Here Come the Girls (4 page)

‘What did you send in?’

‘“We are The Sail of the Century”,’ beamed Ven proudly.

‘And you won a holiday for that?’ scoffed Roz. ‘Bugger off.’

‘Honest. I won a sixteen-day cruise for . . . three. On their new ship – the
Mermaidia
.’ She dragged her handbag off the floor, opened it and scooped out a folded brochure. ‘Look, three thousand one hundred passengers, swimming pools, bars, cinema, restaurants, ice-cream parlour, outdoor cinema, a spa . . .’

‘A cruise? For sixteen days?’ gasped Roz.

‘Flaming heck,’ said Olive breathlessly as she looked at the pictures of the opulent interior to the ship. It looked like a five-star hotel. Six even. Possibly ten.

‘We leave two weeks tomorrow – the sixteenth of August. We’ve got five hundred pounds each spending money up front to get kitted out, and all our onboard credit will be paid for – providing we don’t go mad and buy some Van Goghs at the onboard art auctions.’

‘Is this for real?’ gulped Roz.

‘One hundred per cent for really real,’ replied Ven. She reached into her bag, pulled out two folded-up cheques and handed them to her dumbstruck friends.

‘This is a cheque from you!’ said Olive.

‘Durr,’ tutted Ven. ‘I’ve banked the cheque they sent me and this is your share.’

‘I’m not sure I would get time off at such short notice,’ said Roz, more quietly now that she was actually starting to believe Ven wasn’t pulling a strange, sick joke on them. ‘That old bitch Hutchinson wouldn’t let me off work if I’d died in the night.’

‘Well, that’s where you are wrong because yes, she would. I conspired with Manus then rang her up and booked it as holidays for you.’

Roz’s eyes opened so far her eyeballs nearly rolled out. ‘You. Are. Kidding?’

‘No, I wanted to make sure this went without a hitch. Sorry, Ol, I couldn’t do the same for you.’ Conspiring behind Olive’s back with David would have been a no-goer. He wouldn’t have let her off the lead. Plus, Olive was self-employed and so ‘permission’ wasn’t really an issue to get past.

‘Well, Manus certainly can keep a secret,’ mused Roz aloud. ‘Which is surprising, given his past history of blurting them out.’

‘I love Manus,’ said Ven, ignoring the caustic jibe. ‘I wish I had a man like him at home.’

‘He’s a sweetie,’ added Olive, thinking of his lean muscle and comparing it with David’s big wobbly beer belly.

Roz just shrugged. She knew that Manus was a good-looking man, even if she didn’t outwardly acknowledge it. She also knew that she was blessed to have found someone who was so kind and patient, whom her friends loved, who worked hard, who ticked all the boxes. Rough and ready, no airs or graces, rocker-blond hair, kind eyes and a very fit athletic frame. She often wished she were one of those wild creatures who could just dive on their man and take them there and then on the staircase.
Like Frankie would
. That thought sent a bucket of cold water splashing down on any rising sexy thoughts of Manus.

‘You’ll have to cancel your cleaning jobs for that fortnight,’ said Ven, turning to Olive.

‘I wish,’ said Olive with a frustrated exhalation of breath. ‘It would be lovely, but you know I’m going to have to let you down, don’t you?’

‘You can’t,’ said Ven. ‘We always wanted to do this and now we’ve been given the perfect chance to. It’s fate. I knew that if I won, the dates would be tight – it warned you about that in the rules, that there wouldn’t exactly be a lot of lead-up time – but you can’t turn this down, Olive. I won’t let you.’

‘I’ll have a think,’ said Olive. But it was obvious to them all that it was something she was just saying to get Ven off her back.

‘Where does the ship go to?’ said Roz, still in shock. Manus never mentioned a word about planning this behind her back. Was he trying to get her out of the way? She didn’t let the possibility that he might be doing this for her sneak past her more negative deductions.

‘Malaga, Corfu, Venice, Dubrovnik, Korcula, Cephalonia . . .’ Ven left a long gap after that port and looked expectantly at Olive. Olive’s head snapped upwards as Ven knew it would. ‘Then on to Gibraltar for the last port.’

‘Where does the ship leave from?’ said Roz.

‘Southampton.’

‘Southampton!’

‘Yes, but don’t worry, it’s effortless. We pick up a bus in Barnsley that takes us directly to the shipside – it’s all included in the prize. Once our cases are loaded onto the bus, we don’t see them again until they’re outside our cabins. And if the bus gets held up for any reason, the ship waits for us. Simple and stress free.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Roz. ‘You’re deadly serious, aren’t you? I need a wee before I wet myself.’

‘Go on and get one then,’ said Ven.

‘I’m going.’ Roz got up and wandered off to the back of the café where the toilets were.

‘What if I said to you, take Frankie instead of me,’ whispered Olive, when Roz was out of sight and earshot. ‘Much as I would love to come with you, how can I leave David and Doreen for a fortnight? They wouldn’t cope. They fall to bits when I go shopping to Morrisons for an hour.’

‘Frankie and Roz on holiday together – without you to help me stand between them? Are you serious?’ Ven raised her eyebrows to their maximum height.

‘Don’t you think it’s all such a shame?’ said Olive. ‘One stupid snog and so much ruined. And we could put it all right, if we just told—’

Ven held her finger up and said sternly, ‘No, it was up to Frankie how she played it, not us. Whatever you or I might have thought.’

‘She made a very wrong call,’ said Olive. ‘And I’ve told her that on many an occasion.’

‘And you think I haven’t?’ Ven replied. ‘But at the time, what else could we do but agree to what she asked?’

‘I wish I’d said something,’ sighed Olive. ‘I know what Frankie was trying to do, but it wasn’t fair on any of us to keep quiet. It was a first-class cock-up.’

‘Yes, well, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we’re stuck with it, Ol. Things have been left far too late to change,’ said Ven. ‘Can you imagine the fallout if the truth came out now?’

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right,’ Olive conceded with a slow, sad nod of the head.

A lifetime of friendship smashed up because Frankie and Manus had once kissed. Guilt-ridden, he had confessed to Roz and it had destroyed her already fragile trust in men. The others knew that Manus had been trying for four years to put things right, but good luck to him, because he was fighting an army of ghosts from her days of being married to the serial adulterer Robert Clegg.

‘I wish something would happen to make everything okay,’ Olive went on. ‘That’s what I’d wish for your fortieth birthday. The four of us all together again with our heads full of nothing but laughs. Like we were when we were kids.’

‘Me too,’ said Ven. She opened her mouth to go on, but shut it at the last. This had all been in the lap of the gods from day one. She had to keep her trust in them to carry on the good work.

Chapter 6

On the bus home, Olive studied the cheque for five hundred pounds. Not that she would put it in the bank. Ven had given her this money to buy some cruise-worthy clothes and she had taken it home with her to shut her enthusiastic friend up, but she wouldn’t be going with her on holiday. How could she go? Even if by some miracle she found herself on board, she would be haunted by pictures of Doreen struggling to cope. Doreen wasn’t paralysed, she could walk a little, but it was so hard for her that a wheelchair was necessary. Who would wash her mother-in-law and put her to bed? She couldn’t have her own son doing it, even if his bad back allowed him to lift her. She would spend a fortnight away from them not sleeping for worry, and be scared stiff what she would come home to. A dead old lady in a wheelchair, who had reached in vain for a glass of water that might have saved her before tumbling to the ground? And a man at death’s door in his bed, spine contorted in agony, unable to rise, even to answer the dying pleas of his mother? No, she wouldn’t be going.

And how could she go back to Cephalonia? How could she return to that island and risk losing the perfect picture of it that she carried with her always? Tanos would no longer be the tiny unspoiled village she recalled. It would be a disco and karaoke-bar-filled horror story by now, because it was too pretty not to be commercialised. Going back there would remind her too painfully of the one dream she had managed to live out – flying off and working in a bar one hot summer twenty years ago. When she was young and brave and free to go where she wanted in that small window of opportunity – when she was Lyon by name and Lion by nature. Then the guilty feelings had set in, taunting her that she shouldn’t be gallivanting about having a good time when she had aged parents to look after. So she had torn herself away from the island, back to her familiar life of drudgery, to be charmed by David Hardcastle and his fancy ambitious talk. No, she couldn’t bear to go back. Although her heart had never left.

As Olive stepped into her mother-in-law’s fag-smoky house and saw the mountain of ironing awaiting her before her shift cleaning the offices up the road, she felt the weight of duty on her shoulders and her eyes filled up with tears. Talk of this cruise had stirred up too many muddy waters inside her. Or rather, azure-blue waters with gentle waves, little fishes and a salty Greek tang.

Chapter 7

Manus dragged his hands down his face in despair. He couldn’t believe he’d got it wrong again. But here was his partner bollocking him for helping to arrange for her to go on a free cruise with her mates.

‘I didn’t suspect a thing,’ Roz had thrown at him.

‘But that was the idea, love!’

‘Quite the little secret-keeper, aren’t you?’ she sniped.

Manus shook his head slowly and resignedly. He didn’t want to fight again. He’d had four years of fighting with this woman whom he loved so much. It crushed him that he couldn’t get through to her. They rarely made love these days, and even when they did he felt that she was just going through the motions so she had an excuse not to ‘do it’ again for another few weeks. Her orgasms were mechanical, a bodily response to stimulation. He could make her come, but he couldn’t reach her mind – he knew that. He’d prayed that the walls around her heart would start to crumble, but they just got stronger, more impenetrable. Still though – like a fool – he kept on trying, but he was so tired. He didn’t know how much more he could be pushed away, but he daren’t say that because she would take it and run with it. He could hear her now:
Yes, I knew you’d end up leaving me like that first prick. You’re all the same
. The first prick being her ex-husband, who ran off with Roz’s pregnant cousin. She had idolised him and their deceit had crippled her. It had been a hard slog to get her to trust men again, but Manus had been hooked from the first sight of this tall, slim woman struggling with an iced-up lock on her car outside a supermarket, seven long years ago. He had moved in on her like a white knight and made her promise to come out to dinner with him as his fee.

Yes, she had softened towards him through his intense courtship, because he had battered down her defences with his romantic offensive on her, determined to show her that men could be faithful, but my God, it was hard work. Then he’d stupidly had to fall from grace and kiss her best mate. Years of building up her trust undone by a three-second weak moment of weakness when, after yet another row with Roz, his own hunger for warmth and comfort had met with the same from Frankie. And if that hadn’t been idiotic enough, he had thought it best to confess it to her because he had promised never to lie to her. Oh boy, she’d never let him forget it. He couldn’t have been more vilified if he’d had an orgy with her whole office, her two stepsisters and her mother’s Standard Poodle. Not once had he made any excuse for his action that night. He wouldn’t have tried to hurt Roz by telling her how desperate he sometimes felt for a crumb of kindness, love or affection from her. The fault was his and he would have to bear the consequences.

Now, for the first time, Manus Howard felt the hopelessness of his situation. Nothing he did could thaw Roz. She wouldn’t talk to him openly about what happened that night with Frankie but would refer to it constantly in sarcastic asides. He stepped around her on eggshells, not even daring to mention if someone on the TV was pretty. And if his eye happened to stray unconsciously towards a female, especially a dark-haired one, when they were out together – all hell was released. He didn’t feel they had moved one single step forwards in the past four years. And listening to Roz now, levelling at him that he might want her out of the way for a fortnight, when he just wanted her to have the holiday of a lifetime with her friends, well, he wasn’t sure this was healthy for either of them any more. The sad truth was that it was killing him, and if the sight of him was still making her hate him so much, how could it be good for her either?

Manus Howard was a big, hard man but there were tears threatening outwards now. He came from a dysfunctional family in Ketherwood, the roughest part of the town, and had fought his way out of the rut he was destined for – the dole and drinking too much. He’d worked hard all his life, had a profitable garage business and a bit of money in the bank. He had everything he wanted, but his bed was so cold – even with his woman in it. When he touched her, he felt like a client who had rented her body for an hour. Not that he dared say that either. He could imagine what argument she would make from that one.

He sighed and his shoulders fell with the weight of despair on them.

‘Roz, I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Maybe,’ his voice cracked and he coughed before continuing, ‘maybe you should think about what you really want when you’re on holiday.’

‘Maybe I should,’ said Roz, her clipped delivery masking the panic his words had kicked off inside her. Attack was the best form of defence. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m going away. I think . . . I think it might do us both good to have a complete break.’

Once the words were out, she wished she could pull them back into her mouth and swallow them. She didn’t want to hear that Manus might agree with her. But he did.