Francis arrived next to her, carrying two magnetic L plates. ‘You want to drive the rest of the way?’ he asked.
She let out a long sigh. ‘No… no, it’s OK, Fran. I said I would help you learn and that’s what I’m going to do. You’re doing fine, apart from the braking thing. You should be good for your test.’
Her brother raked his fingers through scruffy blond hair and looked less than confident. He’d been taking driving lessons for a year now, embarrassed to still be learning at twenty-four. Kate had passed her test ten years ago, when she was still seventeen. She had agreed to let him get some more practice on their journey to Suffolk. She shouldn’t have given in about the car, though. She should have stuck to her guns and made him drive her Honda.
‘How’s the shoulder?’ asked Francis, and she realised she had been rubbing it, distractedly, again.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘We should get going. Put the learner plates back on. We’re only half an hour away, you might as well keep driving.’ She tried to think of something nice to say about his choice of car as he reattached the magnetic L plates front and back. ‘The wheels are cool,’ she said, eventually.
‘They’re original thirteen-inch alloys,’ he enthused, grinning. ‘And the engine is a two-litre which could do nought to sixty in 10.4 seconds back in 1979. That was world-rocking stuff back then.’
‘Right…’ She smiled, shrugged, and got back in. She really needed to be a bit more upbeat. This whole trip was meant to be fun. She’d invited him along because he spent too much time cooped up in his room, online. It was his job — he was some kind of IT guru, working from home — but it was also all his downtime and it wasn’t healthy, given that her brother wasn’t a vampire. If he didn’t get some daylight and Vitamin D soon, he was going to turn from pasty-pale to see-through. He needed to get out and meet other people, too, in the flesh.
When Talia had got in touch a few weeks back about the Magnificent Seven After Seven plan, Kate had initially thought she might give it a miss, but Talia insisted, ‘You have to come, or it’ll only be the Sorry Six. That’s no good. Kate — I demand that you come!’
Talia had always got what she wanted seven years ago when they were working as Bluecoats at Buntin’s Holiday Village, and it appeared nothing much had changed. And Kate knew it would be fun, meeting up seven years on from that first summer, when she had just turned twenty and was earning a little money before starting her last year at uni. A very little money, it turned out. The pay at Buntin’s was piss-poor because so many excited young luvvies applied, hoping the weekly Bluecoat cabaret shows might earn them an Equity card. They were wrong about that, it turned out, but by the time they realised it they were usually fully on board for fourteen weeks of entertaining holidaymakers for little more than their keep. It was hard work but a lot of fun, and a total shagathon from start to finish. Nobody but Kate had gone to uni, so this was their Freshers’ Week equivalent and it had lasted for an entire summer.
Kate had only gone for the job because Talia had. Bruised by constant drama school rejections, her Salisbury College friend had opted for Buntin’s, hoping for that elusive Equity card. After all, an assortment of comedians and telly presenters had started out as Buntin’s Bluecoats, so why not try that route? It had to be worth a shot.
Kate could still vividly remember the day she’d first arrived at the site, perched on the chilly Suffolk coast. Talia had booked a later train, having stopped off in London to see some theatrical friends en route, so after a rail journey through the flatlands of East Anglia, followed by a bus ride through the Fens, Kate had found herself standing alone at the bus stop opposite the entrance to Buntin’s Lakefield Holiday Village.
And wondering what the hell she was doing there.
Dragging her wheelie case down the long drive, between neatly tended flower beds, she had reached an empty car park and a whitewashed pavilion with WELCOME TO BUNTIN’S emblazoned on a rainbow hoarding over its three sets of glass double doors. Inside, on a carpet of violently red and orange swirls, Gary, the Entertainments Manager, had welcomed her with a pack of forms and badges, a ticket to collect her Buntin’s Bluecoat uniforms, and a key to the chalet she would be sharing with Talia.
Seven years later, Kate smiled to herself as Francis drove sedately along the straight Suffolk B- road, pointing out windmills on the horizon. She was glad she’d been able to bring him. It was her condition in agreeing to come, which Talia had readily agreed to. Seven years ago, Kate had written old-fashioned letters to a teenage Francis and posted them home with a different piece of Buntin’s gift shop tat every week. She was pleased to be able, finally, to show him the strange world she’d inhabited that summer.
It would be fun to see everyone again and find out what had happened to them since they’d last met. She might edit her own life experiences slightly; it wouldn’t add much to the party spirit to tell them her mum had died a couple of years after she’d departed Buntin’s — and that she herself had nearly died twice in the past six months. Although
