The Staycation: This summer's hilarious tale of heartwarming friendship, fraught families and happy ever afters

by Michele Gorman

  ‘We found Spot,’ James called.

  Harriet dove for the duvet as the bedroom door opened. It was a good thing she did, because Owen was right behind Billie.

  ‘That’s all?’ Billie said. ‘I thought something was really wrong. You don’t need to scream the house down.’

  ‘That’s all? THAT’S ALL? I’ve just had a deadly snake about to squeeze the life out of me, so no, that is not all.’ She glared at Billie’s smirk.

  ‘She’s not exactly deadly, is she?’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if it was your neck.’

  Owen took the snake from James. ‘Good one, Mr Cooper.’

  ‘Be sure that door is locked when it’s inside,’ Harriet said. ‘And close the bedroom door, too.’

  ‘Your mum is mental,’ she heard Owen say as they went to put Spot back in its enclosure.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  What was mental, thought Harriet, was having a bloody python in the house in the first place.

  Chapter 20

  Tuesday

  Sophie was awake before anyone else the next morning. She snuggled deeper under the ultra-soft duvet – Harriet’s sheets must have a thread count of over a million – listening to a bird singing in the tree beside the window, like he had every morning since they’d arrived. When she stretched, Dan stirred on his side. She peered at him, listening for his regular breathing to start up again. She waited, waited, then bucked her shoulders and her legs, bouncing on the mattress. Disturbed once more, he turned onto his tummy with a sigh. More waiting, then she did it again.

  He squinted at her. ‘Soph?’

  Oops. A bounce too far. ‘Ssh, it’s still early,’ she whispered, carefully peeling back the covers on her side. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  Downstairs, she surveyed the kitchen while she waited for the kettle to boil. Harriet wouldn’t like what they’d done to her house. Shoes littered the floor where they’d been kicked off. One of Oliver’s trainers was on the breakfast table without any laces. She’d never get round to buying new ones for it. He had half a dozen strays in the same state at home. She was down to around three laces to share between them all, like that Greek myth where the witches pass a single eye between them.

  She could at least wipe up the tea rings and toast crumbs, she supposed. Maybe empty the overflowing bin and put a few of the cereal boxes back in the cabinet that Harriet had so neatly labelled. Half an effort was better than no effort at all, as her dad liked to say. But she hadn’t the motivation to collect up all the dishes – how did one little family use so many – or all the cast-off clothes that had piled up on the sofa and chairs. They’d have all Sunday morning to tidy up before they left.

  As her family woke and migrated to the kitchen, the peace seeped from Sophie. The minute she stepped outside, though, leaving Dan muttering over some outrage in the paper, she felt that lightness again. The same way she’d felt walking between here and the village each day. It was almost a tipsy sensation – not unpleasant at all – as if the edge had been taken off her life.

  But that couldn’t be right, because Sophie didn’t have any edges on her life to speak of. Dan made sure those were all sanded away.

  She couldn’t deny the feeling, though. Free-floating. No, not free-floating. Free and floating. Sophie was starting to feel free. But from what, exactly? What was happening to her?

  Her phone rang on the walk to the village for her treatment. Tempting as it was to let it go to voicemail, it could be Katie or Oliver needing something.

  She shouldn’t have looked. ‘Hi, Carlos.’ She’d already ignored one call from him.

  ‘Morning. Is it too early?’

  ‘I’m on my way to the village. Are you well?’

  ‘Well enough.’ He matched her formality. ‘They found Spot last night. You know how she likes warm places.’

  Of course! The hot-water pipe ran close to the floorboards under the sink in the downstairs loo. ‘I should have thought of the loo,’ she said.

  ‘They’d have been lucky if she was there. No, she got into bed with the woman.’ Carlos chuckled. ‘She screamed blue murder. I heard her through the wall.’

  That would have put a serious dampener on Harriet’s night.

  ‘She asked me if I could take Spot to my house till you got back,’ Carlos added. ‘When are you coming back? Still Saturday?’

  ‘No, Sunday.’ She’d told him that already. ‘It was only because of the flights that we had to come back a day early before.’

  ‘It seems like a long time away.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm, two whole weeks. And then some.’ What bliss.

  ‘That’s not—’

  ‘Sorry to rush you off, but I should ring Harriet and I’m nearly at the spa.’ She stared over the green fields at the village church spire, still in the distance. ‘Talk to you later. Thanks for dealing with Spot!’

  She switched her phone off and tried to settle back into the peaceful walk, but mentioning Harriet conjured up bad feelings again. Fat chance that Sophie would be ringing her to apologise for Spot. Harriet should be the one apologising.

  Great. Now she was thinking about Harriet instead of being serene and at one with the universe like she was supposed to be. Damn you, Harriet!

  Peace … love … happiness, she chanted to herself. Peace, love, happiness. The mechanical rumble of the tractor in the next field was a perfectly fitting backing track to her chant.

  Her GP had told her it was all about mindfulness these days. What was the technique he said to try? Something about water and leaves. Imagine standing in a stream where leaves are flowing past on the current. Then plonk all your negative thoughts on the leaves and watch them float away.

  Bye-bye Harriet.

  That was better. Yes, much better. Sophie was pushed along by the brisk wind rustling the leaves and flinging bits of hair into her face. She loved that rustling and didn’t mind the hair in her mouth too much, either. Then she imagined Harriet carried off by the wind, too. Why not? It was her mindfulness. She could aim it where she liked.

  The sound of traffic rumbled along the lane, but it didn’t disrupt the atmosphere. The bucolic atmosphere. Her face flamed, remembering the time she accidentally said the bucolic plague. Dan hadn’t let her forget that quickly.

  Now why had that popped into her head when she was just starting to have a perfectly nice time out here? She chucked Dan on the next leaf to pass.

  Honestly, she did sabotage herself sometimes. And just when she was feeling so good, too. Floaty and good.

  If they’d gone abroad like they’d planned, she’d probably assume it was an odd kind of jet lag or maybe brought on by too much pasta. Yet she hadn’t travelled and she wasn’t carb-loading.

  It wasn’t the clean country air, either, or the oxygen rush disorientating her. The answer wasn’t coming from inside. Her body wasn’t letting her down.

  Dan was. She didn’t like to think it, but there it was. All this time she’d congratulated herself on her fairy-tale life. She’d gloated, knowing that she’d found her very own knight in shining armour. Dan was always riding to the rescue.

  But it wasn’t just his wing that she’d been safely tucked up under, was it? Often it was his thumb, too.

  The house was her remit, he liked to say, yet he never let her do things her way. Or when he did, then she could be sure that the meal, task, food shop or errand would prompt his opinion about how she should be doing it better. She was the only person she knew who broke out in a cold sweat when Tesco was out of stock of something her partner wanted.

  Why hadn’t she noticed before that she dangled from the strings her husband pulled? The answer popped into her head with the memory of the way he’d spoken to Laxmi when they’d first arrived at Harriet’s house.

  He could blame the traffic noise all he wanted. Traffic noise, my arse, she thought. That was a bollocking. He’d done it again just yesterday, leaving Laxmi that rude voicemail. Sophie had assumed her discomfort was for the poor wo
man, but it wasn’t only that. For the first time, it seemed, she also heard the way Dan spoke to her.

  Sophie didn’t always live in a fairy tale, did she?

  So maybe she was chaotic. She always had been. She wasn’t sophisticated or well travelled and she used words like bucolic when she meant bubonic. She’d never particularly seen those as faults, but maybe she had benefited from a guiding hand. Dan would be the first to say how much he loved taking care of her. For years he made Sophie feel special like no one else she’d ever met. He couldn’t do enough for her, and she loved that about him.

  Bad habits must have crept in somewhere along the way. She couldn’t remember when Dan started being so critical. Maybe she’d become lazy, too, letting him make all the decisions when she was capable of doing things for herself. This holiday had reminded her of that. More importantly, she wanted to. She wasn’t keen to go back to the way her life had been. This new feeling was addictive.

  She would talk to Dan about it. He’d probably be over the moon to have some of the pressure taken off. He was always saying how hard he worked for them.

  By the time she reached the village, Sophie looked forward to seeing Dan later. It could be the start of a new phase for them. Those women’s magazines were always talking about letting changes spice up one’s relationship. After sixteen years together, this was going to be just the seasoning they needed.

  Molly was ready for her when she got to the spa. ‘Today you can keep your trousers on,’ she whispered when they reached the treatment room, ‘but please take off your top and bra. Sit on the table, and you can tuck this around your front.’ She handed Sophie a fluffy white towel. ‘It’s a sitting-up massage.’

  She’d never heard of a sitting-up massage. Maybe it needed gravity to work on her lymphatic drains again. Her plugholes must really be blocked. She stripped off and waited for Molly’s gentle knock.

  The masseuse busied herself behind Sophie’s bare back while Sophie tried to figure out what she was doing. She could have turned to watch her, but that would spoil the game.

  Molly’s touch flickered across her shoulders, playing Sophie like she might a harp’s strings. She thrummed across the middle of her back, then the bottom. ‘Mmm, that feels nice.’

  She was just getting into the routine when it stopped. Then she felt the whisper of something up her side.

  ‘Bwaa ha ha ha ha ha ha!’ She squirmed away. ‘I’m sorry, sorry. Please continue.’

  Molly stroked again. Sophie’s arms stiffened with trying not to laugh. It was no good. ‘Bwaa ha ha ha ha ha ha!’

  ‘Let’s try something else,’ Molly whispered.

  When Sophie glanced over her shoulder, Molly was wearing a red feather boa around her neck. ‘That’s very glamorous,’ she said.

  Molly smiled and reached for one of the paintbrushes laid out on the small table beside her. ‘It’s a tickle massage.’

  Sophie nearly fell off the table in stitches for most of the next hour, as Molly worked her way through more brushes, cheerleader pom-poms and (surprisingly tickle-making) dusting cloths. By the time Sophie left, she knew she’d never look at an electric toothbrush in quite the same way again.

  She stopped again at the tea shop where she’d gone with the children yesterday. It looked exactly like a village tea shop should: whitewashed and strung with bunting, with vintage teacups and cake stands everywhere and flowers spilling out of milk jugs. There was a friendly buzz from the men and women who chatted around a few of the tables. The vibe was cosy and inviting, and Sophie didn’t mind sitting on her own.

  She poured more peppermint tea from the second pot that she’d needed to wash down the extra wodge of cake she’d just finished. Given how much tiramisu she’d factored into her holiday, she was still behind on her pudding quota. Must try harder, Sophie.

  She fibbed when the tea shop owner, Bea, asked how she’d liked her treatment. Not an outright lie; more of a glossing over of all the squirming she’d done through most of it.

  Bea seemed to know Sophie’s entire spa schedule. Not to mention what Dan had been making for dinner, and exactly how much the Scouts event had raised on Sunday. The villagers must keep a bulletin board tucked out of sight where they posted about all the comings and goings of visitors like Sophie.

  On a sliding scale, the tickle massage hadn’t been as bad as, say, teeth-cleaning or karaoke, but she wouldn’t rush back for another one. In fact, a thought drifted in with the minty aroma in her cup: why was she still following Dan’s schedule? It had been very thoughtful of him to get the ball rolling for her, but she should make the most of the treatments she had left. Now she knew that snails and sticks weren’t her thing. She’d ring the spa later and book the treatments she knew she’d like.

  That was the kind of support she wanted; normal relationship stuff like lending a hand or an ear or a shoulder to cry on when one of them faltered, and cheerleading every success. She didn’t need him booking her massages or buying her clothes or advising her on haircuts or – she glanced at her bare forearm – getting the shade of fake tan he thought would look best.

  When was the last time she’d been clothes shopping for herself? Dan did it all online. The delivery bloke turned up a few times a month with more things to try on. She used to do that as soon as she got the package, but it was a waste of time, since Dan would only make her put everything on again for him when he got home from work. He always sent back the ones he didn’t like.

  Bea was glancing with pride at Sophie’s empty plate. ‘Something else?’

  ‘I’ll explode if I have anything else, but thanks, just the bill, please. Though it’s so nice here I could stay all afternoon.’ She tipped her face towards the sun streaming through the front window.

  ‘’Spect so.’ She picked up the plates. ‘We’re not your in-and-out job like you get in London.’

  Sophie nodded. Of course Bea knew where they came from, too. ‘I’ll be sad to go back. It’s so lovely here.’

  ‘’Tis that,’ said Bea. ‘But James’ll be itching to get home. It’s hard for him being away. He was raised here, not like her.’ Bea’s feelings about Harriet were written all over her face, and that seemed to be the end of the conversation.

  Sophie pulled her purse from her handbag to pay the bill.

  Her phone! It had been off since the morning.

  She rang Dan straight away.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dan, I turned the phone off for my treatment and forgot. Sorry. I’m just leaving the tea shop now.’ She mouthed a thank you to Bea for the change. ‘Do you need me to pick anything up while I’m here?’

  ‘No, Sophie, I’ve got everything we need. The children have been waiting for you and they’re bored. I’ll come and pick you up.’

  She hated that angry edge to his voice. But she hated more that she felt herself folding into the perfectly accommodating wifey-sized woman she always tried to be in the face of it. The folds pinched. That was new. ‘No, don’t worry, I can walk back. It won’t take long. The massage was interesting, by the way. It tickled!’ Distract distract distract. It worked on children and pets and sometimes husbands.

  ‘I’m glad you were having so much fun while I was here holding the fort for you.’

  She wasn’t in the mood to pander to him. ‘Sorry, but you knew I had a treatment. And I wouldn’t say it was fun. It was weird.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry I bothered to book it for you if it was so weird.’

  ‘I mean I’m grateful you did, thank you. It was just surprising, that’s all.’ He didn’t respond and she felt herself folding again. ‘Do you want me to bring you a slice of cake? The chocolate is delicious.’

  He ignored her offer. ‘There are a lot of different kinds of treatments in the world, Sophie. I’m trying to give you a wider experience, but if you can’t appreciate that … And you should have been home over an hour ago. You’re not the only one with things to do other than sitting in some tea shop
. Why are you there anyway?’

  To drink tea, she wanted to say. But he was cross enough as it was. ‘It’s really pretty. We stopped by yesterday on the way home.’

  ‘How nice for you.’

  ‘I’ll be home as soon as I can,’ she said. It was definitely not the time to talk to Dan about their relationship.

  Chapter 21

  Tuesday

  Nineteen years. For nineteen years Harriet had watched James eat breakfast. Even though he was up way before her at home to deal with the goats, he always came inside to join her when she had her morning toast (with butter and a generous slathering of Marmite that went right to the very edges). Nineteen years. She could predict every single movement and each facial expression of his, from the way he overfilled his cereal bowl to how he unscrewed the cap on the milk – for some reason turning the bottle instead of the cap – to the number of seconds he poured and the way he cupped his giant hand around the rim of the bowl to keep the cereal from spilling over when the milk displaced it. She knew he’d take the first mouthful with a slurp and smack his lips in satisfaction. She hated the sound of that smacking.

  The milk dribble on his chin was a wild card, though. Sometimes he managed an accurate approach. Usually a slick of wet white glistened amid his stubble till she told him to wipe his chin.

  She watched him scratch a spot on his back with his breakfast fork. ‘James, that’s disgusting.’ And new. He was full of surprises these days.

  ‘What? I’m not using it.’ He held up his spoon, dripping with cereal milk.

  ‘That’s not the point. It’s for eating, not scratching.’ Honestly.

  James raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Eating what? When was the last time I used a fork at breakfast?’

  That wasn’t the point, either. Harriet set the breakfast table the same way she set every other table.

  ‘Why do you always do that?’ he went on. She could see bits of masticated muesli in his mouth. ‘Is it in case the queen decides to eat her Weetabix here?’