The Mini Break by Jane Costello

Author:Jane Costello [Costello, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9781471134982
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

Chapter 1

Wandsworth, London, July 2012

My make-up bag doesn’t look like that of a woman who’ll be checking into one of the world’s most glamorous hotels the day after tomorrow. Even I know that, with my stunted enthusiasm for these things. There are lots of lipsticks – the only cosmetics I ever seem to buy (intermittently in a bid to ‘make an effort’) – plus a Rimmel concealer, dehydrated mascara and something called a ‘chubby stick’ donated by Meredith. That’s pretty much it.

It strikes me how bad I’ve become at the things girls are meant to be good at.

I never used to be. Once upon a time, I was into this sort of thing. But for someone who takes their job as seriously as I do, flaunting your assets is not a good idea. Part of me thinks that if any boss has an issue with glamour and femininity in the workplace, then it should be the patriarchy’s look out, but the reality is it rarely works like that. If I turned up at the office all pouty lips and filigree undies, my reputation would never recover – and not just because letting my boobs off the leash of their control bra would be such a hideous distraction that I might as well go the whole hog and stick two Mr Whippy cornets on each one.

But, if I’m honest, wanting to be taken seriously at work isn’t the whole story. The whole story is a long and complicated one, and can probably be summarised thus: I have other priorities now.

Still, this trip will be good for me, as everyone keeps saying.

Part of me can’t believe I’ve never been on a holiday as luxurious as this. Although, to be fair, I’ve had hardly any holidays in the last four and a half years, unless you count

Center Parcs.

‘Mummy!’ my four-year-old daughter, Florence, cries from her bedroom. ‘Something’s . . . happened. But it was only an accident.’

Florence, who was named after her father’s birthplace, might have the voice of an angel but there are few sentences capable of making my heart sink faster.

I optimistically interpret her tone as being insufficiently urgent to qualify as a true emergency.

‘What kind of accident?’ I ask lightly, piling my clothes into the bag, deliberately stalling before I face whatever disaster has befallen her.

‘Well . . . will you be cross?’

I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know – what have you done?’

‘It wasn’t me. And, anyway, it’s okay because it was only an accident.’

I abandon my packing and head across the hall to her tiny bedroom.

We moved here last year because it’s in the catchment area of the exceptionally good state school where Florence will start in September. This monumental date in my daughter’s diary unfortunately coincides with our company’s most important day of the decade – a headache I have put off tackling because it involves an impossible choice: get my friend and neighbour Debbie to take her to school on her first day there, or face being burned at the stake by my boss – or something like that.

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