by Mandy Baggot
Mandy lives in leafy Wiltshire and has Sting as a neighbour. She lives with her husband, two daughters and two cats (Kravitz and Springsteen). When she isn’t writing she loves to sing and do Lady Gaga impressions (check out You Tube). She will soon be working on her fifth novel – if she can stay off Twitter for long enough.
Praise for Mandy Baggot
I've just read your book and thought it was excellent! It had a real ‘feel good’ factor about it. (Excess All Areas)
I was entertained by the book from beginning to end and when I finished reading it, I felt the same satisfied feeling I have after watching a good film. (Breaking the Ice)
The book takes a thorough look at relationships, love, commitment and honesty and all the complicated baggage that comes with the territory. It is chick-lit to its fingertips! (Knowing Me Knowing You)
Excess All Areas
Mandy Baggot
Published in 2011 by Hit Lit Limited (Kindle version)
Copyright © Mandy Baggot
Second Edition
The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the
prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
British Library C.I.P.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
To my two beautiful daughters Amber and Ruby – because I want to make you proud!
One
Auburn Blush it said on the packet. A multi-tonal hair colour to compliment light brown to medium brown hair. Freya looked at her reflection in the mirror of the ladies lavatories. Auburn Blush looked more like Red Revenge - her head was practically glowing. She didn’t care though, it didn’t really matter. The important thing was it was different. And different was good.
She washed the dye off her hands, all the time still gazing into the mirror at what stared back at her. Cilla Black hair, circa Blind Date 1990s. She put her glasses back on, added a touch of powder to her nose, a sheen of clear lip gloss to her mouth and she felt instantly better. Well, perhaps not completely better, but improved.
‘Passengers for the sixteen forty Monarch Airlines flight M-O-N six three four to Corfu, please make your way to gate seventeen where boarding has commenced.’
That was Freya’s flight. The tickets were still warm in her hands as they had only been printed a little over an hour ago. There had been no time for thinking logically, she was here and she had to get away. She picked up her handbag and turned to the door. Before she pushed it open she caught sight of her reflection, this time in a full-length mirror. Her jeans were too tight, her top could have done with being longer to cover her stomach, her chest was definitely in need of greater support and now she had bright red hair. She was seeing what Russell had seen. What Russell had obviously seen for at least the last six months but neglected to mention. Or perhaps he had mentioned it. Freya took a deep breath and tried to suck in her stomach. She held her breath and turned to the side, smoothing the bumps down. Perhaps she should invest in a corset.
The door to the ladies was pushed open and Freya let out her breath and coughed, hurriedly pretending to fix her hair. A super-slim, super-tanned blonde-haired twenty-something entered the toilets. Life always had a way of bringing you right back down to Earth. She was never going to be a size ten. Who was she trying to kid? She was never going to be a size sixteen.
She made her way out of the toilets and headed towards the gate. People around her were racing towards the boarding gates, hurrying along the moving walkways, excitedly, frantically. Freya in comparison followed the directions calmly, outwardly appearing almost serene. However, on the inside she was far from serene. She was still angry and hurt. And what was worse was, she was angry at herself more than anyone else. She had just wasted a year and a half with someone who thought nothing of her.
Boarding was well under way and Freya handed over her passport and boarding card to yet another super-slim blonde-haired twenty-something on the desk.
‘Thank you, that’s all in order,’ the woman told her with a whiter than white smile.
Freya nodded, took back her passport and headed down the tunnel towards the plane. She reached into her handbag as she walked and took out her mobile phone. There were thirty five missed calls. As soon as she’d left the restaurant she had switched it to silent. She knew he would call her, well it was only natural you would call someone if you were supposed to be meeting them for lunch and you thought they hadn’t turned up.
But Freya had turned up. She’d even been early. She had then decided, in her wisdom, to go to the ladies before indicating her arrival to the maitre d’. She had wanted to look her best on her birthday, her thirtieth birthday. She hadn’t wanted a party or anything extravagant, but she had wanted to mark the occasion. She had decided on a nice lunch with her boyfriend at her favourite restaurant.
Thinking back, if she had just taken ten seconds longer putting on her lipstick, or if she hadn’t washed her hands or if she had just skipped going to the loo and sat straight down at the table, she wouldn’t be getting on a plane right now.
She had come out of the ladies and seen Russell stood at the bar. The idea had been to surprise him, creep up on him, put her hands over his eyes and make him laugh. So she had crept quietly up towards him and it was as she crept that she listened and heard him say:-
‘I wonder if you’ve seen my girlfriend, I’m supposed to be meeting her here. She’s a large girl, you know, with brown hair and glasses - sort of ordinary looking and probably wearing jeans.’
When he’d said ‘large girl, you know’ he’d used hand gestures to indicate the largeness. Freya was rooted to the spot for a split second until a voice inside her had said ‘run’ and she had moved quickly towards the door and out of the restaurant before Russell had a chance to notice her.
It had been like having her eyes opened. It had been thirty seconds or less, but it had been enough time for her mind to conjure up all the memories and images of her relationship with Russell, as she watched him gesticulating over her size with a barman. A barman called Milo.
Over the past six months Freya had begun to feel the first stirrings of ‘The Stutter’. The Stutter was something that was quite familiar to her. It was a feeling, a little voice in her head that nudged her into the realisation that perhaps a relationship had run its course. The Stutter had put paid to every relationship she had had, except one. But this time it had taken longer to happen than usual. Russell had started working longer, later hours; they’d barely gone out together, apart from a couple of disastrous evenings at the all you can eat Chinese restaurant where they had spent all night sparring with each other. And as for sex, well when Russell had been at home he was preoccupied with the fillies on the Racing Channel instead of giving the maiden he had at home any attention. It was the classic first signs of The Stutter, or so Freya had thought, until six weeks ago when there had been a sudden change. Russell had come home from work one evening and looked at her like he had when they’d first got together. He had a large bouquet of flowers in one hand and a bag full of food from the Indian Palace in the other. He had stood in the doorway of Freya’s flat, seemingly admiring her, a smile stretched right across his face. That evening, before Freya lea
rnt that he had purchased all her favourite dishes from the takeaway, they made love just like the first time. All thoughts of The Stutter evaporated and she had spent the next month living in a dream, feeling happy and content and almost loved. Almost loved. It sounded a stupid thing to feel, but it was as close as she’d ever been able to get and closer than she had been with most of the people whose relationships The Stutter had put paid to.
But although Russell was doing and saying all the right things, something just wasn’t right. Freya couldn’t put her finger on it or perhaps she didn’t really want to. She was too afraid to burst the bubble, but the feeling was unsettling. That was why, when she’d stood in the restaurant and listened to Russell describing her to the barman called Milo, along with the immediate pain and shame, Freya had also felt some sense of relief. Now she had a reason to run. She had been right to feel cautious over his change in behaviour that, for what ever reason, had been an act. The relationship wasn’t just stuttering, this was permanent. This was an end of the line termination; everybody should disembark, or in Freya’s case, board the next available plane.
Freya sat down in her seat on the plane and let out a breath. This now felt like the right thing to do. It had seemed somewhat mad when she’d hailed a taxi to the airport, bought a ticket to Corfu and then bought a hair dye, in that order. But now she felt more relaxed about it all.
A large girl, yes she was a large girl, there was no point in denying it. But she’d been a large girl when Russell had wooed her. He had told her she was beautiful and pestered her for a date until she had no choice but to give in. And, as time went on, she thought that he had loved her. She thought he might have been the man that she told everything to. As she sat on the plane, on her birthday, her partner having been revealed as a prize shit, the sense of relief was rapidly turning into hurt and disappointment. She hadn’t cried yet but she knew the tears would come, probably as soon as she saw Emma.
Freya turned off her mobile phone. She would call Emma from Corfu. The last thing she needed was someone to try and rationalise things right now. She had never been the rational type and that was probably why she carried her passport around in her handbag.
Freya fastened her seatbelt and shut her eyes. Suddenly she felt very tired, tired of everything. If she could just get a few hours sleep while the plane completed its three and a half hour flight it would be a start.
But she was woken abruptly, shortly after the plane had finished making its assent and had settled at its cruising altitude. Her head was being thumped against the back of her seat. At first she considered it might be turbulence, however it soon became rhythmic – boom, boom, boom - over and over again. Someone was kicking her seat.
Freya wasn’t good humoured on waking, but today was not the best day and she felt particularly intolerant. She took off her seatbelt and knelt up to peer over the headrest at whoever was occupying the seat directly behind her. An angelic looking girl of about six years old, complete with plaits, was kicking the back of Freya’s seat as hard as she could manage with pink patent shoes.
‘Could you stop doing that please?’ Freya said firmly, glaring at the girl.
The little girl gave Freya a well practiced ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ smile and then landed another kick onto the seat, even more forceful than before.
‘I said could you stop that please?’ Freya barked. This was no time for beating around the bush when she needed sleep.
‘You’re not my mum Fatty!’ the girl replied and she stuck her tongue out at Freya and kicked the seat again.
‘Where’s your mother you little brat?’ Freya questioned as the rhythmic thumping started up all over again.
The seat next to the girl was empty and the middle aged man in the aisle seat of that row was pretending as hard as he could to be asleep. It was unconvincing.
‘If you don’t stop kicking right now I’m going to tell the air stewardess,’ Freya said seriously and she gave the girl another glare.
‘And what’s she going to do about it?’ the girl replied, leaning forward in her seat and glaring back at Freya.
‘She’s going to tell you off.’
‘Big deal. Why is your hair so red? It looks really stupid,’ the child answered back.
‘Look you little beast, I’ve had a horrible day and I just want to get some sleep, so would you please stop kicking my seat.’
Threats hadn’t worked; perhaps begging would or perhaps bribery was better, offer her a few euros. Except she didn’t have any Euros. Where was this kid’s mother?
‘No! I’m bored and this is fun,’ the child spoke and she started kicking harder and faster.
Freya could feel what little patience she had crumbling. This was all she needed. She snapped.
‘For God’s sake! Who does this child belong to? Satan are you there?! Come on, own up! Who is the mother or father of this child? If she is flying alone I swear I will remove her!’
Freya hardly recognised the sound of her own voice as the words flew out. She sounded almost unhinged. She was yelling at a flight full of people, all because a bored child was kicking her seat. Hadn’t she been a bored child once? Yes she had, but she hadn’t even been allowed to remove her seatbelt let alone achieve enough leg swing to wallop the seat in front. Now she felt hot and she was perspiring. She felt out of control and sick, she needed to sit down. Everyone was staring at her. People had put down their crosswords to look at her; one woman across the aisle had dropped two stitches in the scarf she was knitting. She needed to calm down, but what she wanted to do most of all was cry.
‘Are you alright?’ the woman with the knitting asked Freya.
She was now bent over, her head in her hands. She didn’t reply, she was trying hard not to throw up. She had known that eating a family sized bar of Dairy Milk in the departure lounge was wrong and now she was paying for it.
Boom, boom, boom, – the girl’s kicking was incessant. What was she doing on a plane to Corfu with no Euros, no luggage and no guarantee that Emma would have somewhere for her to stay? Was she crazy?
And then it stopped. Her seat was no longer being kicked out of its fixings and the banging in her head had lessened. Had the Devil child found something else to entertain her Freya wondered. Tying people’s shoelaces together? Activating the emergency lifejackets? Creating an elaborate bomb using nothing but the survival leaflet, a can of Coke and some Kirby grips? Freya dared to turn her head and peek through the gap between the seats. The girl’s mother had returned and the girl was still looking angelic but this time she was asleep, her head on her mother’s lap.
‘Is everything OK Madam? Can I get you a drink?’
Freya hadn’t noticed the air hostess arrive, but she did now and she also noticed she was pushing the drinks trolley which contained a large selection of alcoholic beverages. All of them looked immediately appealing, even the sherry.
‘Can I have a brandy and Coke please? A large one,’ Freya asked her, trying to compose herself.
‘Of course Madam, with ice?’ came the reply.
‘Please,’ Freya answered.
‘That will be five pounds sixty please,’ the air hostess informed her as she placed the drink and a napkin on Freya’s stowaway tray.
Oh my God, money! Did she have any cash? She had bought the plane ticket with her Visa card and now she didn’t know whether she had enough cash on her to pay for a drink. A drink she badly needed.
She picked up her handbag from the floor of the plane and began searching through it to try and find her purse. On opening her purse she discovered she had precisely two pounds twenty six, a supermarket trolley token and a French franc.
‘Um, do you take credit card?’ Freya enquired with a hopeful look at the stewardess who also happened to be a super-slim blonde-haired twenty-something.
‘We do take Visa madam, but only for purchases of more than ten pounds. We take Euros however, if you want to use your holiday money,’ the hostess replied with a helpful smile.
‘I’d better have two then. When do we land?’ Freya asked as she handed over her credit card.
‘Just over an hour now, not too long. There you go, if you would just enter your PIN number - thank you,’ she spoke, completing the transaction.
Freya took a large mouthful of one of her drinks and tried to relax herself. It wasn’t long now until she’d be in Corfu.
‘I see the little terror behind you is asleep now. Make the most of the peace and quiet. Let’s hope she isn’t staying at your hotel,’ the stewardess spoke in a hushed voice as she moved her trolley past Freya and along the aisle.
Freya nodded and smiled. That would be too cruel to imagine and Fate could not be that cruel on your birthday.
Two
It was an hour and five minutes before the plane touched down. It was 10.30pm local time and dark. Freya was glad to arrive. She had never been a lover of flying and three and a half hours was about her limit. She had done a long haul trip to Canada once to photograph the Rockies for a client, but these days she stuck to scenery nearer to home.
As she stepped out of the plane and on to the steps, Freya took a deep breath of the night air and filled her lungs with it. It was warm, it was sweet and it filled her whole head up with its comforting scent. There was absolutely nothing on Earth as wonderful as Corfiot air and it made Freya feel welcome every time she visited.
‘Excuse me; we’re in a bit of a hurry.’
