The Mini Break (7 page)

You know how some celebrities claim to love charity-shop chic, but wouldn’t actually set foot in Age Concern even if they were escaping a serial killer? Well, Nicola
really
loves it
– and pulls off the vintage look beautifully. Today she’s wearing a floaty cotton dress adorned with yellow roses, which sets off the warm copper hues of her eyes to perfection.

‘Just worried about leaving Flo, that’s all.’

Nicola puts her hand on my arm. ‘She’ll be
fine
with your mum.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ I reply. ‘My only concern is that she’ll come back dressed like Kim Kardashian and asking for eyelash extensions for her birthday.’

Nicola laughs. ‘Try to relax. This trip must have been five years in the making.’

‘Six, isn’t it?’ asks Meredith.

Nicola thinks for a second. ‘You’re right. I set up a standing order for my savings account as soon as I got back from Zante. Good job we didn’t have to rely on
that
,
though – I’ve pilfered so much of it on the days my rent is due, I’d only saved up enough for a weekend in Pontins.’

She’s not the only one to have failed to save successfully – I spent two days before Christmas in Euro Disney with Florence last year, and have similarly depleted resources.

‘Good job one of us bothers to enter these competitions, isn’t it?’ Meredith points out.

Our friend, it seems, is the luckiest woman alive: she’s only ever entered two competitions in her life, and won both of them. The first was for a year’s supply of incontinence pads,
first prize in the raffle at the summer fair run by her great aunt’s church. Then, last month, she did one of those giveaways on Facebook that everyone enters but, suspiciously, never seem to
win. Well, it turns out that some do – and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Only a couple of weekends earlier, when Meredith had tagged along on a trip home to Liverpool,
we’d all bemoaned how we wished we’d taken our pledge six years ago more seriously. I was feeling the strain of my new job, Meredith was desperate for a ‘babymoon’ –
though with us, rather than Nathan – and Nicola, for a reason I couldn’t put my finger on, seemed more stressed than I’d seen her in ages.

I don’t think it is her job, because she loves that. Nicola is by nature a modest, down-to-earth type who doesn’t have a flashy bone in her body, yet she is food and beverage manager
of one of the City’s hippest venues, Fire and Brimstone. It’s a huge, converted warehouse that only the coolest dare enter, and occasionally me if I’m feeling brave. Although
Nicola is insistent that the atmosphere is relaxed – they have smoked alfalfa-seed soup on the menu, and regular art fairs to prove it – I can’t set foot in the place without
feeling as square as a chessboard.

Anyway, the trip Meredith won was billed as a ‘romantic getaway for two’, but the holiday company who ran the competition agreed to let us pay for a third person, which we did by
splitting the cost. So, basically, we’ve got the most luxurious holiday imaginable, in a hotel that could happily grace the cover of
Condé Nast Traveller
, for a fraction of the
cost.

It’s so fabulous that Nic’s girlfriend, Jessica, was tempted to join us, even though she hasn’t come on our previous holidays. But she had to attend a medical conference:
something there’s been a lot of since she qualified as a junior doctor at Liverpool’s Cardiothoracic Centre. I like Jess a lot, and she’s good for Nicola: funny, feisty and loyal,
the first person my best friend has ever got really serious about. That was nine years ago – ages after she’d confided in me, aged sixteen, that she was gay (I hadn’t had the
heart to break it to her that I’d already worked that out).

Despite it being an almost-freebie, I didn’t immediately jump at the trip. Although I’m owed tons of holiday at work, I knew I’d miss Florence too much. But, one evening, after
a horrible day when I was one of only two people who’d remembered it was ‘Wear Your Pyjamas To Work Day’ for Comic Relief (the other being our 84-year-old security guard, Graham),
I mentioned the possibility of the trip to my mother on the phone.

I should have known better. Having grumbled constantly since the day Flo was born about how deprived she is of opportunities to look after her, the decision was virtually made for me.

‘So, the bit I didn’t tell you,’ Meredith says, grinning the way she did when she last had a cold and combined one too many doses of Benylin with a heavy night out, ‘is
that our luxury treat starts now. Not when we get to Spain, but now.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

‘Follow me!’ She winks. So we do, bewildered, all the way to the sign marked,
BUSINESS CLASS PASSENGERS
.

Nic shivers. ‘You’re not going to try and get us a free upgrade again, are you?’

Meredith once claimed that she had a guaranteed technique for securing this, the details of which I won’t bore you with, except to say that it involved flashing more than her passport.

‘It’s all part of the prize,’ she says. ‘I only found out a week ago when the marketing woman from Elegant Vacations phoned me to check everything was in
order.’

‘You’ve kept this a secret for a week?’ I ask.

‘Nice surprise, eh?’ Meredith smiles and marches straight to the business class desk as every head in the economy queue turns to look at her.

The woman behind the check-in desk flashes us a gleaming smile. ‘Hello ladies, where are you travelling to?’

‘Barcelona,’ replies Meredith.

‘And you’re in business class?’

I glance at Nicola incredulously then turn back. ‘It looks that way,’ I reply coolly, suppressing a sudden urge to cheer.

I unclasp my necklace to go through airport security and feel a shiver of unease that doesn’t evaporate until it’s safely back in place around my neck. I know I
have friends who think I shouldn’t still be wearing jewellery given to me by a man who everyone knows isn’t coming back. But, despite the fact that I’ve reluctantly accepted that
I’ll never see him again – just about – something still stops me from taking off the necklace permanently. It’s not just that it seems to complement every item in my
wardrobe, or that I fell in love with its delicate, blossom-shaped pendant the second I saw it. It’s because whatever misery I went through when Roberto had gone, it was given to me during
times I still consider to be the best of my life. It’s a reminder that once, albeit in the distant past, he and I had something undeniably, uniquely
good
.

As we arrive at the business–class lounge, these thoughts evaporate.

For those who have not experienced the unbridled joy of this oasis – and that included me until three and a half seconds ago – allow me to let you into a secret: if ever there was
proof that life’s not fair, this is it. I would be overcome with a sense of injustice if I wasn’t already overcome with the complimentary croissants and Buck’s Fizz.

As we find a seat with a view of the runway, I note the sublime peacefulness, the subdued lighting, the chairs of infinite plushness. There are no kids running about. There are no students,
sweaty from travelling and asleep on their rucksacks. Everyone is sharply dressed, tapping away meaningfully at laptops and – the sign of a true world-class traveller – managing to
restrain themselves from stuffing their faces with the free food.

I, on the other hand, am happy to concede that I am not a true world-class traveller. I am a mere pretender, a fleeting visitor to this world. And I am starving.

‘Do you think you’ll be able to leave work behind on this trip?’ Nicola asks me.

I can’t help but smile. She knows me, and my job, only too well. This might be the first holiday I’ve had in years where I actually relax the way normal people do – with no
phone ringing, no work distractions. And I’m going to read a book. A proper one, not
The Gruffalo
.

‘You always have had a wild streak,’ she says, grinning. ‘Well, I’m impressed. Meredith and I have been worried about you lately.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘You have so much on your plate. You’ve taken the term “juggling” to a new level, Imogen – it’s like watching a circus act sometimes.’

Nicola has always looked out for me. She is an only child, just like me, but she’s been my surrogate sister since we met. My formative years were spent combating chronic shyness (once,
aged five, I got locked in a downstairs toilet at a birthday party, and rather than pipe up and make a fuss, opted to sit there for two hours until my mum came and my absence was discovered). So
starting secondary school had been a hell that had no equal. But about five days after the beginning of term, Nicola had sat down next to me and introduced herself with a quiet smile. It was all it
had taken for me to know that everything would be okay.

And it was. We were never members of the popular, pretty – and spectacularly bitchy – clique at school (most of whom are working on the checkout at Poundland these days). Despite
repeated efforts with Nic’s mum’s false tan, we were plain and unassuming, the type of girls people nobody really fancied and (until my breasts grew . . . and grew) hardly even noticed.
Nicola was the one whose shoulder I cried on when, aged thirteen, a pack of Tampax fell out of my bag and cascaded across the school canteen; and again, when James Dickinson nearly burst his
appendix laughing at the Valentine’s card I’d taken three weeks of inner turmoil to muster the courage to send; and indeed, in 2007, when I fell into the black hole that opened up when
Roberto wasn’t there any more. I’ve done a lot of crying on Nicola’s shoulder, there’s no doubt about it.

‘Why don’t you do something really crazy and turn off your phone?’ she suggests.

‘That’s a step too far. I’ve disabled my email and Internet settings, but I’ve got to keep the phone on, and not just for work emergencies. I’d never relax with
Florence on the other side of the continent. I need to know that if anything goes wrong, I can be easily reached.’

‘Nothing will go wrong.’

‘Well,
I’m
severely tempted to turn off my phone,’ Meredith breaks in, glaring at hers. ‘Nathan is driving me up the wall. He’s already phoned three times
this morning to check I’m doing my pelvic-floor exercises. Oh, and of course to bring up, again, the fact that I’m going away in “my condition”. I hate that term.
You’d think I was a used car, not a 28-year-old woman.’

‘He’s not happy about this trip, then?’ Nicola asks.

Meredith shakes her head. ‘He hasn’t said that but it’s fairly clear that’s the case. I know he’s only worried, but even his books say that it’s fine to fly
at this stage in pregnancy. Besides, it’s not like we had a choice – it was the holiday company, not us, who chose the dates.’

I’d never have had Nathan down as an obsessive future parent. He’s a DJ by trade and former wild-child by disposition yet, these days, he seems more concerned with memorising Gina
Ford’s newborn routines than any of the dubious escapades he regularly got up to a couple of years ago.

‘He’s just concerned and excited about being a dad, Meredith. It’s nice that he’s so interested,’ I point out.

‘Lots of men aren’t,’ Nicola adds.

Meredith grunts and changes the subject. ‘Are you going to turn off that phone or not?’

‘I can’t. And it’s a moot point anyway, because everyone’s promised not to phone, unless it’s a real emergency.’

‘Even your mother?’

I nod. ‘Even my m—’

My phone interrupts me. It’s my mother.

‘
So
sorry to phone so soon after you’ve left.’ Her enunciation is near perfect, despite growing up with a debilitating childhood lisp for which she received regular
hidings from her authoritarian father. She eventually got rid of it using a self-help book and an hour of tongue exercises every night, something she says taught her that anything is possible in
life if you put your mind to it.

‘I know I said I’d keep calls to a minimum, but your father’s taken Florence and Spud for a walk so I wanted to check on a few things. First is the itinerary for this week.
Tomorrow we’re taking Florence to
Princess Wishes
at the Arena. On Tuesday we’re going shopping for dresses. On Wednesday she’s coming with me to get a pedicure.
On—’

‘What?’

‘Shopping,’ she repeats.

‘No – the one after that.’

‘Oh, the pedicure. Well, obviously it’ll be
me
having that, but they won’t mind letting her have a go. She’ll love it.’

‘I don’t doubt that, but she’s only four. What next, a full leg wax?’

‘I thought you said it was up to me where to take her?’ she points out.

I hesitate. ‘Yes. Yes, I did. Take her where you like. I . . . trust you.’ Which is true if we’re simply talking about my daughter’s general wellbeing and safety; whether
I trust her not to return Florence dressed like one of those children on
Big Fat Gypsy Weddings
is another matter. She was exactly the same when I was little: obsessed with cultivating my
inner-girliness – losing battle that that was.

My mother is PA to the boss of a private bank that manages the money of ‘ultra high-net-worth individuals’ (‘rich buggers’ to you and me), but I get the impression she
runs the place, a bit like the way Rasputin did Tsarist Russia. This, her job for the last fifteen years, represents the least glamorous of her professions since she ran away from home aged
sixteen. The only thing not on her CV is ‘Bond Girl’, although she apparently did once serve falafel to Roger Moore during a brief stint as a restaurant hostess in Abu Dhabi.

My parents met in their early thirties when my dad, who’s an engineer, was working for a company in the Middle East. They only moved back to Liverpool, his home city, after they had me, an
event my mother describes charmingly as the worst experience of her life – I was born nine weeks early and weighed the equivalent of two of the ubiquitous bags of sugar. The fact that Mum was
convinced she was going to lose me could be one of the reasons why she barely leaves me alone today.

She and Dad have one of those she-wears-the-trousers relationships and it seems to suit them both because, more than twenty years later, they’re still together. That’s despite the
fact Dad is a
Guardian
-reading, bespectacled liberal, and in all honesty you wouldn’t automatically put them together.