What I Did On My Holidays

by Chrissie Manby

  ‘Sophie,’ Clare broke the silence, ‘weren’t you supposed to be going on holiday for two weeks?’

  ‘I was,’ I said. ‘Two whole weeks in the sun . . . Fourteen days away from the office, fourteen wonderful days of—’

  She stopped me. ‘But that’s perfect. I’ll call Evan and tell him that we’re going to stay out for the whole of the time you guys originally booked. It’ll give me chance to think.’

  ‘What? And have both of us spend another week looking at these four walls?’ I said. ‘No, you can’t. I’m coming home.’

  Clare was disappointed. ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. Much as I enjoy your company, I am going absolutely nuts stuck in this flat all the time. I want to get back to my real life. Even if it means confronting the reality that Callum’s gone for good. Besides, it sounds like you’ve got some reality confronting to do yourself. With Evan.’

  Clare looked pained.

  ‘But if you decide to go ahead and call the engagement off, you know you can come back here and stay for as long as you like. I think we make pretty good flatmates.’

  Clare nodded. ‘I think you’re right about that.’

  ‘I promise you, whatever happens, it’ll be OK,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?’

  Chapter Thirty

  After Clare’s tearful revelations about the state of her relationship, we spent the rest of the day being very careful around each other. What she’d shared with me was very serious indeed. I promised that what had happened between her and Jason would be my secret. For her part, Clare promised she would never again give me love-life advice unless I asked for it. She would definitely stay away from my Facebook account. She also made me about a dozen cups of tea. It was as though she spent the day anticipating my wishes, like a genie. Anything to keep me on her side.

  Of course I was on her side, but I made her promise that she would think carefully about her commitment to Evan. She had to work out what she really wanted. I neither wanted her to throw away something good – and I did think that Evan was a great guy – or lock herself into a relationship that made her unhappy. The wedding date might have been booked, but, I reminded her, she would be able to say, ‘I don’t,’ right up until the minute she said, ‘I do.’ Nevertheless, I didn’t envy her the choice that lay ahead of her. I especially didn’t envy her having to tell our parents if she decided not to go ahead. What would our mother tweet about that?

  And then it was Wednesday, the last day of our holiday at home. I woke up first and went through our usual holiday routine, logging on to the official Majorcan tourist-board website to see what the weather was set to be like that day. Sunny and twenty-six degrees in the shade. Just another day in paradise, I thought, as I opened the kitchen curtains just a crack to see that outside my flat was a typical British summer’s day. Overcast. Cold as November again. The brief heatwave we had enjoyed on our private beach was already over. The weather guy on the radio blamed the unusually low jet stream, which was going to bring rain for the rest of the week. Maybe even for the rest of the summer, he joked with the morning DJ.

  So far so gloomy. Yet I couldn’t wait to be ‘home’ again. I couldn’t wait until the following afternoon, when I could officially fling open the front door and take a proper walk under that leaden sky without worrying who I might bump into. I needed to stretch my legs properly. Maybe even go to the gym. We were running out of food. We had long since run out of old Sex and the City DVDs to watch. I needed to open all the windows and let the air blow through the flat. It smelled as though something had died under the kitchen sink and I was finding it just a little hard to cope with my sister’s disinterest in keeping things tidy. The draining board was cluttered with glasses and mugs. Clare got through more mugs of tea in a day than a whole team of builders.

  I was a little worried about having to talk about my holiday when I got back to the office, but Clare assured me that it wouldn’t be so hard. The thing to remember was that no one is really interested in other people’s holidays, she said. Any questions would be rhetorical and polite. No one would be in the least bit bothered if all I said was, ‘It was great,’ then changed the subject back to the office gossip I had missed in the meantime. Even if the office gossip at that moment was all about me and Callum.

  ‘They’ll be thrilled to get on to that,’ said Clare.

  ‘Hannah will ask questions about the hotel,’ I said.

  ‘Only to introduce the subject of her own holiday on the Golden Isle. You can just let her get on with it.’

  I nodded. That was exactly what would happen. Hannah never talked about anyone else if she could bring the subject round to herself. But she would be bound to ask me about Tom, I was certain. What could I say about him?

  I found myself looking at the photographs Clare had taken again. Tom was very photogenic. He had a kind face that reflected the nice bloke he so obviously was. You had to admire him for his dedication to what had to be a very difficult job. I couldn’t help feeling envious of him, heading off on his real holiday that very day. And I couldn’t help feeling envious of the girls he might meet while he was there. He would be bound to have a holiday romance. There was no chance that a man as friendly and good-looking as him ever had to spend a night alone at the weekends. I had wondered what it would be like to kiss him, of course. While we were washing up together, there had been a moment when I misheard something he said, I turned towards him to ask him to repeat himself, and suddenly our lips were no more than an inch apart. It would have been very easy to kiss him then. Our proximity had certainly raised my heartbeat. I held back. Just as Tom had held back when he kissed me goodnight. But I hadn’t imagined the tension, had I?

  I shouldn’t be disappointed about that, I told myself. I still had unfinished business with Callum. I still hadn’t entirely given up hope of reconciliation. That was all I needed to know. As the time for me to pretend to return from our holiday and subsequently go back to the office grew nearer, I was definitely becoming nervous at the thought of our first face-to-face meeting in such a long time. What would it be like? Would we bump into each other in the corridor, and if we didn’t, should I go to his office and say ‘hi’? Hannah had stopped reporting that Callum was looking fed up around the office. Did that mean that he had got used to the idea of our break-up and would not want to alter the status quo?

  As I boiled the kettle to make some more tea, I imagined our first post-break-up encounter. I had the outfit planned, of course. I would top up my fake tan at some point that day. Clare had suggested that I streak some lemon juice through my hair for the sunkissed look. I would wear a white shirt to set off my tan and the navy-blue pencil skirt that Evan once said made me look like an extra from Mad Men. If Evan liked it, then maybe Callum did too. Perhaps I could get Clare to help me add the finishing touches with a killer blow-dry. She was great at doing hair.

  If I didn’t see Callum before I got to my desk, then of course I should search him out to say ‘hi’. It was all about seeming nonchalant. It was all about convincing him that I didn’t care whether he came back to me or not. I was perfectly happy as I was. My life would go on. I would carry on working hard at Stockwell Lifts, moving up through the ranks.

  Except, of course, that there was nowhere to go at Stockwell Lifts, and if Callum and I were no longer together, then my job would have lost a big part of its appeal. Without Callum to retain my interest, I might have left Stockwell Lifts within eighteen months of starting there. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand being in such close proximity to Callum if my plan had not paid off. I would have to look for something else. What a rotten time to have to do that, when all over the country people were losing their jobs. Would I be able to sign on if I made myself voluntarily redundant? Perhaps I could persuade my boss to cut his PR budget and my job with it.

  Perhaps I didn’t want to come back from my make-believe break after all. I had a few pretty awful weeks ahead of me.

  How long would it
be before Alison decided it was safe to start flirting with Callum again? How long would it be before he thought it was safe to transfer his affections on to my colleague and her infamous cleavage? I knew that the day would come all too soon when Alison considered it no longer necessary to protect my feelings and went all out on her own offensive to win Callum’s heart.

  But right then, my iPhone buzzed on the kitchen table. I snatched it up. The impossible had finally happened.

  Callum had sent me a text.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  After a week with no contact whatsoever, I had started to grow used to the daily disappointment of Callum’s continued silence. Even on my birthday. In fact, it had almost become a comfort to me when another day passed without word from the man I had loved so very much. At least if I hadn’t heard from him, then things were no worse than they had been when I woke up without him by my side. As time passed, I had come to think it was so very unlikely he would call to tell me he’d changed his mind that any contact would be, by definition, disappointing.

  I have never been one of those people who says of bad news that they would rather ‘just know’ so that they can get on with the business of reacting to the changed situation. On the contrary, I am the kind of person who likes to live in denial until the last possible moment. I am the sort of person who covers her eyes during horror movies and peels plasters off ever so slowly, wincing with every painful millimetre gained. I know it’s better to get some things over with quickly. I know that having all the requisite information makes it easier to plan your reaction, but I really don’t think I’m up to shocks.

  So when my phone buzzed to tell me that Callum had sent me a message, my first reaction was to feel a little sick. Then a lot sick. That man had so much power over my emotions, it was frightening.

  ‘Open it,’ said Clare.

  I told her I couldn’t. What if Callum was writing to tell me that he had seen the photographs on Facebook of me with my new ‘friend’ and he never, ever wanted to talk to me again as a result? I would never, ever talk to Clare again as a result of that. Worse, what if he was writing to tell me that he was glad I had found somebody new so quickly because now he could come clean about the real reason for our break-up and her name was . . .

  I explained my apprehension to Clare.

  ‘What if he’s saying neither of those things?’ she said reasonably.

  ‘Just let me have this moment,’ I begged. ‘This moment where he might still be texting to beg my forgiveness. This moment in a parallel universe where he still loves me and there’s still some hope that we’ll get back together.’

  ‘Here, you sap. Give it to me.’

  I didn’t have to give Clare my phone. She just snatched it out of my hand and opened the text before I could get the word ‘no’ out. I watched her face anxiously for any sign that would betray the nature of the text’s contents.

  ‘Well, that’s all very boring,’ she said, as she handed the phone to me so that I could read the news for myself.

  ‘Sounds like you’re having a good time out there in Majorca,’ he wrote. ‘I’m really glad you had the courage to go on your own. Perhaps we could get together to talk about it when you get back?’

  So far, so mundane, but it was as though a real ray of sunshine had broken through the closed curtains of my flat. Callum had reached out to me at last. And he said that he wanted to talk! I danced around the flat with almost as much enthusiasm as I had fandangoed around the kitchen to the Gipsy Kings over a week ago in the moments before he texted to tell me that he wouldn’t be coming on holiday.

  I showed my sister the message again. She nodded wisely.

  ‘Of course he wants to talk about it,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think it’d be too eager to ask to see him the very day we get back? I want him to know he has a second chance.’

  ‘But does he deserve a second chance? He needs to make an effort for you, Soph. Don’t let him just slip back into your life like he didn’t ruin your holiday.’

  ‘I understand. But the funny thing is,’ I told her, ‘he really didn’t ruin my holiday. I’ve had a wonderful time these past few days. Just you and me.’

  She gave me a high five.

  ‘I’ve had a great time too,’ she said. ‘You know what? One of these days, we should go on holiday together for real. In fact, let’s promise to do it every single year. At least get away for a couple of days. No matter who we may or may not get married to.’

  ‘Definitely. That sounds like a family tradition that will be easy to keep. Now what should I text back?’

  ‘You’re texting back already?’

  I nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Clare. ‘Not yet. You’re too busy having fun.’

  But I couldn’t leave it like that. No way. I was willing to accept Clare’s argument that my continued silence would make Callum sweat, but I was worried that too long a silence would discourage him from trying for a second chance altogether. What if he thought I was really over him and, as a result, he went out clubbing with his mates that night, drank to drown his sorrows and ended up in the arms of another girl?

  Callum’s text had arrived at ten in the morning. I managed to hold off replying until four in the afternoon. Mostly because Clare confiscated my phone and sat on it while she knitted the arms of a sweater she had promised her goddaughter.

  ‘I hope you remembered to switch it from vibrate,’ I told her.

  While Clare knitted, I paced the room, grinding more sand from the backyard into the carpet as I did so. My landlady was going to have a fit. Never mind. Callum wanted to talk to me. Who cared about anything else? I composed a novel’s worth of responses to Callum’s text in my head. I agonised over each and every word. Should my tone be chilly, warm or neutral? Should I write, ‘I’m having a great holiday. No thanks to you,’ or should I take the moral high road and not refer to our break-up at all? What would I have written in response to Callum’s text were he just a friend and not my ex-lover?

  I did practically nothing but compose that silly little text in my head for a whole six hours, so that when Clare finally told me I could have my phone back, I typed up and sent my final edited version in under thirty seconds. I did not let Clare see it before it went, but when I finally told her what I had written, which was, ‘Thanks for your text. Having a lovely time. Weather great. Sophie’ (no kiss), she said that she approved.

  ‘It’s perfectly neutral,’ was her verdict. ‘No suggestion of anger, desperation or bitterness whatsoever.’

  ‘You think so?’ I was very relieved.

  ‘I think you’ve hit exactly the right note. The fact that you responded at all gives him the opportunity to take it further, but he will have to be the one who goes out on a limb and puts some emotion in his next move.’

  But how long would I have to wait until Callum made his next move? The following forty-five minutes made the previous six hours during which I had done nothing but pace the room seem to have passed by in a flash. How could forty-five minutes seem so long? It passed like Pilates time, when an hour in the gym seems like three hours’ worth of real time because you just want to be out of that press-up position and eating a Krispy Kreme.

  I checked my phone every two seconds, despite the fact that I had turned the ringtone setting from ‘silent’ to ‘loud’ so that there was no way in hell I would not know the very second Callum deigned to reply.

  At last it happened.

  ‘Weather rubbish here,’ he said. ‘Wish I had come with you.’

  ‘Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.’ I danced around the room, flapping my hands.

  ‘Maybe it’s just a figure of speech,’ said my sister. ‘Let’s see if he says any more.’

  ‘Should I respond?’

  ‘Do not respond.’

  Clare sat on the phone again.

  And she was right to do so, because ten minutes later, Callum sent another text and this one really was worth dancing about.<
br />
  ‘Bryan says I can still take the rest of this week and the first three days of next week off if I want to, seeing as how I already had it booked. I’m thinking I might come to Majorca after all. Can I meet you there?’

  When Clare read that text out to me, I fell backwards onto the sofa as if into a faint, then kicked my legs in the air and sprang straight back up again. I was that excited.

  ‘Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.’

  I grabbed my sister and we danced around the room. Our stupid plan, conceived in such desperation nearly a week before, had worked. I had pretended to be having a wonderful time in Majorca for a week and now Callum wanted to join me there. He wanted me back. There was no doubt about it. Callum Dawes was going to be mine.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Of course, in my ecstatic jubilation at this sudden change in Callum’s feelings, I had forgotten one very important point. Callum had said that he wanted to join me on holiday in Majorca, but my sister and I were still very much in my flat in SW11.

  ‘This is a disaster!’ I said.

  How quickly my mood had changed from joy to despair.

  ‘He’s going to find out I never went away.’

  ‘How?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Well, I’ll have to tell him he can’t join me in Majorca because I’m not over there, am I? I’ll have to come clean.’

  ‘Not at all. You could just tell him that you don’t want him to join you right now. Tell him you want to use the time you have left on the island as thinking time. That should be enough to put him off making the trip and put the fear in him at the same time. He’ll start to think he’s really lost you so that by the time you do “get back” from your holiday, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was waiting on the doorstep with a ring.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘No, not really. And in any case I’m not convinced you should accept any ring from such a jerk. But it would get him thinking, I’m sure.’