Читать книгу The Mini-Break - Maddie Please - Страница 6

Five years ago, my sister and I were skiing together (Val d’Isère, a chalet full of our friends and a case of Grey Goose vodka to get the party going) and Jassy took a tumble and dislocated her knee. Apart from the pain – which must have been awful – she was furious. She’d made us get new salopettes for the holiday too, really attractive, and matching fur-bobble hats. There were paparazzi all over the place photographing some Swedish princess and her family, but instead we attracted all the publicity, the sort Jassy wasn’t used to.

After several weeks of medical attention and physio we thought her knee was healed, but then in January she was on the ice rink at Somerset House, fell over and as a result needed an operation. Leg in plaster, the works.

The trouble was, with Jassy’s knee and with me going through a bad patch with Benedict after a rather disappointing Valentine’s Day, both of us had lost focus. We needed a break. Jassy came up with a plan and as usual she was very persuasive; she had a first draft of her latest book to finish while her husband was away in the West Indies, commentating on some mind-numbing cricket matches, and from all the media evidence, enjoying himself a bit too much out of the commentary box.

I had some structural edits to do on Choose Yes (okay, more of a rewrite if I’m honest) and a partner who was starting to get on my nerves. I know Benedict was stressed at work and I did sympathise, but all he ever seemed to do was complain loudly and at length about colleagues who were being more annoying and incompetent than usual. I really needed some peace and quiet, no arguments about whose turn it is to put the recycling out or when the water filter was last changed. Benedict is very particular about the water filter, you’d think what came out of the tap was poisonous.

And so, there were lots of reasons why we had borrowed our literary agent’s holiday house near Dartmoor. Jassy thought it was a good idea and it sounded fun. We would take some time out to get our writing wagons into a circle, do some proper work and recover after the alcohol-fuelled madness that had been our Christmas and New Year.

Sally had described in mouth-watering detail the glorious view across pretty fields and opening the diamond-paned windows to breathe in great lungfuls of clean air. Which is a joke as she smokes like a chimney.

We pictured ourselves sitting in comfortable armchairs next to a gorgeous fire. Jassy would be wrapped up in her pink cashmere robe, with her laptop open on her good knee. I’d be flicking through my proofs, ticking things off with the silver propelling pencil Jassy gave me for Christmas. Occasionally we would look up and grin at each other, pleased with the way things had worked out.

Peace, quiet, rest, lovely meals, large glasses of Merlot glowing like rubies in the firelight. I imagined a bird feeder in the window with all sorts of little birds fluttering around it.

Well it wasn’t a bit like that.

*

For a start the weather was rubbish. But then it was February in Devon. I suppose we should have expected horizontal rain and red mud everywhere.

One week in and I wanted to go back to London with just about every atom in my body. Back then my idea of a breath-taking view was the glass canyons of Knightsbridge. I’d been invited to a really brilliant birthday party at the V&A and turned it down to come here. What was I doing there with only sheep and my sister for company?

You might well ask.

I write romances – the sort where ditzy girls take over cafés or inherit cottages from their godmothers and find a wonderful and passionate love with the local surfer dude. I’ve written a whole series of medical romances too where the handsome surgeon falls in love with the feisty little nurse. Don’t sneer, you’ve read them, you’ve heard of me: Lulu Darling. I’ve sold millions of books; I know what I’m doing.

I look like one of my sweet-faced heroines too. Blonde and cute, and almost tiny enough to tuck in your pocket.

Just try it, Buster – all those years of writing about something that didn’t exist had knocked my corners off a bit. And the last few years had reinforced my rather jaundiced view of men, relationships, love and all that sort of thing.

My sister is pretty. She looks clever too, in a dark-haired, high-cheekboned sort of way that makes people assume she’s pondering deep thoughts when in fact she’s probably wondering if it’s possible to drown someone in a kitchen sink or poison a husband with household products without leaving evidence. That’s the sort of book Jassy writes you see, and she’s very successful too. But by the end of last year she was seriously behind with her latest book and her publisher was starting to nag. In a polite way, of course, because Jassy sells almost as many books as I do.

We were the Darling sisters after all: a brand, a sparkling little oasis of success in the middle of the dark scramble for sales. We were photographed at glossy events. We went to glamorous parties. Designers lent us stuff.

Jassy was asked to go into the last Big Brother House. Of course she refused; we do have some standards. I’ve been on Have I Got News For You because apparently my ample chest made them think I’d be an easy target for mild sexist banter. They were so wrong. They won’t try that again.

*

Very quickly I realised coming to Devon had been a mistake and while she didn’t say much I could tell Jassy thought the same. I think she felt more responsible because she had talked me into it. Not that she would ever admit it.

The house was lovely though. Sally had spent a fair bit of money doing it up – you know the sort of thing, Crucial Trading floor tiles, a pink Aga in the huge kitchen, and in the beamed sitting room, velvet sofas that were really comfortable. But it felt literally bloody miles from anywhere.

I wasn’t used to that; I was used to corner shops that were open all hours of the day and night, takeaway cafés and patisseries, wine merchants who deliver, Ubers at the touch of a phone. Barracane House was stuck on a sloping field in the middle of nowhere. As for the magnificent views, we couldn’t see them through the rain and the low cloud. The road to the house was an unmetalled track that had turned into a mudslide and the wind (which never seemed to slacken) howled up the hill straight towards the front door. Benedict would have been horrified.

We didn’t sit and work next to a glorious log fire because the wind kept blowing down the chimney the wrong way, puffing smoke into the room. There was intermittent mobile phone signal, pathetic or no broadband, and Jassy had forgotten her laptop cable so it ran out of charge after three days.

As far as the delicious meals went, we’d forgotten that we would have to prepare them and neither of us knew 1) how to cook the sort of meals we had imagined or 2) use an Aga. So the whole experience had been an unqualified disaster.

On top of that it was getting colder by the day.

And then I got a puncture.

*

I’d been looking out of the window, sick to death with my latest work in progress, not even able to email Benedict because of the rubbish Wi-Fi, wondering if I knew enough about vicars to work one into the story, when I noticed my car was on a slant. I tried to persuade myself I had parked on an uneven bit of ground, but closer inspection showed a flat rear tyre.

‘Phone the AA,’ Jassy said, looking panic-stricken.

By this point she was certainly not lying on the sofa being creative and taking inspiration from the glorious countryside outside our windows. And she had been forcibly reminded that while I am a fun companion and have a certain amount of superficial medical knowledge gleaned from my foray into hospital romances, I’m a rubbish nurse. The idea that we might go home was beginning to appeal to both of us.

I pulled out my mobile and waved it at her.

‘The house phone doesn’t work and there’s no phone signal, remember?’ I said.

Jassy whimpered under her blanket. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive. I even went to the top of the mountain yesterday to check, not even one bar of reception at the moment.’

Thinking more clearly, it wasn’t a mountain, more of a hill. But you see I wasn’t used to that either. Where I lived was all lifts, escalators and flat pavements.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I could go for help?’ I said doubtfully.

I looked out of the window at the dark afternoon and the rain lashing against the windows. There was a sudden ghostly howling noise in the hallway and Jassy hid her face in her hands.

‘What the hell was that?’ she whimpered at last. ‘Go and look. Quick!’

Great. So now not only was I driver, cook, nurse and bottle washer but also Security apparently. I didn’t want to go out onto the cold, flagstoned hall any more than Jassy did, but as I hesitated she rubbed her injured knee and gave me a pitiful look.

I wrapped my throw more tightly around my shoulders, picked up the nearest solid object for protection and peered out into the hallway.

‘I’ve got a gun,’ I shouted bravely and waved my weapon above my head. I swiftly realised the wind must have changed direction and it was now wailing through the letterbox. Which was just as well because I wouldn’t do much damage to an intruder with a Limoges ceramic banana.

After Jassy stopped howling with laughter we had a quick discussion about what would be the best thing to do and I stuffed the letterbox with a tea towel. It wasn’t as though we were going to be receiving any post, was it?

‘While you’re out there, can you bring another bottle of wine?’ Jassy shouted from her cosy nest on the sofa. Somehow she managed to sound imperious and feeble at the same time.

*

Two days later I was progressing quite well with my latest novel, but Jassy was moaning that working with a pen and paper was akin to medieval torture and we were down to our last six bottles of wine. Okay, we still had some gin and some weird green liqueur. We’d bought it in France years ago because it had a rather suggestive-shaped bottle, but we’d never opened it. At this rate we would have to. I bet it was horrible too; one of those really sweet, yucky drinks that needs to be camouflaged with five other ingredients to make a cocktail with a stupid name that is embarrassing to order. Like Big Dick or A Bonk Please.

I was looking out of the window at the rain, wondering if my latest heroine would be better off a tragic widow rather than a dumped bride. I kept changing my mind. I wondered what Benedict was doing and how he was coping without me. I bet he hadn’t remembered to put the recycling out.

It was so incredibly quiet that I think we could have heard our hair growing if Jassy had turned the radio off.

I heard his tractor coming up the lane a long time before I saw him. I sat up in my chair, like a dog hearing the rattle of a biscuit tin and, realising what it was, I made a dash for the door.

I stood in the middle of the lane, waving my arms above my head, almost weeping with relief at the thought of speaking to someone other than Jassy.

He slowed to a muddy halt, opened the tractor door and shouted down from the height of his seat.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, yes, no actually,’ I gabbled. It was still raining and in seconds my newly washed hair was plastered to my head, not an attractive look and he – the tractor person – was rather eye-catching.

‘Do you need help?’ he said, and he climbed down from his cab. My first close-up view was of his Hunter wellington boots, which were reassuringly large.

Did I need help? Well yes I did. He looked a capable sort too, and very tall, at least six feet four I would guess, and wrapped up in a big waxed jacket. He was rather broad, with bright blue eyes in a tanned face, actually quite yummy under different circumstances.

‘Yes,’ I shouted, ‘yes I do!’ By now I was so excited I was hopping from foot to foot.

‘Well?’ He raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to go on.

‘Have you got a charging cable for a MacBook Air?’

He looked puzzled.

‘A what?’

‘It’s my sister. Jassy. Her laptop has run out of charge and she’s forgotten …’

My voice tailed off as I realised the idiocy of my question. Of course he didn’t have a bloody charging cable for my sister’s laptop. I’d be surprised if he’d ever heard of a MacBook Air or broadband or electricity for that matter.

He grinned at me, a big sort of Olympic-standard grin that would have been lovely if it hadn’t been directed towards my daftness.

‘Have you tried putting a new elastic band in it?’ he said.

I stopped to process this idea with my mouth open and then realised he was almost laughing at me.

‘No, but thank you for the suggestion,’ I said with more than a touch of acidity, wiping the rain out of my eyes. This was perhaps a mistake as I had been messing about with flicky eyeliner that morning; anything to postpone the evil hour when I would have to get on with some writing.

‘Well, have you considered putting some shoes on?’ he said.

We both looked down at my feet, which were encased in blue cashmere socks and mud. I’d been so keen to dash out and stop him I’d forgotten about putting on wellingtons.

‘I came over because my mother said she saw lights on the other day. Wanted to make sure there weren’t squatters or burglars. You’re not from round here are you?’ he said, and now he really was laughing.

‘No, I’m not,’ I said, almost tearful. ‘I’m from a place with proper roads and shops and phone reception. I need to somehow get in touch with a garage or the AA so they can fix my flat tyre and my sister and I can get back home!’

‘Got a puncture, have you?’ he said.

No, I just let the air out of my tyre for the fun of it.

I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I have.’

It’s the only thing keeping me here in this bloody place.

‘Well, perhaps I could help?’ he said.

‘What? What? Really?’ I spluttered, my heart lifting.

‘Have you got a spare tyre?’

I had no idea. How should I know?

Surely they had to give you a spare tyre when you bought a car? Wasn’t it the law? But if he wanted to know where it was I was scuppered. I’d only had the car for three months. I didn’t actually know how to open the bonnet either.

‘Of course,’ I said at last, in a confident voice.

The rain was now lashing down and my feet were frozen. It was getting dark too, which made the whole thing even more depressing.

‘I’ll pop back then,’ he said and he climbed back into his tractor.

He started up the engine with a throaty roar, turned round in a nearby gateway and drove back the way he had come, leaving me sopping wet and muddy.

‘When?’ I yelled after him as he passed me. ‘When will you pop back?’ but all I got was a jaunty wave.

I went back into the house and stood peeling off my muddy socks.

‘God, shut the bloody door!’ Jassy shouted.

I did so with feeling and went to get a towel to dry my hair.

‘Who was that?’ she said. ‘And why are you so wet? You’ve got black splodges all over your face.’

‘I don’t know and because it’s pissing down,’ I replied, glancing in a mirror and realising I looked like a sad clown. I scrubbed at the black streaks with a tissue. ‘He was passing because someone had noticed there were lights on and he was checking we weren’t squatters.’

‘Who in their right mind would squat here?’ Jassy grumbled.

‘He’s offered to do the spare tyre.’

Jassy brightened up. ‘Oh my godfathers! When?’

‘Don’t know, he says he’s going to pop back.’

‘Pop? Pop back? Oh FFS! It took ages for him to notice we were here in the first place so I won’t hold my breath!’ Jassy said. ‘Why didn’t you grab him, Lulu? Make him do it now?’

‘Because it’s getting dark and it’s bloody raining!’ I said, furious with myself for not doing exactly that.

‘Jeez,’ Jassy said, sending me a dirty look, ‘we could have been out of here in the morning. We could have made it to Kirsten’s book launch. Now I expect we’ll be stuck here for another fortnight. We’re going to die here, starve to death. Sally will eventually realise I still haven’t delivered Evil Has a Price and then she’ll come looking for me with a bread knife. By then it will be too late and all because you didn’t ask some filthy old farmer to change a tyre.’

‘Actually he wasn’t filthy or old. He was rather attractive,’ I said, but Jassy wasn’t listening, she was too busy refilling her wine glass.