Here Come the Girls (41 page)

At the pool, crew were now shepherding everyone out and throwing a secure net over the top. The water would need to be drained to get rid of the glass. Dom bloody Donaldson and his hissy fit had ruined the fun for everyone. Luckily there were other pools, but that one seemed to be rather a favourite with everyone because of the film screen above it and the generous paddling area surrounding it.

‘Was that my fault?’ asked Ven, feeling a spot guilty as the crew guys busied around. She was shaking. Confrontation didn’t come easy to her at all.

‘No, it most certainly
wasn’t
your fault,’ said Olive, giving her a hug. ‘It was that horrible actor’s fault. I hope Nigel doesn’t schmooze around him just because he’s been in a couple of films and a soap.’

Buzz arrived with a tray of four cocktails just at the right time.

‘Do you still want these?’ he asked. He seemed a bit shaken up too. ‘I would like to buy—’

‘Oy, don’t you even think about it, sonny, or
I’ll
start poking you in the chest,’ said Roz. Champagne on his wages – bless him.

‘Thank you,’ said Buzz. ‘Tonight I will make sure you get extra truffles with your coffee.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘My girlfriend makes them in the kitchen.’

‘That’ll do us,’ said Olive, taking a champagne glass and putting it in Ven’s trembling hands. ‘That’ll do us all very nicely.’

Later on, when Frankie went back to her cabin to get ready for dinner, she found her new dress hemmed and hanging up for her. She showered, dried her hair, spiking it up with strong gel, and went to town on her make-up. After slipping on the dress and shoes and a magnificent chunky gold necklace which she had found in Market Avenue for twenty quid, she stood back to appraise herself in the mirror. If this didn’t show that bloody Viking what he was missing, nothing would.

Ven had a shower, wrapped herself up in her complimentary white towelling robe and took a cup of coffee out onto the balcony. It was a beautiful late afternoon. The sea had barely a ripple in it and the sky was full of ice-cream colours on the horizon – vanilla and strawberry. It had been a hell of a day. First there was that Dom Donaldson incident, then at afternoon tea in the Buttery, they had shared a table with a gentle, elderly couple from Southport. He’d had a stroke and hadn’t really done any of the port visits, but his wife explained for him that it didn’t matter because the ship itself was holiday enough.

‘Enjoy it while you can, love,’ the lady had said, helping her husband to his feet when they were ready to go. Then she nodded towards him. ‘You never know what’s around the corner.’

She smiled, taking his hand and threading it around her arm so she could lead him away.

‘Take good care of yourselves,’ Ven gulped.

‘Oh I do,’ the old lady replied chirpily. ‘Fifty-five years we’ve been together. We were eighteen when we married. They all said it wouldn’t last.’

And she walked off slowly, in time with her man’s shuffling.

Frankie handed Ven a tissue just before she burst into tears, because she knew what she was like.

And as Ven now leaned over the balcony, she knew she had to take a lesson from that little interlude. She was going to suck the juice out of her life when she got home, and make sure the others did the same.

Then she saw it – a black arc of dolphin back curve out of the water and nose-dive back in again. And another. Then two more. Four beautiful dolphins in the distance, effortlessly rising from the glass-like sea, four times – then no more. Ven raised a hand in triumph. At last she’d seen some – and boy, were they worth waiting for! She wondered if it was possible to watch them without smiling. Four beautiful shapes in the water. And four, she smiled to herself, had always been her lucky number.

‘Wow!’ said Roz when Frankie emerged from her cabin for pre-dinner drinkies. ‘You look like . . . well . . . Frankie. Full-throttle Frankie Carnevale.’

‘Is that a compliment?’ Frankie asked sceptically, eyes narrowed.

‘Course it is,’ said Roz. ‘And a very big one.’

Olive emerged in her long red dress and matching stole, Roz in a sleek black gown which fishtailed out at the bottom into a sea of ruffles, Ven in a chocolate-brown heavily sequinned two-piece which went perfectly with her glossy auburn hair. She looked like a princess. But Frankie, that evening, was the queen in that gold dress and sod-blond-Viking-type-men attitude.

‘Oh Frankie, you look gorgeous,’ sighed Ven. ‘Let’s go and get our formal pictures taken for the competition people before we eat.’

And they all swaggered off, feeling like four million dollars, in the direction of the grand staircase at the side of the
Mermaidia
wall sculpture.

They couldn’t have timed it better. As the four of them were posing for the photographer, Vaughan and his party appeared looking over the balcony from above.

‘Don’t look up,’ said Roz out of the corner of her mouth, like a really crap ventriloquist. ‘Vaughan at twelve o’clock. He’ll have a cracking view of your tits in that dress.’

Frankie couldn’t resist looking up though. Her eyes locked with Vaughan’s in his black tux, then she pulled them haughtily away and back to focus on the camera lens. That small rejection of him salved her ego a tiny bit but she was still feeling a heavy weight of sadness lodged inside her and wished it would bugger off. She knew it wouldn’t wholly shift until there was time and distance between them, so she was stuck with it for now. She made sure there was an extra Mae West sashay to her bottom as she followed the others up the staircase to the restaurant floor.

They were slightly late going to dinner that night and Ven was delighted to see that Nigel had not gone to Cruz after all but was sitting in his usual seat at the table. He stood gallantly when the ladies approached but Ven noticed that he seemed to be having difficulty making eye-contact with her. Again.

The conversation at the table inevitably touched on the glass in the Topaz pool and the gossip flying around the ship about it. Royston and Stella had heard that a fight between some teenagers had broken out and a whole tray of cocktails had been tipped over but the girls put them straight with the real story. Nigel was very wishy-washy on what had happened with Dom Donaldson afterwards, avoiding giving any detail. All he would say on the subject was that ‘it had all been sorted out now’. He tapped light feet around the subject like Michael Flatley in ballet pumps.

Ven decided that meant Nigel had taken Dom Donaldson to his office, apologised to him profusely and massaged his ego back up to its fully inflated volume. Why else would he be so evasive? She found herself being really disappointed in him. He had toppled from his pedestal, just like Dom Donaldson had that day. She didn’t even get a raise in pulse when Nigel leaned over during the main course to reach for the pepper and his leg knocked against hers. And when he returned to the bridge before coffee, for the first time Ven didn’t watch his back as he crossed the dining room with a sigh lodged in her heart. The only man who hadn’t been a disappointment in her life was her dad. She’d grown up with him as her benchmark, and not one of the others had come up to the mark.

As the two older couples wended off to Flamenco to listen to a jazz band, the four girls made a slow stroll over to Broadway to watch yet another production by the Mermaidia Theatre Company, who must have had brains the size of major planets to remember all those lines and song lyrics. The offering tonight was
For Your Eyes Only
– a tribute to the James Bond themes. Then, afterwards, laughing that they were really getting to be old farts, they sat in Café Parisienne with cups of Horlicks watching all the teenagers filing past on their way to Harlequins nightclub on the floor below.

When the others went to bed, Ven took her usual trip to the top deck again – her ‘constitutional’ as the others laughingly referred to it – to get some fresh air. Her head was full of Nigel and Dom Donaldson.
What did you expect a Captain to do?
asked a voice in her head that seemed to be insinuating she was being slightly unfair.
Crunch his fist into Dom Donaldson’s nose and send him flying into the swimming pool? This is Captain Nigel, not Chuck chuffing Norris
.

‘Hello, there,’ said a cheery voice to her side, knocking her right out of her reverie. Florence in black sparkles and her familiar pearls. ‘Ooh, was I interrupting you? You were very deep in thought, my dear.’

‘Sorry,’ Ven smiled. ‘How lovely to see you again. How are you?’

‘Oh, we’re very well, thank you,’ said Florence, holding up her arms in an expansive gesture towards the sea and the star-filled sky. ‘How can you be anything else here?’

Ven nodded, looking out over the view. ‘There’s nothing to see, so why do I think it’s so lovely?’

‘A little glimpse of heaven, maybe?’ smiled Florence.

Ven didn’t comment. It maybe wasn’t the thing to say to an elderly lady – that she believed in nothing beyond the final breath. But she gave a sigh that she wasn’t conscious of, which prompted Florence to ask again if she was all right.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ said Ven. ‘Just had a bit of a strange day, that’s all. Someone knocked a tray full of glasses into the pool and it all had to be drained. It was awful.’

‘Still, the Captain dealt with it superbly,’ said Florence.

‘Do you think?’ asked Ven, not convinced by any means.

‘Oh yes,’ said Florence. ‘He can’t have people like that on his ship.’

Ven’s ears pricked up. ‘What do you mean? What did he do?’

‘That actor chap – he’ll be off at Gibraltar tomorrow.’ Then she was suddenly distracted and shouted in response to a sound Ven hadn’t heard, ‘Coming, dear. That’s Dennis calling me. I’m attuned to the slightest sound of his voice after all these years. I’ll have to go. If he can’t find me he starts to panic. Have a lovely day tomorrow in Gibraltar, won’t you?’

‘Wait,’ said Ven, as Florence turned. ‘I have a card for you for your anniversary. Where do I deliver it to?’

‘Oh, that’s very kind,’ said Florence with a wide smile. ‘We’re on table one in the Ambrosia restaurant. First sitting.’

‘Let me write that down,’ said Ven, getting a pen out of her bag and writing down the details on the back of a bar chitty. ‘Table one, did you say? And before you go, what was that you said about the Capt . . .’ She looked up but the door to the ship’s interior was just creaking shut. The old lady had gone back inside to find her husband.

D
AY
14: G
IBRALTAR

Dress Code: Smart Casual

Chapter 61

When Ven drew her curtains it was to see the mighty sight of Gibraltar. She didn’t realise that the rock
was
Gibraltar. She had thought it might have been a discernible bump on the landscape, not the huge steep mountain it was. She quickly washed and dressed because three of them were going on a dolphin-watching trip that morning. Roz was having a meander around Gibraltar by herself. She wasn’t a fan of the unpredictability of little bobbly boats.

‘Wakey wakey, are you uppee?’ came Olive’s voice and knock through her door. ‘Got something to tell you – open up!’

When Ven opened her door, Olive was beaming. ‘Guess who I saw in Reception this morning with bags packed?’

‘Brad Pitt?’

‘Not even close, although he might disagree with you. Only that Donaldson prat and Tangerina Orange Jelly. Seems the Captain told them to leave the ship after yesterday’s performance.’

‘You’re joking?’ gasped Ven. So what Florence had said was true.

‘I am not,’ said Olive, as Frankie’s cabin opened and she joined in the gossip as they wandered up to the Buttery for a quick bite.

Ven had two almond croissants that morning. Suddenly her appetite, and her smile, were restored to full power.

Whilst Ven, Frankie and Olive were leaning over the side of a small boat, screaming like kids whenever they spotted the dolphins that leaped up to within touching distance, Roz was walking towards Gibraltar’s long busy main street full of tourists buying cheap booze and cigarettes and kids looking for the latest console games at a snip. Roz suspected the prices were a lot cheaper when there wasn’t a ship in town. Signs in shop windows promised the ‘Best prices for
Mermaidia
Passengers’.

The last time she had visited Gibraltar, it hadn’t been so busy. There had been no cruise ships in the harbour. She and Robert had travelled down from Benalmadena for the day. Roz drew level with a jewellery shop and went cold as the memory flooded back over her like a frozen wash of ice. She had been buying perfume in the pharmacy across the street and caught up with Robert here and found him looking at rings.

‘I’ve got one already.’ Roz had nudged him teasingly.

‘It’s not for you,’ Robert had replied. It had just slipped out. He could have made a joke out of it but he had been as surprised as she was with what he had said. And once out, it was too big to fold back in and forget.

‘What do you mean?’ Roz looked into his face, smiling nervously, but she knew exactly what he meant. Two minutes ago she had been so happy, on holiday, feeling a rare semblance of security. Now she felt as if someone were quickly disassembling her from the inside, brick by brick, each one bringing her closer to her last total collapse.

‘Not here, Roz,’ Robert said, head held high, looking around him, trying to rise above the scene he hoped his wife wasn’t going to cause.

He didn’t say, ‘Don’t be silly, Roz. Don’t exaggerate, Roz,’ He said,
Not here, Roz
. He had something to tell her but
not here
.

Roz had wanted to scream. Her whole body was vibrating with tension, fear, panic. It had happened again. Another affair. Another cheap tart. Except that this time it wasn’t, was it? Because this time he was looking to buy a ring for the ‘someone’. In front of his wife, he was looking at rings for another woman. It was beyond the cruellest thing he had ever done to her, and he really had ground her nose into the mud over the years. Roz was too distraught to explode; she imploded instead. There on the street outside that jewellers, she began to cry. Fat, salty, full-of-pain tears began to slide down her face and she heard Robert’s loaded sigh of embarrassment.