Read Online A Proper Family Holiday by Chrissie Manby - Free Book Online Page B

are very intelligent creatures,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Chelsea. She was too busy catching up on the emails that had come in while she was flying to ask exactly how camels showed their vast intelligence.
    A text came through.
    We’re having a walk around the town, said her mother, but we’ll try to be at the hotel when you arrive.
    ‘Try?’ Chelsea snorted. After all the effort she had made to come on this stupid trip. Using a whole week of her precious holiday time?
    ‘You got a boyfriend?’ the taxi driver asked, catching her eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘I show you the town if you like.’ The taxi driver had no front teeth.
    When at last the taxi pulled up at the resort, Chelsea’s first instinct was to say, ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ but she knew, with a sinking heart, that there was no mistake. The terrible pictures on the hotel’s website had actually been rather flattering. Chelsea paid the taxi driver, declined to give him her phone number in exchange for a five per cent discount and stood on the pavement, surveying her home for the week ahead. What a dump. She looked up and down the street. Amusement arcades. Fast-food shops. A restaurant across the street promised chips with everything. Chelsea was only glad that her colleagues from the magazine couldn’t see her now.
    ‘I am in hell,’ Chelsea whispered to herself as, taking a deep breath, she stepped into the lobby of the Hotel Volcan.

Chapter Nine
    Ronnie
    Ronnie was the only adult member of the Benson clan to be in the hotel at that moment. The rest of the family had gone to explore the town, but Jack wanted to stay by the pool and somebody had to keep an eye on him.
    ‘Come in the pool with me, Mummy,’ Jack begged, but Ronnie was staying resolutely on dry land. She was, as Jack reminded her in an attempt to win her round to his point of view, already wearing her swimsuit, but Ronnie kept a sarong firmly tied round her waist and refused to budge from her sunlounger. She did not feel like stripping off, despite the fact that the mercury must be nudging forty degrees.
    Ronnie hadn’t felt much like stripping off in a long time. Not since Jack was born. When she had Sophie, the weight just fell off and she was soon back into her pre-pregnancy clothes, but with Jack, it had been different. Ronnie was a teenager when she became pregnant with Sophie. Her body was ready to be stretched beyond anything she might have imagined possible and yet spring straight back into shape within a fortnight. She was eight years older when she conceived Jack. Her life had changed so much in the meantime. When you had a small child and no money, there was little to do but stay home and comfort-eat. Two children and no money? More of the same. Much, much more.
    As a result, one of the things Ronnie had been dreading most about this holiday was having to wear a bathing suit in the vicinity of her stick-thin younger sister. That said, Chelsea hadn’t always been the skinny one. When the sisters were children, Chelsea had been as soft and round as a Cabbage Patch doll. She’d hated sport, preferring instead to stay inside and read. When puberty came, Ronnie had quickly developed a model figure. A tiny hand-span waist complemented her new breasts, while Chelsea had continued to be, well, a little bit lumpen into her teenage years. There was one especially embarrassing moment when a neighbour who had heard that one of the Benson girls was pregnant had collared Chelsea on her way back from school and asked how many more months she had to go before the baby was born. There were tears when Chelsea got home that afternoon.
    The situation reversed quite dramatically when Chelsea went off to university in London. Away from home and their mother’s carb-heavy cooking for the first time, Chelsea had transformed herself. While the average fresher put on half a stone in the first year, Chelsea had done the exact opposite. The year in France her language