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  ‘I don’t think either of us understood what we were really doing when we took such different approaches to life. We just took up our opposite positions and refused to even try to see life from each other’s point of view. Each of us was so sure that we were doing things the right way.’

  ‘I’m sorry for all the times I lectured you about putting your life in order.’

  ‘My bank balance is deeply sorry for all those times I didn’t listen. And I’m sorry for all those times I ragged on you for being such a square. It wasn’t fair.’

  ‘But I was a square.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Amazing what putting yourself into someone else’s shoes can do,’ said Clare.

  ‘Quite literally,’ said Rosie. ‘Who knew walking could be so much fun.’

  ‘Or dancing. Or just asking boys to admire your painted toenails.’

  Clare stretched out her leg and twisted her foot from side to side so that the glittery polish of her pedicure caught the light.

  ‘So, what are we going to do with this change of perspective?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Will you come with me when I go to see my bank manager?’ Rosie asked.

  Clare said she would. ‘And will you help me find some pretty summer dresses for my wardrobe?’

  Rosie said she’d be delighted.

  ‘I got that promotion,’ Clare continued. ‘Turns out that your blue dress made my presentation especially memorable.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Rosie. ‘You knew you were going to nail it.’

  ‘Yes. But I think having to nail it in a long blue maxi dress gave me that extra oomph. And if I hadn’t had to try to get through the whole conference in fancy dress, I might never have had that conversation with Holly and I wouldn’t have written to Ryan and I wouldn’t have ended up spending the weekend with him in Barcelona.’

  The twins chinked mugs.

  ‘And if I hadn’t been able to put on your trainers, I’d never have gone walking with Joe.’

  They chinked mugs again. Rosie confirmed that she had a date with Joe arranged for the following evening. She could hardly wait.

  ‘Whatever happens, from now on I’m going to try to be a bit more like you,’ said Rosie.

  ‘And I,’ said Clare. ‘Am definitely going to try to be a little bit more like you.’

  They shook on it.

  ‘With that in mind,’ said Rosie. ‘I wonder if you’d mind if I borrowed your lovely Donna Karan dress tomorrow night…’

  THE END

  About the Author

  Chrissie Manby is The Sunday Times best-selling author of Seven Sunny Days, The Matchbreaker and Getting Over Mr Right. She also writes upmarket commercial fiction as Olivia Darling and erotica as Stephanie Ash and Stella Knightley.

  If you enjoyed this novella, you might like Chrissie’s new novel, A Proper Family Holiday. Here’s an extract!

  A Proper Family Holiday

  Could you survive a week-long holiday with your entire family?

  Newly single magazine journalist Chelsea Benson can't think of anything worse.

  Your grubby small nephew torpedoing any chance of romance with the dishy guy you met on the plane . . . Your eighty-five-year-old granddad chatting up ladies at the hotel bar . . . Getting nothing but sarcastic comments from your older sister, who's always been the family favourite . . . And all this is before your parents drop their bombshell.

  Is a week in Lanzarote enough time for the Bensons to put their differences aside and have some fun? Or is this their last ever proper family holiday?

  A Proper Family Holiday

  Prologue

  Of the many family photographs that graced the shelves in Jacqui Benson’s living room, there were three of which she was particularly fond. The first, taken in the mid nineteen-eighties, was a photograph of an apple-cheeked baby girl, her younger daughter Chelsea, smiling in toothless delight as her grandfather Bill held her for her first paddle in the shallows of the sea. Chelsea’s big sister Ronnie, just two, stood alongside, gripping their father Dave’s hand for balance. Ronnie’s smile was big and proud as she waved a plastic spade at her mother behind the camera. That photograph was taken at Littlehampton, on a rare bright day in a fortnight of rain. They were staying in a borrowed caravan that smelled of Benson and Hedges and wet dog, but didn’t they have a great time?

  The second photograph had been taken four years later. Same resort. Different caravan. Chelsea was five by now and Ronnie was six and a half. This time, neither sister needed an adult for support as they dashed in and out of the sea. Together with Granddad Bill, they had built a sandcastle and were filling the moat bucket by bucket. It was a thankless task; they spent the entire afternoon going backwards and forwards, spilling more than they managed to tip into the channel and finding it soaked away altogether before they got back with another load. In the photograph, the sun was shining, though Jacqui remembered it as another wet fortnight. Stormy even. Wasn’t that the holiday where the caravan’s awning blew away in the middle of the night? All the same, they had a laugh.

  The third photograph was taken in the late nineteen-nineties. Littlehampton again. Granddad Bill liked the old-fashioned seaside town so much he’d bought a static van on a proper full service campsite when he retired. It was a great idea.– free holidays for all the family when money was especially tight. In this photograph, the girls were on the beach once more but they were too old for paddling and sandcastles now. They’d spent the morning – a brief respite of sunshine in a fortnight of near monsoon conditions – stretched out on their beach towels, listening to music, playing it super cool whenever a good-looking boy walked by and dissolving into giggles once he was past them. They sat up for the photograph, taken by their father. Ronnie had slung her arm round her sister Chelsea’s shoulders. Chelsea’s expression, eyes rolling even as she tried not to laugh, suggested their dad had just told one of his ‘jokes’. This photograph was especially precious to Jacqui. It was the last photograph she had of her daughters together, great friends as well as sisters, enjoying each other’s company on a family holiday.

  Sixteen years later, Jacqui had decided that it was time to recreate that togetherness again. Only this time with more reliable weather.

  Chapter One

  Chelsea

  Saturday morning, five thirty-seven. The alarm clock on Chelsea Benson’s bedside table had been going off for five whole minutes. Chelsea remained in a deep slumber, flat on her back, legs and arms spread wide like a starfish and snoring so hard that her breath actually stirred the panels of the Japanese paper lampshade hanging above her bed.

  Six twenty-three. The alarm had been sounding for fifty-one minutes. Chelsea snored on. She was finally woken by the sound of hammering on the front door of her flat and staggered to answer it, still half-asleep. Her next-door neighbour, Pete, stood on the doorstep in his pyjamas.

  ‘You’re in. I told myself she can’t be in. I told myself it would stop automatically. Or the batteries would run out. Or . . . or . . .’

  With a good portion of her brain still stuck in the Land of Nod, Chelsea looked at Pete in confusion.

  ‘Your alarm clock!’ Pete spluttered. ‘I can hear it through the walls.’

  ‘Be-be-beep, be-be-beep, be-be-beep . . .’ The little clock had not given up.

  As if hearing the alarm for the very first time, Chelsea turned back towards her bedroom.

  ‘No!’ She was suddenly very wide awake indeed. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s twenty-five past six on a Saturday morning!’

  ‘Sorry, Pete. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.’

  She closed the door as quickly as she could without causing offence, then raced for her bedroom, turning off the alarm clock with a slam to its button while simultaneously working out her next move. Her brand-new wheelie case, still empty and bearing its shop tags, was on the floor by the wardrobe. The pile of holiday ironing she had meant to tackle the previous night was still resolutely w
rinkled. No time to fix that. Her passport was . . . where on earth was her passport?

  Now Chelsea’s mobile phone was vibrating on the dressing table.

  ‘I hope U R on yr way 2 Gatwick.’

  It was a message from her sister Ronnie, who, together with her partner Mark and their two children, Jack and Sophie, was already on her way from her home in Coventry to Birmingham Airport. There was no time to respond.

  Chelsea chewed on her electric toothbrush as she threw clothes in the general direction of the suitcase. She hopped into the dress she’d been wearing the previous evening and dragged a wide-toothed comb through her wavy brown hair. The undeniably gorgeous dress at least made her look a little more put-together and looking more put-together always made her feel more put-together, which was useful. Despite the hurry, Chelsea paused for a moment and looked more carefully at the clothes she was planning to pack. Her favourite Chloe tunic? Check. Hepburn-style capris by Michael Kors? Check. Three new designer kaftans that were very Talitha Getty circa 1965? Check. Chelsea wasn’t sure it was the perfect holiday capsule wardrobe but it was certainly getting there.

  ‘Passport?’ Chelsea muttered.

  She spotted her passport on the table by the front door with her keys. Of course. She’d put it there so she wouldn’t forget it. Six forty-five. She could still do this. She could still be on time and looking pretty stylish too, she thought as she glanced in the mirror. The beautiful dress was made perfect for travelling with ballet flats and a fitted denim jacket. She stuck her bug-eyed Oliver Peoples sunglasses in her hair and gave herself a quick pout. Yes. Looking all right, considering.

  It was only as she got to the Tube station at Stockwell that Chelsea realised her passport was still in the very place she had put it to make certain it was not left behind.

  ‘Aaaaaaagh!’

  Seven fifteen. Chelsea was back at the Tube station with her passport.

  ‘There are slight delays on the Victoria Line . . .’

  Eight thirty-five. Chelsea stumbled off the train at Gatwick Airport. Her new wheelie case was more unwieldy than the average shopping trolley. It had gone totally rogue. Which terminal? North or South? She didn’t have a clue.

  ‘We’re checking in now,’ said her sister’s latest text message. ‘Are you even at your airport?’

  Chelsea found her airline. North Terminal. She made a run for it.

  The girl on the check-in desk agreed it seemed cruel that she could not allow Chelsea to board her scheduled flight, even though the delayed nine o’clock to Lanzarote would be on the stand for at least another forty minutes as it waited for a take-off slot.

  ‘But I can put you on a flight for tomorrow,’ the girl suggested. ‘I’m amazed there’s space, to be honest. It is the school holidays.’

  ‘Of course,’ Chelsea sighed. Everybody was going away. The airport was absolutely heaving with new wheelie cases and their amateur drivers. Chelsea especially hated those stupid bloody Trunkis. Even as she stood at the check-in desk, a four-year-old boy was ramming a green one painted to look like a frog into the back of her ankles.

  ‘Is tomorrow the best you can do?’ Chelsea asked the check-in girl again.

  ‘Unless you want to swim there,’ the girl joked. ‘Sorry. There are no more flights today.’

  Had she any choice in the matter, at this point Chelsea would have given up on the whole idea of a week away, cut her losses and headed home. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any choice in the matter at all. ‘Stick me on tomorrow’s flight,’ she said.

  The girl put out her hand expectantly.

  ‘I’ll need your credit card. Your old ticket isn’t exchangeable.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘Oh.’ Having done some more tapping on her keyboard, the girl winced as though feeling the pain of what she was to say next. ‘And I’m afraid you’ll have to buy a different flight home as well. Because the return portion of this ticket is dependent on your having flown out there today.’

  ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘It’s in the conditions of your fare. The only available return flight is next Sunday. The total cost is three hundred and sixty-five pounds forty. Unless you also want to check in some luggage? That’s another twenty-five pounds per item.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ Chelsea cried. She gave her credit card to the girl on the check-in desk, then turned and glared at the child with the ankle-bashing Trunki. He glared right back at her and gave her one more bash on the heels for luck.

  It wasn’t as though Chelsea wanted to go to Lanzarote anyway. Lanza-grotty, as the girls in her office all called it, had never featured high on Chelsea’s list of places to see before she died. Chelsea was sure she knew everything there was to know about the tiny island. It was a volcanic dustbowl with nothing but slate-grey beaches. It was overrun with Brits. Every once passably beautiful bay or romantic cove now sported a burger bar and an Irish pub with an enormous flat-screen TV showing non-stop Sky Sports. The airlines that flew to Arrecife airport said it all, as far as Chelsea was concerned. British Airways didn’t go there. Serena, Chelsea’s colleague at Society, the monthly fashion and gossip magazine where Chelsea was assistant features editor, said that one should never fly to an airport that isn’t served by British Airways. With the exception of Mustique.

  Chelsea hadn’t even told Serena she was going to Lanzarote. She just said ‘Spain’ and let Serena and the other uber-posh girls in the Society office imagine a carefully refurbished finca in an orange grove just outside Cadiz. Serena would have recoiled in horror at the very idea of the Hotel Volcan in Playa Brava, with its sports bar, mini-golf and ‘Kidz Klub’. Its functional bedrooms with their wipe-clean walls would never feature in a coffee-table book by Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that’s for sure. The moment Chelsea clicked on the hotel website and looked at a depressing shot of an en-suite bathroom, she fancied she could actually smell the tiny bars of cheap white soap and feel the scratchy pink toilet paper that must not, under any circumstances, be flushed down the loo. Nothing turned Chelsea’s stomach faster than the thought of a holiday resort without adequate plumbing. But what could Chelsea have said when her mother Jacqui called, so full of excitement to confirm that the Lanzarote trip was on?

  ‘We’re going to the Hotel Volcan. They can put us all on the same floor with disabled access,’ said Jacqui.

  Same floor and disabled access. Such considerations were extremely important when your party included at one end of the scale an adventurous six-year-old and at the other end an eighty-five-year-old who was about as steady on his feet as a newborn wildebeest suckled on Guinness. Five rooms had to be booked in all, for this was to be a ‘proper family holiday’ involving the entire Benson clan – six adults and two children. No one was to be left out. No matter how much they might wish to be.

  This proper family holiday was Jacqui Benson’s idea of the perfect way to celebrate her upcoming sixtieth birthday. It was Chelsea’s idea of pure hell.