Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

BOOK: Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1)
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Chapter 18

 

 

Holly woke early the next morning feeling strangely refreshed
even though she had only been asleep for six hours. After posting her blog the
previous night she had climbed into bed, without even cleaning her teeth, and
fallen asleep almost immediately, a smile on her face and her head full of
images of Philippe.

She dressed quickly in a vest top and shorts, cleaned her
teeth and splashed her face with water before heading to the beach for a
pre-breakfast walk, hoping for a chance encounter with Philippe. At dinner she
hadn’t mentioned seeing him riding his horse on the beach and he didn’t mention
it either, so presumably he hadn’t recognised her behind her sunglasses and
baseball cap.

He wasn’t on the beach, even though she walked past Flic en
Flac reasoning that the longer she stayed on the beach the more chance she
would have of seeing him. She felt an irrational pang of disappointment when
she got back to her room, having seen no one but the various hotel gardeners
and a few local fisherman.

On the bright side, at least her early start meant she was
on the beach before ten o’clock and her spirits lifted further when she saw the
Italian couple and their gorgeous little girl already splashing around in the
sea. She arranged her towel on the sun lounger, hung her sarong over the strut
of the beach umbrella and crossed the few short paces on the already hot sand to
the sea.

‘Ciao’, she ventured in her novice Italian.

The mother smiled.

‘You speak Italian?’

‘Not much I’m afraid,’ Holly replied. ‘Just a few phrases
I’ve picked up on my travels and from restaurant menus.’

‘Well I like that you try,’ the woman said, moving towards
Holly. ‘I am Mathilda and this is Giulietta,’ she said, stroking the side of
her daughter’s face. The little girl smiled coyly and then turned her face into
her mother’s shoulder.

‘Ciao Giulietta,’ Holly said, causing the little girl to
turn back towards her. ‘I’m Holly.’

At that moment a mobile phone started to ring.

‘That is my husband Umberto,’ Mathilda said, casting her
eyes in his direction as he rushed up the beach to retrieve his phone from a
brightly coloured beach bag. ‘We are supposed to be on holiday but he is always
working,’ she continued with a hint of annoyance in her voice.

‘How long are you here for?’ Holly asked.

‘We only came for a week,’ she answered, ‘and sadly we go
home tomorrow. It has been our first holiday since Giulietta was born and she
has really enjoyed playing on the beach.’

On hearing her name the little girl started to wriggle, so
her mother dangled her from under the arms allowing her feet to kick in the
sea.

‘Is it your first time here?’

‘Yes,’ Mathilda said. ‘How about you?’

‘I came here on my honeymoon,’ Holly said, another
effortless lie escaping her lips, to keep her cover story consistent.

‘Your husband is not with you this time?’ queried Mathilda.

‘No,’ Holly said. ‘He died.’

The Italian woman looked shocked and saddened.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ Holly reassured her, noticing as she
spoke that Mathilda was glancing almost protectively in the direction of her
own husband.

The two women continued to chat amicably while Giulietta
paddled in the warm sea. Holly had been wondering about Mathilda’s command of
the English language and it turned out that she was bi-lingual due to an
English mother and an Italian father. Apparently they had met when her mother
had visited Rimini on holiday with a group of friends. Her father had been a
waiter in a restaurant and it was love at first sight. They were still together
thirty years and five children later.

A holiday romance with a happy ending, Holly thought, a
small smile playing at the corners of her mouth and a million butterflies
fluttering in her stomach.

Mathilda was asking her something but she had no idea what
it was because she had been daydreaming about Philippe.

‘I’m sorry Mathilda I didn’t quite catch that,’ admitted
Holly.

‘It must be my accent,’ said Mathilda apologetically. ‘I was
just asking if you would like to join us for lunch?’

‘I’d love to,’ replied Holly, putting her working hat back
on. It would give her a perfect opportunity to see how helpful the staff were
at catering for families with small children.

 

 

In the end it was just Holly, Mathilda and Giulietta who had
lunch in Waves restaurant. Whatever work problem the phone call had brought up,
Umberto was clearly finding it difficult to solve. He had gone to their room
which, it turned out, was in the same block as Holly’s but on the ground floor,
and he was sitting on their terrace frantically bashing the keys of his laptop
with an exasperated expression on his face. When Mathilda went across to tell him
that she was going to lunch he raised his eyes from the computer screen
momentarily and waved to his daughter. With her free hand Giulietta waved back,
her other hand was holding on to Holly’s very tightly just as she had been told
to do by her mother.

It’s a good job the Internet is working today, Holly
thought, or that would be one very unhappy hotel guest.

 

 

Holly spent most of the afternoon with Mathilda and
Giulietta. After lunch they went to the children’s play area together. It was
nothing like any of the council playgrounds Holly had taken Harry to when he
was little. It was themed around children’s fairytales, with a life-sized
gingerbread house complete with toadstool tables and log stools for the
children to sit and draw. In one corner there was a low tower which was a
helter skelter. There was a painting of Rapunzel’s face next to a window near
the top and the slide was painted yellow as though it was her hair wrapping
around the tower. Giulietta loved climbing to the top with her mummy and sliding
down on a mat to be caught by Holly at the bottom.

They walked back to the beach each holding one of
Giulietta’s hands and occasionally swinging her high in the air. Holly couldn’t
help thinking how sad it was that she had never been able to do that with her
own child as there had only ever been her to look after him. At one point
Giulietta stopped walking, let go of their hands and picked something up off
the floor and carefully put it in the pocket of her yellow cotton dungarees.

‘She loves to collect things,’ Mathilda said, ‘like the
coral on the beach. I must remember to check her pocket later and remove
whatever it was otherwise it will end up going through the washing machine.’

Holly smiled knowingly, remembering the time a two-year-old
Harry had put a biscuit in the pocket of his shorts to eat later and then
forgotten about it. The chocolate chips had melted in a forty-degree wash
creating a gooey mess that she had to scrape out before re-washing them.

After walking back from the playground Giulietta was ready
for a cool drink. ‘It is time for your nap now. Say Ciao to Holly,’ her mother
said. Instead of saying anything the little girl toddled over to Holly, reached
into her pocket, retrieved what she had picked up earlier and handed it to Holly.

‘You’re very honoured,’ Mathilda said. ‘She doesn’t normally
like to share what she has found until she has had chance to play with it.’

Holly looked down at the tiny white curled feather the
little girl had given her. ‘
Grazie
, Giulietta.’

Holly watched mother and daughter walk across the grass
towards her father who was still sitting on their terrace, working at his
computer, and thought of her own father as she always did whenever she saw a
white feather in an unusual place.

It had started the day of his funeral when a devastated
Holly, clutching eight-month-old Harry, stayed at her father’s graveside long
after the other mourners had left. She had been about to leave when a solitary
white feather spiralled slowly down and landed at her feet. Holly had felt that
it was her dad trying to communicate with her. She had picked up the feather
and later slipped it in to a compartment in her purse to always carry with her.
There had been many white feathers appearing in random places over the years,
usually when Holly needed comfort, reassurance or guidance. White feathers and
also rainbows, the two things that she felt were a connection from beyond the
grave. Holly wondered what her dad was trying to tell her this time?

 

 

Mathilda returned to the beach after putting Giulietta to bed
leaving Umberto to listen out for his daughter. Holly was pleased as it gave
them the opportunity to have a proper chat. They ordered a couple of colourful,
non-alcoholic cocktails from the refreshment buggy that drove up and down the
sandy path next to the beach, and settled on their sunbeds.

‘Your husband seems to spend a lot of his holiday working,’
Holly remarked.

Mathilda sipped her drink. ‘He was promoted four months ago
so he feels the need to always be on the end of a phone line until he has
really established himself in his new role.’

‘What does he do in Rimini?’

‘Well in Rimini he was the import manager for a Swiss
computer software company but his promotion meant that we had to move to Geneva
where their head office is.’

‘That must have been a bit of a wrench, leaving your family
when Giulietta is so young?’

Mathilda turned to look at Holly. ‘I hate it. Umberto is
working so hard that Giulietta and I hardly ever see him, and of course there
is no family there to help watch my baby for a few hours if I want to go
shopping. I feel so isolated.’

Holly knew the feeling. She had spent the whole of Harry’s
early years virtually alone until he had started at primary school and she had
begun to mix with other young mothers. Even then it had been awkward if they
were having people to dinner as it was mostly couples.

‘Have you told Umberto how you feel?’

‘No. I don’t want to seem ungrateful when he is working so
hard for our future. It was so difficult to persuade him to come away for this
holiday but despite him still working at least we have been able to spend some
time together as a family. Have you ever been to Switzerland?’ she asked.

‘No I haven’t. Most of my trips are to beach resorts,’ said
Holly, phrasing it in a way that was truthful and didn’t mention holidays.

‘Maybe you would like to come and visit us in Geneva
sometime?’ the Italian woman asked hopefully. ‘Giulietta has really taken to
you and I would certainly welcome a familiar face.’

‘I would love that,’ said Holly.

After they had exchanged details, Mathilda excused herself
saying she needed to check on her little girl.

Holly scribbled a few lines in her notebook for the blog she
would be writing later. The resort had definitely passed the ‘happy parents’
test.

 

Chapter 19

 

 

Holly ordered room service that evening. She was impressed to
find that you could order anything off the Waves restaurant menu. The items
marked with a yellow tick were part of the all-inclusive package she was on and
there was plenty to choose from, particularly for vegetarians, she thought
wryly.

After replacing the telephone handset she only had time for
a quick shower before there was a knock at her door.

Impressive, thought Holly, back home it takes longer than
that for a pizza delivery, courtesy of a dodgy old moped.

She had decided to eat on her balcony, the perfect place for
a bit of people-watching as she was only fifty yards from Roberto’s Italian
restaurant, and she could also enjoy the soft breeze from the Indian ocean and
the fragrant perfume of the frangipani carried on the balmy evening air.

As she tasted her first forkful of food she was surprised to
see Umberto and Mathilda at the entrance to Roberto’s waiting to be seated,
without Giulietta. They were shown to a table next to the entrance which would
give them a perfect view of their room, the last one of the block closest to
the restaurant. Holly leaned over her balcony and could just see the baby’s
buggy fully reclined with netting over it to protect Giulietta from the night
time bugs. Her parents would be able to hear her if she cried but Holly still
felt uncomfortable that they had left her outside their room alone. That
picture of Madeleine McCann and her huge haunting eyes flashed into her mind.
It would be a very safe bet that her parents never got through a single day of
their lives when they didn’t feel regret.

Holly had never left Harry unattended for a moment, even to
pop into a shop to buy a loaf of bread or a postage stamp. She would either
struggle in with the buggy, often disappointed that no one volunteered to help,
or she would unclip Harry from his harness and carry him into the shop, leaving
the buggy outside on the pavement. Although she was short of money a buggy was
replaceable if it got stolen, not so her precious child.

Maybe it was different for her because she had no one else
in her life. No husband, no father and a mother who had disowned her because of
one mistake.

She remembered her mother’s words as if they had been spoken
yesterday: ‘Have a termination Holly or you will regret it for the rest of your
life.’

She had been shocked by her mother’s vehemence. Theirs had
never been an easy relationship, with constant accusations that she was a
‘daddy’s girl’, but that was a savage thing to say to a frightened nineteen-year-old
whose boyfriend had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Holly
admitted that there was a good deal of truth in her accusation. She had adored
her dad, but it was her mother’s fault really. It was difficult to love someone
who was so volatile particularly when she had been drinking. That was when she
would become abusive towards Holly.

‘You ruined my life,’ she screamed at the terrified,
cowering child on more than one occasion, along with, ‘I should have got rid of
you.’ Holly swore that one time her mother had said in a drunken rage, ‘I
should have got rid of you too.’ When she questioned her mother about it she
was adamant that Holly had misheard, although she had sobered up pretty quickly
that time.

Laughter below her balcony dragged Holly back to the
present. A group of a dozen or so young people in very high spirits were
heading for Roberto’s. Holly wanted to tell them to shush, as they might wake
the baby, but she was too late as Giulietta let out a wail. Within a few
seconds Umberto was next to his daughter’s pram, lifting her out to comfort
her. Then he released the brake on the pushchair and wheeled it the few yards
to their table in the restaurant. That was the end of his and his wife’s
romantic dinner for two, but in a way Holly was pleased as now she could sit
back, relax and enjoy her own dinner.

A different noise attracted her attention. This time it was
the sound of the almost silent golf buggy steering along the path with another
room service dinner delivery. It stopped outside Robert and Rosemary’s room.
The waiter knocked on their door and moments later Robert appeared and took the
laden tray from the waiter, rather than letting him take it into their room.

‘Great minds think alike,’ Holly said to herself, with a
smile.

BOOK: Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1)
7.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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