After the Honeymoon Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Janey Fraser

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  The Honeymoon

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After The Honeymoon

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Post-Honeymoon Notes

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Three couples. One honeymoon destination...

  Emma never wanted to marry Tom, let alone go away without the children. But then the girls at work pay for a honeymoon in Greece. Enter Yannis, the local lothario.

  Winston is the nation’s Keep Fit darling. Newspapers are agog when he marries Melissa, newly divorced mother of two. But when her teenagers disrupt their honeymoon, his past is revealed.

  Rosie was homeless and pregnant when she arrived at the Villa Rosa sixteen years ago, but now she’s the owner. Winston might not remember her, but she’s forgotten him...

  By the end of the week, none of their lives will be the same. But how will they cope after the honeymoon is over?

  About the Author

  Janey Fraser has been a journalist for over twenty-five years and contributes regularly to national newspapers and magazines including the Daily Telegraph and Woman. This is her fourth book. She has also published books under the pen name Sophie King.

  Also by Janey Fraser

  The Playgroup

  The Au Pair

  Happy Families

  This book is dedicated to my husband and our not-honeymoon (who needs one when you live by the sea?)

  Also to Giles, who refused to go away with us (see above)

  Lucy and Andi (who lived it up in the Maldives)

  William (who loves the beach)

  Little Jack (ditto)

  My sister, whose third honeymoon (Spanish villa for twenty) was a ball

  This book is not dedicated to

  My missed flight at Stansted

  Post-holiday mobile phone bills

  Airport luggage scales (never in my favour)

  Holiday rain

  Lost passports (why didn’t I look under the photocopier?)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks as always to my agent Teresa Chris and our seaside business meetings. Also to my editor Gillian Holmes, Citizen Sigmund, Sarah Aratoon and all the team at Random House.

  Finally, I’m indebted to ex-Royal Marine Bill McDermott for being so generous with his time; to my cousin Finni for her tales about life in Greece; to all the dinner ladies who shared their nuggets (literary, rather than chicken); friends and students who contributed real-life honeymoon stories; and to my fellow writers at the Romantic Novelists Association.

  THE HONEYMOON

  HISTORY OF HONEYMOONS

  Norse legend has it that honeymoons used to take place before marriage. According to one version, a man would kidnap a woman he fancied (hence the meaning behind ‘swept her off her feet’) and carry her around on horseback for a month of moons. The couple would drink mead (a honey-based drink) while in hiding, as this was said to improve the chance of having sons. Then, when the bride’s relatives caught up, they would have a marriage ceremony.

  LAST-MINUTE BARGAIN!

  Idyllic holiday cottage on the stunning, unspoilt Greek island of Siphalonia – suddenly available for the last week of July, due to last-minute cancellation.

  Very reasonable rates!

  Perfect for couple or small family. For more details, please contact Gemma Balls, head of pastoral care at Corrywood School, or leave a message with the school secretary.

  Chapter One

  EMMA

  ‘So,’ asked Bernie chirpily, handing her a serving of pasta curls, chipolatas and broccoli through the hatch, ‘where are you going for your honeymoon then?’

  Emma carefully placed the bright green plastic platter in front of a little girl from Year One with buck teeth and clear-framed glasses, before replying. Why did people keep asking her? ‘We can’t afford one, actually. Weddings are so expensive. Tom says we might have a bit of a break next year instead, with the children.’

  Bernie, or Big-Boned Bern as she was sometimes known (though Emma, with her size-sixteen meringue wedding dress, could hardly talk), rolled her eyes. She smoothed down her Corrywood Juniors pinny and passed the next green platter over the counter that divided the cooking area from the dining room. ‘Thought that was the whole point of waiting all these years before tying the knot. You know, to save up for a big do.’

  Emma, who was wearing a matching yellow pinny like the rest of the team, felt a little shiver go through her: it happened every time someone mentioned the wedding. When she and Tom had first started planning all this, it hadn’t seemed real enough to be scary. But now there was only a week to go and frankly she felt sick as a dog.

  ‘That’s right, love, eat up the broccoli too,’ she urged. ‘It’s good for you.’

  The kindly advice to the little girl in glasses bought her time to compose herself before turning back to Bernie. ‘We’ve been putting aside as much as we could, but with the mortgage, it’s really tight.’

  Her friend and workmate popped a sausage in her own mouth (strictly forbidden, for hygiene reasons) and gave a sympathetic nod. ‘Not easy, is it?’

  She leaned across and picked out a pasta curl that had somehow got stuck in Emma’s naturally wavy, honey-blonde hair. Stray bits of food on your person was one of the hazards of the job, along with the noise from the kids, which made your ears ring until you got used to it.

  Emma loved being a dinner lady, or rather, a ‘mealtime assistant’, as they called it now. She liked nothing more than to help the little ones to cut up their food or sort out an argument because someone claimed to have a bigger sausage than someone else. It was even an exciting challenge to coax fussy eaters into ‘just one more mouthful’.

  ‘Mrs Walker, Mrs Walker! What happens to food when it goes into your tummy?’

  It was an earnest little boy who was rather small for his age, bless him. Always asking questions. Like all the others, he addressed her as ‘Mrs’. It seemed inconceivable to them that a mother could be anything else. ‘It gets eaten up by your body,’ replied Emma promptly, before adding encouragingly, ‘Then you get big and strong and clever.’

  ‘But how does your body eat it
up?’

  Bernie rolled her eyes and mouthed something that looked like ‘Rather you than me’.

  ‘It’s all to do with digestion,’ Emma began, recalling her A grade in biology GCSE.

  ‘Die jest on.’ The little boy looked as though he was memorising the words carefully. ‘But how?’

  It would be so easy to say something wishy-washy like ‘It just does’, but Emma always felt that when a child was bright enough to be curious, they deserved an answer. Even when it wasn’t easy.

  ‘It’s like this, you see,’ she patted her tummy. ‘The food goes round your body and then it ends up in something called the colon.’

  The little boy’s eyes lit up. ‘Like in English?’

  Bernie spluttered with laughter behind her. Emma ignored her. ‘No, although that’s a good question. This kind of colon is different.’

  ‘Then what happens to it?’

  ‘I know! I know!’ One of the older children was jumping up and down, arm up in the air. ‘It comes out as poo!’

  Emma flushed.

  ‘Cool!’ The earnest kid was nodding. It certainly hadn’t put him off his food, judging from the way he was wolfing down those pasta twists.

  Why was it easy to get other people’s kids to obey, but not your own? It had been fine at the beginning when her son had been little, but Gawain had become much more demanding since his sister had been born.

  Emma stifled a yawn as she reached for a plate of veggie nuggets to deliver to table two. She’d spent hours trying to get her eldest to bed last night. Not only had he refused to be peeled out of his Spider-Man costume for bath-time but he’d also kept swooping – arms wide out at the side like an aeroplane – in and out of the tiny bedroom that he shared with little Willow, waking her up.

  It was only when she’d lain down next to him in his new bed that he’d finally dropped off. Then Tom had gone and spoiled it all by declaring Gawain was far too old for all this fuss now he was four. ‘When are we ever going to have an evening to ourselves?’ he’d said gently.

  ‘He’s still very young,’ Emma had retorted, wondering at the same time what she and Tom would actually do with a whole evening on their own.

  Still, the great thing about her little job at Corrywood School was that she felt wonderfully useful. Every time one of the children finished their plate or gave her an impromptu cuddle the way little ones did, she got an electric buzz. She was really appreciated here – far more than at home, to be honest.

  The other big plus was that the hours fitted in with her own kids. There was just time when they finished at one-thirty, after sweeping up and stacking the little red tables, to collect Gawain from pre-school and Willow from Mum’s round the corner. Tight, but just about possible.

  Rather like copping out of the wedding.

  Emma knelt down next to a little boy with muddy knees (‘Shall we make a picture out of these sausages?’), grateful for another distraction. She’d have been quite happy not to get married at all. Mum and Dad’s example had proved there was no such thing as a happy ever after. But Tom was more traditional.

  For a minute, she found herself thinking about the boy she’d met at the community club disco all those years ago. Even though she’d been barely fifteen – ridiculous really – and Tom had been so much older (twenty-two!) she’d known he was the one. It wasn’t just the way he’d asked her to dance with that shy smile. It was how he’d carefully asked for her number before kissing her. Her first kiss!

  Picking up a squashed veggie nugget from the floor, Emma found herself blushing at the memory. It had been a rather awkward meeting of mouths, as though he wasn’t sure what he was doing either, despite his age, especially when his glasses had got in the way. But she’d liked that. The last thing she’d wanted was a slick smoothie. Someone who couldn’t be trusted. Someone like her dad.

  They’d gone out together for the rest of her time at school. ‘Don’t you want to see what it’s like with other boys?’ demanded Bernie, who’d sat next to her in class since primary, sharing her sweets surreptitiously under the desk.

  No, she didn’t. It was all right for her friend, whose parents still held hands when they walked down the street. But when you’d witnessed the arguments that had gone on between her two, you needed stability. Yet at the same time, you were scared of committing for ever, just in case the same thing happened to you.

  Only someone who’d seen their family break up would understand that.

  Tom had started to talk marriage when they’d gone to Paris to celebrate her eighteenth. The hotel had turned out to be more skanky than swanky, and although she’d pretended not to be unnerved by the ‘ladies of the night’ who’d hung around the street outside, Emma had reached out for Tom’s hand for comfort.

  He’d felt awkward as well. To compensate for their unfamiliar surroundings and narrow bed with sheets that bore stains from the previous occupants, they’d had way too much to drink. Perhaps it was that which had made her forgetful.

  Of course, she could have gone and got the morning after pill when they’d got back, but something inside her made her stop. After all, she’d always loved babies.

  Anyway, it wasn’t as though she had a proper career. She’d always dreamed of being a teacher, but then Dad had gone off, putting an end to any kind of wild aspirations like that so she’d had to leave school and get a job in a supermarket to help pay the bills.

  The reality of what she’d done hit home six weeks after the Paris weekend. Tom had been much calmer than she had when they’d stared at the blue line on the pregnancy testing kit. ‘I want to do the right thing by you,’ he’d declared. ‘Let’s get married.’

  Married? The right thing? Emma looked at this man with his open, honest face, greasy navy overalls from the garage where he worked, the premature bald patch in the middle of his head and those round glasses which kept misting up at the most inopportune of times. Shouldn’t he be talking about passion and wanting to grow old together? Besides, he knew what she thought about marriage after Mum and Dad.

  Maybe she could delay him for a bit; put it off so it didn’t seem so important. It was a baby she wanted – not a wedding.

  ‘I don’t want to be four months gone when I walk down the aisle,’ she had pointed out. ‘It will look as though you’ve had to marry me.’

  But from the minute that Gawain was born (she’d always loved that name ever since discovering his story in English class), Tom had started banging on about weddings again. ‘I want a big do,’ he had declared. ‘Nothing can be too good for my beautiful girl.’

  Emma, completely smitten and overcome with a love she had never thought possible for this crinkly, wet baby in her arms, with his shock of red hair (just like Tom’s), dismissed his words. Weddings were the last thing on her mind.

  As for ‘beautiful girl’, that was ridiculous! Emma had never considered herself to be a looker. At five foot three, she was just too short to carry off the extra half stone which had plagued her all through her teenage years and which now, thanks to post-baby weight, had crept up to one and a half. Tom, who was stocky himself, declared he liked her ‘cuddly’ but she knew he was just being kind. If Emma had been forced to name her best points, it would be her hair and what Bernie called her ‘sympathetic, smiley face’.

  ‘Let’s think about getting married when we’ve settled down a bit,’ she’d pleaded to Tom. ‘There’s enough to do at the moment as it is.’

  And so there was. But Emma loved every minute of being a mum. She hadn’t realised how much they’d needed their son to make them feel complete, but Tom still wouldn’t give up on the marriage thing. ‘Why bother?’ she’d retort. ‘It’s so expensive and takes up so much time. Why can’t we just stay as we are?’

  Tom’s face had instantly made her feel guilty. ‘Don’t you want to commit to me? Think you can find someone better, do you?’

  ‘No, of course not, but …’

  They’d been sitting on the sofa enjoying some rare couple ti
me while Mum was out on one of her dates-that-went-nowhere.

  ‘No buts,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘We owe it to our son to tidy things up.’

  Tidy things up? It didn’t seem a very romantic way of putting it. But unable to find any more arguments, save a nagging uncertainty that she couldn’t put a name to, Emma promised to look up some venues, even though they were completely out of their reach financially.

  In a way it had been a relief when she’d found out that she was expecting again, just as Gawain began to toddle. Of course it meant money would be even tighter, but having another baby was important for her son. She’d always longed to have a brother or sister herself.

  When Willow – a name she’d found in a poetry book – was born, she felt as though nothing could make her happier. A daughter! A little girl, with her brother’s trademark red hair, whom she could go shopping with. Talk to. Confide in. It made Emma glow with pleasure to know that she had provided a lifelong friend for her son. They would love each other, she knew it – even though Gawain had already ripped up his favourite picture book on being introduced to his new sister.

  But over the next few weeks and then months, Tom began to show a side of himself that she had only occasionally got glimpses of before. He started speaking shortly; behaving like someone who didn’t want to talk very much or have a great deal to do with her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked one night.

  She’d expected Tom to say nothing, that she was imagining it. But then he’d given her a look that made her chest contract. A cold fear crawled over her. He’d found someone else. Just like Dad …

  ‘I’m not happy,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Who is it?’ she managed to say, her throat strangled.

  Tom frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  Emma could hardly get the words out.

  Then his face cleared. ‘You think I’ve got someone else? Don’t be daft, Em. Though if I didn’t know you better, I might wonder if you had someone.’ He took her hands, getting down on one knee on the carpet they’d bought on credit last month. ‘I’m not happy because I want to get married, and you don’t. If you really loved me, Em, you’d say yes.’