Here Come the Girls by Milly Johnson Read Free Book Online Page B

with her eyebrows raised so high they needed oxygen. ‘What’s brought this on?’
    ‘I saw them,’ said Olive, the tears pushing through now and making themselves an exit. Hot, angry tears that Olive couldn’t wipe away fast enough. ‘I had a headache and didn’t go to my second cleaning job and I didn’t have enough credit on my phone to ring David and say I’d be home early. Anyway, I was just in the alley opposite and I saw our door open. Then I saw Doreen peep out to check the coast was clear. Then . . . then – she ran down the road like Sebastian Coe and was back, presumably from Warren Street newsagents, with a packet of cigarettes before I had a chance to blink.’
    ‘Oh crikey,’ said Ven, really clamping down on the urge to say, ‘Told you so.’ Any joy she felt in seeing the scales ripped from Olive’s eyes was offset by her friend’s distress, which she didn’t want to see.
    ‘Oh, hang on, there’s more!’ laughed Olive in a very dry, humourless way. ‘In between Doreen leaving the house and coming back, a car pulls up at the other end of the street and out springs – like Wayne Bloody Sleep – my husband with a massive bag of tools over his sore delicate shoulder. Then, when the car drove off, I watched him hide the bag in the garage, flop into his usual “ooh, me back’s killing me” shape and drag himself into the house. It was like watching a Jesus miracle in reverse.’
    ‘Oh heck,’ said Ven.
    ‘So I left it five minutes,’ Olive went on, ‘then I did a really slow walk in to give them all a chance to rearrange themselves in their usual tableau, and sure enough upon my entrance I found that David was “in agony” leaning over the sink, and Doreen was hobbling on her zimmer frame to the kitchen to get a “slice of dry bread” to see her poor starving twenty-stone stomach through till I got home to make their tea.’
    Ven opened her mouth to sympathise, but Olive still hadn’t finished.
    ‘Wait, there’s even more. Then lovely Kevin appears at my back with a plastic basket full of rancid clothes. How that man manages to get that many stains on a pair of underpants is beyond me! “Any chance of getting these ironed for tomorrow?” he says. “They aren’t washed!” I say back. “Well, I meant, washed and dried and ironed,” he says. “I’d do them myself but I’ve got a date.” “Sorry, but I can’t stop now, I’m working,” I say, and grab a bottle of bleach and pretend I’d just called home for that. And then I rang you from the phone box.’
    For the first time Olive felt the boil of anger bubble through to the forefront of her feelings. She really had been a first-class idiot. She had washed Doreen and hauled her over to the toilet and pandered to her every whim, she had supported her lazy sod of a husband who hadn’t put a penny in the housekeeping pot for years, and all the time Doreen was probably more able-bodied than she was. And if David was back-pocketing money on sly jobs, he wasn’t declaring any of it – to her or the taxman.
    ‘Do you know, if I could come with you on holiday, I bloody well would,’ said Olive, wiping away the fat drops which were now spurting from her eyes.
    ‘Then do. Come with us,’ said Ven, seizing on the delicious moment.
    ‘Yes, well, if I had anything decent to wear I’d throw it in a suitcase. But I haven’t. Come to that, I haven’t even got a bloody suitcase.’
    ‘You’ve got a passport, that’s enough.’
    ‘Aye, I’ll sew a couple of straps to it and use it as a thong.’
    Ven checked her watch. ‘Look, Meadowhall doesn’t shut until ten this week because the sales are on.’
    ‘I didn’t put the cheque in the bank . . .’
    ‘Never mind that, we’ll sort it out later. I’ll stick what you buy on my Visa. We’ve got about two hours to get you a holiday wardrobe.’
    ‘It can’t be done,’ said Olive.
    ‘Oh yes, it sodding well can,’ said Ven. The miracle was that Olive was coming with