A Proper Family Holiday Read Free

tried to play it cool, of course, but Ronnie knew her daughter was secretly pleased and relieved to be able to tell the girls at school she would be going on a proper foreign holiday that summer after all. Meanwhile, Jack, aged six, was still at an age when the idea of a family gathering appealed to him enormously. Ronnie was sure Jack would have been equally thrilled to spend a week in a Travelodge near Wolverhampton so long as he had his family around him. His grandparents doted on him, but it was the thought of a week with Auntie Chelsea that seemed to tickle Jack most of all.
    ‘Auntie Chelsea!’ he squealed. ‘Is she really coming? Really really? She can play cricket with me,’ he added, remembering the last time he had seen his aunt, just over two years earlier, at a family barbecue. Chelsea had thrown a few balls for Jack that afternoon, in between turning her nose up at Mark’s burgers and moaning to Ronnie about how hard she found her job at that posh magazine. She’d really hardly paid Jack any attention at all, but for some reason she’d left an indelible impression.
    ‘I can’t wait to see her,’ said Jack.
    ‘If she can be bothered to come,’ Ronnie muttered to Mark. ‘I can’t imagine Miss Hoity-Toity is terribly excited by the idea of a package holiday in the Canaries. What will she say to the people at Society ? I suppose she could always write a hilarious article about slumming it with the working classes.’
    Mark just nodded. He knew better than to disagree with Ronnie where Chelsea was concerned.
    From time to time you hear people refer to their siblings as their ‘best friends’. Well, Ronnie and Chelsea definitely didn’t have that sort of relationship. They hadn’t spoken in two years.
    It hadn’t always been like that. Born just eighteen months apart, the Benson sisters had once been inseparable. Ronnie had doted on her sweet younger sister Chelsea and Chelsea had considered big sister Ronnie the ultimate heroine and role model. As teenagers, in their shared bedroom in the terraced house where they grew up, they had talked late into the night about their plans to escape their boring home town and make their way together in London. They’d go to university, become successful businesswomen and travel the world first class. Chelsea was going to work in fashion. Ronnie was going to have her own recruitment company by the time she was twenty-five. The sisters were each other’s cheerleaders. No way were they going to get stuck like their parents had.
    Those ambitions were nipped in the bud when Ronnie turned seventeen and discovered she was pregnant.
    It was a disaster. Just days earlier, Ronnie and her form teacher had been talking about university applications. Her teacher had suggested a string of top colleges. ‘The sky’s the limit for you, Ronnie Benson,’ were her encouraging words.
    It certainly hadn’t been part of the plan to become a teenage mother.
    Jacqui and Dave were strangely unfazed by the news of their elder daughter’s unplanned pregnancy. Ronnie had expected them to be furious. She had expected recriminations and talk of having let them down. Let herself down. In the end, there was nothing of the sort.
    ‘We’ll get through it,’ said her dad as he squeezed her in a bear hug. Jacqui agreed.
    ‘We’re right behind you, love,’ she said. ‘Every step of the way.’
    Likewise, Ronnie’s teachers were sympathetic and did all they could to help her continue with her A-level courses, but Ronnie found her pregnancy surprisingly difficult and postponed her exams, with the intention of going to sixth-form college after the baby was born. However, when Sophie arrived, Ronnie was hit with a malaise she now knew to be postnatal depression. By the time Ronnie had enough energy to brush her hair in the mornings again, her brightest contemporaries were already on their way to university. Although she had actually only missed out on a year, Ronnie felt she would never be