Freya North 3-Book Collection: Love Rules, Home Truths, Pillow Talk. Freya North
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such a snob!’ Jeanette teased her. ‘Who cares if it’s Butlins de la Camargue – the plonk’ll be plentiful and we’ll be happy campers.’
Alice raised her eyebrows at herself and smiled. ‘Do you reckon we’ll have mini-bars in our rooms?’
‘Rooms?’ Jeanette exclaimed. ‘You do know we’re having to bunk up?’
‘Bunk up?’ Alice asked.
‘Share,’ Jeanette elaborated, ‘in groups of three.’
Alice laughed heartily and gave Jeanette a jocular nudge. While the lady with the clipboard who’d accompanied them from the airport bustled through to the hotel reception, Alice coolly took stock of the situation. The group consisted of twenty respected managers each on a high and esteemed rung of their company, all justly honoured by PPA, BSME or ACE awards, soaring circulation figures and massive advertising revenue to their credit. In addition, most were married, all were in their thirties or beyond, on top salaries with share options and positions on the board. Of course they were going to have their own rooms, with mini-bars and satellite television.
Oh no, they weren’t.
‘I thought you were joking,’ Alice almost wept to Jeanette, an expression of pleading panic furrowing her face.
‘Well, I have my iPod and speakers and Jacquie Duckworth bought duty-free gin and two hundred Marlboro Lights – so our dorm will be rocking,’ Jeanette tried to enthuse.
‘You bet,’ said Jacquie, her duty-free carrier bag clanking in proof. ‘Who needs a mini-bar?’
‘You’re on!’ said Alice, hoping her enviable collection of Bobbi Brown cosmetics would be seen as a valid contribution.
‘No, you’re not,’ Ben Starkey butted in darkly, ‘they’ve already designated who’s in which room.’
‘You are joking!’ Alice exclaimed hoarsely, while Jacquie almost dropped her fags and lost her bottle.
‘He’s not,’ Jeanette said glumly, trudging off with the publisher of the crafts titles and the director of circulation.
The accommodation was set in the grounds, in rows of gaily painted breeze-blocked cabins, optimistically called chalets. As Alice trudged towards hers, she was suddenly aware of the natural beauty of the landscape and that it was quite at odds with the ugliness of the hotel complex. The sea could be heard but not seen and the big sky of the Petite Camargue, by then streaked with a colour close to apricot, seemed somehow higher and lighter than that above London. Beyond the hotel grounds, inky pine forests fringed the dunes that led to the coast and a distinctive salty tang from the lagoons and marshes permeated the air. However, Alice’s appreciation of her new surroundings was negated on arriving at Chalet B27. Pea-green on the outside, the breeze-blocks inside had been painted the colour of lemon curd, jumping to a hue close to tomato ketchup in the bathroom. It was by no means cramped, in fact it was spacious, with an additional toilet and a large hallway doubling as a lounge with peculiar seating modules made from foam blocks covered with bright fleece fabric. However, in the bedroom Alice felt irritated by the organization of space. Why insinuate that the three beds were afforded privacy by placing them at acute angles, partially screened by ugly furniture? Why not just build stud walls and be done with it? Alice rarely smoked and gin was not her tipple, but as she attempted to unpack how she craved a swig from Jacquie’s bottle, a lungful of Marlboro Lights.
‘Gosh, three coat-hangers between us,’ Anita Farrell remarked as if it were a scandal. ‘Luckily for you two, I only brought casual clothing so you can share my hanger.’
Alice smiled fleetingly at Anita, who was placing well-worn slippers by the side of her bed. Then she glanced at Rochelle who was arranging framed photos of her horse on the chest of drawers.
Christ and Double Christ.
Alice was in a sulk.
Why wasn’t she sharing with Jeanette and Jacquie? How on earth would sharing rickety wardrobe space with a fifty-year-old equestrienne and a slipper-wearing spinster editorial director of the business periodicals augment her career? In what way was any of this going to affirm her affection and fidelity for the company? And how were Adam and Lush and the rest of her titles to benefit from their publisher spending a week in a ghastly hut with two of the dullest women in the company?
‘My church is holding a forum on how the media corrupt our youth,’ Anita was saying as she stacked a pile of increasingly khaki clothing on a plastic chair, ‘teen mags, lads’ mags and the like. Would you be interested in speaking, Alice? Defend Lush and the like?’
Christ, Christ and Triple Christ.
‘You see,’ Rochelle sighed, loading an excessive amount of thick socks into a drawer, ‘that’s where ponies come in. Did either of you read the research conducted for our Christmas issue of 100% Horse? It established that youngsters who ride are far less likely to play truant or misbehave. To love a sport at an impressionable age, to embrace the responsibility of caring for an animal – is proven to keep them out of trouble. The readership of Pony World is now over 75,000 – so encouraging, don’t you think?’
Good God Almighty.
‘Rochelle,’ Anita fizzed, ‘you could be on the panel too! You and Alice could go head to head!’
Sweetest Jesus H Christ.
‘When I was a kid,’ Alice said to the middle of the room while she attempted to load two Whistles skirts, a Nicole Farhi shirt and a Brora cardigan onto a single hanger, ‘I used to ride regularly. I was madly in love with a pony called Percy but for me the main point of it all was snogging Nathan Jones behind the tack room and smoking John Player fags on the muck heap with my best mate Thea.’
Supper, eaten at long refectory tables, preceded something called ‘Orientation’, according to the printed itinerary handed out with the hors d’oeuvres. Alice sat at one end with Jeanette and Jacquie in a conspiratorial huddle, planning the best time to convene for gin and cigarettes. Their spirits rose with the arrival and constant replenishing of ceramic pitchers of quite palatable rosé table wine throughout the meal.
‘What’s Orientation, do we think?’ Jacquie asked.
‘Probably some character-building mountain hike,’ groaned Alice.
‘In the dark,’ Jeanette added.
‘But it’s in Conference Room B,’ Jacquie pointed out.
‘Perhaps it’s an emotional workshop to scale the metaphorical mountains we’ve encountered in our working lives,’ Alice said.
‘Well, we’d better prepare our mind-set then,’ said Jeanette, sloshing more rosé into their glasses. They drank to each other, they drank to workshops and mind-sets, they drank to orienteering and orientation. By the time they headed for Conference Room B, they were incapable of walking a straight line, unable to follow arrows and thus couldn’t find Conference Room B at all.
It must be here somewhere.
If only they’d taught us orientationeering before supper.
We could always just nip back to mine and have a tiny sip of duty free.
Yes, that is a good idea.
After all, when they realize we are lost, that’s where the search party will first look.
Exactly – so we probably won’t miss too much orientaling anyway.
Exactly.
Good plan.
Cool.
As the three of them staggered off in the vague direction of Jacquie’s cabin, Alice thought how this wasn’t too far off a school trip after all. St Trinian’s for big girls. Mallory Towers with booze. Just then, she had to concede it might just be a bit