Here Come the Girls (45 page)

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

But Ven still hadn’t emerged by the time Roz had gathered her book and towel and glasses together because Jesus was still waiting to get into her cabin to clean it. And something made Roz hang around the corridor because this Andrew and the cruise-winning story had always seemed a bit fishy to her.

Ven came out of the room twenty minutes later. Roz tailed her, unseen, up the stairs to the Topaz pool where she found Frankie and Olive on the sunbeds. Roz arrived just in time to hear her tell the others about the face-to-face interview she had just given Andrew for a future
Figurehead
magazine, but she stayed silent about it. For now.

Chapter 69

David hung up the three dresses over the mirrored wardrobe door in what was to be his and Olive’s new bedroom – his mother’s old room. He’d had the dresses made by the seamstresses in Lamb Street at considerable expense too. He’d paid right over the odds so they would be done extra quickly. He had taken the measurements from a winter dress that Olive had in her wardrobe, so he knew they would fit. She would especially like the green one, he knew. Green looked so nice on her, brought out the colour in her eyes. He was very proud of himself for what he considered was his finest romantic gesture. Olive would be over the moon.

The house was spick and span as well, in readiness for her return. He had found a cleaner in the
Yellow Pages
– Dolly Braithwaite – who was available at short notice, and she had tidied up the downstairs and changed the sheets on his mother’s old bed. Dolly smelled of cigarette smoke and strong coffee, and was someone who didn’t find the overflowing ashtrays in the kitchen revolting at all. In fact, all the time she was working, a lit Benson & Hedges was perched on her lip.

Olive would be home in approximately forty-eight hours now. He couldn’t wait to tell her about everything that had happened in the past two weeks. She was going to worship the ground he walked upon after he explained what their new life was going to be like. David Hardcastle hadn’t been this excited since Charlesworth’s had opened their new pork-pie shop just around the corner.

Chapter 70

Olive had a little break from the sun and went to stretch her legs inside the ship. She watched a couple who had just got married on board posing for photos on the Grand Staircase. She recognised the party – they’d got on at Barnsley too. The bride was tall and slim, mid-fifties, with beautiful thick white hair. She wore a simple sleeveless ivory satin dress and carried a posy of bright yellow flowers which coordinated both with the flower the beaming groom was wearing in his buttonhole and the Matron of Honour’s fifties-style dress in the brightest shade of sunshine. The Matron of Honour had the same twinkly eyes as the tall, smiley groom, suggesting they were closely related. They were accompanied by two younger couples – a black man, his wife and a little boy, and two men, both dressed in ‘his and his’ grey suits, also with yellow ties. There was obviously a lot of affection zinging between them all, and the happy vibes were radiating outwards from them and filling the whole atrium.

Olive wandered around the shops for a while, perusing the stalls of duty-free goods, then moved up to look at the gallery of photographs. Hearing the noise of children coming from nearby Flamencos, Olive peeped in to see a fancy-dress competition just starting. Most of the costumes had been hand-made, by the looks of things. There was a little girl having a bit of a tantrum as her mother tried to staple her into a crepe-paper hula hula skirt.

‘Chloe,’ the mother was saying wearily, ‘it’s taken me hours to make this costume, please put it on.’ But young Chloe wasn’t having any of it.

‘Kids,’ the mother sighed at Olive. ‘I got up at the crack of dawn today to make this for her and we still didn’t get the pick of the materials.’ Her head nudged to the side where the Tray Twins were standing with a small boy whose whole body was completely encased in a cardboard lighthouse. His face was bright orange to indicate the lamp, and waves of blue and green and white fronds of crepe were swaying two feet past the floor to indicate the sea. There was a rainforest of paper in that one costume. It seemed Ronnie and Reggie claimed a lion’s share of anything that wasn’t nailed down.

Olive slid into the theatre and took one of the back seats, slightly worried that she would be asked to leave if she didn’t have a participating child. But then she saw Eric and Irene sitting near the front and relaxed.

The youth director led on the contestants one by one – a lot of pirates, a cat, and the lighthouse who was hardly able to walk in the confines of his straitjacket costume. The little hula-hooper not only continued to reject the wearing of her skirt but also refused to go into the stage arena. Then she was tempted by her appearance prize of a small teddy bear, so ran on, grabbed it and leaped back to her mother. The lighthouse’s parents looked ungracious in defeat when their son didn’t win, but a bee, in a very simple but incredibly cute costume, did. Olive laughed as the bee buzzed across the stage to be photographed, but the tears that started to slip from her eyes weren’t happy ones. She wiped them away secretly, glad that she was at the back of the theatre and unseen. Where had her childbearing years gone? This fortnight was the first time she had looked up and seen that they had disappeared and she was almost forty now with nothing to show for her life. No house of her own, no babies to love, not even a decent bloody mobile phone. Suddenly the sight of that little bee was too much to bear. She couldn’t go back to her sad existence in Land Lane – not after the sun had shone on her life and highlighted every empty corner.

The four of them had fajita wraps and chips from the Terrace Grill by the still closed-off Topaz pool and watched an episode of
Only Fools and Horses
on the giant sea-screen. A waiter called Relish brought them four glasses of sparkling mineral water and lots of chinking ice.

‘So how was your meeting with Andrew then?’ asked Roz, who had been waiting for the right moment to bring this one to the boil.

‘Oh, it was okay. I just did an interview with him.’

‘Where did you meet?’

‘The Samovar.’

‘What sorts of things did he ask you?’ Roz pressed.

‘Well, you know, have we had a good time et cetera, all low-key stuff. Anyone want anything stronger to drink?’

But Roz wasn’t letting her change the subject this time. ‘Doesn’t he want to meet us?’

‘He hasn’t said.’

‘Have you showed him the picture we had taken at the bottom of the staircase the night before last?’

‘Yes, he’s going to use it in the magazine.’ Ven was trying to end the conversation but Roz wasn’t letting her.

‘Isn’t he going to introduce himself to us before we leave?’

‘I . . . don’t—’

‘Bloody hell, Roz,’ put in Frankie. ‘Are you practising for entry into the Gestapo?’

‘Ven,’ said Roz calmly. ‘Come on, ’fess up. What’s going on? You’re telling us a load of old pump.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Ven, but she was jittery now and very red-faced. Deception didn’t sit easily with her.

‘Yes, what do you mean, “what’s going on?”’ said Olive. Now the others were sitting up and wondering what Roz was talking about.

‘Ven, I know you didn’t have a meeting with “Andrew” this morning. I don’t think the bloody bloke even exists. What are you playing at?’

Ven growled in frustration and buried her head in her hands.

‘Ven?’ said Olive, not getting any of this at all.

‘All right, all right,’ said Ven, shaking her palms wildly at them to fend off any further questioning. ‘I lied. I didn’t win a cruise in a competition. I won some money to take us on a cruise. But I knew that if I told you that, you’d start being stupid and not let me pay for everything for you.’

‘You silly generous cow!’ exclaimed Frankie. ‘You need that money. You shouldn’t have spent it on us.’

‘Yes, well, I
wanted
to spend it on us for this holiday and I didn’t want you telling me that I shouldn’t and getting all silly. Now you know, you’ll not let me buy everything. Just great.’ Ven gave a giant sigh of disappointment.

Roz felt awfully guilty now that she had spoiled her friend’s generous surprise. When would she ever learn that she didn’t know best at all?

‘Oh Ven!’ Olive leaned over and gave her a big hug. ‘You are the loveliest person ever. But Frankie is right, you are also a silly cow.’

‘Was it the lottery?’ asked Roz, subdued now.

‘Yes, Roz, it was the lottery,’ said Ven. She leaned back on her sunbed and the others followed suit.

‘I’m sorry, Ven, I didn’t realise I was spoiling a surprise.’ Roz gave her friend’s arm a gentle butt.

‘Well, it was going to happen today or tomorrow anyway. I was just waiting for the right moment. Seems it’s here now.’

‘How much did you win, Ven?’ said Olive, hoping that Ven wasn’t going to be out of pocket herself with her stupid generosity. They all really had bought a lot from the shops.

‘Let me start at the beginning,’ said Ven. ‘On the sixth of June I saw Ian and his floozy out in a flash car and he gave me a really smug wave when he passed. I was pig sick about it.’

‘As you would be,’ added Olive. ‘Bastard.’

‘Some blokes should never be in sole charge of a penis,’ added Roz.

‘Well, I was so angry I went to the post office.’

‘Steady on, Ven,’ laughed Frankie. ‘I’d hate to get on the wrong side of you, mate. What did you do? Buy some first-class stamps and rip them up?’

‘No, I bought a lottery ticket,’ said Ven when the laughter had subsided. ‘A EuroMillions one. I picked the numbers based on how angry I was. Forty-one – for Ian’s age, twenty-four – because that’s how old his bit on the side is, fifteen – because that’s the number of my old house which they’re now living in, three – because that’s how many letters there are in “Ian”, and six – because it was that day’s date: the sixth of June. And his bloody birthday. But for the star numbers I picked four – because we’re a four and two because that’s the square root of four and four is my lucky number. And I won. And the first thing I did was book this cruise for us. The second thing I was going to do at the end of the cruise, and that was to share out the rest of the winnings.’

‘You’ve got some left?’ said Olive. ‘After buying all this, you’ve still got some left?’

Ven opened up her handbag and pulled out three envelopes bearing their names. She’d been carrying them around with her all holiday – waiting for the opportune moment.

They all lazily sat up. Frankie was the first to open hers and she laughed.

‘My Aunt Rosa did this,’ she said. ‘She left fourteen of us in the family a cheque for fifty thousand quid each, but she only had seven hundred pounds in her bank account – total. Bless her.’

‘God, Ven, you’re a silly sod,’ said Olive, looking at the cheque.
To Olive Hardcastle, the sum of four hundred and forty-four thousand, four hundred and forty-four pounds. Only
. She sank back onto her sunbed.

Only Roz was trembling, because she was looking intently at Ven and she knew Ven wasn’t joking.

‘I won just over four million quid,’ said Ven quietly. ‘I’m going to give Jen the same as you and donate a lump sum to the Macmillan nurses who looked after Mum and Dad. I won’t have any arguments about this – I want you to share it with me, in accordance with four being our lucky number.’

Olive sat up again, her back straight and unbending and giving the impression she was rising from a grave – which she could easily have been, given the sudden pallor of her face. ‘You are joking?’

‘I’m not.’

‘You won
four million quid
?’

‘Yep. Just over.’

Maybe if Ven had said she had won ten thousand they would have whooped for her, but this figure was too much to take in, in one sitting. As it was, they decided to go and have a coffee. In the Buttery – because it was always free there.

‘I was worried,’ said Ven. ‘You hear all these stories about people getting loads of money and it wrecking their lives. I was so excited that you wouldn’t have to struggle financially any more, then I kept dreaming awful things – that we bought high-speed cars and died in crashes, and stuff like that.’

‘Aye, well, trust you to look on the bright side of a four-million-pound lottery win.’ Frankie laughed but her hand was shaking as she lifted the cup to her lips.

‘I wanted Manus to have his big garage and you, Roz, to be able to tell that Mrs Hutchinson to stick her job up her bum. I wanted you, Frank, to buy a nice house and never have to worry about money again, and you, Olive, to give up cleaning and—’ She didn’t say that she wanted Olive to leave David and get a life; the money gave her no right to play God. ‘Just don’t cash the cheque until you’re sure no one will take half of it from you like Ian did with me.’ She said this to no one in particular, but Olive knew the warning was meant for her.

‘I can’t take this in,’ said Frankie. ‘I cannot take this in.’

‘Think how
I
felt!’ said Ven. ‘I couldn’t even tell anyone because I wanted this holiday to happen so much. And I didn’t want anyone else to know before you all did.’

‘Ven, that is a hell of a lot of money to give away,’ said Frankie.

‘Do you think I’d enjoy it, keeping it to myself?’ said Ven. ‘All for one and one for all. The Fabulous Four reunited again. Some things are worth more than money.’

‘Nice to have both though,’ winked Frankie. They all grabbed each other’s hands as if about to embark upon a séance and squeezed. Because some joy just had to be let out slowly and carefully.

Roz attended her last belly-dancing class that afternoon. She would definitely have to find a class and continue lessons when she got home. She wondered if she dare do a dance for Manus? He looked at her with desire in his eyes when she was in her old dressing-gown, he’d blow up if she started gyrating in jingly scarves, enticing him to whisk her to bed.

As she practised moving her hips from side to side whilst keeping the top half of her body totally still, she tried to think of the last time she and Manus had made love. It brought her shame to think how she wanted to abandon herself to him, and could feel him willing her to love him with the same intensity that he loved her. He did turn her on, she did adore the feel of his skin next to hers. Stupid, stupid pride. She was going to love him to death when she got home and make up for every little rejection she had ever given him.