Ladies Who Launch (3 page)

Angie left Sel to have a long-overdue soak in the bath and Selina had lain in the foamy water and cried her eyes out. The enormity of what she had set in motion dropped on her like a ten-tonne
brick. Logistically, the split would be horrendous and bitter. There would be so much to divide up and sort out. And could she really avoid seeing Zander for the remaining week and a half of the
cruise? On the bright side, the ship was certainly big enough for that to be a possibility.

Gil had bought them a bottle of pink champagne at dinner to christen Selina’s new life. They had taken in a show and had far too many cocktails but that night she had slept like a baby in
the cool crisp sheets of her double bed. She was alone but less lonely than she had been for years. The next day she had not taken up the offer to accompany her friends around Venice, but enjoyed
pottering around the city by herself, knowing that Zander would not be there to bump into. He hated crowds of tourists and preferred to spend the day in the private spa pool on board away from the
hoi polloi.

She kept away from the sorts of places he frequented and so managed to successfully evade him. People often moved in their own personal orbits on ships. Selina knew that he would be in the
casino and the more sedate ‘gentleman’s club’ lounge. She knew he would avoid the shop area, the coffee bar and the nightclub. He would never eat in the buffet, or join the jolly
sail-away parties – nor would he come looking for her because this was a battle of wills which he was prepared to wait out and win.

Angie and Gil insisted she accompany them into Dubrovnik and they had a wonderful
al fresco
lunch and too much grappa. They all lazed on the beach together in Corfu and went
dolphin-spotting in Gibraltar on a small, bumpy boat. Selina’s face muscles were worn out with smiling and it felt marvellous. She was half tempted to paint her face half-white, half-blue and
run along the ship decks shouting
FREEDOM!

Angie told her later that she had spotted Zander coming out of the celebrated chef Raul Cruz’s restaurant on the last formal night and admitted that her heart gave a thump as old feelings
galloped around her in a confusion of what to do. At such close range, she couldn’t resist studying him; he was still as tall and dark and handsome … sort of. He hadn’t ripened
as she had imagined he would, she said. She’d always thought he’d mature like those film stars, whose flaws become assets: crinkles at the eyes like Clooney, sprinkles of white hair
like Brosnan, but vanity, it seems, had steered Zander from the path of natural maturity. His hair was a block of black, as if it had been painted, and there were no merry rays of lines spreading
from the corners of his eyes; in fact the skin there was iron-flat. His face looked as perfect and lifeless as a Ken doll’s. It was ironic that his narcissism would prevent him from looking
the best he could.

Angie had said that he had seen her too, that was evident from the way his eyes rested on her for a few beats longer than a natural glance at a stranger, but he didn’t acknowledge her
presence. He strolled past out of her sight and out of her fantasies forever. ‘How could I ever have thought that Gil was second best to him, Sel?’ she’d said. ‘I
haven’t a clue, Ange,’ she’d replied. Lovely Gil Silverton with his ginger hair, big nose and laughing eyes. Sel hoped that one day she’d find someone who made her feel
loved and needed and cherished as he made her friend.

On the very final night of the holiday Selina was browsing in the stalls outside the on-board jewellers shop when she felt a hand close around the top of her arm and, too surprised to initially
resist, she found herself being forcibly, but discreetly, pushed out and into a private corner by a staff access door.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Zander, his eyes hard and narrowed.

Selina peeled his fingers off her arm. He had left long white marks on her tanned skin.

‘I told you: I’ve left you, Zander. It’s over. There will be no turning back this time.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ His voice dropped in volume as someone passed. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’

‘This is the first time in twenty years that I haven’t been fucking stupid,’ Selina spat back. ‘It’s done. I’ve had enough—’

‘Had enough what?’ he interrupted her with a brittle laugh. ‘Had enough cruises? Had enough luxury? Had enough big houses?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I think we’re living proof that money doesn’t make you happy.’ His finger came out and lifted up her chin, none too gently until she
smacked it away.

‘You’ll find out then, won’t you? If you think I’m going to play fair in a divorce, think again, my love.’

Just for a moment, Selina would have let him have everything in exchange for a clean break. But having him stand over her, attempting to intimidate her, she found that she was stronger than she
had imagined. Like hell he would take everything that she had worked so hard for from her. She was prepared to fight for her fair share. She had money of her own these days, not enough to buy
business-class tickets everywhere they travelled or suites on cruise liners, but she was sure she would cope. To Zander, luxury meant opulence and the best champagnes on the menu; to Selina luxury
was waking up to a day completely free of a vain, lying, cold, miserable, spirit-destroying knob.

‘Zander,’ she said, her eyes boring even harder into his than his were boring into hers: ‘Bring it on.’

Then she turned from him and walked away to a round of inner applause.

She didn’t see him again for the remaining three days which were spent at sea. She took up Gil and Angie’s offer to drive her up from Southampton to Barnsley where she intended to
catch a train to her flat in Harrogate above the school, but Gil had insisted taking her right to her door. First thing the next morning she contacted her solicitor and started divorce
proceedings.

Zander, as expected, had fought her every step of the way and employed a cobra of a divorce lawyer. Selina’s solicitor, however, was a tenacious mongoose who took a particular delight in
plunging her teeth into the jugular of the obdurate defendant. The divorce cost Selina a fortune in fees but it was worth every penny. Her decree absolute was framed and hung in her study along with
all the certificates of her other finest achievements.

A loud voice from the café brought her back into the here and now. ‘When you said I should put some chicken fillets in my bra, I thought you meant real chicken fillets. They stunk
bloody awful when I got home. I were nearly sick. And so was our Dave when he copped a feel of ’em.’

Selina laughed to herself. She’d been without friends – real friends that is – for too long. She would miss a ship every year and bear the cost and indignity if it meant she
could keep Angie in her life to share stories, gossip, moans and cake with. Especially in this sweet tea room filled with sunflowers.

‘Ooh, that’s better,’ said Angie, returning to her seat and flopping heavily down as if she’d just run a marathon. ‘You can hear all the conversation in the loo.
It’s so funny. Have you been listening?’

‘No, I’ve been sitting here thinking actually,’ replied Selina.

‘It’s a good place for doing that, isn’t it?’ smiled Angie. ‘I could stay here for hours. It’s as if it’s a place that likes people. As if it
doesn’t care what you look like or what your job is or how big your bum is, it just wants you to sit down and forget the world outside for a bit. Does that sound daft?’

‘Yes, it does,’ replied Selina. ‘Now do you and my budding godson want that last chicken and celery sandwich or can I have it?’

‘Be my guest.’

In the meeting next door Hilda was calling order.

‘Now, I thought we’d have a whip-round for Ava and buy her a bouquet to lift her spirits a bit. She’s gutted over her shoe. Is that all right with everyone?’ There
followed a rustle of bags, snaps of purse clips, clank of coins.

‘Isn’t friendship bloody marvellous, Ange,’ grinned Selina.

Read on for a sneak peek of Milly’s new novel.
Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café
.

And to read about what happened to Angie and Selina when they missed their ship, check out
Here Come the Boys
.

The awning that hangs over the window is a tired yellow and white stripe and much of the paint has flaked off the sign above the door announcing that this is The Sunflower
Café. On a quiet lane in the village of Pogley Top, it barely registers as a place of interest. But should your eye venture past the unspectacular façade and you push open the door
and walk in, you would find yellow walls as cheerful as sunshine, pretty sky-blue curtains dotted with sunflowers and a long window affording the village’s prettiest view of the adjacent
stream. You would find a warmth as if the café has a spirit that welcomes you and is happiest when filled with laughter and chatter. Of the women who visit here to partake of the
owner’s delicious and generous afternoon teas, many of them are like the café – you would never guess what beauty and strength sit beneath the ordinary outside.

Hung up are many pictures of sunflowers but one, near the door, in particular catches the eye. Underneath the smiling giant petalled head is written a poem:

This is the story of three women who never realised they had the capacity to be the tallest, boldest, brightest flowers in the field.

When Jimmy Diamond told Della on Thursday morning that she would have to cancel her day off on Friday, he could not have known what wheels he had started in motion.

When Della protested and said that she’d had it booked for weeks; it was her old boss’s retirement party, Jimmy still insisted that she couldn’t take it.

He said no.

In the fifteen years she had worked for him, he had never said no before. He might have man-grumbled a bit under his breath when she asked for a favour, but he knew what side his bread was
buttered where Della was concerned. He would never have found anyone else who worked over and above the call of duty as she did, watching his back, doing his dirty work, covering his tracks more
than Della did and if she had to take a rare afternoon off for a dental appointment or if there was a panic on with her elderly mother, it had never been a problem before.

Had he said yes, this story would never have been told and life would have trundled on in much the same way as it had for years. One woman would have continued to exist unhappily on the begging
end of a non-relationship and one woman would have eaten the equivalent weight of a small emergent country in truffles. But Jimmy Diamond had said no.

The office junior Ivanka had turned up to work that Thursday morning acting limp and tearful with a sickness and diarrhoea bug, obviously unfit to work, so Della had sent her back home again.
Ivanka had protested a little before relenting and saying that she would be in after the weekend. Then Jimmy breezed in and announced that he was off that afternoon to schmooze on a golf course and
wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. When Della reminded him that she had booked Friday off, Jimmy had thrown up his hands and said that someone was needed in the office and as he couldn’t
be there and she had sent Ivanka home, who did that leave? Nope, there was nothing for it: as office manageress, it was Della’s duty to be there, especially in such a busy period. Once upon a
time, cleaners had been ten a penny, now demand outstripped supply and they were like gold dust. Della’s attendance was needed more in manning the phones than it was in Whitby, eating vol au
vents and drinking warm white wine out of a plastic tumbler at the party of a bloke who probably wouldn’t even remember who she was, said Jimmy firmly.

‘Of course he’ll remember who I am,’ said Della, her mouth a defiant thin line. ‘I worked for him longer than I’ve worked for you.’

Della saw the features of his face soften and she guessed he was about to change tactic.

‘Oh, Dells,’ he sighed and held out his hands in a gesture of apologetic surrender. ‘Of
course
he’d remember you. But he won’t
need
you like I do.
I
have
to go on this golfing weekend with Pookie Barnes. I owe him after he’s shifted all his business to us from Cleancheap and he’s making noises about recommending our girls
to clean the offices of his contacts. I have to keep him on side. I hear that Roy Frog is hopping about it.’

Jimmy laughed at his own joke. He and Roy Frog’s firm Cleancheap had a longstanding rivalry. Della knew that it was thanks to Jimmy’s schmoozing that Pookie Barnes,
Cleancheap’s biggest customer, had jumped ship faster than a rat on the
Titanic
wearing a lifejacket.