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.‘I’m very sorry.Lily knows what she did was wrong.’‘Does she?’ Chelsea hoped her look said everything.Lily was standing by the coach.Her face was red, as though she had been crying, but she didn’t seem especially contrite.‘She does.We had a conversation and she is sorry.Believe me.’‘Then shouldn’t she say it herself? She doesn’t need a conversation.She needs a telling-off.’‘Look, don’t go judging me about disciplining children.Your nephew is hardly a paragon of virtue.After what I saw on the roundabout yesterday …’‘You’re bringing up yesterday? The roundabout? After what Lily did on the slide? Jack could have fallen off sideways and cracked his head open, and you tried to pretend that was an accident? What kind of thug are you bringing up?’‘Don’t you dare call my daughter a thug.’‘What else do you expect me to call her? She deliberately and spitefully pushed Jack’s ice cream into his face.’‘She was hot and tired and she wanted to try the ice cream he had.’‘And that makes it right?’‘Of course it doesn’t make it right, but … for goodness’ sake.She’s only a kid.She knows she did wrong.I’ve apologised on her behalf and I’ll deal with it from here without any help from you.Look … just buy him a new T-shirt.’ Adam thrust a twenty-euro note in Chelsea’s direction.‘Spend it on some lessons in manners,’ Chelsea suggested, as she thrust it right back.‘Why don’t you spend it on a self-help book?’ said Adam.‘So you can be even more sure you’re right about everything.No wonder you’re single.’‘Oh!’ Chelsea let the note drop to the floor.Unfortunately for Chelsea, Jack, Lily and Adam, the holidaymakers on the coach trip had all chosen to travel back to the resort in the same seats as on the journey out to the caves.The driver need not have bothered to turn on the air-conditioning.The back two rows of the coach were arctic, as the two adults and two children ignored each other even more emphatically than before.When the coach arrived back at the Hotel Volcan, Adam dispensed with etiquette, leaping to his feet and shuffling his daughter into the aisle before Chelsea even registered that the coach had stopped.She flicked the Vs at his retreating back, imbuing the gesture with all the anger that had been bubbling inside for the past few days.Adam got Colin and Davina and Ronnie’s share of the Vs as well.‘That’s rude,’ Jack breathed in awe.‘And you didn’t see me do it.’‘Auntie Chelsea,’ said Jack, as she helped him down from the coach, ‘you are awesome.’‘Really?’ Chelsea couldn’t help preening.‘Yes.You’re better than Captain Jack.’‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she said.But the good feeling didn’t last.As she helped Jack down from the coach, she watched Adam heading into the hotel lobby.He glanced back in her direction.His expression was furious.That had to be the end of any chance of friendship now.Chapter Twenty-EightRonnieAround lunchtime, Ronnie caught Jacqui staring at her again.It wasn’t exactly annoying, but it was certainly unnerving.Her mother was looking at her in such an odd way, as though trying to form a mental picture of Ronnie’s face that would last for ever.When Ronnie looked back at her, her brows dipping in a questioning way, Jacqui just smiled.‘Is everything OK, Mum?’‘Of course.’Then why was she being so odd? Ronnie wondered.Perhaps she was just feeling nostalgic.Perhaps Jacqui really had been thinking about her own mother more than usual lately.But Ronnie did not consider her mother to be an especially nostalgic sort of woman.Jacqui was loving but practical.She wasn’t much given to sentimentality.After thinking about it for a little too long, Ronnie decided there had to be a reason behind Jacqui’s sudden spate of soppy gazing and she could only come up with bad ones.She wondered exactly when her grandmother had passed away.Had they inadvertently missed the anniversary? Perhaps it had happened in August.‘Mark,’ she said later on, ‘have you noticed my mum being a bit, well, odd these past couple of days?’‘What, odder than usual?’ Mark responded
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