Maddie Please - The Mini-Break

I look like one of my sweet-faced heroines too. Blonde and cute, and almost tiny enough to tuck in your pocket.

Just try it, Buster – all those years of writing about something that didn’t exist had knocked my corners off a bit. And the last few years had reinforced my rather jaundiced view of men, relationships, love and all that sort of thing.

My sister is pretty. She looks clever too, in a dark-haired, high-cheekboned sort of way that makes people assume she’s pondering deep thoughts when in fact she’s probably wondering if it’s possible to drown someone in a kitchen sink or poison a husband with household products without leaving evidence. That’s the sort of book Jassy writes you see, and she’s very successful too. But by the end of last year she was seriously behind with her latest book and her publisher was starting to nag. In a polite way, of course, because Jassy sells almost as many books as I do.

We were the Darling sisters after all: a brand, a sparkling little oasis of success in the middle of the dark scramble for sales. We were photographed at glossy events. We went to glamorous parties. Designers lent us stuff.

Jassy was asked to go into the last Big Brother House. Of course she refused; we do have some standards. I’ve been on Have I Got News For You because apparently my ample chest made them think I’d be an easy target for mild sexist banter. They were so wrong. They won’t try that again.

*

Very quickly I realised coming to Devon had been a mistake and while she didn’t say much I could tell Jassy thought the same. I think she felt more responsible because she had talked me into it. Not that she would ever admit it.

The house was lovely though. Sally had spent a fair bit of money doing it up – you know the sort of thing, Crucial Trading floor tiles, a pink Aga in the huge kitchen, and in the beamed sitting room, velvet sofas that were really comfortable. But it felt literally bloody miles from anywhere.

I wasn’t used to that; I was used to corner shops that were open all hours of the day and night, takeaway cafés and patisseries, wine merchants who deliver, Ubers at the touch of a phone. Barracane House was stuck on a sloping field in the middle of nowhere. As for the magnificent views, we couldn’t see them through the rain and the low cloud. The road to the house was an unmetalled track that had turned into a mudslide and the wind (which never seemed to slacken) howled up the hill straight towards the front door. Benedict would have been horrified.

We didn’t sit and work next to a glorious log fire because the wind kept blowing down the chimney the wrong way, puffing smoke into the room. There was intermittent mobile phone signal, pathetic or no broadband, and Jassy had forgotten her laptop cable so it ran out of charge after three days.

As far as the delicious meals went, we’d forgotten that we would have to prepare them and neither of us knew 1) how to cook the sort of meals we had imagined or 2) use an Aga. So the whole experience had been an unqualified disaster.

On top of that it was getting colder by the day.

And then I got a puncture.

*

I’d been looking out of the window, sick to death with my latest work in progress, not even able to email Benedict because of the rubbish Wi-Fi, wondering if I knew enough about vicars to work one into the story, when I noticed my car was on a slant. I tried to persuade myself I had parked on an uneven bit of ground, but closer inspection showed a flat rear tyre.

‘Phone the AA,’ Jassy said, looking panic-stricken.

By this point she was certainly not lying on the sofa being creative and taking inspiration from the glorious countryside outside our windows. And she had been forcibly reminded that while I am a fun companion and have a certain amount of superficial medical knowledge gleaned from my foray into hospital romances, I’m a rubbish nurse. The idea that we might go home was beginning to appeal to both of us.

I pulled out my mobile and waved it at her.

‘The house phone doesn’t work and there’s no phone signal, remember?’ I said.

Jassy whimpered under her blanket. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive. I even went to the top of the mountain yesterday to check, not even one bar of reception at the moment.’

Thinking more clearly, it wasn’t a mountain, more of a hill. But you see I wasn’t used to that either. Where I lived was all lifts, escalators and flat pavements.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I could go for help?’ I said doubtfully.

I looked out of the window at the dark afternoon and the rain lashing against the windows. There was a sudden ghostly howling noise in the hallway and Jassy hid her face in her hands.

‘What the hell was that?’ she whimpered at last. ‘Go and look. Quick!’

Great. So now not only was I driver, cook, nurse and bottle washer but also Security apparently. I didn’t want to go out onto the cold, flagstoned hall any more than Jassy did, but as I hesitated she rubbed her injured knee and gave me a pitiful look.

I wrapped my throw more tightly around my shoulders, picked up the nearest solid object for protection and peered out into the hallway.

‘I’ve got a gun,’ I shouted bravely and waved my weapon above my head. I swiftly realised the wind must have changed direction and it was now wailing through the letterbox. Which was just as well because I wouldn’t do much damage to an intruder with a Limoges ceramic banana.

After Jassy stopped howling with laughter we had a quick discussion about what would be the best thing to do and I stuffed the letterbox with a tea towel. It wasn’t as though we were going to be receiving any post, was it?

‘While you’re out there, can you bring another bottle of wine?’ Jassy shouted from her cosy nest on the sofa. Somehow she managed to sound imperious and feeble at the same time.

*

Two days later I was progressing quite well with my latest novel, but Jassy was moaning that working with a pen and paper was akin to medieval torture and we were down to our last six bottles of wine. Okay, we still had some gin and some weird green liqueur. We’d bought it in France years ago because it had a rather suggestive-shaped bottle, but we’d never opened it. At this rate we would have to. I bet it was horrible too; one of those really sweet, yucky drinks that needs to be camouflaged with five other ingredients to make a cocktail with a stupid name that is embarrassing to order. Like Big Dick or A Bonk Please.

I was looking out of the window at the rain, wondering if my latest heroine would be better off a tragic widow rather than a dumped bride. I kept changing my mind. I wondered what Benedict was doing and how he was coping without me. I bet he hadn’t remembered to put the recycling out.

It was so incredibly quiet that I think we could have heard our hair growing if Jassy had turned the radio off.

I heard his tractor coming up the lane a long time before I saw him. I sat up in my chair, like a dog hearing the rattle of a biscuit tin and, realising what it was, I made a dash for the door.

I stood in the middle of the lane, waving my arms above my head, almost weeping with relief at the thought of speaking to someone other than Jassy.

He slowed to a muddy halt, opened the tractor door and shouted down from the height of his seat.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, yes, no actually,’ I gabbled. It was still raining and in seconds my newly washed hair was plastered to my head, not an attractive look and he – the tractor person – was rather eye-catching.

‘Do you need help?’ he said, and he climbed down from his cab. My first close-up view was of his Hunter wellington boots, which were reassuringly large.