The Holiday Swap: The perfect feel good romance for fans of the Christmas movie The Holiday

Anna giggled and Flo looked up. ‘You’re right, it’s a joke. I’m a joke, my whole life…’

‘Oh don’t be daft, Flo. Me and Daisy love reading your updates, your life is much more exciting than ours. You’re just in shock.’

‘I miss Tippermere, and you guys.’

‘Believe me, you don’t miss Tippermere. But I can go with the second part.’ Her face suddenly went serious. ‘I am sorry, Flo, he’s a shit. I can’t believe he could do that.’

‘I think I can believe it.’ Flo couldn’t look her friend straight in the eye, instead she concentrated on the keyboard of her mobile phone. ‘The warning signs have been there.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve just been ignoring them. Keeping up appearances.’

‘You couldn’t know he was going to do that.’

If she’d stopped her determined efforts to live the perfect live, to convince herself and everybody else that things were great, then maybe she could have. ‘Sorry to dump on you.’

‘That’s what friends are for.’

‘I’ll be fine when I get home.’ And throw the rest of his belongings off the rooftop terrace. ‘You said you were going to ring me?’

‘It’ll wait until you get home. What time’s your flight?’

‘Hang on, the woman on the airline desk is waving, maybe that means they’ve got a spare seat.’

‘Oh Flo, you are okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Call me when you get back to Barcelona. I’ve got an idea.’

Flo pocketed her phone and made her way back to the airline desk, where a smiling girl was already holding a hand out for her passport.

So, that was it. So much for her smug outward journey with alcohol-laden hamper and gorgeous fiancé-to-be. Now she was make-up free, splodgy-pink faced, wild-haired, on the verge of tears and singledom was yelling her name.

She’d been stupidly happy for two days, she thought, as she trudged down the aisle and took her seat next to a dreadlocked teenager who had earphones in and acknowledged her arrival with a twitch of her pierced nose. Two bloody delusional days. Plus five years.

The whole row shook, as with a cheery grin a large lady heaved her over-sized bulk into the seat next to her, jostling her elbows and wriggling her hips until she’d squeezed her ample frame into the restricted space.

Flo made a grab for the plastic safety card and hoped neither of her travel companions would try and talk to her.

She stared at the laminated card telling her how to evacuate in case of emergency and the pictures blurred. How could her life have gone so wrong so quickly? Even her pep talk with Anna hadn’t made it more bearable; in fact it was just making her feel more homesick – and more of a fool. A tear escaped and plopped onto the card, and she angrily squashed the rest with the back of her hand before they could join it. She was not going to cry. If she did she might never stop and would arrive back in Barcelona a soggy, pitiful mess.

‘Cheer up, love, it might never happen. Ooh it’s a bit parky with this air-conditioning isn’t it?’ A podgy elbow narrowly missed her good eye – the one that didn’t have the overflow problem. ‘Good job I kept my cardi on. Here, have one of these.’ A tin of boiled sweets was inserted between the evacuation instructions and Flo’s nose.

Flo shook her head, not daring to speak, and bit down on her lip.

‘Go on, there’s plenty,’ the tin was shaken violently, ‘a good suck stops your ears popping.’ She leaned across Flo, nearly squashing her with her generous cardigan-encased bosom, and waved the tin in Miss Dreadlocks’ direction. The girl, her eyes shut, continued to nod her head to the beat of the music being blasted into her ears, oblivious to her surroundings and Flo wished she’d thought of that.

‘Ahh, you don’t like flying. That’s what it is, isn’t it, duck?’ She prised the card from Flo’s fingers and pushed it back into the pocket. ‘I know these planes aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, though I must admit I love them, means you’re on your way somewhere exciting doesn’t it when you get frisked at security.’ She grinned, completely unaware that she’d just removed Flo’s first line of defence. What was she going to do now? Go into the full-on brace position so that nobody could see her face? ‘You don’t want to be looking at that thing, dear, it’ll make you feel worse. If we go down, then who’s going to remember that kind of stuff? They’ll all be diving for the doors and to hell with taking your shoes off and not pulling the toggle things. And chances are it’ll be boom.’ She waved her arms extravagantly and Flo dodged to avoid an elbow.

Flo bit down harder on her lip. How come when you really wanted to chat you ended up sitting next to Mr Monosyllabic, and when human interaction was so far down on your wish list it had fallen off the bottom, you found yourself next to the airborne equivalent of the chatty taxi driver?

‘Now, now love, there’s nothing to be scared of. I know rattling down the runway can be a bit bouncy at times but once we’re in the air it’s all plain sailing, isn’t it? Well, plain flying.’ She chuckled at her own joke and popped a sweet into her mouth.

‘I’m not scared.’ The words juddered their way out of Flo’s mouth before she clamped her teeth back over the wobbly lip. The pain in her chest had grown; in fact her whole body was aching. Maybe she should feign death, or once the plane had taken off she could lock herself in the toilet and say the catch had jammed.

The sweet tin was shoved into an oversize handbag. ‘Well, whatever it is, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, is there? I’m sure it’ll all seem better in the…’

Flo burst into tears. She couldn’t help herself, she’d held it together at the airport but just couldn’t hold it in a second longer.

‘Oh goodness.’ The sweets came out again, followed by a man-size tissue. ‘Now, now, don’t you be getting all upset. Don’t tell me…’ Flo hadn’t been about to.

‘Sorry, I, I’ve had a bit of a shock.’ The realisation that your life was a disaster didn’t exactly lead to happy-dancing. ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’

Flo’s travel companion finished wrestling the enormous handbag under the seat and sat up red-faced, ‘I’m Carol by the way,’ then beamed at Flo.

‘Florence, Flo.’ Just saying her name seemed normal, and for a moment she forgot about him.

‘Now would you believe it, Flo, we’re about to take off. How about I tell you all about my hols to take your mind off it?’

Flo nodded and after blowing her nose a few times, taking a few deep breaths and letting Carol’s words drift over her she started to feel more like her normal self.

By the time Flo had heard all about Carol’s fun in Paris they were airborne, and the drinks trolley was jangling its way down the aisle.

‘I think we need a little drinky to cheer us up, don’t we?’ She patted Flo’s knee and, ignoring her protests, proceeded to order a mountain of snacks and drinks. ‘Here you are, love,’ she emptied the contents of a bottle into the plastic cup and added a splash of Coke, ‘I got you a couple of bottles of Bacardi. They’re only tiny little things, aren’t they? Cheers, me dears, drink up!’

Flo drank up and blinked, feeling surprisingly light-headed, which could have been to do with the altitude, or the fact that she really couldn’t put the drink away as fast as Carol.

‘Oh, now look at this.’ Carol had moved onto her magazine, and Flo squinted and tried to concentrate on something other than her disastrous life. ‘He’s a looker, isn’t he?’

Flo nodded dumbly at the photograph of George Clooney. Yes, like Oli. He was a looker alright, and a talker.

‘Makes it too easy for them, doesn’t it?’ Carol turned the page round so she could examine the picture more closely. ‘If they haven’t got looks then they have to work at it, makes them nicer, that’s what my mother always said. And those lookers go to seed, you know. Then what have you got left?’

‘George Clooney hasn’t gone to seed.’

‘Well there has to be the odd exception.’

‘Nor has Harrison Ford,’ chipped in dreadlocks girl, who had removed her earphones at some point, ‘he looked hot in Star Wars.’

‘They’re not real life though, are they, duck? You don’t know what work goes into making them look like that. Worse than women they are, all titivated up.’

Flo sighed. Maybe Oli hadn’t been real life, and the idea of him losing his looks and going to seed cheered her up a bit.

‘Oh look, we’re nearly there. I’m quite looking forward to this, like my mam always said, a change of scene works wonders.’

Flo stared out of the window. A change of scene, a complete change of scene, was probably just what she needed right now. She just had to work out what it looked like.

***

As the airplane touched down at Barcelona airport, Flo didn’t feel quite so tearful. The two double Bacardi and Cokes, plus the glass of Prosecco had taken her from the ‘he’s a bastard and I want to cry’ stage, to the much healthier ‘I’m better off without him (maybe) and I hope him and his hussy burn in hell’ stage. After swaying in the aisle of the plane for twenty minutes waiting to disembark, spending ten minutes in a queue for passport control and an impossibly long time (impossibly because her bladder was about to burst) waiting in line for the toilets, her alcoholic haze had lifted and all she wanted to do was go home, get so drunk she couldn’t see straight, and cry.