What I Did On My Holidays

by Chrissie Manby

  ‘What’s he looking at?’ Callum snarled.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mate.’

  I followed Callum’s gaze to the other side of the room. There stood Tom and his friends. Tom had his back to us. If he had been looking in our direction, he wasn’t looking now.

  ‘Shall we go back to the hotel too?’ I suggested in an attempt to divert Callum’s attention. ‘It’d be really nice if we could get a sort of early night so we’re all fresh and rested before that coach trip to the Caves of Drach tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I don’t want to go on a coach trip,’ said Callum. He was still staring at Tom’s back. There was a lot of it to stare at. No wonder Callum was twitchy. But surely he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.

  ‘Where did you meet that dick anyway? How much time did you spend with him before I arrived?’

  ‘Hardly any time at all. It was Clare who got talking to him. We went to a beach party near Magaluf,’ I lied. ‘It’s no big deal. My sister was doing most of the talking,’ I tried. ‘You know what she’s like when she’s had a couple of cocktails. Maybe she was trying to do a bit of match-making to cheer me up, but I wasn’t interested. I was only thinking about you and now you’re here and everything is wonderful and . . .’

  Callum wasn’t listening to me. His eyes had narrowed. His knuckles, clenched around his beer bottle, were white with tension.

  ‘Callum,’ I tried to bring his attention back to me. ‘Callum, please.’

  He did not respond to his name. It really was as though he couldn’t hear me any more. He sank the rest of his beer and got up, pushing his sleeves up his arms as though in preparation for some dirty work. It was the moment I had dreaded. Ordinarily, when Callum got drunk and antsy, at least one of his mates was around to calm him down and keep him from going too far. It had to be one of his male friends, someone who could hold him back without making him feel emasculated. My pleas just did not have the same effect as they might have done coming from one of the guys. Callum wouldn’t take any notice of me.

  Tom had no idea what, or who, was about to hit him. As far as he was concerned, he had answered an emergency call at my house and stopped by for a drink afterwards. Where was the problem with that? He had no idea that the fantasy holiday Clare and I had been enjoying went any further than our makeshift beach. He didn’t know the history of my relationship with Callum and how much depended on keeping the events of the previous week secret. He was simply sipping his beer with his friends, enjoying his holiday, when Callum strode up to him and attempted to land a punch on his jaw.

  The punch went nowhere near. Unfortunately for Callum, the strange truth behind my acquaintance with Tom the paramedic meant that I had not got round to telling my boyfriend that Tom’s hobby was taekwondo. He stopped Callum’s flying fist without even turning to see it coming. At the speed of light, he had Callum’s arm twisted up behind his back. Then Callum’s knees buckled beneath him and Tom gently deposited him on the floor.

  The club bouncers were quickly at the scene of Callum’s humiliation. I hung back. Tom was shrugging and expressing confusion. His mates confirmed that Callum’s attack had been unprovoked unless . . . One of them pointed across the room towards me. I wanted to sink down to the floor in sympathy with Callum and in embarrassment for myself. What I knew I had to do right then was go to Callum’s defence and tell the bouncers that there had been a misunderstanding. There was no need to throw Callum out so bodily. We would leave quietly and never return to the club again. The important thing was to get out of there before Tom mentioned the night of the fire and the Clapham beach club.

  ‘Callum’ – I tucked my arm through his – ‘let’s go.’

  But Callum was like a terrier and he would not let it go. As soon as he was back on his feet, he was swinging his fists again.

  Tom wasn’t very much taller than Callum, but he was definitely wider. He didn’t even bother to move away from Callum’s punches. They hardly touched him. Callum might as well have been a four-year-old trying to knock out his dad. By now, the bouncers were just looking on in amusement as, at last, Tom caught one of Callum’s fists and put him into another lock.

  ‘Give it up. I would knock you into next Tuesday,’ he said, ‘but your girlfriend deserves better than to have to see that. She deserves better than you.’

  Callum strained against Tom’s arms until Tom let him go so abruptly that Callum fell to the floor.

  ‘Come on,’ I begged Callum as he got back to his feet once more. I was terrified that he was going to square up to Tom again. It was clearly an unequal fight. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘I’d do as she says,’ a bouncer suggested.

  ‘You haven’t seen the last of me.’ Callum stabbed a finger at Tom’s chest, but for the time being he had to concede defeat and stalked out onto the street with me skittering along behind. He showed no consideration whatsoever for my high-heeled wedges.

  ‘Callum. Wait. Wait!’

  As I turned back, I caught Tom’s eye. He was looking at me. He wasn’t, as I might have expected, crowing about his encounter and accepting the back-slaps of his mates. Instead, he looked concerned.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he mouthed after me. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Me too,’ I mouthed back. Then I gave a little embarrassed wave and rushed on out after Callum.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Callum refused to talk to me on the walk back to the hotel. He wouldn’t let me hold his arm. When we got to the main road, he dashed out into the traffic ahead of me without looking. When a car screeched to a halt just feet away from him, Callum thumped his fist on the windscreen.

  Once at the hotel, while I got ready for bed, he went out onto the balcony and sank another beer from the stash he’d bought at the grocery shop. When I asked him if he wanted to come inside and go to bed, thinking that I could perhaps cuddle him out of his vile temper, he merely growled at me. I had never seen him so angry.

  Eventually, I got into bed alone. I didn’t know what else to do. There was no talking to him. It was another hour before he crawled in alongside me. He said nothing. He must have thought I was asleep. I thought it best I didn’t tell him otherwise. In the morning, he would be in a better mood, I was sure. In the morning, he might even laugh about what had happened that night. I would explain to him that Tom was a martial-arts expert so he shouldn’t feel in any way embarrassed for it having been such an unfair fight. Though he should feel embarrassed for having started it . . .

  In the small hours, I rolled onto my back and found myself staring at the ceiling. Wide awake. I went over that evening’s events. Callum had been short-tempered with my sister and Evan from the moment Evan suggested a budget dinner. He’d drunk too much at the restaurant and the club. He’d tried to bait Evan until Evan decided to leave. He swung the first punch at Tom with no provocation. Looking at it that way, why did I have to try to mollify Callum at all? Shouldn’t he be apologising to me?

  But I loved him. And that meant that I soon found a way to put the blame on myself again. I should have known that Callum wouldn’t like that club. I knew what kind of music they played. And I should have guessed that Tom would be there. He’d told me he liked the place. I could have made sure we had a better night out.

  When morning came, it was clear that sleep had not mellowed Callum’s mood at all. When I rolled over to kiss him, he pushed me off and my insecurity grew. I had to apologise. Callum wasn’t going to.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ I said, trying to put my arm round him.

  Callum grunted in response. He got out of bed and locked himself in the bathroom.

  Obviously unable to follow him in there, I took myself out onto the balcony. There were already people down by the pool, setting up for the day, looking happy and relaxed. Meanwhile, I had rarely felt quite so tense. As I watched my fellow holidaymakers shaking out their beach towels and taking an early dip in the pool, I wrestled with the idea of telling Callum the truth
about the previous week’s ‘holiday’. It was the only way I could explain my knowing Tom in such a way as he wouldn’t be jealous or suspect that I’d done anything I shouldn’t. On the one hand, it made sense to tell the truth. On the other hand . . . I couldn’t. If I told Callum, then Evan would find out too and I had promised Clare on my life that I would keep her secret. I didn’t want to be the cause of any break-up. No matter what Clare had said when we were back in Clapham, I liked Evan. He had been so touchingly concerned for me the night before.

  Callum remained in the bathroom. Not knowing quite what to do with myself, I checked my email.

  I discovered that Hannah had sent me a message, which included an attachment.

  ‘You made page six of the Sun.’

  Page six of the Sun? What on earth was she talking about? I clicked on the link to the attachment and waited impatiently for the thing to download. The wifi coverage at the hotel was spotty and slow, but eventually the newspaper page that Hannah had scanned for me materialised on the screen and became focused.

  Oh my God, I really had made page six of the Sun. And so had my sister, Clare. There we were together in glorious Technicolor standing in the backyard of my flat. Our feet may have been upon sand, but there was no mistaking the brick wall of a Victorian terraced house behind us.

  One of my neighbours must have provided the photograph, which had obviously been taken on the night of the beach party. I read the article that accompanied the picture and, of course, though it was wonderful and entirely complimentary, detailing as it did our rescue of Mrs Kenman, the text immediately gave the lie to our story that we had been in Majorca for the past week. I could not be pleased or proud to read that my sister and I had been nominated for a bravery award, which would be presented by the prime minister’s wife at a do in a posh London hotel. I felt red hot with embarrassment. It had never occurred to me that Mrs Kenman’s chip-pan fire would be news outside our street, but of course Mrs Kenman’s grandson, Paul Kenman, the regional weather forecaster, had alerted the media.

  I suppose it was inevitable. Paul Kenman might have just written a letter to thank us, or sent some flowers, but this was an opportunity from him to get his name in the papers as well as ours, and for a regional weatherman who was determined to go national before his thirtieth birthday, it was an opportunity not to be missed. Thus the truth came out.

  I knew that Hannah’s next email would be full of questions, and of course she had tweeted the link so that my mother would be bound to see it the moment she logged on. Worse still, Hannah had forwarded the same link to Callum, copying me in and entitling her email ‘Aren’t you proud of your brave girlfriend?’

  Talk about no good deed going unpunished. Having kept our secret safe by going so far as to fly to Majorca, my sister and I were about to be unmasked by a guiltily grateful weatherman who claimed on his own Twitter feed that he had been beating himself up all week because he had promised to visit his grandmother the night of the fire but was held up at a Met Office conference. His determination to make amends by nominating Clare and me for a bravery award was going to be our downfall. I closed Hannah’s email. The only possible option for keeping Callum in the dark just a little longer was to hide his iPhone. If I could just kick it under the bed, it would give me a few minutes to get my story worked out, but as I reached for Callum’s iPhone, he came out of the bathroom and saw me.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Oh. I thought that was my phone,’ I blustered. ‘I got them mixed up.’

  Callum took his own phone back. He immediately checked his mail.

  How was I going to get out of this one? If there had been even the slightest chance that Callum might not even have bothered to open the attachment, Hannah made sure that his interest was guaranteed.

  ‘This is so surreal,’ Hannah wrote in another email, copying him in and adding yet another helpful link. ‘Firstly, because I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you did something so heroic. Secondly, because I thought you were supposed to be in Majorca last week, not Clapham. What bit did they get wrong? The date of the rescue or your name? Why didn’t you tell us that you rescued an old lady? Now that’s a Stockwell Lifts PR story I wouldn’t have had trouble finding a home for. In fact, can I put it in the monthly newsletter? Makes a change from endless guff about eco-efficiency targets.’

  There was no point trying to pretend that the newspaper had got the dates wrong. The reference to the ‘hottest day of the year so far’ was further evidence that when Clare and I were supposed to be in Majorca, we were rescuing an old lady from a possible inferno in the flat upstairs from mine, in Clapham Old Town.

  ‘What is this?’

  Callum scowled at Hannah’s message.

  There was only one thing for it. I had to tell Callum the truth. But if I had hoped that he would be so impressed by my heroics when faced with the fire that the rest of the story would be irrelevant, I was out of luck. His expression, which was pretty miserable already, only got worse as the tale unfolded.

  ‘You mean to tell me that you rescued an old lady in London and you were only pretending to be in Majorca for the whole of last week?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Talk about Fate. If we’d been out here, Clare wouldn’t have seen the smoke . . .’ Please be impressed by the rescue, I begged him silently. Please don’t focus on the lie.

  ‘So you hid in your flat and then flew out here just eight hours before me?’

  ‘Yes.’ I hung my head.

  There was a pause while Callum decided what to say next. Unfortunately, it was the lie that he decided to focus on.

  ‘That’s so dishonest,’ he said at last. ‘Why on earth would you pretend to be in Majorca when you were really just at home?’

  ‘I got the idea from you, when you told me that you’d been in London but pretended you were still in Newcastle so you could get some time to yourself,’ I reminded him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You did the same thing. You said you were in one place when really you were hiding out at home.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘How is it different?’

  ‘I didn’t post about it on Facebook, for a start. I didn’t tweet about my whereabouts to all and sundry. I didn’t go through some elaborate charade to convince people that I was somewhere I wasn’t. I just shut the door and kept quiet. There’s a huge difference between my wanting a weekend to myself for once—’

  ‘Three weekends!’

  ‘Three weekends to myself, then. There’s still a huge difference between what I did and you lying to everyone about being on holiday. And your sister too. Why did she go along with it?’

  ‘She wanted some time to herself, I suppose.’

  ‘Does Evan know you weren’t really in Puerto Bona last week?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head.

  ‘What do you think he’s going to say about it when he finds out?’

  I could only imagine how the scenario would play out between Clare and Evan. There was no chance that he wouldn’t find out. It was a matter of time before someone he knew saw the Sun and asked him what had happened. He was unlikely to be any happier than Callum. In fact, he had every reason to be less happy, since I had got myself into the situation by default, but Clare had actively lied to him from the start. The only possible silver lining was that Evan would be happy to know Clare had spent less of their savings than he assumed she had.

  ‘Callum, I’m sorry. Of course I wasn’t going to pretend to be in Majorca, but Hannah emailed me to say that you thought I had gone and that the idea that I would get a flight on my own had changed your mind about me. She convinced me that if I didn’t pretend to go away,’ I said, ‘I would have lost you for ever.’

  As it was, of course by then I knew I had lost him anyway. I could tell from the look in his eyes. All the softness was gone from them. If it had ever come back after the previous evening’s embarrassment.

  ‘You’re insane. You know you’re going to
be a total laughing stock when you get back to work. Hannah’s probably told everyone in the company by now. You’ve made me look like an idiot too. I believed you were on holiday. I came out here because Hannah said you had found a new bloke. I saw the pictures of you on the beach. How did you get those?’

  ‘Eight sacks of sand and a little creativity.’ I tried to make light of it.

  Callum didn’t crack a smile. His face was uglier than I had ever seen it. I realised that how things looked was very important to him. He was all about image and me fooling him did not fit his image at all.

  ‘The girls in the office treated me like some kind of pariah for dumping you. Every time I went to make myself a cup of tea, they’d be round the kettle like witches, talking about what a great time you were having in Puerto Bona despite how badly I’d treated you. If only they’d known the truth. At least now they’ll know I wasn’t wrong to break up with you. They’ll know you’re insane as well as clingy.’ He rattled on.

  At no point in the conversation did Callum say that he was proud or impressed or even plain surprised that I had risked my life for the woman who lived upstairs. He was only concerned with how this was going to look to the people we had to work with.

  ‘Pretending to be in Majorca to convince me to take you back. You’re touched.’ He tapped my forehead with his finger. There was more menace in that gesture than I cared to admit.

  ‘You lied to me,’ he continued. ‘Then you stripped off in your backyard with some paramedic for a weirdo fake photo session to keep up the pretence.’

  ‘I had all my clothes on,’ I pointed out. Callum wasn’t interested.

  ‘If you think I believe that you didn’t open your legs for him . . . I hope you at least faked an orgasm too.’

  Callum directed that comment at me with such venom he might as well have spat in my face. Now he turned away from me. He pulled his suitcase out of the wardrobe and started to throw his clothes into it. I went into the bathroom and splashed water over my cheeks. He looked like he was getting ready to go. How could I stop him? Did I want to stop him? With him no longer right in my face, I finally gathered the courage to say something in return. I marched back into the bedroom.