The Banker's Holiday

Day 3

ERICA WALKED up the beach taking in the fresh early morning air. She was headed to the place they were at last night. Mummy had said that she would join her last night, but this morning said she had a bit of a hangover and had to recover and beautify herself for Daddy's client dinner in the evening. So that meant she was pretty much on her own all day and evening.

However it was obviously too early for anything much to be happening and there was hardly anybody on the beach. When she got to the bar it wasn't open yet. So she continued on, idly playing with the wet sand with her bare toes as she walked along the surf's edge and ran through yesterday in her mind.

It had certainly been a great day if a little odd, firstly with Mummy and the shopping, secondly the evening, where neither of her parents seemed to treat her like a kid. Maybe somehow they'd seen her as more grown up since Easter, or she'd somehow changed herself since then, but she doubted that. Not that she was complaining, but it was a little strange.

She'd very much enjoyed the evening and had seen a couple of not bad looking boys ogling her several times. She'd tried to dance in as provocative a way as she could under the circumstances. It would have been obvious, of course, that she was with her parents and that was the quickest way to dampen a boy's enthusiasm, ending all hope of being asked to dance. Hopefully her parents wouldn't always be there though and then they might pluck up the courage to ask her. Odd that it always seemed to be the boys that had to do that, but she admitted to herself she'd be pushed to try and face the shame of rejection.

Tonight they would be at the dinner and she hoped the band or another one might be playing, so things could play out differently. She wondered what Miss Woods would think of a girl asking a boy to dance. Die of a heart attack at the thought probably! That might not be a bad thing for them all and with that thought she giggled to herself. Not nice of course, but then Miss Woods wasn't very nice and the worst House Mistress there was.

She realised that she was now near the place where she had seen the blond boy, so she cut up to the road and looked as she went past but there was nobody interesting there, just an old couple drinking coffee, so she carried on to a small set of shops she had seen, but not stopped at before and spent a while browsing the goods on offer.

There was nothing much of interest though, so she walked back to the beach and sat on the sand. She saw that there were a few more people about, but the beach was still fairly deserted, so she started reading her book. At least she could get a little sun before it got too hot.

FELICITY WAS not feeling so good, maybe too many strong drinks with rum in them last night. She knew there would be a lot more consumed this evening. These dinners were such a pain, but she was almost obligated to attend them if she was around. She hoped they would be nice people and the event not a total bore. Sometimes there was a language barrier which made it not only hard to communicate but also to have a reasonable time. The odd few were fun, but an awful lot of them were boring.

David liked having her there though, as they often didn't have their wives with them and he thought that her being with him changed the way the dinners went, letting him be more in control over the business aspects as they would be more reticent about talking business with his wife present. Supporting her husband was part of a wife's duty after all.

With that facing her, the thought of spending the morning on the beach with Erica and having two awkward events on the same day was too much and so she cried off. Besides, maybe she wouldn't want her mother around to embarrass her, just as she herself had thought at the same age. However much you tried to be best pals there was still that generational gap and she wasn't all that good on the best pal front either. She supposed that one had to let go of them and let them do their own thing and she wondered if all parents had the same difficulty of limiting their concern.