Love...Under Different Skies by Nick Spalding Page A

passenger seat of a car, without it being on fire and covered in scorpions.
    I’d already said my goodbyes to our hosts before running to the car as fast as my legs would carry me. I just couldn’t bear to look at their faces ever again. These perfectly nice people, who brought us into their home and let us play Rummikub with them, now think I have a daughter who’s scared of her own shadow and that I have antisocial bowels.
    Only Jamie has come out of this unscathed. This is an unacceptable state of affairs.
    As my husband loads up the last of the suitcases, slams the trunk lid down, and lowers himself into the passenger seat, I open my window.
    “Grant! Ellie!” I shout up the tangled driveway.
    “What are you doing?” Jamie asks as he slams the car door.
    The two Australian hippies reemerge onto the veranda. “What’s up, Laura?” Ellie asks as I start the car engine.
    “I just thought you both should know…Jamie has an extremely small penis. He wanted to leave before either of you accidentally caught sight of it and called the Guinness World Records .”
    Yes it was childish, but by crikey it made me feel a lot better as I sped away, my husband’s shrieking protests ringing in my ears.
     
    Jamie did get the ear-bashing he so richly deserved for blaming our hasty move on my bowels, but as I sit here in the Metro with the gentle breeze of the air-con playing across my shoulders, I have to confess that the embarrassment was almost worth it.
    I start a brand-new job on Monday and really could do with the next few days being as stress-free as possible. This is more likely here in our modern hotel than it would have been back in 1950s Australia.
    Love you and miss you, Mum. And I can assure you that my bowels are functioning with clockwork regularity.
    Your relaxed daughter, Laura
    xx

JAMIE’S BLOG
    Wednesday 22 February
    Stop raining.
    Please stop raining. This is Australia, for crying out loud. It’s supposed to be warm, sunny, and potentially carcinogenic for the skin 365 days a year. Here I am, though, sitting on the balcony of our apartment on the eighth consecutive day of incessant rain.
    And you thought the August bank holiday weekend in the UK was bad. I’m glad we’re not camping anywhere, as by now I would have probably been swept out to sea on my inflatable mattress, never to be seen again.
    Apparently this kind of weather is not actually that surprising in this part of the world at this time of year. The Gold Coast is in southern Queensland on the east coast of the country about a hundred kilometres south of Brisbane, and it has a subtropical climate. Essentially, this means it is either hot and sunny or hot and wet. And in January and February the chances of it being the latter are quite high.
    They fail to mention this in the brochures and travel shows. Not once have I seen a family from Cleethorpes standing outside a Melbourne detached bungalow in the pouring rain while a bedraggled TV presenter tries to convince them that open-plan living rooms are a good idea.
    The constant downpour is lovely for the rainforests and gardens, I’m sure, but it’s not so great for an out-of-work writer with a short attention span and borderline ADHD.
    It wouldn’t be so bad if I had Poppy to look after, but Laura’s annoyingly efficient new employers have access to an excellent day-care centre a scant few minutes’ walk from their Surfer’s Paradise store, so Poppy is currently having the time of her life playing in a state-of-the-art ball pit with her new Australian toddler friends.
    Actually, this is probably just as well. I can only imagine the psychological damage I’d do to her if we were left alone for days on end. It would be virtually guaranteed that I’d lose her in a department store again before the week was up. Either that or I’d poison her the first time I tried to whip us up a cooked lunch on the tiny two-ring electric cooker in the kitchen. She’s far better off picking up an Australian