Here Come the Girls (7 page)

Chapter 13

When Olive got home, Doreen had a face like a vinegar-sucking Shar Pei.

‘Where’ve you been till this time? I’ve been waiting for you to put me to bed.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Olive in her usual meek way, but she was sorely tempted to give her mother-in-law a mouthful. Dutifully, she helped Doreen change into her voluminous nightie and bore her weight as she helped her onto the toilet, nursing the thought that she wouldn’t be doing this again for another two and a half glorious weeks. Then she pulled the lounge sofa out into a double bed – the same routine she had done for nearly eight years now, when Doreen decided it was too much for her to go up the stairs to sleep. She put Doreen’s teeth in a glass to soak, made her a Horlicks with the usual six teaspoons of powder and full fat milk, then she switched off the big light leaving the small lamp on next to the sofa bed so Doreen could read a few pages of her latest Mills & Boon. As she went into the kitchen, she tried not to look at Kevin’s washing basket, which he’d asked her to sort out for tomorrow. She also tried not to breathe in the cheese and vinegar sock smell which was heavy in the air. The washing machine was ancient but easy enough to use. Even an idiot could load it and press the button that said either ‘On – quick wash’ or ‘On – long wash’. Then again, maybe it was still a bit highbrow for Kevin.

She’d only had the slice of lemon drizzle cake to eat all day and decided she’d better get something to fortify herself before she collapsed. She had made a huge shepherd’s pie that morning to be heated up for tea. True to form they hadn’t left her any. The dish was scraped empty on the work surface. She picked it up to soak it in the sink, then had a rethink and put it down.
No, let them do it
. She smiled to herself as she toasted two slices of bread and spooned some coffee into a cup. There was no point in having decaff – she wasn’t going to sleep much anyway.

Olive then had a quick bath and packed some underwear, toiletries, her best shoes, a couple of nice tops, her only decent dress and passport into one of the bags she used for her cleaning stuff. David was snoring like a pig whilst she crept around their bedroom. He always said that medication didn’t help his back pain so it wasn’t worth taking; however, beer knocked him out and at least allowed him to get some well-needed sleep. She had always accepted that as a feasible argument. How the Hardcastles must have laughed at her. Well, they wouldn’t be laughing again for a while.

She took her bag back downstairs into the kitchen and then got a writing pad and pen out from the drawer and wrote:

Dear All

I’m going on holiday and will be back on Tuesday 2nd September.

Olive

Then she ripped out the sheet, stuck it in an envelope and propped it up against Doreen’s fag supply next to the kettle. That way, she knew it would be found first thing.

Olive checked the clock; in less than seven hours’ time a taxi would be calling for her. She didn’t think she would nod off in the easy chair in the never-used dining room, but she did – and dreamed of being naked on the ship and that Cephalonia had turned into a seedy seaside town.

D
AY
1: A
T
S
EA

Dress Code: Smart Casual

Chapter 14

Manus was standing at the side of Roz’s bed with a cuppa as her alarm went off and she jerked awake.

‘Wakey, wakey, Penelope,’ he said, then immediately clarified that before she broke into: ‘Penelope? Can’t even get my name right nowadays. Who’s Penelope? Not one of my friends, for a change.’

‘Penelope Cruz as in
cruise
, I meant – you know.’ Manus coughed, wishing he had never made the joke. ‘Anyway, here’s a caffeine shot for you. Thought you might need it.’ He was dressed only in boxer shorts; he suited them. He had strong muscular thighs that her eyes settled on until she ripped them away and took the coffee, thanking him politely.

‘I’ll get some clothes on,’ he said, thumbing to the spare room in the manner of someone suddenly realising he was inappropriately attired. Another sign of the ever-increasing divide between them that he could be embarrassed to be half-naked in front of her after seven years.

When Roz came downstairs, showered and dressed, it was to the smell of hot buttered toast which he had made for her. ‘I could have taken you and Ven myself to the bus station, you know, instead of you having to get a taxi,’ said Manus.

‘The competition people are paying for it,’ replied Roz, taking a half slice of the toast. She was far too stirred up to eat any more.

‘Do you want me to come and see you off?’ Manus asked. Had she imagined it, or was there a little note of hope in his voice that she would say, ‘Yes, please come’?

‘No, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I grew out of waving through windows when I was twelve.’ Her insides were at war with themselves. Why didn’t she just say ‘Come and wave me off,’ like she wanted to? It hurt her that he didn’t press it.

‘Fair enough,’ was all he said with flat emotion. She deserved nothing more than his indifference, she knew.

Roz was halfway through brushing her teeth when a taxi horn sounded in the street.

‘Jesus, they’re early!’ she flapped, drying her mouth, expertly applying two smooth lines of lippy and dragging an afro comb through her wild, wavy hair as she ran down the stairs.

Manus had already taken her suitcases out and was hugging Ven and wishing her a happy birthday for next week.

Roz grabbed her handbag from the hall-stand and checked inside for her money and passport again. She didn’t know how to say goodbye to Manus appropriately. He wasn’t giving any impression to Ven that they were hanging on by a thread as he helped the taxi driver load the cases into the boot. Nor did he allow Roz time to stage their parting because he bent to her cheek and laid a soft kiss there.

‘Have a lovely time,’ he said. He was scared to give her more, she knew, and she momentarily hated herself for it. Then she hated him for not fighting back. Hate, hate, hate. She felt full of it and it exhausted her.

‘I will,’ she said with a dry smile. Then she climbed into the back seat of the taxi and kept her head facing forward, and defied those tears that were rising within her to make a show.

Olive switched her alarm off after the first ring, panicking in case it alerted anyone else in the house, but she needn’t have worried. The shrill ring would have more luck waking the dead on Cemetery Road. It was like an awful choir as she tiptoed to the bathroom: Doreen snoring contralto in the lounge, Kevin – alto from the spare room, and the mighty bass – David, in their bedroom. They would have turned to dust, getting up at six on a Sunday morning. She wondered how they would feel, rising after eleven and finding there was no comforting smell of bacon and eggs drifting from the kitchen. They’d combust! Dutiful feelings started to creep in and poison Olive with guilt and she galvanised her resolve and batted them away. They needed this wake-up call. For all their sakes, they needed to realise that Olive wasn’t a slave. It wasn’t good for Doreen to be immobile for such long periods of time either, she reasoned. Obviously nipping out for fags was the most exercise she was getting, if that wasn’t ironic. And Kevin might be a more attractive prospect if he could clean his own clothes, though brushing his teeth might help a bit as well. The tortoiseshell-glaze look would never be in vogue, although by the number of women he’d pulled in his time, maybe he knew something the dental world didn’t. As for David – well, having to do what Olive did for the family day in, day out might just make him learn to have some respect for her. Yes, they would all benefit from her being away, and she needed to keep that thought fully in focus, especially when those guilty feelings started gathering again, as she knew they were bound to.

At seven forty-five, she crept down the hallway with her bag and was just about to open the door and go out into the street so that the taxi didn’t beep its horn on arrival, when Kevin’s voice hit her from behind and scared her half to death.

‘Where are you off to at this time, Olive?’

Olive turned to see Kevin, yawning and looking like an anorexic xylophone with his skinny bare chest. He was clutching the pink toilet roll he had just come downstairs to fetch and wearing only a red thong with a porn-star bulge pushing at the material, which was drawing Olive’s attention where she didn’t want to give it. Ah, so it wasn’t the tortoiseshell teeth that was the hook, after all.

Flustered, she was about to reply that she had an early-morning cleaning job, but then an imp took over her mouth.

‘I’m clearing off,’ she said cockily. ‘To Greece. See you later, Kevin.’

The taxi was just drawing up when she went into the street. And just like Roz, after climbing into it, Olive didn’t look back at the house which she had just left.

Chapter 15

‘I can’t believe you are here,’ said Roz, smiling and hugging her. Ven had already filled her in on what had happened the previous night to make Olive change her mind. ‘What a brilliant surprise. I am thrilled you made it.’

‘Trust me, it was eleventh-hour. Fate stepped in,’ said Olive. ‘And Ven. And Meadowhall’s late-night opening hours.’

‘I don’t care what stepped in, I’m just chuffed to bits and pieces. Oh Olive, we are going to have such a fantastic time – the three of us.’

‘You’ve remembered my swanky pink suitcase, haven’t you, Ven?’ Olive asked in a sudden moment of panic.

Ven feigned forgetfulness and shrieked, ‘Oh my God – no! It’s still on the kitchen table!’ Then she quickly nudged Olive and grinned. ‘As if.’

‘Oh, this is going to be so good,’ said Roz. She looked like her old self, light and smiley, as in the old days, before Robert the Brute took over her life and squashed all the joy out of her.

Oh God, I hope so, thought Ven. Because she knew that all wasn’t quite as it appeared on the surface.

It was less than a ten-minute journey to the bus station, during which the three of them twittered like an excited dawn chorus on the back seat.

‘I’ll pay the driver,’ said Olive, getting out her purse, as the taxi pulled up.

‘Ah, ah – no, you won’t.’ Ven slapped her hand. ‘I have been sent the cash to pay for all these peripheries like fares and coffees when we stop at the motorway services, so don’t you dare.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Roz.

‘Yes,’ growled Ven. They were always having this sort of ‘generous argument’. It infuriated her.

‘Bloody hell. Who donated the prize? Rockerfeller?’ laughed Roz.

‘Oy, it’s big business getting the right slogan. I could make them millions,’ sniffed Ven proudly.

They arrived at Barnsley Interchange where a crowd of people with similar tags on their suitcases were waiting, so at least they knew they were in the right place. The tags were all different colours, denoting which deck the suitcase was destined for.

‘Didn’t think there would be this many going from Barnsley,’ said Olive. ‘Half the ship will be full of Yorkshiremen.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ laughed Ven. ‘The ship holds more than three thousand passengers.’

‘Do you reckon B deck is more expensive than our C deck?’ whispered Roz, as the elderly owner of a suitcase with a B deck tag, in a blazer and tie, was asking an E deck man, ‘Is it your first time on the
Mermaidia
?’

‘It’s our first cruise full stop,’ said E Deck Man.

‘It’s our thirtieth,’ said Mr B Deck, puffing out his chest. ‘Our eighth on the
Mermaidia
, isn’t it, Irene?’

‘Big-headed sod,’ said Ven. ‘If—’ She bit off what she was going to say.
If Frankie were here, she’d have had him like a hungry Jack Russell with a rat!

‘Think I’ll nip to the loo,’ said Olive. ‘Oh heck, are you sure I can buy things on the ship? I had a nightmare last night that I didn’t have any clothes and was walking around naked.’

‘Olive, look at my suitcases.’ Ven gestured to her heaving luggage. ‘I’ve over-bought so much stuff. Share my wardrobe. You’ve been doing it since we were twelve anyway.’

Olive and Ven always were the same dress size. Olive never had a lot of money to spend on clothes but Ven had a real eye for fashion and was happy to let Olive loose in her wardrobe when they were teenagers. She used to think that loads of her clothes better suited her blonde friend. Greens and reds and violets always looked more stunning against Olive’s lovely long golden hair than her own auburn locks.

‘Thanks,’ smiled Olive. ‘I think I might have to take you up on that. Apart from the stuff you bought me last night, I’ve only got a couple of tatty rags. Oh God – I didn’t buy a swimsuit, did I?’

‘No worries, I’ve packed five,’ said Ven. ‘Or was it six?’

‘Trust you,’ said Roz.

‘And three trankinis.’

‘Trankinis?’ Roz burst into laughter. ‘Sounds like a cocktail for drag artists. It’s tankini, you twerp.’

In the toilet, Olive wished the bus would hurry up. She kept imagining a truck full of Hardcastles arriving at the bus station to hijack her and force her home where they would chain her back to the sink. Then again it was a Sunday morning at just past eight o’clock, and that was tantamount to midnight for them. Kevin would have thought she was a hallucination when he saw her by the door and she had no doubt he had gone back upstairs without her parting words sinking properly into his little brain.

‘Bet Manus will miss you, Roz,’ said Ven.

‘Well, he’s got a lot of work on so he’ll be too busy to miss me,’ replied Roz with a shrug. Ven frowned. So many times she wanted to butt into Roz’s business and say, ‘Stop being a cow to him,’ but she didn’t. She wasn’t like Frankie who said things straight up – with one notable exception, of course.

Olive returned and then went straight back to the loo again. ‘I know it’s only nerves, but I’m just making sure I’m empty,’ she explained.

‘There will be a toilet on the bus, you know,’ said Roz to her back. She turned to Ven. ‘I hope she’s going to let herself go and enjoy this.’