Here Come the Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

the panic his words had kicked off inside her. Attack was the best form of defence. ‘Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m going away. I think . . . I think it might do us both good to have a complete break.’
    Once the words were out, she wished she could pull them back into her mouth and swallow them. She didn’t want to hear that Manus might agree with her. But he did.
    ‘Aye,’ he said wearily. ‘Maybe it’s for the best, Roz.’ The way he said her name was painful to hear; the word died in his throat.
    ‘We shouldn’t contact each other whilst I’m away. At all,’ she pushed.
    Manus’s head snapped up. ‘Is that what you really want to happen?’
    ‘Don’t you?’ said Roz, again with that defensive hard edge to her voice. ‘You’ve just agreed that we should go on a break!’
    Manus opened up his mouth to stop this now and say that he didn’t want to see the holiday as a break at all, but for once, his anger flared up and made a matching contestant for her own.
    ‘Do you know, Roz, I think you’re right. No contact, as we both agree then – how’s that? It’s fine by me. I think you need to seriously consider what you want in life and so do I, because this is crap. You’re not happy and it’s clear to me that I can’t make you as happy as Robert obviously made you! Now, do you want me for anything because I’m going back to the garage for an hour or so. I promised a customer that I’d finish his van as soon as I could, and I need to do an oil change on it.’
    For once Roz didn’t give him a smart-mouthed reply. She watched him go, and hot, self-loathing tears rose up in her eyes and felt like spikes there. She wanted to fling herself at his back and tell him that she was sorry she was such a cow to him and really she knew it was that bitch Frankie’s fault anyway. Frankie had always been a forward piece. Manus wasn’t. She suddenly wanted to feel her man’s arms around her, his lips on hers, showing her once again that he loved her. But she had got so used to over-protecting herself.
    Once upon a time, she had laid herself wide open to Robert and he had trampled all over her. She couldn’t go through pain like that again. However much she might want to open up to Manus, she had lost the keys to the door that was so tightly shut around her heart.
    Hearing Manus’s car engine start up, Roz slumped down onto the chair behind her. She had finally managed to do it – push her sweet, loving, long-suffering man to breaking-point after four long years of trying. So why didn’t she feel in the slightest bit victorious?

Chapter 8
    Ven and Roz drove over to Meadowhall after work the following Monday. The sales were on and the shops were buzzing – a bit like they were inside. If only Olive had been there with them picking out holiday clothes, they both thought, with more than a little sadness.
    ‘Aw, I hope Ol does come,’ said Ven.
    ‘She won’t, the silly, soft sod,’ replied Roz, picking up a blue bikini. She wasn’t sure if she dared bare that much flesh in public though. Her stomach was as flat as an ironing board but she carried all the insecurities of a middle-aged woman whose first husband had run off with a skinny minx, even if that was over nine years ago and she was now living with a guy who would have savoured her whatever size she was, given half the chance. She put it back and plumped for a black all-in-one with a plunging neckline. She was proud of her bosom and would rather show some of that off than her stomach anyway. Out of the four of them, she had been first in the chest queue when God was giving them out. Ven, a close second, Olive just behind and Frankie way, way at the back of the same queue, with flat-as-a-fart AA cups. ‘Froz’ as they used to call themselves, long before Jedward segued their names (or had even been born), could never swap clothes the way that Ven and Olive could, being of similar heights and builds. Roz was leggy, slim and tall, Frankie was