‘I’m always the one who compromises,’ I told her.
‘I know.’ She pushed her long, curly, blonde hair out of her eyes. ‘I told you that before.’
‘I know you told me,’ I said miserably. ‘I just didn’t want to believe you. And we were supposed to be going to Barbados.’
And then I started to cry and the tears rolled down my cheeks and plopped on to my short, sugar-pink skirt.
Which was when Cleo suggested that I go on the Adventure Holiday of a Lifetime with them and the twenty girls to the South of France.
Cleo was my best friend and a teacher. Every year she took a group of her pupils away on a sports holiday. Every year she told me about it. Every year it sounded like a nightmare.
‘I couldn’t go with you,’ I said. ‘I hate kids.’
Cleo laughed. ‘Nobody said you had to like them. You don’t even have to have that much to do with them. Just supervise them, that sort of thing. It’s easy, Paula.’
‘But I don’t do sports, Cleo!’ I wailed.
‘Oh, come on, Paula.’ She grinned at me. ‘You can swim, can’t you?’
‘Not well,’ I said. ‘And I know this kind of holiday, it’s all abseiling down the side of mountains and canoeing in freezing cold rivers. I was supposed to go to Barbados, remember? To do nothing but lie in the sun and drink cocktails.’
She laughed. ‘We do windsurfing and yachting,’ she told me. ‘Absolutely no abseiling. A little canoeing but on the sea. And the sea is beautiful even if you fall in. It’s summer, it’ll be warm!’
‘Surely there isn’t room for another person,’ I said.
‘That’s just the point,’ Cleo said. ‘There is. Frankie and I have been tearing our hair out because we desperately need another person. Carol Dunphy was meant to be coming but she dislocated her shoulder and she really doesn’t feel up to it.’
I grimaced. ‘Why am I the only one of your friends who doesn’t go around abusing their bodies?’ I asked. ‘When will you and Carol and Frankie cop on to the fact that your body is a temple and should be treated with care!’
She roared with laughter. ‘You’re priceless, Paula,’ she said. ‘You’re a member of the gym, aren’t you?’
‘Not with any great enthusiasm.’ I crumpled up the mauve wrapping of the chocolate bar I’d just finished. I was comfort eating. Even with eating huge quantities of chocolate and not going to the gym I’d lost weight in the last couple of weeks.
‘Besides.’ She smiled. ‘Having a professional masseuse will be very useful, don’t you think? When we come back battle-weary and sore you’ll be able to give us rub-downs.’
‘Massage is not a rub-down,’ I said crossly. ‘And my massages are always restful experiences. I don’t see how I can feel restful if I’ve spent the day rescuing drowning kids.’
‘It’s not like that at all,’ she promised me. ‘The place we’re staying has trained people to look after them all day. We organize them, of course, but they go out on the water with professional staff. All we do is make sure they don’t run off with an instructor or something. I promise you, Paula, you can sit on the beach with a good book and just glance in our direction from time to time. The only time you have to do anything is to shepherd them on and off the plane and the coach. Easy.’
I didn’t really want to go. I wanted to stay at home and be miserable about the fact that I was twenty-eight years old and my marriage had disappeared down the toilet and that I had once loved Mike with all of my heart.
But I said yes all the same.
Emily Harris forgot her ID to go with the group passport which caused a panic at the airport. Dawn Purcell dropped an open can of Coke in the middle of the departures area and sprayed everyone within a few feet with the sickly, brown liquid. Treasa Dolan arrived with a face so perfectly made-up that she looked at least twenty and threw Cleo into a fit of worrying about how she was going to keep her under control on the mixed camp-site.
She hadn’t told me about the camp-site part until a week before we left. I’d fondly imagined that we’d be staying in apartments but Cleo grinned and told me that the Hirondelles resort was made up of tents.
‘But the adults aren’t in tents, surely?’ I asked in horror.
‘Bigger tents,’ she told me. ‘Nice tents. With camp-beds and all facilities.’
‘What facilities?’ I demanded.
‘A fridge,’ she told me baldly.
I would have pulled out there and then but it was too late – if I’d backed out the whole trip would have been in jeopardy. But I muttered blackly under my breath as I trudged into town and bought myself a sleeping-bag. I’d never needed one before. I thought roughing it was staying in a three-star hotel.
The flight to Perpignon was relatively uneventful. I sat in my seat near the window and missed Mike so much that I wanted to be sick. But teachers couldn’t be sick. Teachers were supposed to be concerned with their charges. All I was concerned about was Mike and how, right now, we should have been lounging in the all-inclusive resort on the beach, watching the sun set into the Caribbean Sea.
Cop on, Paula, I told myself fiercely, they’re about five hours behind us in the Caribbean. You’d only be having breakfast.
It was early evening by the time we arrived at the resort and there was a slight haze over the sky, but the air was warm and the entrance to the camp-site was alive with brightly coloured bougainvillaea.
The girls jumped from the coach with great enthusiasm while I practised sounding adult and mature by saying, ‘Helen Wallace, don’t push!’ And was rewarded by the lanky fifteen-year-old responding with, ‘Sorry, Miss.’
Cleo, Frankie and I installed ourselves in our tent once we’d sorted out the children. ‘I thought you said it was luxurious,’ I said to Cleo as I stood in the middle of it and looked around.
‘In comparison to the girls’ it is,’ she pointed out.
‘Yes, but –’ I shrugged helplessly. You’re either a camping person or you’re not. I couldn’t see that the small fridge and electric light made up for the fact that the plastic groundsheet was covered in sand and that the camp-beds looked decidedly utilitarian.
‘You’ll be fine.’ Frankie grinned at me. ‘And we’ll go down town later and stock up the fridge with some booze.’
‘What about the girls?’ I asked.
‘They can’t come,’ she said solemnly.
‘One of us will stay,’ said Cleo, ‘while the others go and get some drink.’
I looked around the tent again. I thought of Barbados. I ached for Mike. Why, I asked myself, why should I suddenly start to care again when I knew it was all over? I said I’d get the drink.
I couldn’t identify the noise when I woke up the following morning. It was a dull, thudding sound which seemed to echo around the tent. I sat up gingerly in the camp-bed and looked around me in bewilderment.
In the bed opposite, Cleo rolled over and opened one eye.
‘It’s raining,’ she said.
‘Raining?’
‘You know, wet stuff.’
‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘How can it be raining? It was lovely last night.’
‘Happens sometimes,’ she told me. ‘But it usually goes after a few hours.’
I shivered and snuggled down into my sleeping-bag. ‘Wake me when it stops.’
She laughed. ‘You’ll have to get up in ten minutes. It’s breakfast time.’
I squinted at my watch. ‘But it’s only a quarter-past seven!’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Remember the rota from last night? We’re half-seven breakfast this morning.’
‘Oh, God!’ I groaned. ‘And I probably have to queue for the shower.’
‘Most people don’t bother with the shower in the mornings,’ Cleo advised. ‘There isn’t time. Anyway, you’re going to be in the sea all day. Or,’ she said benignly, ‘in your case, sitting on the beach. A splash at the sink will do you.’
I groaned again. But Cleo was right, there wasn’t time. A
s I contemplated getting out of the sleeping-bag, Frankie – who had a little room of her own in the same tent – put her head round the flap and told us it was time to get up. And that Greenhills College were already queuing for breakfast so if we didn’t get up there soon those boys would have eaten everything – remember last year? So we’d better get a move on. Oh, and by the way, it was drizzling.
It was heavy drizzle. I felt my dark hair begin to frizz as I hurried along the sandy pathway from our tent to the open-air cafeteria.
The girls hadn’t been any more enthusiastic than me about getting out of bed and I’d been very cranky with my lot shouting things like, ‘Come on, come on, you know you’re meant to be at the cafeteria before half-past,’ while at the same time struggling to hold back the yawns. I was utterly amazed to see that Treasa Dolan had found time to complete a basic make-up which left her looking quite stunning at that hour of the morning while dressed in her jogging pants and sweatshirt.
‘Is it too wet to go out sailing?’ asked Emma Johnson.
Cleo withered her with a look. ‘You’ll be on the water,’ she told Emma. ‘You can’t get much wetter than that.’
‘But what if it’s squally?’ said Denise O’Halloran.
‘It’s a drizzle,’ said Frankie.
‘It might be a squally drizzle,’ objected Denise.
I yawned again. I liked to ease myself into the day. A refreshing shower. A breakfast of fruit and yoghurt. Some time to do my make-up. I didn’t just leap out of bed and into a crowd of people.
I closed my eyes and did some deep breathing. Anna Boland tripped over my outstretched leg and almost broke her jaw on the ceramic tiled floor.
It was too wet to sit on the beach with my book. And, despite Frankie’s scathing dismissal of squally drizzle, it had become too rough to allow the children out in the boats. One or two hardy souls suggested that they could swim or body-board near the beach but the staff at Hirondelles said no. They couldn’t be responsible in this sort of weather.
Cleo and Frankie decided that the thing to do would be to bring everyone on a trip to the nearby town of Cap d’Agde. They normally did a trip to Cap d’Agde anyway, it would just be sooner rather than later. The girls piled in to the coach. I took my rain-jacket (thankful that I’d actually brought one) from the tent and slung it over my head.
The rain was coming down harder now and the clouds had descended almost to the level of the pine trees either side of the road.
‘It’s like Connemara,’ said Aisling Ward gloomily as she peered through the steamy window of the coach. ‘Only wetter.’
‘I wish we could have gone out on the boats,’ said Emily wistfully. ‘I’m dying to go out on the boats.’
The coach swished its way along the country road. To our right, the sea churned in angry green and white. I shuddered at the thought of being out in a boat.
I wondered what it was like at home. We’d left Dublin bathed in warm sunlight, in the middle of a virtual heatwave. I imagined Mike sitting on the balcony of our apartment, sipping a glass of wine in the late-evening sun. Mike liked wine, it was his hobby. He went to tastings and lectured me from time to time on acidity and fruitiness and tannin and then I’d just take the glass and knock back the drink and he’d call me a philistine. But he used to laugh when he said it.
It stopped raining briefly while we walked around Cap d’Agde but, pretty as the town no doubt was in blazing Mediterranean sunshine, it was dull and gloomy that afternoon. The tables outside the pavement cafés were deserted, their chairs tipped against them to stop puddles forming on the seats. The local ice-cream seller looked miserable in his hut surrounded by huge wafers and pictures of ice-cream sundaes while water dripped from the green and white striped canopy above. The few people who were out on the streets hurried along, heads bowed.
Cleo decided that we should bring the children to the local swimming-pool so that they’d at least manage to have a swim. After all, she pointed out, they’re here to swim.
They loved it. I bobbed around out of reach of the people who enjoyed pulling you underwater by your ankles and wondered what Mike was doing now.
We took the long way back to the camp. The girls took it in turn to sing Spice Girl songs over the bus microphone. None of them could sing. I had a headache. Cleo broke up a fight between Sharon and Emily. Frankie confiscated a packet of cigarettes from Treasa. The bus swung into the reception area of the camp-site and parked in the middle of a deep, wide puddle. We all got soaked as we jumped off.
When we got back to the tents, though, we stopped and looked in horror. The incessant rain had forged channels through the sandy surface on which they’d been set up. Small rivers ran through some of the channels while in front of some tents great pools of water had built up. The camp attendants were frantically digging holes at the side of the channels to divert the water from the tents.
‘Oh, my God!’ Cleo looked at us. ‘What a mess.’
‘We couldn’t do anything about it.’ The organizer came up to us. ‘The rain was so heavy and at first we didn’t realize …’ His voice trailed off as Cleo strode into our luxurious tent and I followed her. The groundsheet was a sodden mess. So were her clothes which she’d neatly stowed beneath her camp-bed. I’d stowed some of mine under my bed too, but the slope of the floor had kept the water away from them and they were merely damp.
‘Shit!’ Frankie looked in at us. ‘My stuff is soaking. So is everyone’s!’
We walked out of the tent and surveyed the rest of the site. The girls were rushing into their tents – when not prevented by the puddles outside the entrances – and emerging shrieking that their clothes were ruined.
‘My Prada suit is destroyed!’ Treasa looked distraught. I would have been distraught too if I’d had a Prada suit.
‘Prada!’ Cleo looked at her as though she were mad. ‘If you’ve brought a Prada suit on a camping holiday, Treasa, you deserve to have it destroyed.’
Nuala Gilmore, small, dark and elfin ran up to us. ‘Isn’t it a laugh!’ she said. ‘We’re going to have to share clothes.’
‘I’m not sharing with you,’ said Treasa dismissively.
‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in the stuff you ponce about in!’
‘Girls, girls!’ Cleo pushed her fingers through her hair. ‘Come on, let’s help to clear up.’
We helped but it wasn’t easy. It was still raining, the water still ran through the camp-site, we were wet and tired and cold. At one point I looked up at everyone digging trenches and felt, surreally, as though I was in a refugee camp. I suddenly realized how dreadful it would be. If one of these tents was your home, I thought, and not just yours but home to a number of families and it rained like this – I shuddered at the thought and applied myself to digging trenches with renewed vigour. I only swore when I broke a nail.
Eventually we diverted the rainwater, sent the wet clothes to the local laundry and changed into dry (or less wet) clothes. The girls, amazingly, thought it was all a bit of a laugh.
‘Couldn’t we go to a hotel?’ I begged. ‘I really need a hot bath.’
Cleo laughed. ‘It’ll be gorgeous tomorrow,’ she promised. ‘And you’ll forget about today. Go and have a shower, Paula. They’ll be really hot right now.’
I took her advice. The showers were really hot but it’s very difficult to feel at ease under the spray of water when there’s a pigeon roosting in the rafters above. I was beginning to feel as though I was in my own personal nightmare. Where there were no aromatherapy oils, or perfumed candles to ease the strain. Where just keeping clean was an effort in itself.
But, I thought, at least it would be dry tomorrow.
It wasn’t. Or the day after that. Or the day after that. But whenever the rain eased even a little the girls went out on the boats and did their body-boarding and played beach-games. So did I. Actually, it was more fun than I’d expected. And the girls were fun too. They reminded me of myself when I’d been fifteen – hopeful, expectant, scare
d. And then they discovered that I did manicures as well as massages and suddenly I was booked up to do their nails for the on-site disco each evening.
‘You’re enjoying yourself,’ Cleo told me one night as we played cards in the tent after the kids had gone to bed. ‘You might even get to like camping.’
‘You must be joking!’ I shook my head. ‘I hate this bloody tent. It smells of damp and it’s full of wet sand and it’s cold all the time.’
Cleo laughed. ‘Poor Paula.’
‘You can laugh,’ I said bitterly. ‘Your hair hasn’t turned into basic frizz because of the damp. And you weren’t meant to be in Barbados!’
‘You miss him, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘No.’ I bit my lip.
‘Why don’t you phone him?’ suggested Frankie. ‘You owe it to yourself, Paula. A second chance, maybe?’
I shook my head. ‘He has his second chance,’ I said bitterly. ‘And it’s at being on his own again. Why would he want anything else?’
Amazingly, on the next day, the clouds lifted completely. I’d grown so accustomed to hearing the sound of the rain drumming against the roof of the tent that I couldn’t figure out what the difference was when I woke up at seven the following morning. And then I realized that it was the lack of noise that had woken me. That, and possibly the sound of the birds chirping happily in the trees.
The sunlight gave everything a changed perspective. The trees swayed gently against a bright blue sky. The green and red tents looked bright and cheerful in the glare of the sun. The top layer of sand had dried to a shade of pale gold. And the kids hurried out of the tents before they were even called.
Later that afternoon, when everyone else was out on the boats, I walked up the narrow country road to the collection of shops and cafés. It was growing warmer, the scent of multi-coloured flowers filled the air and, suddenly, I felt almost happy. But there was an empty space inside which ached for Mike. I knew that I still loved him. It was simply that I wasn’t sure whether I liked him.
I sat down at one of the pavement tables and ordered a coffee. It came in a huge bright yellow cup with a tiny pot of hot milk and two oblongs of sugar, served by a pretty, gamine waitress who smiled cheerfully as she sat it down in front of me.
Girls' Night In Page 32
