Here Come the Girls (2 page)

‘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 T
ENA
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.

‘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?’

‘Flaming heck, Roz, I’ve got five weeks until then,’ laughed Ven.

‘She’s obsessed,’ tutted Olive, shaking her head in exasperation. ‘Anal, totally anal.’

‘I want to get it booked,’ Roz explained. ‘Honestly! What’s wrong with that?’

‘So my choices are egg fried rice, korma or spag bol. How our plans have shrunk over the years,’ laughed Ven. ‘Remember being on the school playing-fields and planning that cruise we were all going to have when we got to forty?’

‘Aye, well, we were young and daft then,’ said Roz. ‘If you remember, I was going to be a PA for an international businessman and travel the world on private jets, not work for an old sow in a boring bank.’ It was no secret that Roz hated her administration job in a town centre bank, and despised her pernickety, frumpy boss – Mrs Hutchinson – even more.

‘Aye, and we were all convinced we were going to be multimillionaires by the time we were twenty-five,’ added Olive. Oh, if only she still had all those dreams packed tight in her heart like buds ready to flower into giant blossoms. She had managed to live out only the one – spending a single summer on a Greek island – but the rest had rotted from neglect. ‘God, it seems another lifetime away – the four of us lying on the grass in our grey, white and red uniforms, looking at shapes in the clouds.’

She felt Roz bristle at the memory of them being ‘a four’. However much she had reconstructed history and reclassified them as a ‘three’, to Olive and Ven they would always be a quartet.
The Fabulous Four
.

‘Would you still go on a cruise if you could?’ Ven asked.

‘Course I would,’ said Roz with a humph. ‘In fact, I’ve got a spare five grand in my purse. Why don’t I nip into Thomas Cook’s right this minute.’

‘But if you did have a spare five grand . . .’

‘I’d get a new bathroom,’ Roz counter-interrupted. ‘But I haven’t, so that’s the end of that one.’

‘I’d go on one,’ sighed Olive. ‘I haven’t been abroad for twenty years.’ She thought back to
that
summer, swimming in water that was as blue as Paul Newman’s eyes, harvesting olives, tasting fruits that had been kissed by the sun.

‘Yes, well, we aren’t fourteen any more with heads full of stupid dreams,’ said Roz, with that bitter tone they were so used to hearing in her voice these days, but it still had the effect of a cold shower on the conversation for a while.

Eventually Olive broke the silence. ‘Do you fancy a surprise party?’ she piped up, which made Ven laugh and Roz roll her eyes and say, ‘That’s a grand idea, Olive. But let’s not mention it to Ven. We wouldn’t want her to
GUESS WHAT WE’D GOT PLANNED
.’

‘No, I don’t fancy a surprise party, thank you,’ Ven told them. ‘I have an idea what I would like, but I need to do a bit of arranging first.’

‘Like what?’ asked Olive. Conversation broke off for a minute whilst the coffee and cakes arrived.

‘Never you mind,’ said Ven, tapping the side of her nose and picking up her fork. ‘But let me just say that my money’s on an Italian meal.’

Chapter 2

On the bus home, Olive was all wrapped up in that revisit to a precious memory of them all at school on the playing-field, lying in the sun, Frankie pointing to the sky and saying, ‘
That one looks like a ship
.’

And Roz saying that she wished she were on a ship instead of psyching herself up for double Classics with Mr Metaxas.

Mr Metaxas
. Olive smiled to herself as she thought how she always turned to mush whenever he said her name. He made it sound like something earthy and desirable. Then five years later she was to meet a man with the same smouldering Greek accent who didn’t only make her name sound beautiful and succulent as sunshine embodied into fruit, but he made
her
feel beautiful and ripe and ready for the plucking.

Her smile grew a little wider when she remembered herself aged fourteen. Then, she’d thought anyone over twenty-four was ancient. And people at forty were only fit for sitting on deckchairs reading books about jam-making, if their cataracts allowed them to. Her younger self had never considered that at thirty-nine her spirit wouldn’t have aged a day, even if her body had. In her head she was still that same skinny, leggy lass who loved rounders and had posters of the Police up on her wall. Olive, Ven, Roz, Frankie.
The Fabulous Four
. They had even nicked their thumbs with Ven’s dad’s razor-blade and sealed their friendship in blood after seeing it on a film because apparently it would bind them together for life. Well, that obviously hadn’t worked. Everything was a right old mess now.

Olive got off the bus at her stop, crossed the road and walked down the back alley opposite to the house where she lived. She never thought of it as ‘home’, because it wasn’t. It was her mother-in-law Doreen’s home. Home was a place for which she would choose the carpets and the wallpaper. She was a lodger at number 15, Land Lane. It was not her home and she suspected it never would be.

She pushed open the front door and stepped inside.

‘Olive, is that you?’ That screechy female voice dragged her kicking and screaming back from warm memories of girlhood into the dull chilly present.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ Olive said, slipping off her eight-year-old raincoat and hanging it up next to David’s work jacket. Although the word ‘work’ was pushing it a lot. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d done a full day’s labour. She wasn’t sure he ever had, come to think of it.

‘Did you get my corn pads?’

‘Yes, Doreen.’

Doreen Hardcastle shifted her bulk in her specially wide wheelchair so she could straighten all the gold cushions around her. She looked like a very fat queen on a reinforced sturdy throne. Except instead of a crown on her head there was a helmet of tight curls, thanks to over-zealous perming by the mobile hairdresser who came once every eight weeks with a bag full of rollers and some stinky setting chemicals.