Ladies Who Launch
Authors: Milly Johnson
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
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.
Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café
‘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.