Excess Baggage Read online

  About the Book

  A Proper Family Holiday was the last thing Lucy was expecting to have. But as a penniless and partnerless house-painter with an expired lease on her flat and a twelve-year-old daughter, she could hardly turn down her parents’ offer to take them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Caribbean. She’d just have to put up with her sister Theresa (making no secret of preferring Tuscany as a holiday destination) and brother Simon (worrying that there might be some sinister agenda behind their parents’ wish to take them all away) with their various spouses, teenagers, young children and au pair.

  In a luxury hotel, with bright sunshine, swimming, diving, glorious food and friendly locals, any family tensions should have melted away in the fabulous heat. The children should have been angelic, the teenagers cheerful, the adults relaxed and happy. But…some problems just refuse to be left at home.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  About the Author

  Also by Judy Astley

  Copyright

  EXCESS BAGGAGE

  Judy Astley

  The island of St George, the Blue Reef Hotel and all characters in this book are fictitious (apart from Sr Pavarotti). But – this comes with love and thanks to staff and fellow guests at the Hawksbill Beach, Antigua, where we spent the night of 20 September 1998 cowering in bathrooms and closets from the devastation of Hurricane Georges.

  One

  THE CLOCK RADIO woke Lucy Morgan with ‘Here Comes the Sun’. It was too blearily early in the morning for her to sing along with the Beatles but she let the lyrics dip into her mind a few times over the next hour, like pebbles skimmed pleasingly over a smooth whispering sea. She was ready for the sun after a long soggy summer in which radio DJs had played ‘It might as well rain until September’ until the joke wore as thin as the flimsy strappy holiday frocks that disappointed women had shivered in all around the British coast.

  Lucy’s holdall (hideous puce nylon, part of a three-for-two bargain) was crammed with swimwear and sarongs and loose light clothes for a reliably un-English climate, with no space allowed for the usual cautious cover-up for evenings. You didn’t fly three thousand miles (in economy, on a charter) and turn down two lucrative weeks’ work (repainting Aline Charter-Todd’s kitchen yet again, Ocean Blue being so last year) just to have to cater for a chill breeze and the possibility of showers. In her hand were keys, two passports and a Sainsbury’s bag full of cat food to leave outside Sandy’s basement flat. Sandy was also custodian of her ladders and brushes, which were locked safely away in her garage.

  Lucy’s daughter Colette was impatient by the door, giggly and overexcited. Just now she looked a lot younger than twelve, much more like a very small child who doesn’t yet doubt the existence of Santa Claus and good fairies. Lucy smiled at her, hoping a hint of her own disappointment didn’t show in her eyes. Ross wasn’t coming with them.

  ‘Passport’s expired, sweetie. Sorry, should’ve checked,’ he’d drawled, with not even the pretence of real regret, down the phone the night before. She’d heard him slurp some wine, heard the clink of glass and the unmistakable click-clicking of high heels across his pale new Augusta oak floor in the background as he spoke. The clicking had been Lucy’s replacement, presumably, checking out the lie of the land and the route to Ross’s bedroom. With luck those spiny heels would have gouged ugly pitted holes in the immaculate wood and ever after remind him that for this he’d dumped a woman whose idea of a perfect shoe was something innocently flat with a harmless soft sole.

  ‘We’ve got to go! It’s nearly seven!’ Colette’s fingers were clumsy as she hurriedly unfastened the safety chain, then bent to wrestle with the stiff bolt at the bottom. ‘I must oil that, when we get back,’ Lucy muttered as she picked up her bag and followed Colette out into the shabby communal hallway that no-one felt driven to clean.

  ‘Why? We’ll only be here till Christmas. Then we’ll be living somewhere new.’

  More enviable youthful innocence, Lucy thought as she slammed the main front door behind them and sent Colette down the basement steps with the fortnight’s worth of cat food for Sandy to feed to the cat. ‘Somewhere new’ at the right rent, in the right area, and the right size had yet to turn up and the expiry date of her current lease wasn’t negotiable. She’d do serious flat-searching after this holiday. For now, all she had to think about was getting the two of them to Gatwick and praying her rusting resentful heap of a van wouldn’t choose this drizzly early morning to spring a leak from its radiator or split a vital hose.

  ‘Why have we got this?’ Colette’s bag was on the pavement next to the van and she was pointing at the big square of paper stuck to the windscreen. ‘Mum, it’s been clamped! But we’re residents!’

  Lucy read the notice. ‘Residents without road tax,’ she said, her heart thumping as she frantically thought out a potential plan B for getting to Gatwick.

  ‘Sod it, bugger it. We’ll have to get the train. Is that bag too heavy for you to carry as far as the station?’ Without a word, or even a glance, Colette hauled it over her shoulder and started marching ahead of Lucy, her rigid back and over-fast walk proclaiming ‘blame’ with every step. Lucy kicked the van’s nearside back tyre as she passed and was surprised when it didn’t cave in and deflate miserably. She thought hard as she walked. Mortlake to Clapham, trains every what, twenty or thirty minutes? Clapham to Gatwick, every couple of seconds if you believed the adverts. They’d have plenty of time to spare, it was just a pain, that was all. In her head she could hear her older, hyper-organized sister Theresa tutting and muttering ‘typical’, and she hoped Colette would forget to mention the van and its lack of tax.

  Ahead of her, Colette’s stroppy pace slowed and she swung the bag awkwardly onto her other shoulder. Lucy caught up and gently pulled it off her. ‘We’ll take a handle each, it’ll be easier for you,’ she coaxed. Colette smiled, her pink face clearly showing a threat of anxious tears.

  ‘We’ve got hours,’ Lucy assured her. ‘And just think, two weeks of wonderful Caribbean sun, palm trees and turquoise sea, your cousins and aunts and uncles, Gran and Grandad and no school when you should be at school. The Government wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘And no Ross.’ There was deep satisfaction in the girl’s voice and if Lucy had chosen that moment to look at her closely she’d have seen a face smug with secret worldly wisdom. Colette knew well enough that a man who worked for an airline and spent half his life travelling didn’t carelessly let his passport lapse. He was another enemy vanquished, another suitor seen off.

  It was very satisfactory having exactly the right car for once. Theresa Bosworth was more used to feeling acutely the lack of a gleaming Mercedes. The Honda Previa was perfectly suitable for the daytime use of a largish family, but she would have liked something less functional for evening events. Swishing up the gravelled Surrey driveways in the huge Previa (which Mark unamusingly referred to as the van, as if it was a clapped-out rotting old heap like Lucy’s), out for supper or drinks, reminded her of when she was little and her mother had made her put her old school mac over her pink organdie party dress. That coat had crushed her spirits along with her frills and she’d craved a velvet sapphire-blue cape, tied at the neck with silk tasselled co
rd, preferably scarlet. Not much had changed about Theresa since then. Just now, though, watching the au pair shepherding the three children into the Previa, while she adjusted the seats to accommodate their mountain of luggage, she felt the rare satisfaction of form corresponding with function.

  ‘Marisa, don’t put Sebbie in the middle, just in case,’ she reminded her. The dough-skinned Swiss girl gazed back at her blankly. ‘You know, just in case,’ Theresa repeated, hissing out the hint of appalling consequences. Still nothing. ‘Quoi? Say in French maybe?’ Marisa pouted, not terribly prettily.

  ‘Jesus. Malade, mal de voyage,’ Theresa explained. ‘But just don’t say anyth—’

  ‘Ah! I understand!’ Marisa interrupted. She hugged the stocky-four-year-old and cooed at him, ‘’S’OK, Sebbie, petit, you won’t get sick, will you? Not today?’ Each side of him, his six-year-old sisters giggled and wriggled and made retching noises across him to each other.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ Theresa muttered, ‘exactly what I didn’t want. Just the mention of it and he’ll be off.’

  She strode back into the house for some just-in-case plastic bags and caught Mark sitting on the stairs reading the Times financial pages. He was ready to go, expensively casual in his navy linen jacket and beige chinos, his puppy-soft leather bag showing the outline of a tennis racquet. He was ready, that was all that mattered to him: the preparation of the rest of them was simply not his job, for this was a holiday with his wife’s entire family; it was their show, at their expense and he had bagged for himself the conveniently unproductive role of being merely along for the ride.

  ‘Sorry, darling, did you want me for something? I was just checking shares.’

  ‘That’s yesterday’s. I cancelled the papers,’ Theresa snapped. He should be more useful. He should be like Daddy back in the Devon days, packing luggage into the car as meticulously as a well-stocked picnic hamper.

  ‘You could turn off the gas,’ Theresa suggested, still recalling her father’s long-ago duties.

  ‘Lord, could I? Do we usually?’

  Theresa sighed, a long-drawn-out, hard-done-by sound. ‘No I suppose not. The Aga would go out.’

  ‘Right, and then your Mrs Thing would phone all the way to St George and report the disaster.’

  Teresa picked up the nearest suitcase and glared at him. ‘She’s not just my Mrs Thing. She cleans our house and she’s called Gwen.’ She’d have swept out with justified haughtiness if the bag hadn’t been so heavy.

  ‘Here, let me.’ Mark took the case from her, just in time to stop her bursting into overwrought tears. If only he knew, had even the smallest clue, how much organization it took to sort and pack clothes for herself and three small children. And most of theirs were new, because they’d so thoughtlessly grown since their last kitting-out. Summer clothes had had to be tracked down like rare relics at ridiculous expense now the shops were full of winter and back-to-school, and of course they wouldn’t fit again by next year so it was all an exorbitant waste. At last sensing tension, he put the case down, leaned across and kissed her cheek and then stroked her hair, his hand encountering the inevitable black velvet Alice band, an item he loathed.

  ‘You’re not wearing that hair-thing, are you? To the Caribbean? Awfully hot I’d have thought.’ And suburban and matronly and dull. Her fine honey-coloured hair had a permanent dent across it like a rabbit track worn through a wheat field.

  ‘Well, what else can I …’ Theresa looked at herself in the hall mirror, seeing a tall angular streak of pent-up worry. She ripped the band out of her hair and shook her head hard, fluffing out the layers and taking years off. Now she looked more like her wacky free-spirit sister Lucy and less like her uptight edgy brother Simon.

  ‘That’s better. Sexy.’ Mark smiled, the sideways sort he always did when he was thinking about bed. Theresa allowed him a small grin in return, left the hairband on the hall table and carried the children’s three small rucksacks full of journey-entertainment out to the car. Mark, before he set the burglar alarm and shut the door, dashed through to the kitchen and shoved the hated velvet item in the bin. It could be Mrs Thing’s (OK, Gwen’s) fault.

  ‘Right. Me in front, Ma and Pa and Plum just behind, I think, then Becky and Luke in the far back well out of harm’s way.’ Simon Morgan, the luggage safely stowed, chuckled and gave the driver a grin that invited amused response but got none. The driver shrugged and opened two of the big Volvo’s doors at the same time, then looked at his watch and waited for Simon’s children to arrange themselves in the car. Becky and Luke glared and scowled, their eyes hooded in the usual way of teenagers hauled out of bed long before their preferred twelve hours were up.

  ‘Those seats face backwards. I mean when you said it was gonna be a limo …’ Luke grumbled.

  ‘Yeah, backwards like li’le school-run kids,’ Becky agreed.

  ‘Little – the word’s got a “t” in it, Becks.’ Simon had promised himself that on this holiday he would limit himself to one telling-off per day about their speech. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, on day one, and he knew he’d never last.

  ‘Lit-tle. And there’s two “ts”, actually Dad,’ Becky mocked. Simon sighed and just managed to stop himself running his fingers through his hair. Strands of it came out, these days, when he did that. It might be a sign of something, some disease, or just age. Either way, he didn’t want to be standing there on the pavement wafting hairs off his hands and everyone seeing.

  ‘Look, you can’t expect Gran and Grandad to climb in the back and face the wrong way, now can you? After all, this holiday is their treat for us, they’re the ones forking out a fortune.’

  ‘You keep saying that,’ Luke pointed out. ‘They never say it, it’s just you. You keep going on about us being so lucky and about how we’ve got to behave and be good ’cos they’re paying. They don’t go on all the time, and if they didn’t like us the way we are they wouldn’t have asked us to come, would they? They’d have said, “Everyone’s really welcome but not Becky and Luke because we hate them.” But they didn’t, did they?’

  Speech over, and shattered by his own early-morning verbosity, he slumped into the car and settled himself with his feet on his bag. He fastened his seat belt and clamped his headphones to his ears, isolating himself from further contact. Simon sighed again and wondered about his blood pressure. One teenager in, one to go, then the rest of them could get in the car. If the whole fortnight was going to be like this …

  Simon’s wife Penelope looked at the Volvo and wondered, as her son had, what had happened to the pram-like Daimlers so beloved of small-town mayors and senior royalty. She hoped Simon’s parents weren’t disappointed, seeing as this was the only aspect of the trip they’d allowed her and Simon to pay for. It was always hard to tell what they thought, priding themselves as they did on having the good manners to keep trivial carping and criticism to themselves. It wouldn’t surprise her if during these two weeks they tried to teach Luke and Becky a thing or two about that. They’d find it uphill work: all teenagers were self-obsessed and growly – it went with the territory and the rest of the world was just supposed to lump it for the duration. Theresa, who’d forgotten she was ever under thirty, tended to assume teenagehood was something nastily infectious and gathered her children to her like a litter of threatened pups whenever they were in range of youf-contamination. Plum took a last loving look at her tall, reassuring Edwardian house, hoped the dog would forgive them for putting it in kennels and that Simon’s patients would forgive him for all the last-minute cancellations and not take their orthodontic problems elsewhere. She started jollying her in-laws towards the car. ‘In you get, Shirley. And Perry, do you want to go round to the other side?’ She took hold of her mother-in-law’s arm and steered her across the pavement.

  ‘No need to fuss, Plum. We may be old but we haven’t got to the stage of requiring heavy engineering just to get into a vehicle.’ Shirley Morgan, full of lady-of-Cheshire independence and enough breakfast to
sustain her for a journey far longer than this one, pulled her arm free from Penelope and slid herself along the seat next to Perry. She inhaled the scent of clean leather and felt pleased with life. You had to have done well to be able to afford to take your three grown-up children, their spouses and six grandchildren off to a Caribbean island for a fortnight, even if it was September and about the cheapest season you could get. Christmas would have started to be in the shops when they got back, with winter in the air and nights well drawn in. This holiday would set them all up. The driver of the Volvo had a Christmas-tree-shaped air-freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror. Shirley assumed he hadn’t bought it recently, that it was left over from the year before. She sniffed discreetly, but couldn’t smell pine or cinnamon, just the delicious, expensive leather.

  ‘You all right, Ma? Not getting a cold, are you?’ Simon turned round at the sound of the sniff and looked anxious.

  ‘No, Simon, I’m not. Nor, before you ask, do I have any chest pain or tingling in my arms or a cold feeling in my leg or anything else. So please don’t worry. We’re all going to have a lovely time!’

  Penelope laughed. ‘He likes worrying, it’s his hobby; leave him alone.’

  Perry tapped the back of Simon’s seat. ‘It’s all covered by insurance anyway. I took out the Platinum Scheme. For that price they’ll fly the bodies back in hand-carved marble coffins on a chartered bloody Concorde. And you’ll know where to go for the cars, you could get a good few in this for the funeral.’

  Simon could feel his left eye twitching. They might laugh now, but what was this sudden, short-notice, no-expense-spared trip all about? He and Theresa and Lucy hadn’t been on holiday with their parents since the last Devon visit, and those used to be carefully arranged a good six months in advance, not rushed into at three weeks’ irresponsible notice. He must have been in his mid-teens for that last Torquay fortnight, at the age when you just prayed you’d be swallowed into the sand rather than have a bunch of giggling girls on the beach twig that you were with your mum and dad. They’d gone on taking Lucy away long after that of course, seeing as she was ten years younger than him. He vaguely remembered his mother showing holiday photos and saying things like, ‘This is the little friend Perry found for Lucy on the beach.’ He could imagine his dad accosting small girls of the right age and luring them to the immaculate sand castle he’d have constructed for Lucy. Parents now would be narrow-eyed with suspicion but Perry had simply been buying time off for Shirley with every ice-cream offered to a stranger.