Escape for the Summer Read online

  “Don’t blame me!” Gemma had wailed on the countless occasions when Angel berated her for inviting him in the first place. “I hardly knew the guy. He was only in two episodes and he played a teacher, so I didn’t have any scenes with him. Anyway, I’m sure he wasn’t such a tosser back then.”

  As far as Angel was concerned the jury was out on this one. In fairness to her friend, Tom had been working steadily in the early days of his relationship with Andi. But as the roles had dried up he’d taken to pitying himself and hanging out with a dope-smoking crowd who modelled themselves on Withnail and I – although when it came to work ethics they actually had more in common with the characters in Shameless. Angel had been to enough parties where she’d seen Tom stoned and maudlin to have made up her own mind about him. Maybe he had been talented once. Maybe not. In any case, the talent was draining away and all Angel saw was a parasite making her tender-hearted sister feel guilty. How many times had she heard him tell Andi that he’d given up his flat to move in with her and put his career on hold so that they could be together? Far too many times, was the answer, and it was all nonsense.

  Angel might have been the younger sister but sometimes she felt about a hundred years older than Andi. Andi still believed in fairy tales and happy endings, whereas Angel was a firm believer that a girl made her own luck. That was why she was so excited about Gemma’s plan to go to Rock.

  “Well done for flushing that watch down the bog,” she said admiringly. “Shame you couldn’t stick Tom’s head down after it and hold him under until the bubbles stopped.”

  Andi laughed in spite of herself. “Have you been hanging out with Mr Yuri?”

  Angel grinned. “There’s more to being a beautician than just giving facials! You’d be surprised what I’ve learned.” She jumped up and, grabbing Andi’s wrists, pulled her sister to her feet. “And one of the things I do know is that when a man does the dirty on her, the last thing a girl should do is sit and mope! Revenge is needed! Can’t we dump tonnes of manure on his doorstep or something?”

  Andi smiled. “Nice thought, but if he’s at Gina’s we share the same doorstep!”

  “OK, bad idea,” Angel agreed. “Here’s a better one. How about we tip this disgusting drink down the sink, go to the pub and get hammered? Celebrate losing our jobs and having new adventures?”

  Andi shook her head. All she wanted was to be left alone and allowed to have a good cry in peace before she started to rummage through the rubble of her life. There was a landlord to appease, a bank to plead with and an employment agency to call. The last thing she could afford to do, literally or metaphorically, was go on the lash with Angel.

  “I don’t feel like going out.”

  Her sister put her hands on her hips and fixed Andi with a determined look. It was the same look that over the years had seen Andi part with her dolls, do Angel’s homework and, lately, dish out money. “There’s no way I’m leaving you here breaking your heart over a knob-end like Tom. You’ve given him nearly two years. He doesn’t deserve another second.”

  It was a valid point. Besides, what was left of Andi’s misery cocktail was curdling in the jug. Goodness only knew what it was doing to their stomachs. Suddenly the idea of a cold glass of white wine was very appealing.

  “Maybe just one then,” she agreed.

  “Fantastic!” Angel said. “Grab your purse, sis: I’m skint. I’ll text Gemma and she can meet us. I think it’s time we all put our heads together. Look on this as your lucky day – how do you fancy joining us in Cornwall?”

  Andi stared at her. Could she really do it? Leave London and the flat, and step away from everything for the summer? At the thought of going back down to Cornwall her heart rose like a paper lantern. A break by the coast promised mental elbowroom, bright light and the sting of sea salt against her skin.

  “Come on,” urged Angel. “You know you want to be a Rock chick!”

  Andi’s bank account was empty, her boyfriend had left and she’d lost her job. Why on earth not? What did she have to lose? At that moment a Rock chick was exactly what she wanted to be.

  Chapter 10

  “Oh my God! Oh my God! I can see the sea!”

  Angel’s shriek in Andi’s left eardrum was just about enough to make her weep. Her head was already pounding from listening to Gemma’s Lady Gaga CD all the way from London to Cornwall; now it was ready to explode. By the time they’d joined the M4 Andi already knew the lyrics so well that she was confident she could put on a meat dress and double for Gaga should the star ever require a break; by the Tamar Bridge she was starting to wonder whether it was a new kind of torture. Death by “Poker Face”. Add to this the roaring Beetle engine only inches behind her backside and the constant squeals and giggles from Angel, and it felt like a pneumatic drill was boring into Andi’s brain. She’d popped so many painkillers she was in danger of developing a Nurofen addiction.

  “The sea! The sea!” echoed Gemma, bouncing up and down in the driver’s seat and craning her neck to glimpse the small slice of glittering blue nestling between hills that resembled Jordan’s boobs.

  “I can’t believe we’re nearly there!” Angel cried. She pogoed in her seat, the glimpse of Atlantic blue whizzing her back to her six-year-old self faster than you could say “tardis”. Andi couldn’t help but smile even though her neck was aching and she probably had deep-vein thrombosis. It was hard to move when you were sharing the back seat of a car with three suitcases, a hatbox and more pairs of shoes than you could count. And that was before she added in the endless chocolate wrappers, empty cans and sweet papers that had been constantly lobbed into the back seat. It had been like sitting in a skip for five hours.

  Turning to her, Angel said excitedly, “Oh my God, Andi! We’re back after all this time! Can you believe you’re going to be in Rock for the whole summer?”

  The short answer to this question was a resounding and heartfelt no, because Andi couldn’t quite believe that she was in Rock. Normally on a Wednesday morning she was sitting at her desk, frantically hoping Zoe would leave her alone for just one day and trying to wrestle figures into submission. By lunchtime she would be cross-eyed from staring at the screen and only able to make it through the day by emailing PMB for a chat. Andi wondered who had taken over her role and whether PMB would miss chatting to her? Probably not, she told herself sternly. He probably had a life. She hoped Zoe hadn’t told him that Andi had been sacked for taking credit for another colleague’s work. That thought made her skin prickle with mortification. Apart from the fact that it was untrue, she couldn’t bear the idea of him thinking badly of her. Somehow she had to clear her name. Maybe once she was away from the city and had some thinking space she’d come up with something? At the moment, though, her brain felt as if it had turned to cottage cheese.

  As the car began the descent towards the seaside town, Andi thought about how her life had taken a very odd turn. A week ago she was an accountant at a prestigious company, working on the figures for Britain’s answer to Microsoft and living with her long-term boyfriend in a small but comfortable flat. Fast-forward a week or so and here she was, suddenly homeless, penniless, unemployed and on her way to Rock to share a caravan with her sister and her sister’s bonkers friend.

  Even Russell Grant couldn’t have seen this coming.

  Andi was just contemplating, for the umpteenth time, the horrifying and gut-churning discovery that Tom had not only cheated physically but also emptied all her accounts and maxed out her credit cards to boot, when Gemma slammed on the brakes with such force that several bags flew off the parcel shelf and walloped Andi on the head.

  “Ouch!” she gasped. There was something really hard in that fake Louis Vuitton holdall. There was probably a dent in her skull now. Maybe she had concussion too? She could hear a really weird buzzing sound…

  “Gemma! Don’t look at the sea! Look where you’re going!” cried Angel, her hands over her eyes. “We’ve got all summer to look at the view!”

 
“Oops! Sorry!” giggled Gemma. She ground the gears; the Beetle kangarooed forwards and another bag smacked Andi on the head.

  “I can hear buzzing,” Andi said, wrestling the holdall back into position. “Either I have a head injury or else your electric toothbrush has been set off.”

  Gemma chuckled. She caught Andi’s eye in the rear-view mirror and winked.

  “I hate to break it to you, but that is not my toothbrush!”

  Andi recoiled from the bag as though scalded while her sister and her best friend cackled with mirth. She felt about a hundred and ninety. She was thrilled to be back in Cornwall, and the moment they had crossed the Tamar her stomach had pancake-flipped with excitement – but for the life of her she just couldn’t summon up the exuberance and energy that fizzed from the other two. Andi supposed this was hardly surprising. She’d just broken up with her long-term boyfriend, and although she wasn’t breaking her heart over him she was bound to be a bit flat.

  Andi had never seriously intended to join the girls on their westerly pilgrimage to find sunshine, fame and millionaires. It had been a wonderful slice of escapism for a few hours on that blackest of black Mondays to listen to Gemma and Angel planning their summer and how they would be bound to find Callum South in one of the cafés or maybe running along the water’s edge. As the white wine had flowed and the pain of the day had begun to blur around the edges, Andi had almost believed that she too would be journeying westwards and spending the summer by the ocean. In her mind’s eye she’d seen herself wearing frayed denim cut-offs and deck shoes, her hair caught up in a simple knot at the nape of her neck; she’d be sitting on the edge of the pontoon, bare legs dangling as she watched the flotilla of boats bobbing on the estuary. She had almost felt the warm sunshine on her skin and heard the slap of waves against hulls. But of course reality was different. Deep in her heart Andi had known that she would have to wake up the next day, take two Alka-Seltzers and then deal with the car crash of her life. She’d ended up moving in with Gemma and Angel because she’d shortly afterwards discovered that landlords didn’t take “my cheating bastard boyfriend stole all my money” as a valid reason for not being able to pay the rent.

  Living with the girls had certainly been an education. Slugs roamed free in the kitchen, dirty plates festered in the sink and all Andi could find in the fridge was nail varnish and rotting veg. When she lay on the sofa at night, alternating between sobbing over her finances and worrying about Tom’s threats, she could practically hear the listeria and E. coli having a chat from the sticky work surfaces. After a week with the girls Andi felt as though she needed to bathe in disinfectant and dreaded to think what they’d do to a caravan. Public Health would probably condemn it after a week. But she didn’t have a choice.

  Andi had no money and no job. Tom had been given access to her banking details, so the bank wasn’t obliged to compensate her – and there was no hope of ever seeing a penny back from him. It was a truth universally acknowledged, that a young woman in possession of sod all must be in want of a place to live. Andi couldn’t afford the Balham/Clapham flat, Tom had nicked her cardboard box on his exit, and so she had ended up on the sofa at Angel and Gemma’s place. A bed of nails would have been more comfortable, but at least she’d had somewhere to go while she attempted to decide what to do next.

  Andi sighed. It had probably been easier for Einstein to figure out his theory of relativity. At the moment she couldn’t see much further than either panicking or ranting or, when she wasn’t engaged in those activities, eating all the cakes Gemma insisted on baking. For a girl who was always on a diet Gemma had some very odd ideas about what was healthy. Andi was pretty certain that carrot cake couldn’t really be classed as one of your five a day. Still, there was no doubt about it, Gemma Pengelley was an amazing cook and Andi had enjoyed comfort-eating every calorific mouthful. She figured she deserved a lot of comforting. She might as well add getting fat to her list of woes. Maybe Callum South could hire her for his show? Andi smiled in spite of herself: if you couldn’t beat them, join them.

  Anyway, now Angel and Gemma had quit their flat and were out of Tooting on their wild goose chase to Cornwall. Andi hadn’t really any choice but to throw her lot in with them and come too. She had contemplated contacting her father for some help but the thought of his silent disappointment seeping down the phone line had frozen her finger every time she almost called him. Andi had spent the past twenty-nine years feeling as though she was a big letdown to her father. No matter how hard she tried, she was never able to please him. She hadn’t achieved the A-level grades he’d expected; she hadn’t followed in his footsteps to Magdalen College in Oxford; and her job, although steady, wasn’t something he could boast about at embassy soirées. If she asked him for help he would probably loan her some money, but Andi knew she’d be paying it back in more ways than one. Sharing a caravan with Angel and Gemma was definitely the lesser of two evils. At least she could keep an eye on Angel. Surely her sister couldn’t get up to much in a quiet Cornish seaside town?

  The car breasted the top of a hill, then coasted downwards – and suddenly they were in Rock. The road dropped away steeply to the turquoise ribbon of the Camel Estuary twinkling in the sunshine and braided on each side with egg-yolk yellow sand. Moored boats danced on the tide, Padstow glittered across the water and a RIB zipped by, leaving a paper-doily wake across the shimmering surface. To her left and right, chunky Range Rover Sports, BMW X5s and Porsche Cayennes lined the streets while impossibly skinny women with golden tans, tortoiseshell hair and huge shades meandered along the road. There wasn’t a clapped-out banger or scruffy person in sight. Suddenly conscious of her own lank hair and soggy jeans, Andi sank back into the seat.

  Talk about hitting Rock Bottom. She was practically ready to dig.

  Andi knew she was no good at positive thinking. Here she was, arriving in one of the most beautiful seaside towns in Britain, and she was still moping. She couldn’t possibly have any more tears left to shed, surely? She had to get a grip and try to make the most of being here. She was bound to find some kind of a job; in the meantime, she could work out a way of getting her money back from Tom, a way that didn’t involve threatening to chop off his bollocks as Angel had so temptingly suggested. She could live cheaply here and get herself together for a bit.

  “We’re here! We’re here!” Angel chanted, her eyes big blue saucers of excitement. Turning around she cried, “Look, Andi! There’s Ocean View! It’s hardly changed!”

  Sure enough, there was the beautiful old house where, until their mother had died, the Evans sisters had spent every summer. Ocean View was one of Andi’s favourite places in the world. Rented by her father for the whole summer break, long before the royals and the Hooray Henrys discovered Rock, it was a higgledy-piggledy New England style affair, all weathered clapboard and turrets and widow’s walk. Perched high on the hillside, surrounded by ancient cedar trees, it overlooked the sparkling Camel Estuary and gazed dreamily towards the Atlantic. Over the years various owners had added to it and decorated it, but in Andi’s imagination it remained as it had always been, a rather tatty and beloved family haven filled with powdery sand and children and happy sunshiny memories.

  “We have to stop!” Angel ordered Gemma. Already she was pulling on her shades and gathering her things up into her bag. “Let’s get a coffee in The Wharf Café and see what’s going on!”

  Gemma didn’t need asking twice. “Callum could be about. I saw on Twitter he’s been spotted there and his Facebook Fan page says he was at the Ski School yesterday. Let’s check it out.”

  Somehow she squeezed the car into a minuscule gap between a Lotus and a convertible Mini. Andi stumbled out of the car and onto the pavement, her legs coming back to life in a gush of pins and needles. Since Gemma drove as if the motorway was her own personal game of dodgems, Andi felt like kissing the tarmac, Pope style. She had survived the journey! Maybe this was positive thought number one?

  “You guys go ahead,
” Andi said when her sister tried to nudge her towards the café, all funky chrome and glass and where Andi knew her final ten pounds in the world would not last long. “I want to stretch my legs.”

  Angel looked doubtful. She’d practically been on suicide watch since Empty Bank Account day. “Are you sure?”

  Andi nodded. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  Angel and Gemma headed off into the town, fake designer shades firmly perched on top of their artfully tousled hair, and Andi wandered back up the main street to the newsagents. Unlike her sister, whose nose had been buried in Heat for most of the journey, she had a burning and very square urge to buy a copy of the FT. She might not be working at the moment, but she still liked to keep up to speed with everything. Like the Safe T Net flotation, for example. From what she’d read it had gone phenomenally well and for a ridiculous amount of money too. Aston Martin man was now worth the kind of crazy money Bond villains used to ransom the world for. One gazillion dollars! Mawahahahaa!

  Right now Andi would be happy with twenty quid...

  The shop was quiet and cool. It was late afternoon and everybody was either on the beach or waterskiing. Andi browsed the newspapers for a while before selecting the local one, (with the vague hope that she might find a job) as well as the last copy of the FT. She was just reaching out to scoop it up when a man beat her to it.

  “Oh, sorry! Did you want that?” he asked, turning to her. Eyes the same turquoise hue as the sparkling water outside met hers and he smiled apologetically.