The plane lands in Mallorca when it is still early morning. I’ve been awake since 4am, so when my wife volunteers to drive, I offer no resistance. A few miles from the airport, we enter a large roundabout. My phone instructs us to take the third exit.
“This one?” my wife asks.
“No,” I say.
“It must be,” she says.
“No,” I say.
“The sign says…”
“Keep going!” I say.
“Don’t shout!” she says.
After a second circuit of the roundabout, my wife is finally persuaded of the merits of the third exit. “Much less stressful without Dad driving!” she says, looking into the rearview mirror. The middle one, sprawled across the back seat with headphones in, does not answer.
“It’s not less stressful for me,” I say. But, actually, it is.
We arrive at the house an hour later. Some of our friends are already there; others arrive soon after. I sit in a deckchair next to my bag, wearing my slightly crooked sunglasses from last year. Somewhere in the house I can hear my wife winning an argument about bedrooms.
We eat lunch. I nap for a bit. We have drinks. Dinner gets made, and served, and eaten. I hatch a vague plan to lift a finger at some point, but nothing comes of it.
The next morning, the back of my throat feels a bit raw. I put it down to drinking too much, or talking too much, or, in all probability, doing the latter as a consequence of the former. I caution myself against an overly vigorous pursuit of the carefree life. Let it come to you, I think.
The next day, my throat is sorer still. On the third morning, my voice is a feeble croak and I find it difficult to swallow.
“I’m ill,” I say to my wife.
“We know,” my wife says. “You’re bringing everybody down.”
That night, I lie in bed feeling awful, listening to everyone laughing around the big table by the pool. I think: how dare they.
In the morning, I drive into the nearby village and find a doctor’s office. I am standing outside it when they open for business. The doctor is German, and very friendly. He shines a light into my mouth. “Yeah, you have an infection,” he says. “About a medium one.” He says it’s common in summer, and that the day before three people came into his office with the same thing. He prints out a prescription for a short course of antibiotics and gives me directions to a nearby chemist.
“Go right, and maybe before 100 metres you see the green cross,” he says. “Don’t go left 100 metres to the cross, because this is an animal hospital.”
“OK,” I say, nodding.
“It’s a little joke,” he says.
“I see,” I say. We shake hands, and he charges me €50.
Although heartened by the prospect of a cure, I feel much worse the next day. I become convinced I’ve been misdiagnosed, and that my infection is well beyond medium.
“These pills don’t work,” I say to my wife. “I think they might be for dogs.”
“Go back and complain,” she says.
“What’s the point?” I say. “We’ve basically run out of holiday.”
On the last morning, I wake feeling truly terrible: exhausted, infected, depressed. As soon as we’re through airport security, I buy some water and take the last pill. “My final contribution to global bacterial resistance,” I say.
“When we’re home you can go to bed,” my wife says. “Then tomorrow you see the doctor.”
“Come friendly superbugs,” I say.
I sit down by the gate, watching as other holidaymakers arrive, families with tanned limbs and chlorine-bleached hair. I didn’t even go in the pool after the second day.
Our flight is called. I shuffle along in the queue and take my seat, prepared to spend two hours feeling exquisitely sorry for myself: a holiday ruined, and nothing to look forward to but a visit to the GP. Except I don’t feel sorry; I feel fine. My throat has suddenly stopped hurting. By the time the plane throws itself into the sky, I realise I feel amazing.
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