Read Excess Baggage for Free Online

was calm – cut in a neat safe bob, the dull brown colour of drearily wholesome lentils. When the hat came off again her hair would fall straight back into place as if it had never been disturbed. Plum suspected that part of looking restful was to do with being big and getting bigger. Six weeks regular weighing-in at Shape Sorters, with a diet that should have bored her taste buds into defeat, had given her only a confused and panicky metabolism which had her body clinging to every calorie consumed and packing it defensively away into flab to thwart the direst famine. Simon called her Plum – always had, in fact only her students now called her Penelope. But once, just once a few months ago, he’d squeezed her bum and called her Plump and been surprised she hadn’t found it amusing. Well, who would? Why didn’t he
think
?
    ‘And of course he can’t drink, which doesn’t help,’ Theresa went on.
    ‘What? Oh, Mark. No alcohol? Why not?’
    ‘Antibiotics. I told you.’ Theresa was snappy now, impatiently cramming T-shirts and suntan-lotion bottles back into the children’s bags.
    Penelope picked up her book again, tactfully leaving Theresa to seethe silently to herself about her indiscretion. Down on the shore she could see Becky paddling with Colette, pointing out something in the water. On an English beach any number of horrors – syringes, sewage, sanitary towels – might wash their way into the beach-surf for the curious to inspect. How completely wonderful it was that it would be fish they were looking at, stunning, multicoloured, exotic, pretty little fish.
    ‘You’d think they’d be out and about by now.’ Simon checked his watch as he and Lucy walked along the path above the beach. He looked anxious and was moving too fast, as if he was late for something. Lucy, who wanted to stroll and savour and smile at the blissful warmth of the day, had left her own watch in the drawer by her bed with her passport and ticket, and didn’t intend to get it out again till she packed to go back to Gatwick.
    ‘Chill, Simon. The day’s only just started. Perhaps older people don’t feel the jet-lag thing like we do. I can’t imagine Mum and Dad pacing about at 4 a.m. and flicking through crappy TV channels till daylight the way kids do – or pigging out on all the Snickers bars from the minibar. They probably got their reading glasses out, read a couple of chapters and then went back to sleep like sensible souls.’
    The beach ended in a raised headland which held five detached villas, each with its own fenced garden and a broad hibiscus-fronded terrace overlooking the sea. According to the brochure, beyond the headland and past a dense thicket of trees was a beach for nudists with a bar and barbecue.
    ‘Smart up this end, isn’t it?’ Lucy commented.
    ‘Very smart. And big – they could have parties up here,’ Simon remarked as he opened the gate.
    The door to the villa was open and Perry could be seen across the sitting room, out in the sun on the wall above the sea, drinking coffee. Lucy, who had been trying not to give Simon’s anxieties any serious thinking-room , was relieved to see him looking so relaxed, summer-familiar in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved green checked shirt.
    ‘Hi, Dad! We’ve come visiting!’
    ‘Where’s Mum?’ Simon hissed at her. ‘Perhaps she’s not feeling—’ Lucy nudged him hard to shut him up. Shirley’s head could just be seen over the back of a sunlounger. She peered round as they walked across the cool tiled floor.
    ‘Hello, you two! What do you think of our palace? Two bedrooms, two bathrooms
and
a kitchen! Far too big for just the pair of us but your dad insisted on treating us to the best. Have a look round. Our first house in Wythenshaw was only half the size of this.’ Simon went outside and sat with his parents on the terrace but Lucy padded around the villa, admiring. There was the same pale golden cane-woven furniture as in the regular hotel rooms,