I am drunk; liquid-limbed, mind-pumping drunk, and so is my husband, Rob. Craggy features, softened by shadows, move towards me across the mosquito candle placed in the middle of the camping table, as he smiles at me and tops up my glass. I shiver a little and zip up my jacket. The low sky of this Breton night has brought the sort of chill that predicates frost. But although frost won’t happen in July in the south of Brittany, during this camping holiday, I have not felt warm enough. Not once. Not at night, curled up beneath my inadequate blanket, or in the day when I’m supervising our children around the unheated swimming pool. The extra layer of body fat, cultivated after the arrival of our third child, is not protecting me from the cold.
Our children are asleep in the tent behind us. I feel their silence and the exhalation of their breath, deep rooted and satisfying. At least I don’t have to watch their every movement until morning, as I do during the days. Holidays aren’t holidays any more. We just take our children to a different place to look after them. A place that is harder work.
Everything about this camping holiday is exhausting. Standing by the pool for hour after hour, checking that they’re not drowning. The boredom of watching and waiting for the occasional sight of a familiar head coming out from behind a plastic palm tree or poolside dolphin. Holding giggling toddlers as we are tossed down knotted plastic tubes, sliding along until we’re spewed out into the water, the movement almost breaking our backs. The endless cooking of barbecues – washing burnt gunk off the griddle. As far as I am concerned this is the best part of the day; the children are in bed and I have Rob to myself.
For this is what I like. Rob to myself. We married just over ten years ago, so we were alone for several years before our children were born. We met at the training hospital when I was a trainee nurse and he was a junior doctor. I will never forget the sight of him walking down the ward towards me, that first cracked smile. No doubt someone looking in would consider our relationship argumentative. Some of our friends say that they never have a cross word. How do they achieve that? Why do we argue? My mother says it is because we care. Whatever. It isn’t really a satisfactory day without the rumblings of a discussion.
Tonight, sitting opposite my husband, a surfeit of alcohol pounding through my veins, I am filled with a new kind of mischief.
‘Who else would you go for, if you could?’ I hear myself slur.
‘No one,’ he slurs back.
‘I don’t believe you. You tell me and I’ll tell you,’ I push.
Rob sits in silence.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s be really honest – to compound our relationship.’
He looks at me and puts his plastic wine glass on the metal table.
‘But Carly, we don’t need to compound our relationship.’
‘I think we do.’
Green eyes burn to emerald.
‘I don’t want to know who you fantasise about.’
‘But I want to know about you.’
A jawline held taut.
‘I don’t fantasise about anyone.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ I pause. ‘Anyway, I don’t need to know who you fantasise about. We’re just playing a game. Give me a name, someone you quite like.’
He shrugs his shoulders.
‘I quite like Jenni.’
‘Jenni?’
Jenni. NCT Jenni. Placid and peaceful with doe-like eyes. Endlessly, endlessly kind.
‘What about you?’
I don’t reply.
The camping holiday continues but it doesn’t improve. Our two-day conjugal hangover doesn’t help. The swimming pool and the weather are growing colder. Cloud gathers and hangs along the coastline, releasing a clinging sea mist which sticks to the headland, making our nightly walk along the cliff path to the nearest restaurant border on suicidal. The rain starts on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning I wake up and hear its soft drum beat still pounding against the canvas. At first the sound is comforting. A ‘let’s stay in bed and make love because it’s cold and wet outside’ sort of sound. I snuggle up to Rob and then reality hits me. Camping. Rain. Bored children about to wake up. I escape to the shower block.
By the time I reach the shower block I am so wet I’m not sure why I’m bothering to have a shower. The lukewarm dribble of water from the showerhead slightly raises my body temperature, but not my mood as I struggle to pull my clothing back across my damp skin and worry about my weight. I shouldn’t have eaten pizza yesterday. Or chips the day before. And what about the beer? Soft and delicious and brimming with calories.
Forget about alcohol. It’s the only thing I’m enjoying about this holiday.
At least I am not like Jenni, so thin after childbirth that her breasts have disappeared. I look at myself in the mirror, cup my breasts with my hands, think of her boyish figure, and laugh. Jenni.
Rob and Jenni. Who would have thought of that?
When I return to the tent it has come to life. Rob is starting to prepare breakfast and the children are playing a shouting game, or, as I listen harder, a roaring game. Our seven-year-old daughter, Pippa, is crawling on the floor on all fours, head back and growling. She’s trying to frighten her younger brothers, Matt and John, shaking her long blonde hair and attacking them with fingernail claws. They are crawling away from her and laughing, too innocent to realise that if she could, she would hurt them. Rob, seemingly deaf to the noise, is putting cereal on the table.
As soon as I enter the tent, Rob’s face lights up and he moves towards me, kisses me on the lips.
‘Hey you. Do you want to play?’ he asks.
‘Mummy, Mummy,’ Pippa roars. ‘You can be a tiger.’
‘A tiger that needs morning coffee before it can growl,’ I say, planting myself firmly on a chair.
‘The swimming pool closes when it rains. What are we going to do today?’ Rob asks as the kettle whistles.
‘Go home?’ I suggest hopefully.
Being back home has many advantages, warmth being one of them, temperature control at the touch of a button preferable to the vagaries of weather. Regular sex without worrying that the children can hear is another positive. But the biggest advantage is sitting at the breakfast bar on Monday morning sipping coffee, waiting for my mother, knowing I have a child-free day in front of me.
My triangular-shaped mother, Heather, arrives, straight from her flat just around the corner. She steps into the hall, wearing her favourite floral dress and her M&S cardigan. Her shoulder-length curly hair looks as if it needs combing. It always looks as if it needs combing, but it’s just the way her curls frizz. Some remaining brown hair peppers her grey like drizzled dirt. Mother, when are you going to improve your appearance? It doesn’t seem to make any difference to how much our children love her. Pippa thunders down the stairs, two at a time, and falls into her grandmother’s arms.
‘Gwandma, Gwandma,’ John shouts, bumbling downstairs in his Gruffalo pyjamas which Gwandma has bought him, launching himself into the hug. Before long Matt has joined the love-in too. I tip the rest of my coffee down the waste disposal, place my mug in the dishwasher and sidle towards the front door. I manage to kiss my mother as I pass her; the children have left a patch of skin on her cheek accessible.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be late tonight.’
‘That’s