Page 7 of Girls Just Want to Have Sun

I take a beat to consider how badly I want to fit in with these girls and, against my better judgement, drain the glass good and proper. There is a collective sigh of relief, and the glass is immediately topped up. And to prove a point, though I absolutely should not be trying to prove anything this early in the morning, I order three more bottles from the bar, just as we hear our flight being called.

‘Just ignore it,’ says Liberty, gleefully taking the bottles from me. ‘They always do that.’

‘Yeah,’ says Cherry. ‘Last call never means last call.’

Nancy will be furious if I miss this flight. She’ll never trust me again, and my singing career will definitely be over.

‘We’ve got loads of time,’ agrees Big Mand. ‘Enough to do you a proper nose, lip and cheek contour, babes. Come here.’

‘How can you even leave the house without your face on?’ enquires Big Sue.

They dig into their bags and pull out what look like finger paints and fat crayons and crowd round me. I am beginning to regret making a vague, Prosecco-based promise earlier to become an honorary Doll for bonding purposes. Minutes later and they have pulled, rubbed, blended and smudged me into looking ‘like a woman who cares’.

‘Perfect. Now you look just like one of us,’ Tash says, topping up my drink.

BING BONG.

‘Attention, please, boarding for flight 4079 to Alicante is now closed.’

Shite!

3

The upside to being part of a group of drunk women wearing obscene, butt-cheek-revealing thongs, dancing inappropriately in the terminal and having a wheelchair user with us, is that the ground crew become immediately intimidated at screams to reopen the frigging gate and see fit to prioritise our very late boarding of the plane as they whisk us straight through the empty departure lounge. As we clamber on board, we collect resentful stares from the other passengers. The stern-looking pilot comes out of the cockpit to inform us that because we’d failed to hear that we were last-called many, many times, we have now missed the take-off slot and could we hurry up.

‘That would be her fault. She got the round in late,’ Tash explains, pointing to me while undressing him with her heavily made-up smoky eyes.

Unbelievable. What happened to ‘hoes before bros’?

Before I can react, the girls get busy wiping the smiles off the cabin crew’s faces by taking an age to bash passengers left and right as they all struggle with their too-heavy luggage, their too-high sandals and their too-tipsy-to-care attitudes. Next, the girls have a period of swapping seats as they need to sit next to theirdrinking partners. Stuck in the aisle behind them, I glance at my seat number and realise I will be sitting on my own.

Nobody asked but it’s fine. It’s fine.

‘Mind, I’m glad to see that we’re sitting according to breast size. I’m a 28F,’ Tash boasts, laughing hysterically before telling all the passengers around her that she’s very recently become more of a double G.

‘And Big Sue is only a 30A!’ shrieks Liberty. ‘Big Mand! Over here, yer daft cow.’

Oh yes, I forgot, Liberty also has the yeast infection, a PhD and a tendency to overshare.

Big Mand has to retrace her steps.

‘I’ll swap with Liberty!’ yells Cherry. ‘Because me and Tash are readingHeatmagazine.’

Cherry, she has two children and the vagina in tatters, that’s right. It looks like a butchered chicken. Her doctor had never seen a mess quite like it.

‘So where am I now then?’ Big Mand asks, confused.

‘Back down to where you were, next to Liberty.’

Big Mand twists herself back round, clipping someone’s head with her case as she goes. ‘Big Sue!’ she yells, ignoring the yelp of pain and subsequent complaints from the passenger. ‘Can you lift this up for us? Ta, love.’

Big Mand. Midwife. Caring disposition and excellent bedside manner.

Big Sue is six feet of muscular Amazonian-like woman. She strides up the aisle to swing the case easily up into the overhead bin, giving the nearby passengers a glimpse of her all-encompassing back tattoo.

Cherry suddenly roars, ‘BUGALOO!’ which frightens half the passengers to death. The Dollz immediately stop what they’re doing to shake their arms out wide and shimmy, a bit like Turkish dancing, while they belt out an a cappella version ofthe famous Cyndi Lauper hit, changing the words to ‘Girls just wanna have suu-uuun’. Cherry cranes her neck to make sure I’m joining in.

I am absolutely not going to join in. No way. I will not be making a spectacle of myself. The plane is full, and the cabin crew are already making stern eye contact with me. I scurry up the aisle to my seat until I’m shaken to the core by Cherry bellowing down the plane, ‘Connie! Do the friggin’ dance!’

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