The Holiday Home. Fern Britton
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3
Some decades later
‘What on earth is your father doing now?’ Connie Wilson could feel her temper starting to rise. ‘Greg?’ she shouted up the stairs. ‘Come on – we’ve got to go.’
Calm down, she told herself, you’ve got the whole summer ahead of you. Don’t let the holiday get off to a bad start, don’t let it get to you!
Abigail, sitting quietly on the sofa, bags packed and at her feet, looked up from her book. Though only sixteen, she had endured enough family holidays to realise how stressful her mother found the whole business. With an expressive shrug of the shoulders, she returned to her place on the page.
Connie tossed her expensively highlighted hair back and put a hand over her eyes.
‘God, we’re going to be late again. Why does everybody leave it all to me?’
Abigail sat unmoving, peering over the top of her book as her mother pulled the specs from her blonde head and checked for the umpteenth time the long list of notes she’d made in her Smythson diary.
‘Well?’ She looked at Abi pointedly.
Abi indicated the bags at her feet. ‘Mum, I’m all packed and ready to go.’
‘Sorry, darling. I don’t mean to be a grouch, it’s just that I hate the thought of Pru getting there before us.’ Connie glanced towards the stairs. ‘What on earth is your father doing? Why is he taking so long?’ Rolling up the sleeves of her stripy sweatshirt, she marched to the foot of the stairs and bellowed, ‘Greg! Please can you turn your computer off. Surely work can wait for a few hours? We need to get a move on.’
Upstairs, Greg had his feet propped up on the wide and empty expanse of his ultra-cool desk, or ‘work space’ as he preferred to call it. This was his oasis. A place of sanctuary from the bedlam of his wife’s domain. A place of privacy. He slowly rocked himself on the ergonomically designed kid leather chair, sighing as he ran his hand through his wavy dark hair, now speckled with grey – much to his annoyance.
Raising his voice he shouted back, ‘Darling, won’t be a minute. Just got some loose ends to tie up at the office. Your father will want to have a full report as soon as we get there.’ He listened for a response from below, but none came. ‘Sorry about that, Janie,’ he murmured into the receiver of his agonisingly trendy and sleek steel handset.
‘That’s all right, Greggy,’ returned the voice of a well-educated young woman. ‘I’m so going to miss you.’
‘And I shall miss you. But I shall be thinking of you every moment of every day and every night, Janie darling.’
‘You will call me when you get there won’t you, Greggy?’
Irritation flared in him. Janie was getting too clingy.
‘Greg!’ Connie was shouting again. ‘Please hurry up!’
Greg, beginning to lose interest, was eager to end the call. ‘Yes, Con, I’m coming,’ he shouted. Then, speaking softly into the phone: ‘I’ll try. I’ve got to go. If only for Abigail’s sake.’ He started to tidy his desk, closing the lid of his laptop and looking round for its leather case. Lately he’d found himself wondering whether the time had come to kick Janie into touch. Lovely girl and all that, but it was asking for trouble, having an affair with your secretary. Especially when your father-in-law owned the company. Maybe he could pay her off, get her another job in a friend’s company. He’d write her an excellent letter of recommendation. After all, she was very good at her job. And very, very sexy.
Greg Wilson considered himself a reasonable man. A man who was satisfactorily married while indulging in a slice of illicit cake. Surely it was expected that a man in his position would have a mistress? Then again, mixing business with pleasure … that was where he’d made a mistake. He’d have to give some thought to the Janie problem over the summer hols.
‘Janie, I really have to go. I’m only off to Cornwall. Not to the other side of the world. I’ll call when I can.’
‘Promise, Greggy?’ she purred.
‘Promise.’ Greg was now standing up with the phone sandwiched between shoulder and ear, shovelling things into his briefcase.
‘Bye bye, baby cakes.’
‘Bye, sexy.’ And he hung up. He’d added the ‘sexy’ to keep her sweet. She did the ‘sexy secretary’ look very well. Business suits with tight pencil skirts and high heels. And beautiful underwear that encased her twenty-six-year-old derrière to perfection.
He could hear the sound of a heavy suitcase being dragged across the hallway below.
Taking one last look around the room to see if he’d forgotten anything, he gathered up his laptop and went downstairs to inspect the damage.
His wife frowned up at him, ‘Greg, you know I want to leave as early as possible. We must get there before Pru.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Connie. Why you and that sister of yours insist on this ridiculous battle of wits each year is beyond me. And watch what you’re doing to the floor. It costs a fortune to polish those marks out.’
Connie was at the front door with the largest of three suitcases. She turned very slowly, took a deep breath, was on the verge of saying something unkind but thought better of it. Instead she continued towards the front door.
‘Here, let me help you. Before you scuff the paintwork as well.’
‘It would have been nice if you’d spared the time to do your own packing as well,’ Connie muttered, then, more loudly: ‘I think I can manage, thank you.’
Greg moved towards her just as she got the front door open. There ensued an unseemly scuffle as he tried to wrench the case from her hand and she held fast. It was Abigail who stepped in.
‘Mum! Dad! Why do we have to start every summer holiday with all this aggro? It will be brilliant once we get there and we’re going to have a LOVELY time! Let’s get on the freakin’ road.’
*
Fifty miles away, in an expensive corner of South-East London, Connie’s sister Pru was waiting for her pedicure to dry. She’d been up since four, tying up a few overnight loose ends that her overseas office had thrown up. These commercial surveyors could be such a bore. Now, she was lying on the bed in her extremely white and bright but sparsely furnished bedroom – a room so desperately tasteful it wouldn’t have looked out of place between the covers of Elle Decoration. She watched as her beauty therapist packed away the many pots of nail polish and lotions she had used on her client.
‘Thank you so much, Esther. I love this colour. What’s it called again?’
‘Pantie Glimmer,’ said Esther, a tall slender girl with a violent fake tan.
‘Pantie Glimmer? Where do they get these names from? I should think taupe was a perfectly adequate description.’
‘Yeah,’ deadpanned Esther. ‘But not very sexy, is it?’
Pru was about to argue the merits of taupe, one of her favourite shades in décor and clothing, but was stopped by a gentle knock on the door.
‘Enter,’ Pru called.
The door opened quietly and the slightly anxious face of her husband, Francis, appeared.
‘Hello, darling. You look marvellous.’ He took an appreciative sniff of the room. ‘Lovely smell. What is it, Esther?’
‘Ylang-ylang, geranium and sandalwood. It’s very good on ageing skin.’
Beneath her perfectly styled, short and sleek brown hair, Pru’s face stiffened, and her blue eyes took on a look that could only be described as icy. Francis hurriedly