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short and on the plump side. Although Roz did once catch Frankie trying on one of her bras, having stuffed the cups with loo paper.
    ‘Must be nice having tits,’ she had said, admiring her new pronounced profile in the bedroom mirror.
    ‘It is – not that you’ll ever know!’ Roz had laughed. They’d laughed a lot once, the pair of them. Froz.
    Roz shook her head and dragged her thoughts into the here and now. Why the hell am I thinking about her so much again, after all this time?
    ‘I am sure they’d all cope without Ol for sixteen days,’ said Ven. ‘I know for a fact that Doreen isn’t as disabled as she makes out because I once saw her waddling from the shop on Warren Street with a packet of fags in her hand. She didn’t look like a woman who couldn’t get off her backside without assistance then. And David’s so-called bad back hasn’t stopped him doing some sly pointing work on my neighbour’s gable end for some cash in hand. He didn’t know I saw him, but I did. He was halfway up a ladder with a cap on but I would recognise that flabby bum hanging out of those jeans anywhere.’
    ‘Crafty buggers!’ tutted Roz. ‘Have you told Olive?’
    Ven nodded. ‘She thought I was mistaken on both counts. She knows that David couldn’t get up a ladder without the aid of a winch. He’s too good an actor. Takes after his mother,’ she added with a sniff.
    Roz shook her head. ‘Who in their right mind turns down a free cruise?’
    ‘She’s not going to turn it down,’ said Ven decisively, fire in her sea-blue eyes. She didn’t know how she was going to get Olive on that ship, but she was; even if she had to play dirty tricks to secure it. Though in the end it wasn’t her dirty tricks that made it happen.

Chapter 9
    ‘Did you get some nice clothes then when you went shopping?’ asked Olive at their last Saturday meet before the cruise.
    ‘I got a few bits in the sales, yes. By the way, I noticed when I did my banking online yesterday that you still haven’t put your cheque in,’ said Ven, slapping Olive on the hand. ‘It’s still not too late, you know.’
    ‘How can I bank that five hundred quid?’ replied Olive. ‘That money is for holiday clothes, you said it yourself. And seeing as I won’t be going on holiday with you tomorrow, I can’t take the money.’
    ‘You are going, you know,’ replied Ven, shovelling in a huge piece of cappuccino cake. ‘Whether you like it or not.’
    ‘I wish!’ laughed Olive. Not that she had much to laugh about, even less so with yet another lazy mouth to feed. David and his mother and smelly Kevin were slouched in front of the television all day arguing over what to watch. If it wasn’t for having to get up to go to the toilet occasionally, they would atrophy. David did manage to struggle to go out and sign on though, but it was Kevin who was really doing Olive’s head in at the moment. He was like a locust in the fridge. He bit off chunks of cheese and drank milk straight from the carton, and no one would want those custard teeth near any food they were going to touch. And he never flushed the toilet. And someone had raided Olive’s savings pot. It was a fiver light and no one was owning up to it. She was saving for her friends’ fortieth-birthday presents in that pot. Olive was only glad she’d taken out the thirty pounds to give to Roz for the locket they’d bought between them for Ven. Roz was going to take it on the cruise with her and give it to her on her birthday with her cards. They’d be in Venice that day. Another place Olive had always wanted to go. One of her cleaning clients had been and described it as ‘so beautifully unreal, you’d think you were on a film set’. She wondered if anything could be as hauntingly idyllic as Tanos though. She envied her two friends calling at Cephalonia more than she envied them anything else.
    ‘Have you spent up, Roz?’ asked Olive, ignoring Ven.
    ‘Not quite,’ said Roz. She’d taken her