Free Here Come the Girls by Milly Johnson

having a . . . a career break,’ she worded carefully.
    ‘Career break?’ scoffed Roz. How the mighty fall , she added to herself. Then she was suddenly shocked at how mean that made her feel. What sort of person have you become? said a disgusted little voice inside her. She didn’t like the sound of that voice at all. She grabbed a magazine out of her handbag. It fell open at the page about Putting the zing back into your love-life . As if she needed to have it rubbed in.
    Within fifteen minutes they had stopped at a service station and picked up some more passengers, and before Clive had repeated his scintillating safety information to the newcomers and told them about his infatuation with tinned peas, Olive had fallen asleep. She jerked awake a few minutes later with a falling sensation, but as she had barely had any sleep the night before, it wasn’t long before she had drifted back to the Land of Nod. Roz wasn’t far behind her and eventually Ven’s eyes shuttered down too.
    They awoke as the bus jerked to a halt outside another service station. Clive was announcing that they would have an hour’s lunch here because he was legally obligated to eat something himself.
    ‘Amazing what you can make yourself believe when you want to,’ laughed Ven.
    ‘He’s hardly going to wither away,’ whispered Roz, with a long stretch and a yawn. ‘He could digest himself and live on the meat for years. I wonder if he’d eat himself with peas or without.’
    ‘Well, I don’t want him fainting through starvation whilst he’s driving,’ said Olive, wondering if he was really ‘legally obligated’ to eat and if any militant food police would be around to make sure he cleared his plate of meat and twelve veg.
    People were getting off the bus. B Deck Man was first off, Roz noted, strutting towards the café with his missus a dutiful three paces behind him.
    ‘Let’s go and have a coffee,’ said Olive. ‘If I don’t get some caffeine in my system, I’ll go into a coma.’
    She looked at her watch. The Hardcastles would be stirring from their crypt now. Doreen would be screaming for Olive to help her go to the toilet. She felt a pounce of guilt that David would have to step in. Then she remembered that Doreen was quite capable of getting to the toilet by herself if she could skip down the road for fags as she did. She thought of all the years she had tended to her, without a word of thanks. The big, bossy, idle so-and-so. She’d always known her parents could have done a lot more for themselves than they let on, and yet she’d gone and fallen straight in the same trap with the Hardcastles. What a first-class chump she was.
    ‘Oy, stop thinking about that lot,’ said Ven, nudging her as they queued up for coffee. ‘I know you, lady.’
    ‘I was just thinking they’ll be getting up now. They’ll have read my note and be in a state of chaos.’
    ‘Good,’ said Roz. ‘I bloody hope they are.’

Chapter 16
    At exactly the same time as the bus driver slid into first gear for the final leg of the journey, David Hardcastle was woken up by his mother hollering for Olive.
    ‘Olive. Olive! Get up. I need the toilet. I’ll wet myself if you don’t hurry up.’
    ‘Olive, get up, my mother wants you.’ He farted on his wife and laughed because it was a hot smelly one, and if that didn’t get her jumping out of bed, nothing would. Olive hated anything to do with farting and would be up in a flash now. Getting no reaction, David rolled over in bed, disappointed that he hadn’t hit the target. Her side of the bed was cold and empty. More than that, it looked unslept in.
    He swung his feet out from under the duvet and had a good scratch as he lumbered out of the bedroom to shout down the staircase.
    ‘Olive, where are you? My mother wants you.’
    ‘She went out,’ called Kevin’s yawning voice from behind the spare-room door. ‘Said she was going to clear off some grease.’
    ‘Clear off some