Five Go Glamping (8 page)

‘What is that bloody noise? It sounds like a police siren. Are we being pulled over?’ said Steph, glancing in her rear view mirror and then tutting. It wasn’t a police siren, it was Kirk wailing. We’d been on the road for an hour and Kirk had not stopped crying at all. Sinead and I had fought over who was sitting in the back. We both wanted the back seat so we could play with Brian and Sinead let me have it, but God, was I regretting it now. The wailing stopped for minute and Kirk spoke through his sobs.

‘How could he leave me? He said it was me or the dog. He must never have loved me.’

‘It could be a blessing in disguise.’ Sinead said wistfully. She’d said this lots of times since we set out. A few times to me and a few times to Brian. I had the feeling she wasn’t really paying attention, like she had her mind on other matters like what was inside Crazy Trousers’ crazy trousers.

‘Well at least you’ve got a job,’ I said to Kirk. I was trying to be sympathetic but after an hour or so on the M5, I could have done with a little bit of space to think about my own problems.

‘At least you’ve got a boyfriend,’ said Kirk.

‘Will you all please be quiet? I’m trying to concentrate. Pull yourself together, Kirk,’ said Steph.

It was the worst thing she could have possibly said as the sobbing turned to police siren wailing again. I pulled my notebook out from my rucksack and stared at the front page.

‘Please tell me you haven’t bought your planning book with you,’ said Steph.

‘No,’ I said, closing the notebook.

‘Come on Fiona – how about, just for this holiday, you let go of your planning and see what happens?’

While I didn’t like the idea of not having a plan, I suppose she had a point. Maybe I could do without planning for one long weekend away and see what happened. There was nothing I could do about the job thing until I got back anyway. I put the notebook back into my bag but I held onto it once it was inside. I wasn’t prepared to let it go yet.

‘Look,’ chirped Sinead. ‘Pub’s open.’ It wasn’t lunchtime yet but our holiday rule was, if we see an open pub we are permitted to start drinking. It was the law. So I reached around into the boot of the car and rummaged in the cool bag for a couple of bottles of Crabbie’s. Sinead said she didn’t want one. Steph obviously did but couldn’t as she was driving and she was scowling at us in the rear view. I cracked them open with Kirk’s key ring bottle opener, clinked bottles with Kirk and started to drink. It was the only thing so far that had stopped Kirk crying.

I looked out of the window, enjoying this new silence that spread over the car and with the help of the ginger beer, I started to relax and feel in holiday mode. The further we got away from home, the more my problems seemed to dissolve. Brian Harvey sat on my lap and snuggled up to go to sleep. I patted him on the head. This was much nicer than being stuck on a hot bus on my way to work. I’d worry about being jobless when I got home, and I was sure I could meet up with Connor at some point and sort things out, maybe tell him what had happened at work.

Plus now that Kirk had finally shut up, I looked round at my friends and felt like everything would be okay. Sinead was right, it would be good to get away and have some lovely fresh air and I was also into Steph’s enthusiasm for having a good time and maybe when I got to see Connor, he’d understand about the job thing.

I wound down the windows and took a huge deep breath in through my nose. I took another deep breath in and then it hit me. Manure. Not any manure, some kind of all powerful super stench manure that stung my eyes and made me gag. It created ripples of panic around the rest of the car with everyone shouting at me to close the window. Kirk declared it was ‘an ominous start to the holiday.’

*

The motion of Steph braking sharply jolted me awake. My leg was sore from where a bottle of Crabbie’s was wedged between me and Kirk and it looked like some of it had spilled onto my skirt. At least I had hoped it was that and Brian Harvey hadn’t had an accident. I picked him up and eye-balled him but he seemed innocent enough, tongue hanging out, and it looked like he was smiling at me. He was so adorable. I was most definitely a dog person and not a mad cat lady.

‘What’s happened? Why have we stopped…’ I said, blearily.

‘Bloody car has broken down, when we are nearly there.’ Steph said, banging on the steering wheel in frustration. ‘Everybody out,’ she ordered. That was rather tricky, especially holding two bottles of ginger beer and Brian Harvey.

‘Oh my God,’ said Steph, ‘what a stroke of luck – a pub.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Kirk. ‘Breaking down on the moors, outside a creepy looking pub, that’s handy isn’t it? There’s actually nothing scary about that is there? Oh no.’

I let myself out of the car and put Brian Harvey down on the ground while Steph opened the bonnet and started pulling wires out of it.

I turned to look at the pub. It didn’t look creepy at all to me, just a little bit neglected. A dilapidated sign above the door told us it was called The Creech Inn. It was a grey stone building with a porch at the front, like the kind you see on an old chapel. Outside there was a couple of benches on a little patch of lawn behind a stone wall that had seen better days. I thought it all looked quite pretty.

‘It’s not scary, it’s a nice little pub,’ I said to Kirk.

‘Have you seen
An American Werewolf in London
, Fiona?’ said Kirk, very seriously. ‘That’s why they say don’t go out on the moors.’

‘Who says don’t go out on the moors?’ said Sinead, looking confused.

‘We’re not even on the moors. We are nowhere near any bloody moors.’ said Steph, poking her head over the bonnet.

‘Go into the pub, Fiona,’ said Sinead.

‘No,’ said Kirk. ‘Don’t go in there, it’s too spooky. I’m going to call the AA.’

‘You’ll have to all push me, we’ll get it started again.’

She climbed back into the car and we all stood around wandering what to do while Kirk came up with theories about horrific things that would happen to us if we dared step foot inside The Creech Inn. I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped out of my skin. I let out a little noise which in turn made Kirk jump.

‘Hey sorry,’ the man said. I turned to look at him and saw he was not someone who wanted to murder us at all. He was smiling and had a mop of thick curly hair and really striking green eyes. He was kind of hot but a little too scruffy looking with a threadbare jumper. It was how I imagined Poldark would look if he had fallen on hard times and had been listening to too much Nirvana and couldn’t be arsed to have a shave, but something about him was mesmerising.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Did you need some help?’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said, seemingly suddenly incapable of forming a sentence. Now Kirk was staring at him with his mouth open. The man turned to Kirk, who was still holding his phone ‘You’ll be lucky to get a signal here, mate.’

‘Oh,’ said Kirk.

I don’t know what it was about this man that was making us all lose our marbles. Yes, we could all see he was good looking, but part of me wondered if we had a complete inability to converse with anybody new. Our social lives were so stale, we did the same things all the time, pub on Saturdays, quiz on Mondays, round to mine for dinners in between. I wondered if we had lost the ability to talk to strangers. Something about this seemed all fresh and new to us.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Kirk,’ said Steph. ‘Give me your phone.’

Steph then adopted her flirty stance, head to the side, hand on hip which most men were unable to resist, but she didn’t seem to be able to hold the man’s gaze and he carried on looking at me.

‘Would you…’ started Steph in her best seductive voice ‘… possibly be able to give us a jump?’

‘A jump start, she means. Jump start the car.’ said Sinead, looking embarrassed.

He laughed but still didn’t break eye contact with me and I could feel myself going red as he looked at me with a quizzical, curious look. At the same time I couldn’t look away from him, staring intently at me. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone looked at me like that. Steph coughed and he finally turned to her.

‘Sure,’ he said. He walked over to a crumpled heap of a car parked outside the pub and took some leads out. He moved his car nearer to Steph’s, connected the leads and within seconds the car had started and we all got back in. Steph hurried us, worried the car would stop again, so I mouthed a quick thank you.

I watched him out the back window as he waved us off, and I thought we should definitely go back and thank him at the end of the holiday as we passed through on the way back home.

*

‘And did you see the nice man checking Fiona out, Brian Harvey?’ said Kirk giving Brian a little fuss on the head.

‘He wasn’t checking me out,’ I said.

‘He so was,’ said Steph.

‘Totally was,’ said Sinead and grinned at me. ‘Oh, we’re here! This is it.’ she chirped. We’d only travelled a little while further around a long bend and could see the castle in the distance where the festival was being held.

‘I need water.’ murmured Kirk as we all got out of the car again, it looked like one of those late afternoon hangovers was kicking in and I realised my head had cleared a little and I felt surprisingly chipper.

The man at the pub showing a bit of interest in me had put a little spring in my step and now we had arrived on holiday everything felt that little bit brighter. It was still warm, but there was a breeze and it was nice to be outside, enjoying the summer rather than commuting into work on a packed sticky bus.

I passed Kirk a bottle of water from the cool bag and looked over out on to the gravelly track and admired the view. A bright blue sky sat on top of a valley where the hills rolled down to a river. In the valley, cows drank from a stream, while a line of sheep trailed up the other side. I could make out a little chink of darker blue on the horizon. The sea. It all looked so beautiful and after surveying the lovely vista, I felt my stiffened muscles unwind. I had a definite sense of getting away from it all.

I was in mid- stretch, admiring the view, when my gaze was drawn to our more immediate environment and I stopped with my arms still raised above my head.

‘Erm…are you sure this is it?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t exactly look very erm…festival-ly, does it?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Steph, who then glared at Sinead who had come round to join us at the front of the car.

The three of us leant on the bonnet and stared at the piece of paper taped on the gate of a field. Someone had written in biro ‘Welcome to the Find Yourself Festival’.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ said Steph.

‘There’s nothing here.’ I said, leaning over the gate. ‘It’s an empty field.’ I did not like the sound of the Find Yourself Festival one bit and was leaning towards Steph’s theory that this was some kind of cult. Although at least if I was kidnapped by a cult, I wouldn’t have to go back and face Juliet again.

‘I’ll ring the lads and ask them,’ offered Sinead. She fished in her handbag for her phone.

‘No signal,’ she said, which prompted Steph to check hers.

‘Do any of you have a signal at all? Seeing as we are stranded in the middle of nowhere?’ said Steph.

‘Oh my God, where the bloody hell are we? What hell hole is this?’ Kirk said as he put Brian Harvey down on the ground. ‘Are we stranded?’

‘No, this appears to be it,’ I said, resignedly. ‘This is where we are spending the weekend.’

‘My God. But it’s a field. A field!’ Kirk looked terrified. ‘I can’t stay in a field in the middle of nowhere. I’m afraid I’m a little too fragile to cope with this.’

‘Calm down Kirk,’ I said ‘We can always go and find a B&B, or even go home, it’s not like we’re stranded in the Sahara desert and have to decide whether we to starve to death or eat Brian Harvey for our tea is it?’

‘Oh. How could you?’ he said, picking Brian Harvey up and flouncing off to go and sulk in the car.

‘Let’s not panic,’ said Sinead. ‘It’s not that bad. We have Kirk’s tent and we can pitch up here. We can all stay in that. Maybe everyone is late. Or we could go back to that pub and see if that man knows where–’

‘Yes, let’s do that,’ I interrupted, causing everyone to smile and tease me about the man. I could feel my cheeks going red when a rickety old banger with peace and love stickers all over it pulled up next to us. The moonfaced mirrored skirt lady from the Himalayan Healing Centre and another woman who looked like her got out of the car. They both had skirts with mirrors on them and bags with mirrors on them. I could see Steph bristling at their fashion choices.

‘Bright blessings,’ said the first woman with an impossibly shrill voice. ‘Are you here to find yourselves too?’

We looked at each other and conferred without speaking. We shared a few raised eyebrows and then some reluctant nods before turning to the women and muttering ‘Yes’, letting her know that we were here for the free festival, but not fully confirming that we believed in any of this new age nonsense. I did not like the look of this at all but realised the chances of finding ourselves might be possibly improved if we could find the bloody Find Yourself Festival in the first place. I was trying to work out how long we would have to stay here before we could go off to the music festival.

The second woman offered her arms up as though she was going to hug us, and Sinead looked like she was going to respond but Steph held a cautious hand out in front of her which made Sinead step back. Even Brian Harvey must have thought they were shifty because he was growling at the woman’s strange shoes. ‘Well, come on then, you’ll need to get out of the way of the gate girls. Follow us down! Close the gates behind you. Country code and all that.’

The first mirrored skirt lady pushed the gate open while the other one waited in her car. We followed the strange hippies along the dirt track through the field and through a tiny opening into another field where our yurts awaited. It still didn’t feel very festival-ly though.

The view was even better from here and I could see much more of the sea. Strings of pretty pastel bunting flapped gently between the yurts, and there were fire pits dotted around in front of them. Nothing could spoil this scene. Apart from, maybe, the sight of some really horrible trousers.