Here Come the Girls (37 page)

As they wandered back to their cabins to freshen up for dinner, Nigel’s gorgeous voice announced over the Tannoy that they were now on course for Gibraltar and there were two lovely relaxing days at sea to look forward to. And that the forecast for those two days promised even more sunshine and calm seas.

Olive put on her green evening dress and studied herself in the mirror, trying to see herself through Atho’s eyes. Did he really want her to return to him? The mirror threw back the image of a slim woman with a decent chest and green, green eyes that were shining from a fire burning inside her. She didn’t look like Olive the cleaning woman. And she sure as hell didn’t feel like Olive the cleaning woman. There was a swagger in her step as she joined the others in Beluga for a pre-dinner gin and tonic and a nosy at other women’s formal frocks.

Frankie was wearing a dress she had bought that afternoon in Gallery Mermaidia – a stunning, bright red diamanté number that showed off her beautiful shoulders and fabulous chest to best effect. It was so nice to see her back in bright colours, they all thought. She wasn’t built for dowdy.

It was funny how a bit of tanning affected everyone’s bravery levels. Women who had huddled up in pashminas on the first few nights to hide away their pale bingo-wings, now couldn’t give a toss who saw them. All sizes were showing off their bronzed bits with confidence, and heels were strutting all over the ship. It was lovely and liberating to see. The four of them could have sat in Beluga all night just people-watching.

But the call came for dinner and they wended their way down to the restaurant where they were greeted by the friendly smiling face of Supremo in a shirt so white it could have caused them serious snow-blindness. Eric relayed the apologies of Royston and Stella that evening. Apparently they had decided, last minute, to attend the Indian buffet that was being held in the Buttery. And Nigel didn’t attend either, which pulled Ven’s spirits right down. She was almost back at the college disco, waiting in vain for her then heartthrob to turn up. Feelings just didn’t get any more refined with age, she had to accept. Her disappointment was just as raw now as then.

The menu was Greek-themed tonight.

‘I’ll have a stifado,’ announced Olive confidently.

‘Haven’t you had enough of that this afternoon?’ said Roz, with a cheeky nudge.

‘Oy, he only kissed me goodbye!’ replied Olive. She did not add that the kiss had lasted over an hour and stolen her breath for most of it. Especially not to Roz, who despite her teasing, would most categorically not have approved of a married woman being subject to the sort of erotic pre-foreplay that made
Debbie Does Dallas
look like an episode of
Dora the Explorer
.

At the other side of Olive, Ven whispered so that Roz couldn’t hear, ‘Was he as nice as you remembered?’

‘Oh Ven, he was gorgeous. He wants me to go back and make up for lost time.’

‘And much as you want to, you never will,’ said Ven, with impatience. ‘Fool.’

‘You don’t have to tell me what I am,’ Olive answered with a smile, but one totally devoid of humour. She had felt brave – strong – on the island, but every second that passed was taking her further away from him, to a weaker place where sense and duty had a stronger pull than her own desires and needs.

The entertainment in the Broadway Theatre was Mikey ‘Fingers’ Lee, a camp old pianist who had been half his present width when, aged nineteen, he had won
Opportunity Knocks
. He’d obviously tried to hang on to his youthful good looks with so much Botox that he made Stella look like Mr Bean. But it didn’t matter an iota because he was cheesy-fab. Roz groaned a bit about being dragged along to it but she was cheering the loudest for Fingers to do an encore when he took his curtain bow.

‘That was bloody brilliant,’ she said. ‘More. More!’

‘What’s come over her?’ said Ven.

‘She’s loosened her corsets so much this holiday they’ll ping totally off by the end,’ giggled Frankie. Then she realised how close the ‘end’ of the cruise was getting and it made a sour little splash in her laughter.

Ven too heard that spoiling word ‘end’. But at least she had something to tell her friends that would considerably soften that particular blow.

D
AY
12: A
T
S
EA

Dress Code: Semi-Formal

Chapter 56

Roz studied the tattoo on Frankie’s shoulder as they sunbathed around the Topaz pool the next morning. She had to admit that, as a piece of art, the little angel was beautifully drawn.

‘Did it hurt – the tattoo?’ she asked.

Frankie stopped reading. ‘It scratched a lot,’ she said. ‘In an annoying way.’

‘What made you have it done?’

‘I thought an angel on my shoulder might look after me. I would touch it and ask it to help me. Daft, I know, but you’ll try anything when you’re desperate.’

‘Like buy beige clothes to blend in,’ Roz teased.

‘And hope Death wouldn’t notice me,’ added Frankie, but she laughed loudly to offset the dark words. ‘Aye, well, they’re going in the bin.’ Her bosom sat proudly inside the new bright orange swimsuit she had bought in Cephalonia. She didn’t want to hide away in dull colours any more.

‘You never used to wear anything that didn’t give me a migraine. It wasn’t right seeing you in beige that first day on board. It felt wrong. Even though I hated your guts.’ Roz smiled and nudged her.

‘Yeah well, with you not around to wind up and spat with, I kind of lost my way a bit. You would have bullied me out of wearing anything less than psychedelic.’

A rush of emotion blindsided Roz and she volunteered to go and get some drinks and settle herself. God, she had been an evil cow. A blinkered, nasty, selfish old bat. How had Manus put up with her? She just hoped it wasn’t too late to put things right.

Dom Donaldson pushed right in front of Roz at the bar. She noticed he lacked any ability to say the words ‘Please’ or ‘Thank you’. As usual Tangerina was two paces behind him chewing one arm of her sunglasses as if simulating giving a blow job and positioning herself in a pose that made the best of her perfect figure. Roz wondered what they talked about at home: Einstein’s theory of relativity? Darwin’s theory of evolution? The vision of the actor in a smoking jacket and leather slippers holding court in a posh house with fellow luvvies came to her and made her burst out in an involuntary giggle. Dom Donaldson gave her a dirty look, recognising her as the woman who had had the effrontery to ask him to sign a common birthday card. If only his adoring public knew he was an arrogant arse. Ven, thankfully, was still in blissful ignorance about him.
Never meet your idols
, that’s what they said, wasn’t it?

Frankie spotted Vaughan passing in front of her before he saw her, and her heart jumped a massive beat. He turned his head towards her, as if he had heard it, and she didn’t have time to avert her eyes and pretend she hadn’t seen him. He gave her a small wave because it would have been too rude not to acknowledge her at all, but he didn’t break his stride. Frankie tore her eyes away from his long, lean, tanned back but they quickly returned to it again. His sudden coldness hurt her more than she cared to admit to herself. The old Frankie would have raised two fingers to him and yelled, ‘NEXT!’ The new Frankie worried more about what people thought of her. There had been a lot of time for self-analysis when she was hiding in the shadows with her beige clothes on.

She forced a smile onto her face when Roz came back with Chocolate Banana cocktails. It was a whole dessert in a glass, but also an essential part of their ‘five-a-day’, Roz argued.

‘I can’t believe it’s nearly lunchtime,’ said Olive, sitting up to receive her cocktail and glancing at her watch. Half past eleven in the morning and she was drinking alcohol. How deliciously naughty. But then she felt incredibly rebellious at the moment. Her dreams last night had been full of Atho Petrakis; in them he had carried on where he had left off yesterday, and she woke up feeling so horny she almost dragged Jesus in from the corridor to sort her out. She was under no illusions: she knew that if she were to return to Cephalonia, she would be in for the love-making of her life. He had always been incredibly attentive, inventive and superlative in that department. How the hell had she ever settled for David and his fumbling, selfish sexual ‘technique’? And with Doreen on the floor directly underneath them, Olive could never shake off the fear that they were being overheard, which didn’t make for abandon in the bedroom. Not that David was that sexually driven. He ‘scratched an itch’ in the same way every time, and if Olive got anything out of it, it was a mere byproduct. But then again, she hadn’t exactly tried to change the way things were by dragging him off to Pogley Top Woods, which were about as near to an olive grove as was available in Barnsley, or guided his hands to where she wanted him to touch her. She had just let him carry on in his own merry way, thinking everything in his garden was lovely. She was partly to blame for her own frustrations.

She thought of ‘this time next week’. She would be back in Land Lane, gathering her stuff together to do Mr Padgett’s upstairs. The old man gave her the creeps, always taking any excuse to squeeze past her or touch her and make it look like an accident. Ugh. Maybe she would have had ‘welcome home sex’ with David by then. He would roll over in the middle of the night and she would lie there and let him enter her and grunt out his orgasm, whilst her imagination roamed to various film stars and Greek café-owners. It would be a poor substitute for the real-life man whom she knew would be patiently waiting for her in a garden full of white roses. Oh GOD – why had she gone back to the Lemon Tree? Life was so much easier without choices to make.

Ven sipped her Chocolate Banana and nearly choked on it when Nigel came into her vision, striding purposefully past at the other side of the swimming pool. She watched as a woman in a pink sarong halted him with a perfectly manicured hand and engaged him in conversation. She was swishing her hair about flirtatiously, sticking her boobs out whilst sucking in her stomach. She couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d had
shag me
tattooed on her forehead.

Ven felt a stab of jealousy, unable to stem it even though she was quite aware it was a puerile emotion to feel. She had no claim on Nigel. He was a man paid to be nice to passengers; a man who wouldn’t even remember her name in a week because he would be sitting with another group of people at dinner making small – if lovely and friendly – talk.

He was smiling at Pouty-Knockers who was using her hands a lot as she spoke – another flirty gesture. Then his eyes swept to the side and Ven thought they fell on her; she was just about to wave when he turned back to Pouty-Knockers and they strolled off together out of sight.

The sun was bright and high and shining its heart out, but that morning, there was a glum little cloud above four particular sunbeds on the ship.

Chapter 57

Roz was first in the room for her belly-dancing lesson that afternoon. Fifteen of the original recruits were still stalwarts, Roz the youngest by at least ten years. After a hip-swirling warm-up, she beat down all her self-tormenting thoughts by following Gwen’s moves.

A woman aware of her sexual power was lit from within, something which Roz had never allowed herself to be. Despite her long legs, flawless figure and beautiful face with her to-die-for cheekbones, her insecurities had always distorted any image she had of her own attractiveness. She could not have been more desired by Manus, yet most of her self-confidence had been knocked out of her as a kid. She couldn’t remember ever getting praise or warmth at home, only criticism and slaps, and the little remaining self-worth she had managed to carry into adulthood had been driven deep underground after Robert’s betrayal. But during these belly-dancing sessions Roz – at last – was inching towards becoming in touch with her inner sexuality. The hip undulations and belly rolls were working her pelvic muscles, soothing away her tensions and increasing bloodflow to areas of her body that had been thirsty for a long time. They also gave a rude awakening poke to her libido. She was dangerously close to feeling horny.

She was flushed and breathless after this session. As was Phyllis, a seventy-seven-year-old, who summed up everything Roz was thinking by saying, ‘My goodness, I didn’t even move that much down below on my wedding night.’ Roz wished Manus were nearby. She had a flash of desire for him, to tear at his shirt like an animal, to be pulled down on the bed and pinned underneath him to do to her whatever he chose. But he wasn’t there and a cold shower would probably be wise, so she headed off down to her cabin to get one. But as she was passing by the Restaurant Cruz, the striking figure of Raul Cruz himself rushed out from it and collided with her.

Now Roz had always been a more private person than her friends. Whilst they had shared their crushes, Roz had always been more reserved on that front. What the others didn’t know was that Roz had a major torch burning for Raul Cruz. She always watched him whenever he appeared on TV, and everything stopped for
The Devilled Chef
where ten people competed to win his approval, probably more than they coveted the ten thousand pounds first prize.

Raul Cruz was a tall, big-shouldered Spaniard with wild black hair, huge sexy Bournville-chocolate eyes and the arrogant stance of a bullfighter. And here he was in the corridor, steadying Roz with his Michelin-starred hands and looking into her eyes as if he was about to devour her. Slowly – with relish.

‘Do forgive me,’ he said, his voice heavy and delicious as Rioja.

‘It’s fine,’ croaked Roz, feeling even more blood flow to her pelvic region because he wasn’t letting her go so quickly.

‘I wonder . . .’ he mused. ‘Do you think you could help me?’

Roz would no more have answered that with a ‘no’ than she would have pulled her own nose off.

‘Of course.’

‘Come, come.’ Raul Cruz took Roz’s hand and led her into his restaurant. She didn’t know why, nor did she care. If the others had seen her now, they wouldn’t have recognised the trembling, breathless jelly she had suddenly become.