally unlike her own. Totally unlike any other inhabitant of Tippermere. They might have gone to the same primary school, played kiss chase with the same boys and even hit puberty and agonised over their A levels together. But there all similarities had ended abruptly. Daisy had stayed in the village and Flo had swanned off to Barcelona with her Spanish mother, who had decided that she couldn’t cope with the damp English weather any longer.
‘The last Facebook status I read