Free Foursome by Jane Fallon Page B

Melanie?’
    ‘What? Oh no,’ Melanie says. ‘Just work it out between you, so long as everything gets done.’
    ‘There,’ I say to a sulky-looking Lorna. ‘Crisis averted.’
    Over dinner I tell Dan that I had lunch with Isabel, but I skirt around what she told me about the state of their marriage. I’ll save that for later, once the kids are out of the way.
    ‘Did she say anything about Nicola and Natalie?’ William asks, fish finger poised in front of his mouth, little finger aloft like a duchess with a tea cup. I smile at him.
    ‘She said they’re fine. But they’re sad they haven’t seen you for a while so I thought we might go over there at the weekend.’
    The way his face lights up you’d think I’d told him he’d won the Nobel Prize.
    ‘Excellent,’ he says.
    Zoe looks at him. ‘God, you’re sad,’ she says, but he’s too happy to retaliate.

9
    Somehow in the chaos of everything that’s been going on I’d forgotten about IT. The holiday. Every year since I can’t remember when, we have all gone on holiday together. Rebecca and Daniel, Alex and Isabel and then, as they arrived, the four kids. In the summer we go away in our couples like normal people and the rest of the time we hang around each other’s roof terraces and gardens and local parks. But the autumn half term has become our time. The group. We book ahead, getting together for an evening in the early summer to argue about where it’ll be this year. We’ve done Madeira and Lanzarote, Crete and Rhodes, Center Parcs and Euro Disney.
    This year, on an evening in late May, we decided on the Amalfi Coast, where it should be warm though not hot and where we could force some culture down our children’s throats and then get pissed on cheap red wine in the evenings. Cleverly we booked it there and then. Six nights in Sorrento. In the subsequent fighting over who was getting to keep the house and the dog, no one has even thought to argue about who gets the holiday. We’ve all forgotten. At least, that is, until one night when I wake up in a cold sweat and realize that we have got to cancel it. Now. While we can still get some of our money back. Before it just becomes accepted that we’re going. Or at least, some of us are.
    I shake Dan awake.
    ‘Dan,’ I say in a stage whisper. ‘Wake up.’
    He groans. There’s nothing Dan hates more than being disturbed when he’s sleeping, but this is an emergency.
    ‘What? What’s wrong?’
    ‘We have to cancel Sorrento. I think we only have a couple of days left. Can you do it tomorrow?’
    Dan booked it on his computer. He has the reference number, the details of the travel company, all that essential stuff. It makes sense for him to be the one to cancel it. He sits up. Once he’s awake, he’s awake.
    ‘You woke me up for that?’
    ‘I was scared I’d forget. We can’t afford to lose the deposit.’
    ‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘I think Alex still wants to go. I guess he’ll bring Lorna.’
    I snap my bedside light on so he can see exactly how serious I am.
    ‘No,’ I say in a tone I’d ordinarily reserve for a naughty dog. Down boy. ‘No, Dan, no. Are you f… reaking mad?’
    ‘Did you just say freaking?’
    ‘I’m being serious.’
    ‘But freaking?’ He looks at me, realizes I am not in the mood to laugh. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he says. ‘She’s OK.’
    I can’t believe this is happening.
    ‘What about the kids? They haven’t even met her yet. It could damage them for life watching their father frolicking on the beach in his swimming trunks with some bikini-clad woman who’s not their mum.’
    ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to be frolicking on the beach in their swim wear in October,’ he says in that pedantic way he has sometimes.
    ‘That’s not the point,’ I say, getting desperate. ‘The point is that this holiday is for the kids. If anything, it should be Isabel who comes with them, not Alex.’
    ‘You want me to tell Alex that we’d rather go