Excess Baggage (18 page)

Theresa was on show and sparkling and Mark was confused. She’d left him to help Marisa with the children’s tea and baths, swanned off to the hotel spa on the top floor and come back with her hair done, body aroma-therapeutically massaged, nails perfectly painted and a look on her face that he hadn’t seen since they’d set off for Paris for a weekend of so much scintillating sex that they came home having seen nothing of the sights. That had been a long time ago. Pre-children, definitely. He couldn’t work out what she was up to. She’d smiled at him as she shimmied naked between the bathroom and bedroom, put on scarlet lace underwear and then those red shoes as well, as if that was all she intended to wear that evening, then she’d sat at the mirror to do her make-up, legs tantalizingly apart, calves and thighs tautly braced on those sexy heels. She’d got him to fasten her chain of silver hearts round her neck and she’d watched his face in the mirror as he’d stood close, breathing in her perfume and fumbling with the clasp. It had driven him crazy, wanting to stroke her, touch her and take her there and then but knowing sex was now completely forbidden. She was doing it on purpose, watching him, teasing him with what she was definitely not going to let him have. Eventually, when all the rest of her was ready, she’d dropped the sleek
blue
dress casually over the top, like a protective cloth over a precious ornament. And all the time she’d chatted on, bright and brittle, telling him how wonderful it had been to see the dolphin and the turtles when she’d snorkelled with Becky and how much the children had enjoyed their day with Marisa.

Theresa was looking rather different now she was drunk. After three pre-dinner daiquiris she’d made steady progress through the best part of a bottle of white wine and her glossy veneer was sliding off. Her lipstick was smudged beyond the corner of her mouth and her mascara had settled into tiny furrows beneath her eyes. Before what he now thought of as The Telling, Mark would have reached across and stroked the black smudges away. Now he was terrified to make any gesture towards her in case, in this drunken state, she slapped him hard and yelled at him to keep his filthy diseased hands to himself. Then they’d all know. Sober, the humiliation he’d inflicted on her kept her silent. Pissed, she could say anything. Keeping it as something to sort out just between the two of them was Mark’s only chance, he was sure, of mending all that he’d smashed.

‘Goodness, your three are up late!’ It was Simon who first spotted Marisa making her way across the restaurant towards the table. ‘What?’ Theresa spun round and took in the sight of Marisa leading Amy, Ella and Sebastian, in their Teletubby pyjamas and clutching their cuddly bedtime toys, towards them. Sebastian was rubbing his eyes and looking as if he was sleepwalking. The two girls were grinning at everyone, delighted to have the entire restaurant staring at them. Ella stopped to pull up her pyjama top and proudly show Cathy and Paul her tanned tummy.

‘What on earth are they doing in here? They should
be
fast asleep by now!’ Theresa was on her feet, head to head with Marisa, who stood stolid and silent before her.

‘I want this night off. I meet someone, my friend in the hotel with the one baby.’

‘But … well, you can’t! This is your
job
!’ Theresa protested. Guests at surrounding tables fell silent. Women pushed their hair out of the way of their ears for easier, shameless listening.

‘But I work all day, with no rest. Now I want time.’ Marisa was immovable. She picked up Sebastian and sat him on Mark’s lap and sent the girls to sit where Shirley and Perry should have been. ‘My friend, she says I have time off just like at home. That is what she has with her family.’

‘But we’ve brought you on
holiday
!’ Theresa’s pretty red shoe managed a petulant little stamp on the floor.

‘’S’not a holiday for her if she has to work every day,’ Luke contributed.

Theresa rounded on him, hissing like a cross cat. ‘I don’t need any input from you, thank you very much.’

‘Marisa’s got a point.’ Lucy joined in, bravely, Mark thought. ‘I mean surely she should have some time to herself. Looking after three young children is hard work.’

‘Thank you Lucy, I do know that actually. It’s why I brought help with me. It’s what she’s for,’ Theresa snapped.

Mark, trapped beneath the dozing Sebastian, knew he was being worse than useless. Theresa was trembling with alcohol-fuelled fury now and clearly heading for the kind of mood where she’d say something irretrievably awful, probably fire Marisa on
the
spot and send her straight back to Switzerland in the morning. That would be hugely expensive, he calculated, possibly a figure not unadjacent to the cost of Sebastian’s entire first year’s school fees. He stood up, clutching his son to him, and offered Theresa his most charming smile. ‘Look, I’ll take them back to the room and stay with them while Marisa goes out for a while, shall I? Surely that will solve things. And Marisa, we’ll talk again in the morning, OK? Sort something out?’ He told the girls to come with him, took Amy’s hand and led the little troop out of the restaurant. Marisa followed. There was a daring ripple of applause and Theresa sat down heavily, fuming.

‘It’s that bloody Norland nanny she’s met, giving her ideas about entitlement.’ She stabbed her spoon hard into her melting peach sorbet and it splashed cold orange dollops down the front of her dress. ‘Oh fuck,’ she said, laying her dispirited head slowly down on the table and surrendering to sad, silent tears.

Lucy had tried not to think about Henry all day, even out on the boat when there were long lazy hours of nothing to do but watch the waves. She didn’t want to waste any time thinking about men at all, not since she’d promised herself that Ross would be the last to make her feel like any kind of pathetic victim. That way, at her age, lay a cursed lifetime of Bridget Jones-hood, comparing Disasters and Disappointments over too much appropriately sour wine with similarly afflicted girlfriends. At least Colette would be happy. When she’d been little it had seemed important to try and find her a kind and loving Daddy figure, someone who’d stay around at least long enough to catch sight of any children he might be responsible for producing. For a long time now, though, the seeking of the perfect
male
had been as if Lucy was trying to keep on pretending to her child that Santa really did exist, long after Colette had come cheerfully to terms with the truth.

So all that meant that this wasn’t like going out on a date. It definitely wasn’t. As she cleaned her teeth – convincing herself she wasn’t being over-thorough with the mouthwash – she wondered why there wasn’t a different word for Going Out With Men that grown-ups could use. ‘Dating’ was so very Australian TV soap, or American early Sixties high-school.

Henry was out at the front of the hotel, waiting in a white Suzuki Jeep with its roof down. Lucy saw him before he caught sight of her, leaning back in the seat with his eyes closed, one foot up on the dashboard, his hand hanging out of the window and beating out a rhythm to whatever music he was listening to. Lucy felt peculiarly nervous, with butterflies dancing about in her stomach. She waited to collect herself for a moment, lurking behind a feathery palm in a pot by the doorway. On that upturned crate in the dive shop the night before, he’d kissed her – just once but properly, as if laying out his intentions extremely clearly. The butterflies did a formation flip inside her as she hovered behind the plant, considering those intentions and what she wanted to do with them. They’d clearly been what her mother would call less than honourable. Pure sex. Well that was OK, Lucy decided, for now that she’d given up on settled relationships, she would settle for good old sex, honest if not honourable. This could be a classic Holiday Thing. Just for tonight she would be one of those notorious English-girls-abroad who behave disgracefully and then forget about it on the plane home before the stewardess has finished explaining the emergency drill. There were condoms
in
Lucy’s bag, as ever. They were from way back, from pre-Ross. He’d preferred his own choice, rather ludicrous ridgy black ones that had made her feel as if he was trying to dress up his penis as something else, a cartoon policeman’s truncheon came to mind. She wondered if condoms had a ‘use-by’ date stamped on the packet and, if she got run over and killed, would a mortuary attendant going through her bag feel sorry for her for clearly having had them so long?

She smoothed down her dress, which was an ancient faded Liberty lawn wrapover that she’d had for so many years it had come back into fashion again and appeared in a four-times-the-price version in
Vogue
that summer. She was far more used to wearing trousers and felt strange with the warm night breeze wafting the fabric around her thighs, almost as if she wasn’t wearing anything at all. The dress was pretty but not actually very sexy. If she wanted serious instant sex appeal she would have to ask Theresa if she could borrow the outfit she’d worn for dinner tonight.

‘Hey, Lucy!’ Henry had seen her, was out of the car and strolling across to meet her. He took her hand, kissed her cheek quickly and smiled, then led her over to the Jeep.

‘There’s a restaurant on the edge of the town up a hill. I thought we’d—’

‘Oh! But we just ate …’ Lucy felt dismayed.

Henry laughed. ‘’S’OK, me too, a TV supper with Olly and his homework. But this place has a great bar, quieter than most places – I thought we can get a drink, talk?’

‘Fine! That would be terrific.’ Lucy hated the sound of her own voice, gushy and silly-girlish. She tried again. ‘We went out on a boat trip round the island.’ She sounded worse and stopped. ‘Sorry,’ she laughed,
‘that
sounds so like a typical junior school “what I did on my holiday” sort of stuff. Anyway, I can’t tell you anything new about a trip round the island. I think I’ll just keep quiet.’ She slid down lower in the car seat, feeling foolish. Hell, he’d kissed her once. It wasn’t supposed to turn her into a pathetic quivering heap with mush for brains. Probably if all the holiday women he’d screwed were laid end to end, they’d stretch from here to Barbados, possibly back again too.

‘No, you can tell me,’ he said. ‘After all, none of the versions I’ve heard so far have been
yours
. Did you get seasick? It’s rough round the Atlantic side, especially now.’

‘Simon did. I’m fine. Why is it worse now?’

‘The storm. We’re already getting the swell from where it’s churned up out in the ocean. The last cruise ships are pulling out tonight and there’ll be no more till it’s over.’

Lucy shivered. The vagaries of British weather-forecasting seemed pretty trivial compared with what could happen here, more a form of take-it-or-leave-it entertainment. The words ‘a bit of a damp start to the day’ could mean anything at home from a spot of minor drizzle to a full-scale thunderous deluge, it didn’t matter much which. Here, getting it wrong might well mean life or death to the residents.

The restaurant was an old converted sugar mill high on a hill, still with the stream and a wheel. Huge lilies grew in a pool up on the terrace, fat fleshy leaves crowding together and enormous pale flowers, as big and smooth as alabaster vases. There were tables on the deck, which was on a level with the tops of banana trees growing on the hillside, so the air was damp and languorous, heavy with the scent of coconut and vanilla. Lucy breathed in slowly.

‘On a hot day in London, all you can smell is traffic and chips,’ she commented. ‘This is bliss. It will be hell to go home. I shall probably cry.’

‘So don’t go.’ Henry shrugged.

Lucy laughed and sipped her beer. ‘If it was that simple … I’ve got people’s houses to paint, a daughter to educate and …’ She couldn’t think of anything else.

‘Is that it?’ Henry waited, laughing at her hesitation.

Lucy thought for a moment, looking out at the lights of the town below, at a ship heading for a safer horizon.

‘I suppose it is, really. Jesus, it doesn’t exactly add up to a whole bag of good reasons.’

‘There are schools here. You can paint houses here. You’d have no trouble finding work, though you’d miss home I expect.’ It sounded so simple.

Well, would she? Lucy thought aloud. ‘There’s friends of course, I have got people I’d miss but not desperately. And family, well, you’ve seen them, but we all live scattered separate lives. We don’t usually go round in a herd like this. This is a mysterious Proper Family Holiday, some kind of last-chance bonding effort.’ She laughed, thinking of Theresa over dinner, and spluttered a bit into her drink. ‘Though of course for that you need a Proper Family.’

‘And what’s that?’

Lucy didn’t hesitate this time. ‘One that leaves you in peace. One you can check in with just now and then without them greeting you with unsubtle accusations like “Well hello
stranger
” when you phone.’

‘Wait till Colette goes to college. See if it’s really that easy.’

‘Yeah I know. But it’s not just that. My parents wanted the best for us all. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s
their
best. Simon managed it, he’s successful, big house, posh wife, all that. And Theresa too, she did
the
thing girls are supposed to do, or should I say
were
, and married the perfect Surrey man. I’m the one that they still think is the underachiever. I mean I support myself, I have a job I like but, Jesus, in a few years I’ll be forty and Ma still looks mildly disappointed every Christmas when I don’t bring along a Mr Nice Man that she can serve up to the rest of them along with the turkey.’

‘Sounds like you’ve got one of those families you have to join,’ Henry said.

‘What, like a golf club with rules and a waiting list?’

‘You got it. I reckon with families there are two sorts,’ he went on. ‘The family that’s happy to see you set sail on your own, do your stuff and be pretty casual about when they see you and when they don’t. Then there’s the sort that wants to keep you on strings. Like anyone you get involved with has to join the clan, not claim you for themselves, and kind of almost abandon their own folks so the control stays in the same old hands. Seems to me you got one of those.’