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

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 wheeling or running lumpily towards the bus sides like hungry zombies.
    ‘Well, I’m Clive your bus d r-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