Here Come the Girls

by Milly Johnson

  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.’

  ‘She will, because I’ll make her enjoy herself,’ said Ven. ‘Ooh, is this it?’ A fancy white bus with blue waves painted on it and the name Easy Rider in bold red lettering manoeuvred skilfully towards them.

  Olive bounced out of the loo and came running over in a panic.

  ‘Chill,’ said Ven. ‘There’s no rush.’ Although she would have been better telling Mr B Deck that one because he was hurrying to the front, wheeling his fancy suitcase and making sure his timid-looking snow-haired little wife was following behind. He must have been in his early seventies, but was advancing with youthful determination to make sure he was first on that bus.

  Roz was surprised to see such an age mix of passengers. She’d presumed cruises were just for rich old people. But waiting to get on the bus there were two families with small children and one with a babe in arms. And a young hand-holding couple obviously on their honeymoon from the Just Married stickers on their luggage. And also a very jolly party of seven adults and a little boy with his own WWE suitcase.

  The bus driver was the widest bloke Ven had ever seen. He had a neck like a tree trunk, carried himself as if he had forgotten to take the coat hanger out of his shirt, and a tsunami of belly flowed over the top of his trouser belt, but he lifted the hefty suitcases as if they were featherweight and slotted them in his luggage hold like Tetris bricks.

  Olive, Ven and Roz climbed on the bus, passing old Mr B Deck who was telling some other poor sod, ‘Yes, Irene and I have been on thirty cruises. This is actually our eighth on the Mermaidia . . .’

  ‘I pity whoever gets stuck on his dinner table,’ mocked Roz, making them laugh with her whispering impersonation of him. ‘“This will be the forty-eighth time I’ve had lobster in the Gobshite restaurant. And this will be the seven-hundredth crap I’ve had on board”.’

  The bus engine shuddered awake and Olive breathed a sigh of relief. She wouldn’t be truly happy until it was moving and she had escaped any chance of David and her in-laws catching up with her. The bus slowly turned out of the interchange and headed uptown.

  ‘Well, good morning, everyone,’ said a cheery Peter-Kay-Lancashire bus-driver voice. ‘Are we all in a holiday mood?’

  ‘Yes,’ came a jolly chorus. Although Olive looked more as if she was going to throw up. She was scanning for Hardcastles wh
eeling or running lumpily towards the bus sides like hungry zombies.

  ‘Well, I’m Clive your bus dr-ah-ver for the journey. Just have a few likkle legal obligations to tell you a-bow-t . . .’

  Clive went on to tell everyone about the safety features on the bus, that they should use the seatbelts but he couldn’t enforce it if they preferred to ignore him. And how to break the window with the secreted hammer in an emergency. And that he got home late last night because he’d had to wash the bus down and then had to heat up his tea in the microwave; he’d had liver and onions and peas. Not ‘gorden’ peas but marrowfat ones out of a tin.

  ‘Blimey, I bet the time just flies by on a date with him,’ said Roz, then she called across the aisle to Olive, fidgeting in her seat. ‘Ol, will you calm down. You’re safe.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be calm in a moment or two,’ said Olive as the bus gained speed and headed down the slip road of the M1. She held out her hand, steadily posed to prove her nerves were intact. ‘Look, now I’m calm – see?’

  Clive thrilled them some more with talk about where he was going to stop on the motorway to pick up some more passengers, and to inform them that there was a toilet at the back of the bus and how to flush it (by standing on the button on the floor). But he was stopping in ten minutes for a toilet break anyway.

  ‘Crikey, I know my pelvic floor is knackered but I’m sure I can last longer than that,’ said Ven.

  ‘How can it be knackered – you’ve had no kids!’ said Olive. None of them had. Ven, because she had never found Mr Right to have them with, Olive because she had never fallen pregnant naturally with David. Roz had never been that maternal. Manus hadn’t been that bothered either; he was happy enough just as a couple. At least, that’s what he used to say. As for Frankie, well, Frankie was a different case entirely. Once upon a time they were going to have four kids each and all sixteen children would be best friends – like they were.

  ‘Does she know we’re going on your birthday cruise?’ asked Roz suddenly, as yet another annoying thought of Frankie Carnevale popped into her brain.

  ‘Frankie, you mean?’ Ven asked, though she knew who Roz meant because she reserved a special tone of voice for the rare occasions when she referred to her once best friend.

  ‘Yes, her.’

  ‘Yes, I told Frankie,’ replied Ven, opening up a bag of Cadbury’s Eclairs.

  ‘Wasn’t she pissed off that she was left out?’

  ‘I’ll make it up to her,’ replied Ven.

  ‘What, by bringing her a bottle of wine back?’ laughed Roz. ‘Anyway, I don’t know why I’m asking about her.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Roz,’ said Ven quietly but firmly.

  Roz shut up. Slagging Frankie off was now a long habit and really didn’t have any place on a journey towards a luxury cruise. Especially when dissing her to a mutual friend who had chosen her above Frankie to fill the third place. Roz played with the thought of putting herself in Frankie’s shoes and being told that she wouldn’t be going on a cruise because someone else took priority. Frankie would have taken it better than Roz would, had the situation been reversed.

  ‘Have you seen her recently?’ she asked, trying to sound a bit less negative.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago. I went down to see her.’

  Roz was about to rear up at the thought of Ven going down to Derbyshire and not telling her. Then she remembered she had said ages ago that she didn’t want to know anything about Frankie. As usual with Roz, there was no pleasing her these days. She was suddenly curious, though.

  ‘Is she single?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s been single for ages.’

  ‘What happened to that bloke she moved down to be with?’

  ‘Bloke? Oh yes, well, they . . . they split up not long after.’

  Oh dear, Ros sniggered to herself.

  ‘Is she still in Bakewell – where the tarts come from?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ven, ignoring the barb tagged on at the end. ‘She’s got a little cottage.’

  ‘Thought she had a big house!’

  ‘She sold it and found a smaller place to rent.’

  ‘What the heck did she do that for?’

  ‘She wanted to free up some capital when she lost her translating job,’ said Ven, being careful what she said.

  ‘Oh, so she’s not working now,’ said Roz with more than a touch of smugness.

  ‘She’s doing some freelance work, here and there,’ said Ven, chomping down on her toffee. ‘She’s having a . . . a career break,’ she worded carefully.

  ‘Career break?’ scoffed Roz. How the mighty fall, she added to herself. Then she was suddenly shocked at how mean that made her feel. What sort of person have you become? said a disgusted little voice inside her. She didn’t like the sound of that voice at all. She grabbed a magazine out of her handbag. It fell open at the page about Putting the zing back into your love-life. As if she needed to have it rubbed in.

  Within fifteen minutes they had stopped at a service station and picked up some more passengers, and before Clive had repeated his scintillating safety information to the newcomers and told them about his infatuation with tinned peas, Olive had fallen asleep. She jerked awake a few minutes later with a falling sensation, but as she had barely had any sleep the night before, it wasn’t long before she had drifted back to the Land of Nod. Roz wasn’t far behind her and eventually Ven’s eyes shuttered down too.

  They awoke as the bus jerked to a halt outside another service station. Clive was announcing that they would have an hour’s lunch here because he was legally obligated to eat something himself.

  ‘Amazing what you can make yourself believe when you want to,’ laughed Ven.

  ‘He’s hardly going to wither away,’ whispered Roz, with a long stretch and a yawn. ‘He could digest himself and live on the meat for years. I wonder if he’d eat himself with peas or without.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want him fainting through starvation whilst he’s driving,’ said Olive, wondering if he was really ‘legally obligated’ to eat and if any militant food police would be around to make sure he cleared his plate of meat and twelve veg.

  People were getting off the bus. B Deck Man was first off, Roz noted, strutting towards the café with his missus a dutiful three paces behind him.

  ‘Let’s go and have a coffee,’ said Olive. ‘If I don’t get some caffeine in my system, I’ll go into a coma.’

  She looked at her watch. The Hardcastles would be stirring from their crypt now. Doreen would be screaming for Olive to help her go to the toilet. She felt a pounce of guilt that David would have to step in. Then she remembered that Doreen was quite capable of getting to the toilet by herself if she could skip down the road for fags as she did. She thought of all the years she had tended to her, without a word of thanks. The big, bossy, idle so-and-so. She’d always known her parents could have done a lot more for themselves than they let on, and yet she’d gone and fallen straight in the same trap with the Hardcastles. What a first-class chump she was.

  ‘Oy, stop thinking about that lot,’ said Ven, nudging her as they queued up for coffee. ‘I know you, lady.’

  ‘I was just thinking they’ll be getting up now. They’ll have read my note and be in a state of chaos.’

  ‘Good,’ said Roz. ‘I bloody hope they are.’

  Chapter 16

  At exactly the same time as the bus driver slid into first gear for the final leg of the journey, David Hardcastle was woken up by his mother hollering for Olive.

  ‘Olive. Olive! Get up. I need the toilet. I’ll wet myself if you don’t hurry up.’

  ‘Olive, get up, my mother wants you.’ He farted on his wife and laughed because it was a hot smelly one, and if that didn’t get her jumping out of bed, nothing would. Olive hated anything to do with farting and would be up in a flash now. Getting no reaction, David rolled over in bed, disappointed that he hadn’t hit the target. Her side of the bed was cold and empty. More than that, it looked unslept in.


  He swung his feet out from under the duvet and had a good scratch as he lumbered out of the bedroom to shout down the staircase.

  ‘Olive, where are you? My mother wants you.’

  ‘She went out,’ called Kevin’s yawning voice from behind the spare-room door. ‘Said she was going to clear off some grease.’

  ‘Clear off some grease?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  Funny, thought David. She never said she was working this morning. He hoped that didn’t affect the Sunday dinner being made.

  ‘Olive!’ screeched Doreen.

  ‘Oh shut up, Mam, I’m coming.’

  ‘Fetch my fags, David. And my lighter. They’re by the kettle.’

  ‘Hang on.’ David plodded down the stairs and into the kitchen and there he found the envelope propped up against Doreen’s Black Superkings. He ripped it open and read it.

  ‘She’s gone on holiday,’ he said to himself. ‘What does she mean, she’s gone on holiday?’

  ‘If you don’t hurry up, Olive, I’ll wet myself, I will,’ called Doreen.

  ‘Shurrup a minute, Mam.’ Again David read the note. What drug was Olive on? She didn’t have the money to go on holiday. Or any decent clothes to take with her. What was she on about, ‘going on holiday’?

  ‘I warned you, Olive!’ called Doreen. ‘I couldn’t wait. I’ve wet myself. You’ll have to get a cloth and clean me up. You should have come when I called.’

  David’s lips pulled back over his teeth. He didn’t know what little stunt Olive was playing, but when she eventually got tired of it and came home, they were going to have serious words.

  Chapter 17

  The bus crossed the border into Southampton. Olive was in raptures looking at all the lovely posh houses that lined the main road into the city. She knew she would never live in anything that big, but she’d hoped for something better than a grotty terrace house full of cigarette smoke, nicotine-stained walls and kitchen appliances snatched from the Ark. David had promised her the world when they were courting. He certainly had the gift of the gab in those days. He walked tall and straight, not weighed down by a paunch, and had a round, smiley, cheeky face. He kissed her a lot too and cuddled her, which she loved, because her parents had never been demonstrative.