Ladies Who Launch Read online

  Dear Readers

  When I wrote Here Come The Boys I always thought it was obvious that you’d know Selina would leave Zander, but from all the letters I received (and there were many), I was very touched to hear that you wanted me to secure it and leave no doubt. So this, I hope, will satisfy. Don’t worry though; you’ll definitely see Angie and Selina again.

  I also want to say a big thank you to my friend Michele Andjel at P & O Cruises (www.pocruises.com) without whom I would never have been introduced to the wonderful world of ships and their passengers.

  If you haven’t been on a cruise before – oh, you must. Then write to me and tell me I was right to send you.

  But please, don’t ever miss getting back on the ship when you should.

  Milly x

  ‘Women are like teabags.

  You never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water’

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  First published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd 2015

  A CBS Company

  Copyright © Millytheink Ltd., 2015

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47115-216-0

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Ladies Who Launch

  Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  ‘I know it doesn’t look much from the outside, but trust me,’ said Selina Molloy, pulling up in her car outside the small café with the yellow-and-white striped awning. A sign above the door, which badly needed a touch-up of paint, announced that this was The Sunflower Café. ‘My cleaner told me about this place. Apparently the afternoon teas are to die for.’

  ‘I hope not,’ smiled her friend Angie Silverton. ‘I’m too busy to die at the moment.’ She rocked back and forth to give her the momentum get out of the car.

  ‘Shall I push you from the back, fatty?’

  ‘Thank you, but I’m quite capable. You can ask me again in two months when I’m hiding from men with harpoons.’ When Angie stood up, she leaned back to stretch her spine. ‘Oh, that’s better. I hope they’ve got a loo here as well. I can’t go five minutes these days without a wee.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ said Selina, opening the café door and setting off a small bell tinkling above their heads. They walked into a sunny room with lemon-yellow walls and a long window across the back wall. Pretty blue curtains with sunflowers on them hung at the sides.

  ‘My, what a surprise,’ nodded Angie. ‘I didn’t expect this.’

  She looked around and her eyes fell on a large smiling picture of a sunflower on the wall with a poem written underneath, which she leaned over to read.

  Be like the sunflower:

  Brave, bright

  bold, cheery.

  Be golden and shine,

  Keep your roots strong,

  Your head held high,

  Your face to the sun,

  And the shadows will fall behind you.

  Selina followed Angie’s eyes and knew she was reading the poem. She always felt warmed by those words. She considered herself a sunflower now, although she hadn’t for many years. Then she’d been watered and fed with friendship by the rotund woman at her side – and she’d bloomed.

  ‘That’s sweet,’ said Angie, then she sighed. ‘I’m too short to be a sunflower.’

  Selina wagged her finger. ‘No woman is ever too short to be a sunflower. Anyway, they do have dwarf varieties.’

  ‘Cheeky …’

  Their conversation was cut off as the café owner came out from behind the counter. She was a large, friendly woman with a shock of auburn-red hair.

  ‘Hello, ladies. Table for two is it?’

  ‘Please, Patricia,’ replied Angie. ‘You’re busy today.’

  ‘The café closes to the general public in five minutes. My sister holds a staff meeting here once a month—’ She held up her hand as Selina opened her mouth to groan. ‘But you’ll be all right sitting at that table there in the window. You’ll be quite private, although no doubt you’ll hear them prattling on in the background – some of them have voices like foghorns.’ She paused and looked at Angie. ‘Is this the friend that you told me about?’

  Selina smiled with relief. ‘Thank you. Yep, this is her. I’ve told her all about this place, Patricia. This is part of her birthday treat. We’re having a spa day tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be lovely for you in your condition,’ said Patricia, clapping her hands together with child-like enthusiasm as her eyes trained on Angie’s round tummy. ‘I’d never heard of spas until a couple of years ago. I’d have killed for a back rub during my seven pregnancies. My Jack’s rubbish at them. He moans that his thumbs hurt after five minutes. They wouldn’t hurt if it was Marilyn bloody Monroe asking him for a massage, I bet.’

  Angie leaned back again to uncrunch her spine, which prompted Patricia to stop talking and start serving.

  ‘You go and sit yourselves down. Afternoon tea, is it?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ replied Angie, heading off towards the table for two set in the opposite corner to the tables of women. She sighed with pleasure as her bottom landed on the chair.

  Patricia waddled back into her kitchen. Then the doorbell tinkled and in walked another two women who joined the group at the back of the café. They were both blonde: one petite with a smiley face, the other at least six foot three with huge hands and feet and angelic waves of hair cascading down her back. The smaller one glanced over at Selina, did a double-take and waved over.

  ‘Hello Cheryl,’ said Selina, turning to Angie. ‘It’s my cleaner, Cheryl. Lovely girl. Not sure I could live without her now that I’ve found her.’

  But Angie’s attention was on the view out of the window: a thin stream known locally as Pogley Stripe. There had been a lot of rain the past week and the water level was swollen enough to attract some ducks who were lazily drifting along with the slow flow. As Angie watched them she wished pregnancy was as simple as popping out an egg and then going for a swim. She was exhausted.

  Patricia appeared with a huge china teapot sprinkled with a sunflower design and two matching cups and saucers.

  ‘Afternoon tea won’t be long,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep up to this bleeding lot. They’re like locusts,’ she said, thumbing towards the gathering of cleaners.

  ‘That’s Patricia’s sister in the corner. The slim lady with the red hair,’ Selina whispered to Angie. ‘I think she’s the matriarch.’

  ‘I’d love to have a tea room, wouldn’t you? Your house would be a great place to create one. I’m so green with envy, Sel; I make Shrek look pale in comparison.’

  Selina laughed. ‘So, do you like what I’ve done with it?’

  Angie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Are you kidding me? It is absolutely gorgeous. When you first showed it to me,
I was worried, I don’t mind admitting. There seemed so much to do.’

  ‘Tell me about it, Ange. It’s cost a fortune. But finally it’s all finished. I never thought I’d see the day.’

  ‘I can’t get my head around the fact that you sleep in the same room that Miss Dickson did. I wonder if she haunts the place,’ and Angie, fluttering her fingers in the air and giving a ghostly ‘whooo’.

  ‘Please, please stop,’ replied Selina shaking her head but laughing.

  ‘She died recently, you know. There was a story in the Chronicle. She was one hundred and two.’

  Selina raised her eyebrows. ‘Jesus, I thought she was one hundred and two when she taught us. She used to terrify me, swanning around in that black cape like Batman. I don’t think she could scare me any more as a ghost than she did as a human being.’ Selina shuddered at the thought of their old headmistress.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh, I’ll trump,’ giggled Angie. ‘I can’t keep anything in these days.’

  ‘Dirty girl. Oy, don’t even think about reaching for the teapot, I’ll pour. I don’t want you having your labour triggered off early.’

  ‘I doubt pouring two cups of tea out will set off my contractions,’ huffed Angie. ‘But if you want to pamper me, then go right ahead.’

  ‘Here you go, ladies,’ said Patricia, arriving with a three-tiered cake stand crammed with crustless finger sandwiches on the bottom layer, sweet and savoury filled pastry cases on the second, interspersed with some very delicious-looking round chocolate truffles and scones the size of a carthorse’s hooves on the top. ‘If you don’t finish it all, I’ve got a box to tek it home in.’

  ‘If?’ gasped Angie. ‘If I finish that lot off, you’ll have to lift me into the car on a forklift truck.’

  In the corner, Patricia’s sister knocked a salt pot on the table to call order. Their meeting was about to start.

  ‘Afternoon, ladies. Can I have your attention, please? Ava sends her apologies but she’s had to go to the doctor today about her bunion. It bust her shoe open yesterday and she’s in ever so much pain. More about that at the end …’

  ‘You’ve got a cleaner now, haven’t you?’ said Selina to Angie, pouring out two beautifully strong cups of tea. ‘Tell me, do you always give the place a bit of a once-over before she comes?’

  Angie nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, I do. Gil thinks I’m nuts. To be honest, I was going to ask for the number of the firm you use because the one I’ve got isn’t much cop. She doesn’t do skirting boards. Bending hurts her back, she says. At least she can bend. I’ve forgotten what my feet look like.’

  ‘I’ll text you the details of Diamond Shine, the company I use,’ replied Selina. ‘Cheryl’s great. She does all those little things you never get around to doing like vacuuming underneath the sofa and cleaning inside the kitchen cupboards and, joy of joy, she changes my bedding.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re coming back to live in Barnsley,’ smiled Angie.

  ‘So am I,’ Selina grinned back.

  Selina owned and ran a small private school in Harrogate where she and her staff taught adults to read and also provided some languages and typing skills. It was doing well enough for her to leave it in capable hands and open up a second establishment back in her home town. She had bought the old schoolhouse villa in Barnsley which had fallen into disrepair after being empty for years, and planned to both live and run the new school from it.

  Angie’s eyes started glittering with tears. ‘It’ll be great having you to keep me sane when the baby comes. Sorry, it’s my hormones. I’m all over the place.’

  Selina leaned over the table and gave her friend a comforting rub on the arm. ‘You soft thing.’

  Angie sniffed and Selina whipped a serviette out of a holder on the table. She handed it over and said, ‘Doesn’t seem like a year and a half since that cruise, does it?’

  Angie shook her head. That cruise had changed both their lives. If it hadn’t been for that cruise, Angie probably would have left it far too late to get pregnant, not realised what a fabulous husband she had in Gil because she was too busy staring into a rose-tinted past and as for Selina … well, she wouldn’t be half as bright and strong and smiley as she was today. They were both much happier women for their paths crossing again after so many years apart. Two decades to be exact.

  ‘Have you any more of those prawn sandwiches in that Marie Celeste sauce?’ a portly cleaner shouted over to Patricia.

  ‘It’s not Marie Celeste, Meg. She were that queen that got her head cut off,’ someone else shouted back.

  ‘That’s Marie Antoinette, Sandra.’ A silky, younger voice with refined rounded vowels. ‘The Marie Celeste was a ship found deserted.’

  ‘Was it the Flying Dutchman?’

  ‘Sandra, you daft cow, how can the Marie Celeste be the Flying Dutchman?’

  ‘Ze standard of education in England is crap.’ This from the very tall woman with the long hair. ‘I sank Gott my formative years vere spent in Germany.’

  The fit of giggles Angie fell into drove away any lingering tears.

  Selina picked up a pastry filled with cheese and red onion. It was warm and crumbled against her teeth.

  ‘I was telling Cheryl about us last week,’ she said. ‘She’d had a row with her partner and was upset, so I sat her down and forced her to have a cup of tea with me. I felt very sorry for her. I recognised her “if we split up I won’t be able to cope by myself” look.’

  ‘Poor lass,’ sighed Angie. In saying that, she wouldn’t know how she would cope if she and her husband Gil split up. He was rock solid, kind, loving – she’d been so much luckier than Selina in her choice of man.

  ‘Oh, she’s okay now. I saw her on Monday and she told me they made up.’

  ‘That’s good. Anyway, what did you tell her about us?’ asked Angie.

  ‘That we were best pals at school but lost touch and then met up on a cruise the year before last. And how my life is very different today because of our adventure.’

  ‘Our adventure is putting it mildly,’ laughed Angie. ‘And are you really crediting me with your divorce?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Please.’ Angie puffed out her cheeks. ‘Zander being an arsehole made up your mind for you.’

  Selina popped a truffle in her mouth and purred. ‘That was one voyage of discovery and a half. Do you ever think that divine forces were at work? I mean, what were the chances of two old school-enemies both cruising together and both failing to get back on the ship in Malaga?’

  ‘It’s crossed my mind a few times that we were chess pieces of the gods that day.’ Angie lifted her cup to her lips and sipped at the tea. It was very good quality; the owner didn’t use those cheap tea-bags that exuded a lot of colour but no flavour.

  ‘I’m so glad that Zander didn’t come ashore to welcome me back. I’m not sure what I’d have done if he had.’ A picture flashed up in Selina’s mind of Gil bouncing over to throw his arms around Angie when they caught up with the ship on the island of Korcula. She’d felt a few emotions when she realised her own husband wasn’t there: humiliation, hurt, disappointment. But they churned and mixed in her stomach and an unforeseen chemical reaction took place. By the time the tender boat had reached the ship, her gut was filled with anger, resolve and a determination to never again let Zander Goldman crush her spirit.

  ‘I’m presuming you didn’t tell Cheryl the whole story,’ said Angie, biting deep into a mini rum truffle tart.

  ‘Are you kidding? We’d have been there all day. I gave her the heavily condensed version: the Chinese knicker woman, the nutter taxi driver in Dubrovnik …’

  Angie grinned. ‘I’d forgotten about him. What on earth did he use to honk his horn?’

  ‘I’d rather not think about that when I’m eating,’ replied Selina and shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘That was both the best and the worst holiday I ever had in my life. Who knew so much could happen in seventeen days?’

  ‘D
id you tell Cheryl that you ran off with my boyfriend when we were at college and married him and that’s why we fell out?’

  ‘Yup. But I also told her that having neither passports nor clean pants was a unifying experience.’

  ‘On that note,’ said Angie, wriggling in her seat. ‘I may have to pay a visit to the loo. Sel, how can you eat a cheese sandwich straight after a chocolate truffle?’ She wrinkled up her nose in disgust and Selina chuckled.

  ‘It all goes in the same pot,’ she said, rubbing her flat stomach.

  ‘And I used to think you were posh,’ tutted Angie, hoisting herself up to her feet.

  ‘That Fillit Bong makes my nose bleed,’ came a voice from the throng of cleaners. ‘The flavour is bleedin’ awful.’

  ‘Flavour, Wenda? You’re not supposed to drink the stuff.’

  ‘Smell, I mean. It’s supposed to be Sea Spray. Sea Spray my arse. More like Cat Spray.’

  Selina’s eyes floated upwards as she remembered riding on the tender boat with Angie, heading back to the cruise ship the Mermaidia, knowing that the nearer she travelled to Zander, the more apart she grew from him.

  Back on board, Selina had shooed Angie off to get a well-needed shower and then prepared to tick off the first job on the mental checklist that she had written for herself. Her head might have been held high, but inside embarrassment was pulsing through her as she approached the desk to inquire if there were any vacant cabins which she might move into. The receptionist, Sumeer, asked her if there was a problem with her present cabin. She didn’t answer that she was sharing it with a heartless twat but replied instead that the room was fine, it was just that she would like to move, if possible, into another one alone. She tried not to think what must be going through Sumeer’s head. He seemed to take it all in his stride though, either because he was being gentlemanly and professional or had seen it all before.

  If there was no vacancy, she would have to leave the ship at the next port – Venice – the following day and go home; there was no way she could share airspace with Zander again. She closed her eyes and willed that there be a cabin free because she didn’t want to go; she needed a holiday more than ever now.