Having A Lovely Time by Jenny Eclair

Author:Jenny Eclair [Eclair, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405525404
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2012-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

26

Wild Boar and

Rose-tinted Glasses

Saul is mulling something over. He’s not sure but he thinks a girl, just a bit older than him, might have been rude to him at breakfast. She’d been watching him piling his plate with fruit and buns and boiled eggs and salami.

‘I’m famished,’ he’d told her, but she’d just tossed a brown ponytail and snorted, ‘Tell that to the Africans.’

‘Tabitha, do you think I’m fat?’

Tabitha swigs her drink before responding.

‘Am I? Am I a lard arse, a dough ball, a chubster freak?’ They are sitting outside in the mid-morning sun; the aluminium café table is as warm as a radiator.

‘Is that why you ordered a Diet Coke?’ his sister replies.

Saul picks up his T-shirt and counts four rolls of flesh.

‘It’s puppy fat,’ reassures Tabitha. ‘Dad was like you when he was your age. I’ve seen the photos.’

‘Oh good,’ says Saul, and he wanders over to the counter and orders an ice cream. Tabitha oinks like a pig behind his back. ‘It’s not for me, it’s for Freya,’ he lies.

Tabitha and Saul are looking after Freya. It feels a bit like that time Saul got to take the guinea pig home from nursery, a vicious ginger and black creature with sharp yellow teeth and loose bowels. Freya should be a breeze by comparison.

Nina wasn’t keen on the idea. ‘What if she runs out into the road?’

‘It’s pedestrianised,’ Joe had sighed, his patience worn perilously thin, as dangerous as a bald tyre on a motorway. Nina is getting on his nerves. ‘She can’t sit on your knee for ever.’

Why not? thinks Nina, trailing miserably after Joe. They’re only going to the chemist up the road. Freya needs a new bottle – she threw her favourite Tweenies one over the balcony back at the apartment. Saul ran down to fetch it but it was cracked. Of course it was – everything on this holiday is cracking and breaking. Nina cannot rid herself of this feeling of impending doom.

Normally she’d be in her element. The temperature is already in the eighties and the shops are loads better than she was expecting. A few of them are shut because it’s a Sunday, but most of the gift shops, the supermarket and a couple of little delis are open. If she didn’t feel so paranoid she could be having a nice time.

I have felt sick ever since we arrived, Nina admits silently to herself. I feel sick because I saw something, correction, I saw someone yesterday, who reminded me of a night I have been trying to forget for over three years. It’s guilt, she tells herself, it plays tricks with your eyes, it isn’t the same person, it can’t be. She’s not ready for her luck to run out, not yet, not now. ‘Joe, wait for me!’ she yelps, but he just keeps on walking.

Freya is being very good. She is wearing a yellow dress with a matching sunhat. Tabitha and Saul let her eat brown sugarlumps out of a little stainless-steel bowl.

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