Life's A Beach Read online

  It’s not so much that I’m stressed today though, more that I’m just frustrated at having the same conversation, again and again, with my dad.

  ‘I’m telling you, I got a text saying my PayPal account had been compromised and needed to verify my information to take control of my account again,’ my dad insists.

  David Cole – Big Dave to his mates – is sixty-eight years old and has only recently discovered the internet. I remember when I was thirteen or fourteen, getting my first dial-up modem and being blown away by the World Wide Web, going into chatrooms (which in hindsight seems like a terrible idea) and playing games, reading about anything and everything, messaging with my friends. Well, my dad is going through that phase now, but he’s somehow more technologically inept than a child at the turn of the millennium, and on a World Wide Web that is far more tangled with… well, I don’t need to tell you what the internet is like these days. It’s all misinformation and porn – neither of which you want to see in the hands of a technophobe pushing seventy.

  ‘Right, but do you use PayPal?’ I ask him, already knowing the answer.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have an account?’ I continue.

  ‘Well, no,’ he replies. ‘But—’

  ‘It’s a scam, Dad. Just like the text you got supposedly from HMRC, and the email from your Wakandan uncle who died and left you his fortune.’

  I can never quite get it to sink in with him that these types of messages are usually spam, and to always just assume they are. Some of them are very convincing – others not so much. At least he checks with me, even if it is pretty much every time I come here for dinner.

  ‘It would have been nice though, wouldn’t it?’ he says, staring thoughtfully into the distance, obviously thinking about what he would have done with his millions.

  ‘If the uncle you didn’t know you had from the entirely fictional country of Wakanda had died and left you millions? Sure, Dad, that would have been nice.’

  I can’t help but laugh.

  ‘And I thought I’d get less cheek tonight, with your sister being on holiday,’ he points out with a chuckle.

  ‘She’s been texting me from Greece, telling me to be extra cheeky while she’s away,’ I joke.

  Di isn’t just my little sister, she’s my best friend too. She’s only three years younger than me but, growing up, thanks to her being smart and my parents’ finances changing for the better, we wound up going to different schools. This didn’t drag us apart though, it just made us closer. She’s currently away on holiday – well, at a destination wedding for one of her old school friends. Do destination weddings count as holidays? I suppose they do when you stay for a week. She must be having a good time because I’ve hardly heard from her.

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ my mum shouts from the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Lasagne tonight,’ Dad says as he pulls himself to his feet.

  ‘Uh, I can’t wait,’ I say. ‘I’m going to stick my face in it.’

  ‘Let me get mine out of the dish first,’ he says with a smile.

  I follow Dad’s lead downstairs. As he walks down the stairs he holds on to the banister on one side, and steadies himself with his other hand on the wall.

  I feel a heaviness in my heart. No one likes to think of their parents struggling as they get older.

  ‘Do you need a hand, Dad?’ I ask, wincing as I watch him carefully shuffle down the stairs, terrified he’s going to fall.

  Mum reappears at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Oh, he’s fine, he just had a few too many with lunch,’ she says with a laugh and a bat of her hand.

  I breathe a sigh of relief.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t walk!’ I say.

  ‘Well, he can’t,’ my mum replies. ‘But it is only because he’s a bit pissed. Come on, dinner.’

  Retirement really suits my parents. It’s nice. My mum, Julie, spends her days sewing and cooking and doing all the housewifey stuff she wishes she’d spent her entire life doing. My dad spends his surfing the web and drinking, apparently.

  ‘I’m not ready to look after you yet,’ I say with a smile. I’m kidding, of course, but then again, I’m definitely not ready to look after them. I’m still not all that great at looking after myself.

  ‘You could forgo having kids to look after us,’ Mum says through a smile – I’m sure she’s kidding.

  ‘Di and I could take one of you each,’ I suggest. ‘Not that I’m sure which one I’d want. Actually, now that I can smell the lasagne, I’ll take Mum.’

  ‘Di is my favourite anyway,’ Dad teases. ‘She’s bringing me a big bottle of ouzo. Are you sure you don’t want me to pick her up from the airport?’

  ‘It’s OK, I have a job at Mote, that fancy hotel near the airport,’ I reply.

  We all take our seats at the table as Mum serves the lasagne and Dad pops open another beer. I can’t resist grabbing a piece of ciabatta bread while I wait.

  ‘Another wedding gig?’ Mum asks. ‘How did it go today? Would Matthew have liked it?’

  I can’t help but smile.

  Everyone knows all about Matthew Hemsworth, my fake groom. Intimidatingly tall and impossibly handsome, Matthew is one of the big wigs at Owen’s department stores – but don’t look it up online, because he isn’t really, obviously, because he’s made-up. I did think that sounded like a good job though. It means he has money, so can afford fancy weddings, and it sounds like a dream, to be married to someone who can get me employee discount on Yves Saint Laurent, because unless I get stuff like that from work, I can’t exactly afford it on the regular.

  I know, I probably sound deluded, but my job requires me to be convincing, so it makes sense I should have a detailed cover story.

  I’m a mystery shopper, which basically means I am paid to go to shops, restaurants, hotels, et cetera to pretend to be a customer. I’ll usually have a brief, telling me what I need to do while I’m there. Sometimes it is my job to go through the motions with a hotel wedding coordinator, planning a fictional wedding with them, before I write my report, which ultimately makes its way through my employers and back to the hotel in question. It’s such a fun job, and best of all, it allows me to enjoy the finer things in life, even though I can’t afford them.

  ‘It isn’t a wedding one this time, just a regular hotel visit,’ I explain. ‘They have this super romantic suite that comes packed with food and drink. Totally luxurious. I can’t wait.’

  ‘It’s a shame you don’t have a man to share it with,’ my mum half-teases as she places my plate down in front of me.

  ‘Oh, isn’t it just?’ I reply sarcastically, glancing over at Dad who already has tomato running down the front of his shirt. He dabs at it with the piece of pre-emptive kitchen roll Mum must have left under his side plate.

  ‘You get red sauce out by dabbing white sauce on it,’ I tell him.

  He points at me, as though I’ve just hit the nail on the head.

  ‘Right!’ he replies.

  ‘Wrong,’ Mum chuckles, taking the kitchen roll from him before he can dab it in his dinner. ‘Just, take your shirt off.’

  ‘What? No!’ I reply. ‘At the table?’

  ‘I’m spending more and more time naked these days,’ Dad says. ‘Your mum too. Our therapist says we’ve spent so long raising kids that we’re no longer acquainted with one another’s naked bodies.’

  ‘Therapist?’ I say, trying not to sound too worried. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ Mum insists reassuringly. ‘It isn’t couples counselling or anything like that.’

  ‘It’s a sex therapist,’ Dad says confidently.

  Sex is a perfectly normal and natural thing. No one should feel ashamed for having it. Except children talking to their parents about having it, and even more so parents talking to their children about having it.

  ‘I should probably set off to pick up Di now so I’m not late,’ I joke uncomfortably.

  ‘I thought you were picki
ng her up tomorrow?’ Dad replies, clearly not getting the joke. But then he gets it and he laughs. ‘Ohhh.’

  They’re lucky this lasagne is good or I’d be out of here. Mum’s cooking is always so amazing, in a way I’ve never been able to emulate, even though she gave me a book of recipes the day I moved out. I think, short of them doing it on the table in front of me, I’d struggle to walk away from this table without clearing my plate.

  ‘You must have missed her,’ Mum points out. ‘It’s like the two of you are joined at the hip.’

  ‘Yeah, I really have,’ I reply. ‘And seeing as I don’t have a man, I thought she could visit Mote with me. We can have a girly night, eat all the chocolate, watch movies.’

  ‘She’ll love that,’ my mum says. ‘And it will be great practice for when the two of you live together.’

  ‘Yes!’ I say excitedly. ‘It’s timed so well, with my landlord not finding anyone to rent the place yet, and Di’s rental agreement being up next week.’

  ‘Yes, but no one wants to pay that rent to live there, not when there are so many fancy new apartments for much cheaper,’ Dad offers up.

  I suppose he has a point.

  ‘I like the place – it has charm,’ I reply. ‘Plus, it really does feel like my home now.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget that this was your home first,’ Mum says.

  ‘I try not to, but it’s hard when there’s not a trace of me left,’ I point out through an amused grin.

  ‘It will be nice, the two of you living together again,’ Mum says. ‘And I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time tomorrow. Do you both fancy coming over for dinner on Sunday?’

  ‘That would be nice,’ I reply. ‘We can celebrate me and Di moving in together.’

  ‘Or commiserate you both being homeless,’ Dad says, ‘if your landlord flogs it before you sign on the dotted line. The women in this family always fly far too close to the sun. Cheers!’ Dad raises his beer before swigging the last from the bottle.

  Di and I had previously talked about living together, but with her already renting a place, moving into my flat with me just wasn’t on the cards. But things have lined up perfectly now. I need someone to move in with me, Di needs somewhere to live, and it really will be nice to live together again.

  I’m so lucky to have a sister and best friend rolled into one, and there’s no one I’d rather spend a night eating and drinking with, except the legendary Matthew Hemsworth, maybe, but he’s almost too good to be true.

  3

  I’ve never actually visited Mote hotel before, despite it having been open for two years now and me living and working not too far away. I’ve driven past it a bunch of times and every time I do, I can’t take my eyes off the place. It’s always been my dream to have a job here.

  You know how, when you need to stay in a hotel near the airport, you usually just check into a cheap and cheerful Hotel Premier Travel Inn Lodge kind of place? Well Mote was built by an eccentric billionaire who decided that the world was missing a sort of luxury take on a budget hotel. Somewhere you could live it up, rather than just crash for the night, and with a popular bar, restaurant and spa thrown into the mix. Having looked at the prices, this certainly isn’t somewhere your average person would stay the night before a flight – unless, of course, they get to sneak in, like I do.

  It’s a massive, brilliant-white building, floodlit with the brightest black light, which gives it such a luxurious, modern finish. I can see it glowing, across two roads, from the airport window I’m peering out of. I stroll a little further, to look out of the window that faces the runway. It seems strange that I haven’t heard from Di yet. She said she’d call me just before take-off.

  I locate a departures-and-arrivals board, find Di’s flight, but there’s just a blank space next to it. That can’t be good.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say at one of the info desks. ‘I’m supposed to be picking up my sister. She’s flying home from Greece, but I haven’t heard from her and I can’t seem to work out when her flight is due in.’

  ‘Oh, that must be one of the flights held up by the strikes,’ she explains.

  ‘Strikes?’ I hear a male voice ask from behind me.

  ‘Yes, staff strikes,’ she replies. ‘Unfortunately you’ll just have to wait for further updates. I can’t say what’s happening – I don’t really know myself.’

  ‘I suppose there are worse places to be stuck than Greece,’ the man behind me says brightly. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you waiting for someone too?’ I ask as I turn around.

  I didn’t know who to expect – I don’t think I had any expectations at all, which is why I’m a little taken aback when I clap eyes on him.

  He’s tall – really tall, maybe six foot two, I actually have to shift my gaze upward to make eye contact with him. He reminds me of Zac Efron, just a little, but not an old school High School Musical Zac from the noughties. I’m talking the circa 2020, big, buff, manly version with the dark hair, the rugged beard and those piercing blue eyes shining through.

  ‘Yeah, I was supposed to be picking up my mate,’ he replies. ‘He’s lucky I love him – this quick favour isn’t turning out to be all that quick.’

  He laughs, and I melt. A good-looking man who does favours and is not only polite but also comfortable enough to say he loves other men. I wonder what the catch is.

  ‘How about you?’ he asks.

  My brain – a little confused by what I can only file under ‘lust at first sight’ – takes a breather. It’s tuned out. It’s just me and the voice in my head, staring at him, hoping he doesn’t notice how weird I’m being for what feels like eternity, but in reality is probably only a second or two.

  ‘Are you picking someone up too?’ he prompts.

  Perhaps I was staring for longer that I thought.

  ‘Yes, sorry, my sister,’ I say. I have such an impressive way with words.

  ‘Last time I offer to do anyone a favour,’ he says with a smile. ‘I’m always too quick to do favours. Well, no more – unless you need something?’

  Oh, and he makes naff little jokes too – I love naff little jokes, they’re like 80 per cent of my vocab when my mute button hasn’t been hit by someone handsome.

  ‘Can you go for dinner with me?’ I joke.

  To ask a man out to dinner would be totally out of character for me – but to make a joke that doesn’t really land, resulting in things feeling kind of awkward, is totally my style.

  The man raises one eyebrow curiously. I should probably say more things now, to make that less odd.

  ‘My sister was supposed to be having dinner with me at the hotel over the road, but now that I don’t know when she’s going to get here, I’ll have to go by myself,’ I explain as casually as I can. ‘It was just a joke, don’t worry about it.’

  Smoooooth as silk. From an awkward joke to a babbling mess of an explanation. Oh, and in my attempt to sound casual, I’ve probably gone a little too far. Not just like I don’t care but like I really don’t care. Why can’t I just say something normal?

  ‘It’s a shame you’re joking,’ he replies. ‘Because I’m going to have to go back to propping up the café here, all on my own.’

  Does he… does he actually want to have dinner with me? Him? With me? Obviously he’s knocking on the doors of being a ten, and it’s not that I think I’m some kind of monster, but I’ve given off pure weirdo vibes since the second I turned around. I don’t know whether to retreat or double down.

  ‘You are welcome to join me,’ my mouth says, oblivious to the fact my brain was thinking it over. ‘If we’re both waiting for the same flight and you’re at a loose end.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ he says. ‘We can wander over now and keep an eye on our phones in case we get any calls.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ I say. I awkwardly shift my weight between my feet for a few seconds. ‘OK, let’s go then?’

  I didn’t intend for that to sound like a question.

  ‘Yeah,
let’s do it,’ he replies. He actually sounds excited, but in reality, I bet he’s just hungry.

  We make small talk as we make the short journey from the airport to the hotel across the road.

  ‘So, where are you from?’ he asks.

  ‘I live in York,’ I reply. ‘Grew up just outside the city, went to uni there – I never wandered far. You?’

  ‘Almost identical, but I’m a West Yorkshire version,’ he explains. ‘My family live in Kirkstall. I’ve got a place in Leeds city centre, in Bridgewater Place, if you know it?’

  ‘The Dalek,’ I say to show that I not only know the building, but I know its nickname.

  ‘That’s the one,’ he replies. ‘I rent a room from my mate. He’s got a penthouse on the thirtieth floor. As apartments go, it’s so out of my league. I could never afford it on an Oliver Strand salary.’

  ‘You work at Oliver Strand?’ I say. ‘The department store?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replies. ‘In PR. But they don’t pay you enough to shop there.’

  He laughs, and I laugh with him, but he can’t truly know how funny this is, because Oliver Strand is a big, fancy department store, like Harvey Nichols or John Lewis – or Owen’s, which is where the man of my dreams, Matthew Hemsworth, works.

  ‘Well, don’t worry about paying for dinner tonight,’ I tell him as we walk through the doors at Mote.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t pleading poverty,’ he insists. ‘I just didn’t want you to think I was a rich dick, living in a penthouse – my friend is the rich dick.’

  He smiles. I love his smile. I also love that he’s a little bit embarrassed to live in such a nice place. I totally relate to that. As much as I’m playing a part when I go on these fancy mystery visits and get to enjoy all the expensive products I wouldn’t have otherwise, there’s a little voice in the back of my head telling me that I’m a fraud – what’s a working-class girl like me doing in a place like this? I feel lucky more than anything, but there’s always a tiny niggling feeling of awkwardness. I’m glad he has it too.