Here Come the Girls

by Milly Johnson

  Milly Johnson is a 4ft 11in half-Barnsley, half-Glaswegian author, BBC Radio Sheffield broadcaster, greetings-card copywriter and award-winning chef (winner of Come Dine With Me Barnsley). She likes cruising on big ships, mingling with big wrestlers and savouring big hampers full of rum truffles, carrot cake and Canadian ice wine.

  She lives in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, bang opposite her mam and dad with her two hulking lads, four moggies and Teddy, her German Eurasier dog. She is a proud patron of Haworthcatrescue.org and The Well – a complementary-therapy centre for cancer sufferers, associated with St Peter’s Hospice, Barnsley. Here Come the Girls is her fifth novel. Visit her at www.millyjohnson.co.uk

  Also by Milly Johnson

  The Yorkshire Pudding Club

  The Birds and the Bees

  A Spring Affair

  A Summer Fling

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2011

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Milly Johnson, 2011

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-84983-205-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84983-206-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental

  Typeset in Bembo by M Rules

  Printed in the UK by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8EX

  This book is dedicated to the wonderful people of Yorkshire. The ones who have taught me, healed me, employed me, supported me, laughed with me, lent me tissues, scoffed cake, broken bread and drunk wine with me, represented me legally, tucked me in at night, cooked for me, delivered my babies, read my books, called me ‘friend’, called me ‘mum’, liked me – and loved me.

  On the third day out I get it, the sea

  Is not one thing, it constantly transforms

  Itself, and in unthinking majesty

  Tapestries horizons with sun or storms.

  So then lying now, rocking to and fro

  On its soothing and gentle amniotic swell

  I loosen thoughts of home, and let them go,

  And my shipwrecked heart can start to heal.

  What promise for me, what spirit salve

  When unanchored here I find at last,

  Something has shifted, giving me resolve

  To let hope aboard, jettison the past.

  The sea has given me a chance to live,

  And leads us maybe to a safe harbour, love.

  ‘The Voyage Out’ by James Nash

  ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’

  Mark Twain

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  People always remember the winters of their childhood as being as white as iced Christmas-cake tops. They recall their journeys to school as being trapped inside a giant snow-globe, recently shaken. Likewise they remember their long-ago summers as hotter and brighter and longer than they ever were. The sun switched on its light in May – all 950 watts of it – and didn’t even begin to fade until all the rusty, crispy leaves had dropped from the trees in late September. Indeed, whenever four women thought back to a certain afternoon twenty-five years ago, they pictured the shapes in the clouds as more defined, the sky impossibly blue and the sun the colour of a massive sherbet lemon. The grass they lay on was more velvet than itchy, and no one remembered sneezing because their hay fever had been triggered off.

  Full of Cornish pasty and lumpy school gravy, four fourteen-year-old girls reposed on the grassy bank in their red and grey regulation uniforms and looked lazily up at the sky.

  ‘That one looks like a squirrel,’ said Ven, pointing to a white mass of cloud.

  ‘Eh? Where the hell are you looking?’ replied Frankie.

  ‘There.’ Ven stabbed upwards with her finger. ‘That bit there is its tail and the big round thing is its head.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Roz. ‘I sort of see what you mean, but you have to admit that it does look more like a squirrel which has just been run over by a tractor. Aw, look – there’s a heart.’ She sighed, making the others groan.

  ‘Has it got “I love Jez Jackson by Roz Lynch” written across the middle of it, by any chance?’ laughed Olive.

  ‘It might have,’ said Roz bashfully, or as bashfully as she could manage as the thought of Jez Jackson glided into her brain. Three years older than her, he lived across the street and was skinny and lithe and never acknowledged her. He was the ‘Boy from Ipanema’ and made her heartbeat rev up whenever she spotted his Marc Bolan perm.

  ‘That one looks like a cloud,’ said Olive.

  ‘Oh, very funny!’ snorted Roz.

  ‘No, I mean like a proper cloud in a cartoon. Flat at the bottom but bobbly on top
. By the way, did you know that Zeus was the God of Clouds?’

  ‘Ooh, who’s been paying extra attention in Classics,’ said Frankie, poking Olive in the ribs. ‘Swotty Olive Lyon, that’s who.’

  ‘Give over!’ chuckled Olive.

  ‘I’m surprised she pays any attention in Classics,’ said Roz. ‘She’s always too busy looking into Mr Metaxas’s eyes.’

  ‘That’s a big lie. I am not!’ refuted Olive, but laughing too because it was true and her friends knew it was.

  ‘I reckon you’re going to move to Athens, Ol, and become a Greek bride. You’ll change your name to Aphrodite and live off vine leaves. They love blondes out there, apparently. You’re worth at least a couple of camels,’ said Frankie.

  ‘They don’t use camels as currency in the Med, dafty,’ said Roz.

  ‘Oh whatever,’ Frankie returned with a sniff. She sat up and swished her long black sheet of hair behind her. ‘Olive, the most-a bellissima fruit in the world-a,’ she said, affecting an accent very similar to Mr Metaxas’s sexy Greek one. ‘How juicy the olive is. I just want to eat her . . . er . . . it all up in-a one-a bite.’

  Olive was giggling and blushing and trying not to think of snogging Mr Metaxas. His Mediterranean tan, black hair and huge brown eyes had done their fair share in helping to kick-start her adult hormones. She often went to sleep thinking of him calling her ‘Olive’ in the same way he did in class. Out of all the crap names her parents could have called her, ‘Olive’ had always seemed by far the worst. If only her parents had called her ‘Olivia’ which was far more posh and acceptable. But Olive! It was the name of the frumpiest woman ever in On the Buses. Mr Metaxas always managed to make it sound so romantic and rich, though.

  ‘That one looks like a ship,’ said Frankie.

  ‘Ooh yes, it does,’ Roz said, agreeing with her for once. ‘God, I wish I were on a ship now having a nice holiday. I’ve got double Classics this affy.’

  ‘So have I ,’ smiled Olive wistfully. She was the only girl in the school who looked forward to it, apart from a couple of spotty, brainbox types in the year above who were aiming for Oxbridge. ‘Paraclausithyron,’ she added with a sigh, making it sound more like a sexual act than a Greek motif.

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ asked Frankie, who had double Spanish and wouldn’t have liked to have swapped. She had a natural flair for languages. Her family were Italian and she was already bi-lingual and on course for being tri-lingual.

  ‘An entreaty at a closed door,’ said Olive, still in her half-dreamlike state. ‘When a lover is outside appealing to be let in.’

  Ven chuckled. ‘What do you know about not letting randy Greeks in the door? You’d let them all in, you romantic saddo.’

  ‘It costs thousands of pounds to go on a ship for your holiday, I heard,’ said Olive, trying to wean her thoughts away from Mr Metaxas. At least that’s what class show-off Colette Hudd had told her when she was queening it with her holiday photos aboard a Cunard ship. Her dad owned a secondhand car lot and was absolutely loaded. She got dropped off at school every morning in a Rolls-Royce and out of school wore proper jeans with labels on them like ‘Brutus Gold’. Not like Olive, whose mother bought all her clothes from Littlewoods. Olive and her parents had never holidayed further than Skegness in a caravan. Hot water and an indoor toilet would have been a luxury, never mind a flaming cabin with a porthole.

  ‘We’ll all have to go on a cruise one day and pick Ol up a husband with brown eyes and garlic-stinky breath,’ said Roz, flicking the grass off her long legs. ‘When we’re all old and rich.’

  ‘Not too old,’ said Olive. ‘I won’t get a husband if I’m all hunched up and wrinkled with a stick.’

  Frankie thought of the beautiful English teacher at school, Miss Tanner. She was everything Frankie hoped she would grow into one day – curvy, husky-voiced and confident. Thanks to all the secret fags she smoked, she was almost there with the voice. And she knew Miss Tanner had just turned forty because Frankie had been asked by Mr Firth (French) to stay in at break and make a birthday card for her because Frankie was pretty good at Art too. It was obvious to everyone in the school that English and French were having an ‘entente cordiale’. And him not even thirty yet. Way to go, Miss Tanner!

  ‘Forty would be a good age. We’ll all be rich and gorgeous by then. We’ll have to go on Ven’s birthday though because she’s the only summer baby,’ decided Frankie.

  ‘Okay, let’s do that then,’ said Olive. She held her hand out for the others to put theirs on top of it and seal the deal. They did, and it was now set in stone that on 24th August, Venice Smith’s fortieth birthday, they would be on the sort of ship that made the one Colette Hudd showed off about look like a blow-up dinghy.

  The ship-shape cloud had morphed into a big white mess now. The end of dinner bell sounded and Roz, Frankie and Ven grimaced at each other. Only Olive had a spring in her step as she headed back towards the school building, her heart full of dreams of being a bride carried away to a lush, sunny island in the middle of a wine-dark sea.

  Chapter 1

  Twenty-five years later

  ‘What about this one then?’ Roz said, holding up birthday card number eighteen.

  Olive took the card and read the outside of it aloud. ‘“What do you call a forty-year-old woman who is single?”’ She turned to the inside for the punchline. ‘“A lucky bitch”.’ What a surprise – another man-bashing joke from Roz. She handed it back with a pained expression. ‘It’s quite funny, I suppose. But I can’t say I’m rolling around on the floor laughing.’

  ‘It’s only a card – you don’t need to wet your pants with hysteria,’ tutted Roz. ‘It’s relevant on the age forty and the single-status front though, don’t you think?’

  As well as relevant to you on the ‘I hate men’ front, thought Olive, though she wasn’t snipey enough to say that. Instead she decided, ‘I’m going for a sentimental one. Something like this,’ and she held up a sweet flowery card with a nice ‘friend’ verse.

  ‘Huh. Ideal if you like slop. Don’t get me a card like that for my fortieth, I’ll throw up.’

  ‘Oh, I shall,’ teased Olive. ‘I’ll get one with little kittens on the front and a long verse about what a wonderful person you are.’

  ‘You’d better buy me an accompanying bucket as well then,’ said Roz. ‘Oh sod it, I’m getting this one otherwise I’ll be here all day. What are you going to buy her as a present?’

  ‘I haven’t even thought about it yet,’ replied Olive. ‘I’m not as organised as you. I bet you’ve got your Christmas presents bought and wrapped already.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ sniffed Roz. Olive knew she wasn’t joking. She’d probably have all their fiftieth birthday cards bought and written by this November.

  ‘Maybe I’ll get her a hamper,’ mused Olive.

  ‘A hamper? What sort of hamper?’

  ‘One with TENA Ladys, Werther’s Originals and a nasal hair-trimmer in it.’

  Roz tutted. ‘I thought you were being serious.’

  ‘I am,’ twinkled Olive, leaning in to impart her secret. ‘Actually it’s not that much of a joke these days. Don’t tell anyone, but I stuck the trimmer that David’s cousin got him for Christmas up my nose and it started making all sorts of zzzing noises. Scared me to death. I never thought the day would come when I’d have to trim nasal hair or wax my face.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about facial hair,’ said Roz. ‘If I didn’t get mine ripped off at the salon every couple of months I’d be walking around like Rolf Harris.’

  Olive chuckled as they made their way to the till. She knew Roz would wake up out of a coma to put her make-up on. She wouldn’t pull the wheelie bin out unless she was wearing mascara, even though she didn’t need to. Roz had a gorgeous face with slicing cheekbones like the top models in magazines.

  ‘Ol, do you fancy clubbing together and getting Ven something between us for her birthday?’ Roz suddenly asked.

&nb
sp; ‘Yes, I’m up for that. Thirty quid each – is that enough?’

  ‘It’s more than enough. Are you sure that’s okay with you, though?’ Roz didn’t say ‘can you afford that amount?’ although that’s what she meant. It was no secret that Olive was permanently skint. She had cleaning jobs all over the place but a nest full of big cuckoos with ever-hungry mouths ready to devour the wages she earned.

  ‘It’s my mate’s fortieth birthday and it’s important she has a nice present,’ said Olive firmly. ‘Especially one who’s had such a crap couple of years.’ Losing both a mother and a father within thirteen months had really brought Ven very low. Then, if that wasn’t enough, her rotten stinking husband declared he was off with a floozy, divorced her and was awarded half of everything she had – including the money her mum and dad had been putting away for her all their lives. And just to kick her whilst she was at her lowest, a few weeks after her Decree Absolute came through, she was made redundant from her job. Bad luck always came in such big chunks, unlike good luck, Olive thought.

  They walked up the hill and down into the shopping arcade, throwing ideas for suitable fortieth-birthday presents at each other until they reached the Edwardian Tea Room. Already sitting at a table inside, Ven waved heartily at them through the window.

  ‘Wotcher, girls,’ she called as they joined her. Ven’s face had always fallen naturally into a big dimply smile, but today she was grinning like a loon and her dimples were as deep as Grand Canyons.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ said Roz, noting it. ‘Lost a Ryvita and found a cheesecake?’

  ‘Nope. I’m just happy to see you. Let’s order straight away ’cos I’m parched.’

  ‘My usual,’ said Roz.

  ‘Ditto,’ added Olive.

  ‘Three nutty honey lattes, two pieces of cappuccino cake and one slice of lemon drizzle, please,’ Ven said to the waitress who came over. Smiles seemed to be oozing out of her.

  ‘What’s the matter? Have you been on laughing gas?’ asked Roz.

  ‘Nope,’ Ven said. ‘Nothing’s up with me. Absolutely nothing at all.’

  ‘Okay,’ conceded Roz. ‘So, have you made up your mind where you fancy going for your fortieth-birthday celebrations? Shall I book us a Chinese banquet at the Silver Moon, an Italian at Bella Noche or a curry at the Raj?’