skinny-dipping and sangria

The first time the Cunninghams and the Metcalfs went on holiday, Jed was just a toddler and Anna was very frightened that he might drown. Jo had hired a villa in the north of Majorca with a pool, which was marvellous but meant, of course, that there had to be an adult lifeguard on duty at all times.

Nigel was also rather worried about going to Majorca; he’d been to Magaluf as a teenager and the pal he’d gone with had returned home with genital warts. Genital warts were one of Nigel’s phobias, they had to be burnt off and can re-occur for life. To Nigel, the mere mention of Majorca conjured up sexually transmitted disease. His suspicions were confirmed when they boarded the plane at Gatwick, only to find it was full of Sun-reading common types, demanding lager on a 10am flight - and that was just the women. Nigel thought they all looked like they were riddled with genital warts.

He needn’t have worried. Majorca is an island of two halves: the peasants stay down in the south, where they eat egg and chips and turn geranium-pink in the sun, whilst the middle classes stream up to the north, with their factor thirty and their Booker-nominated novels. It is just the way things are. Possibly there is some village in the middle where people dither between The Birdy Song and Martin Amis.

It takes less than three hours to get to Majorca but when the plane touched down some people started clapping! Nigel almost fainted with embarrassment. Chris, however, forgot that clapping was very infra dig and joined in, which meant that Anna had to punch him rather hard in the stomach.

Jo was horribly nervous about the whole thing; choosing a holiday is an awesome responsibility and the flight unsettled her. Jo didn’t like flying. Anna loved it and when the plane hit turbulence halfway into the journey, she yelped with laughter, whilst Jo tightened her sphincter until you could have sharpened pencils with it, and clutched her copy of Hotel du Lac to her chest rather as if it were a bible. Jo took charge of all the passports, all eight of them - even Jed had his own. Anna’s passport photo managed to look as if David Bailey had been operating the photo booth, whilst Jo's made her look like her father in drag.

They travelled in convoy from the airport in two hire cars, and only had to go round the one-way system twice before they found the motorway. The villa was just outside of Puerto Pollensa on the north-west coast and half a mile down a dirt track, off the mail road. Jo was so tense that she gnawed her bottom lip and it took two days fro the indentations from her top teeth to wear off. It was a relief when the villa finally came into sight; a two-storey traditional stone finca-style suntrap, complete with a cartwheel bolted to the side wall.

Hoorah, hoorah, let the holiday begin.

Of course, it’s not as simple as all that. The welcome box of groceries consisted of white bread, six eggs and a tub of margarine. So Jo offered to pop to the supermarket. ‘No, really, its got to be done.’ When she got back everyone was in the pool eating egg sandwiches, but she pretended not to mind and prepared a tray of gin and tonics, making sure she got the extra strong one.

It was the first time they had all seen each other wearing so few clothes. Jo found it all rather traumatic. She made sure she never lay on the sun lounger next to Anna: the contrast would have been too stark, Anna visibly turning copper in a scarlet bikini, Jo with her dingy flesh the colour of old bra strap, barely contained within an old Marks and Spencer swimming costume with built-in cups. Ah well, at least Chris was in no better shape, with his spindly legs, his big fat belly and the large gelatinous moles on his back. ‘Ugh,’ said Georgina when she saw them. She was six, Pandora five, Henry seven and Jed just two. Nigel, of course, with his university rowing-team body looked just fine in his Speedos. The only bulgy bits on him where his genitals, something Anna couldn’t fail to notice. 'Your Nigel’s got a fair-sized knob,’ she remarked casually, over a dish of roasted almonds.

The villa had three bedrooms; the plan was that Anna and Chris should have the big one with the en suite because they needed the extra space for Jed’s travel cot. ‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ Chris said. ‘After all, Jo, you organised all this, you should have the big room.’ But Anna had already taken their bags up and arranged her toiletries in the little fake marble bathroom. There was another bedroom with bunk beds, which was ideal for the bigger children, so that left the smallest room with the twin beds and cat-flap-sized window for Jo and Nigel. It wasn’t ideal: Nigel was slightly claustrophobic and Pandora, disturbed by Henry’s nocturnal jabbering and occasional screams, decided to wander in to Chris and Anna’s bed every night and wedge herself between them like an electric fire. The sheets were nylon and Anna though she might suffocate.

‘Next time you book a holiday, Jo, make sure the bloody place has got air-conditioning.’

She wasn’t being ungrateful, Jo persuaded herself, she was just tired. None of them got much sleep. They attempted a couple of daytrips but it was easier to stay by the pool and pick lemons from the trees in the garden. Sometimes Jo thought it would be nice to go out for dinner it was quite hard work feeding people three times a day and none of the kids like the same thing. Nigel kept telling her to ‘chill’ and occasionally she had to hide herself away in the laundry-room and have a little cry whilst she sorted out the washing. ‘Just chuck your stuff in with ours, I might as well do it all together.’

Jo and Anna went to the Wednesday-morning market in the town together. It was meant to be a special ‘girl treat; but Jo found herself buying figs, tomatoes, cheese and artichokes, whilst Anna bought a leather belt, some shoes and a turquoise bra and knickers set. Still, you can’t eat lingerie and everyone agreed that the artichokes were delicious.

Two weeks flew by. On the last night they drank every drop of alcohol they had left and ate their farewell barbecue by the pool. Once the kids were asleep they kept drinking, not even bothering to tidy away the supper plates. They wre laughing a lot and at midnight Anna stripped down to her new turquoise bra and knickers and dived into the pool. The next minute, they were all in; the boys were stark naked and when Anna threw her soggy underwear on to a deckchair, Jo found herself doing the same. Unfortunately the cold water sobered her up and she suddenly felt vulnerable and embarrassed.

Jo got up at 5.30 the next morning - their flight was at 10.00 - as there were still the dinner plates, the barbecue grill-pan and a broken glass to clean up before they left at 7.00 and it wasn’t fair to leave everything to the maid. In the end she needn’t have been in such a panic, the flight was delayed by three hours. ‘I Knew it,’ said Nigel. ‘See, Jo, you had time to creosote the fence.’ He was trying to pretend he didn’t have a hangover, but they all felt terrible and Chris had to go and be sick whilst Anna bought some Clinique in the duty free.

But it was a fabulous holiday, and they all decided to do it again. Over the years the Cunninghams and the Metcalfs rented villas in Majorca, a gite in France, a farmhouse in Corsica and a converted windmill in Tuscany. Jo organised everything. Once she put her foot down and said it was up to the boys to arrange the accommodation. It was a disaster; they ended up in a godforsaken bungalow in Brittany, where it rained every day and they decided to get the ferry home before someone got stabbed to death with the bottle opener.

Sometimes Jo dreaded these holidays; they were so much effort. She had to make sure Henry had enough asthma inhalers and then there were travel sickness pills to remember and Elastoplast, insect repellent, anti-histamine cream, sun-block and after-sun; Calpol and then, of course, the dinghy. That bloody dinghy. It was her fault, of course, buying one built to last, sturdy as a U-boat. Every year she wished it would get punctured beyond repair, but no, every year it had to be found, packed, inflated and then at the end of the holiday deflated - which took four hours - and even this it was always wet so she had to remember to have enough bin liners to wrap it up in. Still it wouldn’t be the same without the dinghy. What else would Anna have to lie is as she bobbed about the pool drinking cheap Spanish champagne?

Often Jo’s irritable bowel would flare up and she would have to sit on the lavatory for hours on end, listening to everyone else having fun outside. But at least while her colon dithered about trying to make up its mind whether to auto-strangulate or just to fall out completely, she had time to plan what to cook for supper. Her only concession to being on holiday was buying shop-bought mayonnaise.

Over the years, evidence of these trips accumulated in both households: a pair of pink flowery flip-flops, a couple of straw hats, little ceramic bowls that looked like lettuce leaves, pebbles and shells. In the old days there always seemed to be sand at the bottom of their suitcases.