Читать книгу The Birthday That Changed Everything: Perfect summer holiday reading! - Debbie Johnson, Debbie Johnson - Страница 12

There was a stunned silence as I walked into the Blue Bay Hotel’s poolside bar to catch the last few minutes of our welcome meeting.

The rep’s voice trailed off to a stammering standstill, and a gentle murmur of surprise did a noticeable Mexican wave around my fellow holiday-makers.

As I sat down, I was feeling decidedly nervous. Even under normal circumstances – without lost suitcases and the sudden appearance of sex aids – I wasn’t used to doing this kind of thing on my own.

Every holiday I’d been on for the last seventeen years had been with Simon. Simon was good at social situations. He was charming and confident and always completely at home in a room full of strangers. I usually got away with being the support act, something I had rather pathetically mastered over the years. Now I was on a steep learning curve to becoming Miss Independent, and I can’t say I was enjoying the climb that much.

I’d been left with two options – staying cooped up in the hotel with two surly teenagers waiting for a stray suitcase to turn up. Or finding an alternative way forward. I had things to do, people to meet. I wanted to sign up for sailing lessons, take mountain-bike rides through the hills and perfect my serve. It was kill or cure – either I’d simultaneously find my inner strength and lose a stone, or I’d drop dead of a heart attack.

More to the point, I wanted to go downstairs because I was absolutely gagging for a drink – it had been a long day. Travelling is never easy, but doing it mid-marriage collapse and accompanied by the alien beings known as teenagers is torturous.

After a few wardrobe malfunctions and a lot of swearing, I eventually found something I thought I could live with, and made my way downstairs into the midday heat. It wasn’t the perfect outfit choice, but it covered my bits at least.

I sat alone; glancing around, I saw that every other table was filled with smiling couples and their children. Children who didn’t hate their parents. Husbands who hadn’t run off with Latvian lap-dancers.

More to the point, they were all dressed in nice, normal clothes. Colourful swimwear, sarongs, shorts, bright T-shirts – nothing more outrageous than a straw hat at a rakish angle. Their suitcases had obviously been packed by smart-casual beachwear experts.

Mine, on the other hand, had been packed by a pair of perverts from the West Midlands – which explained why I was wearing a Naughty Nurse Nancy costume, complete with shiny white plastic miniskirt and a name tag that said ‘Sister Slut’.

All in all, it was a less than perfect start to my allegedly perfect holiday.