A Proper Family Holiday by Chrissie Manby Read Free Book Online

cottage all day long, playing Connect Four and Pictionary until a fight broke out.
    ‘Sophie, I don’t know what I can do about it,’ Ronnie pleaded. ‘We’ve only got two rooms.’
    ‘You don’t understand me. You make no effort to understand me. First, you stop me from going to Berlin. The only other person who didn’t go to Berlin was Shelley Tibbetts, by the way …’ Sophie’s lip curled in disgust as she named the least popular girl in her school year, a poor girl who had such outrageous BO that even some of the teachers gossiped about her. ‘And now you’re going to force me to share with my brother and he’ll see me in my bra and he’ll tell his school friends all about it.’
    Ronnie closed her eyes. ‘He’s six, Sophie. Jack’s not going to talk about your bra to anybody. He still thinks babies are delivered by Amazon.’ That was Mark’s joke.
    Sophie wasn’t listening. ‘You treat me like I’m still a child, but I’m not. I’m nearly sixteen years old, for God’s sake. I need my independence.’
    ‘All right, all right, I’ll see what I can do.’
    What could she do? In desperation Ronnie called reception and asked for a collapsible bed to put in the corner of the room she and Mark would be sleeping in. It wasn’t as though they were planning to have a load of hot sex anyway. Ronnie got no joy from the receptionist, though. This being the school holiday season, the hotel was full and every spare bed had already been pressed into use. Sophie would have to share.
    ‘You’re ruining my life,’ was Sophie’s measured response again. She refused to utter a further word to her mother while they unpacked the suitcases.
    When Ronnie and Sophie finally got back outside, Sophie stormed to the low wall that surrounded the hotel complex and sat there looking out to sea in grand dudgeon. She refused even to join her family for lunch. Some holiday this was turning out to be. They’d been in the resort for less than two hours and already Ronnie’s daughter wasn’t speaking to her. And then Chelsea texted in response to Ronnie’s question about her flight: ‘Unless I can arrange a bomb scare.’ What was that supposed to mean? Could she make it any more obvious that she didn’t want to come?
    The day didn’t get much better. Sophie managed to sulk for the best part of six hours without a break. She didn’t even change out of her black skinny jeans, despite the blazing sunshine. Jack, meanwhile, would not stop asking when Auntie Chelsea was going to arrive. It was ‘Auntie Chelsea this, Auntie Chelsea that’ all the long afternoon. And of course Mark got right into the holiday spirit by tucking into the beers as though it was New Year’s Eve. By the time the family had finished dinner, with Sophie refusing to eat anything except three chips and Jack having a choking fit when he tried to emulate his father downing a pint by knocking back his own overly large glass of fake Coca-Cola, Ronnie was almost ready to go back to Coventry.
    She fell into bed.
    ‘I think we’re going to have a good week here,’ said Mark, as he flumped down on the mattress beside her.
    ‘Hmmmph,’ said Ronnie from the depths of the pillows. It was all right for Mark. The minute he stepped off the plane, he’d shed his responsibilities. Meanwhile, Ronnie already felt as though she wanted to go back to work for a rest. She may have travelled almost as far as Africa to ‘get away from it all’, but she’d brought her biggest stressors with her. If only Chelsea were the kind of sister whose arrival would make everything easier.

Chapter Seven
    Chelsea
    Sunday
    Chelsea’s free day at Gatwick had actually ended up being another workday. When Davina finally woke up and looked over the changes Chelsea had made to the Eugenia Lapkiss article, she had plenty of suggestions of her own, which Chelsea had to implement from the dressing table in her hotel room. There were other pieces to be worked on too. Chelsea’s boss