Free Blowing It by Judy Astley

seeing other people, he’d been phoning her after a month, utterly confident of getting straight back to full-scale romance thinking she’d be ready for him again now, having used the free time innocently going to movies with friends and catching up with homework.
    ‘Ah yes, but you see, Ilex,’ Mac was now explaining, ‘we wouldn’t
be
staying in cheap dives with “scuzzy adolescents” as you put it. We’d do it the five-star way, me and Lottie. Flash-packers, not back-packers, that’ll be us.’
    ‘Mmm, sounds good when you put it like that!’ Lottie agreed.
    ‘Cost you, that,’ Sean warned. ‘Doesn’t come cheap.’
    Mac frowned. ‘Who said anything about cheap? When do I do cheap?’
    ‘But how …’ Ilex held his breath; perhaps he wasn’t going to have to worry about the old folks after all. A pension maturing, that must be it. Well, thank goodness – they’d been more prudent than he’d imagined. Not going to be the big old-age burden after all.
    Mac grinned. ‘What’s the point of sitting on a load of cash if you don’t use it?’
    Clover and Sean exchanged glances. ‘None at all, Dad,’ she smiled, ‘if you’ve got it, spend it.’ How reassuring that would be. Perhaps the little place in France (Spain? Portugal?) was a possibility after all.
    ‘Yeah, well, we’ve got it,’ Mac said, looking around the room. ‘Right here – this place must be worth truckloads. Should take us round the world at the front of the plane, wouldn’t you say, Lottie?’
    ‘Well, I hadn’t actually thought how much it would come to, exactly … but …’ She too looked around at the sagging curtains, the ornate plaster on the cobwebby ceilings that could do with an expert painter and the floors that in places creaked so ominously. Tatty but tasty, that was their home. ‘Yes, it should take us round the world several times over, I’d say!’
    They were all looking at her as if she’d lost her last remaining senses. But if there were any pennies to drop in the collective junior branch MacIntyre brains, they were taking their time getting under way. It was – and who’d have thought it? – Gaz who finally got the words out.
    ‘What, you’d, like, flog your house,
this house
? And, like, blow all the cash? Wow, awesome!’ he said , reaching across Clover to spear the last big slice of pie.
    ‘But you can’t do that!’ Clover blurted out. ‘You couldn’t sell this house! It’s … it’s
home
! It’s the whole family … centre!’
    Lottie and Mac smiled at each other; the surrounding expressions of horror were wonderful to behold, the tease was irresistible. ‘Sure we could! It’s our new, great idea.’ Mac shrugged. ‘Why not?’

SIX
    IT WAS, FOR a weekday, a pretty good way to be woken up. Ilex watched the top of Manda’s glossy brown head snaking its way back up the bed and smiled happily.
    ‘Mmm. It doesn’t get much better than this,’ he told her, feeling a delicious post-coital languor creeping on.
    Manda, who rather thought it did, gave his shoulder a swift kiss and climbed out of bed to go and run the shower. She wasn’t due at work till midday, which gave her plenty of time to go to the gym, have a swim and a workout and maybe join in with the advanced yoga class. All that lot would give her energy, get the
chi
flowing and help her to feel positive, something that she badly needed. Where now, if not at Holbrook House, were she and Ilex going to have their wedding party? What were his parents thinking of, so casually coming up with the idea of selling the place? It was their family’s home, for heaven’s sake, not some superfluous gadget you could offload on eBay. And Clover, who sometimes seemed so babyish as to be barely out of her pram, must be spitting blood at the very idea of Mummy and Daddy getting rid of the house. She probably still kept her soft toy collection there, all cutely lined up on her little pink bed.
    Manda knew perfectly well that there were any