Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets - Cathy Kelly - Страница 13

Four hours later, Leonie stood in the queue at the airport clutching her guide book to her chest and wishing the plane journey was over. Ever since she’d seen that disaster movie about the guys in the Peruvian mountains who’d had to resort to cannibalism to survive after a plane crash, she’d hated flying. Loathed it.

‘I’ll give you some ketamine for the trip,’ joked Angie the previous day, referring to the heavy-duty animal tranquillizer.

‘I’d almost take it,’ Leonie had replied, not joking. She’d bought a bottle of herbal relaxant tablets, her travel sickness wrist-bands and some aromatherapy oil to rub on her temples, but she still felt more stressed than Mrs Reilly’s hyperactive cat when it was getting its claws clipped. A lovely, sweet animal in the home – or so Mrs Reilly regularly assured them immediately after Sootie had mauled somebody – the five-year-old tabby was labelled ‘dangerous’ in the surgery. Heavy gloves and sedation were required to calm Sootie before even the simplest job. Leonie wished that cabin crew sedated their patients.

She pushed her trolley further along the queue and looked at the other passengers taking Flight MS634 to Luxor. Nobody else appeared to be sweating with fear. Especially not the very slim woman at the front of the queue who had the nervous expression of a purebred Saluki hound. Long, silky, light brown hair that fell over her big saucer-like eyes added to the effect. In an unflattering cream knit outfit, she looked terribly thin and unhappy. She must have been about thirty, Leonie guessed, but she carried herself with the unease of a teenager going on a hated family holiday when she longed to be at home.

An older woman, obviously her mother, stood beside her talking animatedly. The older woman was wearing a very old-fashioned floral dress, the sort of thing Leonie’s rather Bohemian mother would have refused to wear years ago because she might have to wear gloves or a pill-box hat with it. A giant of a man with a beard appeared beside them and started arguing with the girl behind the airline counter, his booming voice easily audible along the length of the queue as he roared.

‘I’d make a complaint to you, young lady, but I don’t see the point,’ he thundered at the airline girl. ‘I’ve made my feelings more than plain to the travel people. You mark my words, they won’t be taking advantage of me.’

The Saluki Woman looked away, eyes wide with embarrassment, and caught sight of Leonie gazing at her. Abashed, Leonie looked down at her trolley. She loved people-watching but hated being caught. Figuring out what they did and what sort of people they were from peering into their trolleys in the supermarket was her favourite hobby, and she couldn’t sit on the train into Dublin for longer than five minutes without speculating on the relationship between the passengers sitting opposite her. Were they married, going out, about to break up? Did the woman with a trolley full of Häagen-Dazs chocolate chip but a figure like Kate Moss actually eat any of the ice cream or did she have a fat portrait of herself in the attic?

Up ahead, the woman at the desk said ‘Next’ with a relieved voice. When the difficult trio finally walked back down the queue after checking in, Leonie kept her eyes averted but risked a surreptitious glance at the younger woman.

As she walked past, carefully stowing her travel documents into a sleek little handbag that wouldn’t have held a quarter of Leonie’s cosmetic junk, Leonie noticed that the Saluki Woman had pink varnished nails which had been bitten down to the stubs. She looked resolutely ahead, as if she knew the entire queue had heard the argument and was terrified of making eye contact with anyone. Definitely not keen on holidaying with the parents, Leonie decided.

The queue shuffled forward and, with nobody interesting to gaze at, Leonie toyed with the idea of skipping off and driving home. Nobody would have to know: well, her mother would, because that would be her first port of call, to take her beloved Penny and the animals home. But nobody else had to know.

Meaning Anita. Safely on the way to West Cork, Anita wouldn’t be in Wicklow for another three weeks and would remain oblivious that her flamboyant, outwardly dauntless, divorced forty-two-year-old friend had cried off from her first single holiday ever because of fear of flying.

‘I’m going to the loo. I won’t be long,’ said a soft female voice behind her.

‘I’ll miss you,’ answered a male voice.

‘Oh,’ sighed the woman. ‘I love you.’

‘Love you too,’ answered the man.

Newlyweds, Leonie realized wistfully.

She pretended to look around her in boredom and got a glimpse of a young couple kissing gently before the woman, wearing a virginal pale pink short cotton dress that wasn’t exactly suitable for travelling in, hurried off in the direction of the toilets, looking back at her husband all the time, giving him sweet little waves and smiling with sheer joy.

He smiled back at her, one hand holding two suitcases on which some joker had written ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’ in sprawling white Tipp-Ex letters.

Had she ever been that happy and that much in love, Leonie wondered, turning back and gazing blankly at the rest of the queue. She didn’t think so. Surely she deserved it. Wasn’t there someone out there for her, someone who couldn’t bear to let her off to the loo without kissing her goodbye and telling her to be careful? There must be. And she wouldn’t find him sitting at home weeding the garden. She gave her trolley a determined shove along the slowly diminishing queue. Egypt here we come.

They’d put her in 56C, a window seat at the back of the plane. Leonie winced as she sat down in it and looked longingly at the two empty seats beside her. If only she could swap with one of the other people. But what if they didn’t want to move? Hating herself for being so nervous, Leonie peered down the aisle and looked for a stewardess she could accost and ask about changing seats. Instead, she saw a graceful woman striding towards her, confident and slim in jeans and a white T-shirt with a navy cotton cardigan slung casually over her shoulders.

She held her small holdall aloft so she wouldn’t bump into anything, but when she collided with a large man shoving a bag into the overhead locker, the woman gave him a dazzling smile, flicked back her long nutbrown hair, and strode on. The man’s eyes followed her, taking in the gentle sway of her slim hips and long, long legs. She was aware of his gaze, Leonie was sure of it, from the small smile that tilted up the corners of her full mouth as she progressed up the plane. She looked perfectly elegant and brimming with confidence, the sort of woman who was born to go on a Nile cruise, from the tips of her spotlessly clean deck shoes to the designer sunglasses perched on top of her head. When Leonie stuck her sunglasses on her head, they inevitably fell off.

The woman reached row 56 and smiled in a friendly manner at Leonie, who decided to take the bull by the horns.

‘I did ask not to get a window seat,’ she gasped up at the glamorous brunette, fear at having to look out the window overcoming her hatred of being a nuisance.

‘You can have mine,’ the woman said in a gentle voice with just a hint of a West of Ireland accent. ‘I hate the middle seat.’

They swapped and Leonie smelled a heady waft of Obsession perfume as the woman arranged herself in the window seat, put on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, took a very serious-looking guide book from her small bag and settled back to read it. No wedding ring, Leonie noticed. Perhaps she was travelling alone too and they could team up. Leonie felt very grateful to be sitting beside this nice woman. Everything was going to work out.

She tried to relax and peered out of the window from the comfort of the middle seat. She could see the baggage handlers hoisting giant suitcases on to the conveyor belt to the plane’s hold.

Practically everyone was on board before anyone arrived at the seats in front of them. Leonie, by now bored looking at the baggage handlers because she could imagine them shaking all her clothes and make-up to bits, watched the late arrivals. The family she’d observed earlier were marching up the aisle towards her. The younger woman came first, her too-long fringe and her downcast eyes ensuring she didn’t meet anyone’s gaze as she shoved a small rucksack into the overhead bin and sank quickly into the window seat. Behind her came the other pair. Leonie grimaced. From the performance she’d seen at the check-in desk, she could imagine the fun and games they’d have on the flight with Mr Conviviality himself.

‘Number 55B,’ muttered the older woman. ‘There we are. Maybe I should sit on the window seat.’

Silently, the girl got up and let her mother into the seat. She appeared to be waiting to see if her father wanted to sit beside her mother.

‘Get in, Emma,’ snapped the big man impatiently.

‘Sorry,’ the girl murmured, ‘I just thought…’

‘Do you want me to put your bag up, Anne-Marie?’ he interrupted her rudely.

‘No, well, let me see,’ began the older woman, ‘I’ll want my glasses and my tablets and…’

Leonie looked out the window again. Family life, what a pain. When she was that age, she wouldn’t have gone on holiday with her mother and father for all the tea in China. That girl must be mad – or simple.

When the plane finally took off, Leonie closed her eyes with terror; Hannah closed her eyes and grinned at the memory of Jeff’s powerful lovemaking, which was certainly as uplifting as the thrust of a jumbo; and Emma sucked a mint, feeling calmer because of the half a Valium she’d taken in the loo beforehand. She tried to get comfortable but it was hard because her father was taking up a huge amount of space on purpose.

Half a Valium couldn’t harm the baby, she hoped, but her father was in a terrible mood and was determined to make everyone else suffer too. Emma had seen several people watching them in the queue when he’d argued furiously with the poor check-in girl over not being able to smoke his pipe on the flight. It was going to be a hellish holiday if he behaved like that the whole time. Why, oh why had she come?

Hannah sank gratefully on to a seat in the air-conditioned bus and decided that the only way she’d ever be cool in Luxor was if she went around naked with a bag of ice strapped to her body. It was half six in the evening and she was roasting after just fifteen minutes outside the airport. She’d have escaped to the cool of the Incredible Egypt tour bus more quickly had it not been for the two porters in Arab dress who fought volubly over who got to haul her suitcase over to the bus.

‘Great double act, guys,’ she grinned at them, giving them each a tip.

It must be eighty degrees at least and it was nearly pitch-dark. Who knew how hot it’d be during the day. She fanned herself with the itinerary the tour guide had handed out as she greeted her party of thirty-two travellers.

‘Make your way to the bus and I’ll finish rounding our gang up,’ the tour guide had said brightly as she pointed people in the direction of the buses waiting like gleaming silver monsters in the shimmering heat.

Fresh as a daisy in a royal blue cotton blouse and cream shorts, the tour guide was a young woman named Flora who exuded calm efficiency. She’d need to be calm to deal with that horrible man who’d sat in the row ahead on the plane, Hannah thought. He’d complained throughout the journey, saying the meal was cold when it should have been hot and demanding to know if they’d get a refund for taking off an hour late. What a bully, she thought with disgust.

He’d been rude as hell to the sweet, dark-eyed stewardess who’d haltingly told him they didn’t serve any sort of alcohol on the flight, and during the scramble for visas in the arrivals hall in Luxor, only the deaf would have been spared his sarcastic comments about Egyptian inefficiency.

‘Call this an airport?’ he’d roared when the crowds from the plane began milling around the arrivals hall, looking for their tour guides, trying to change money and queueing for visas in disorganized groups. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace asking Westerners to come into this sort of makeshift place. No signs, no authority, no proper air conditioning, nothing! No wonder these fellas were ruled by foreign powers for so long – couldn’t arrange a piss-up in a brewery, if you ask me. I’ll tell you, I’ll be writing a letter to the Irish Times and the Egyptian embassy when I get back.’

Hannah couldn’t figure out why he’d bothered coming to a foreign country if all he was going to do was whinge about the heat and make racist and jingoistic comments about the inhabitants.

Taking a gulp from her bottle of mineral water, she watched sweating people haul themselves up the bus steps, panting heavily and repeating ‘It’s hot!’ to each other every few minutes.

‘It’s hot,’ gasped her large blonde next-door neighbour from the plane as she shoved her canvas holdall into the luggage rack and flopped heavily on to the seat beside Hannah.

‘That’s what we get for not listening to the travel agent who warned it was unbearably hot in August,’ Hannah said with a grin.

‘Did they say that?’ The woman rummaged around in a bulging black suede handbag until she triumphantly extracted a small orange juice carton. She stuck the tiny plastic straw in, drank deeply and then said: ‘Mine never mentioned the heat. I just said I could only travel in August and they booked it for me. My kids are away for August, you see. I’m Leonie,’ she added.

‘Nice to meet you. I’m Hannah.’

Leonie knew her face was pinker than usual, while her shaggy blonde hair was frizzing in the Gas Mark 7 dry heat. On the plane, Leonie had barely talked to her neighbour at all because she’d been desperately trying to concentrate on reading a thriller for the whole flight, hoping that she’d forget the fact that she was on a plane at all if she could immerse herself in a book. Safely on terra firma, she was all talk, loquacious with relief. Hannah didn’t look hot at all: she looked as if she was used to the sort of temperatures that could cook a chicken out of doors.

‘Wasn’t it mad in there,’ Leonie said, referring to the arrivals hall. ‘These men kept taking my case and trying to stick it on their trolley and I kept having to take it back. I think I ruptured something dragging it off the last time.’ She massaged her shoulder.

‘They’re porters and they’re hoping for a tip if they bring your luggage out for you,’ Hannah explained.

‘Oh. I never thought of that. But I’ve no Egyptian money yet,’ Leonie pointed out. ‘I’m going to change currencies on the boat.’

She began fiddling around in her bag to check for her purse, giving Hannah an opportunity to study her. Leonie’s uptilted nose was strangely childlike, Hannah decided, and her make-up was a bit heavy for the torrid heat of North Africa. But nothing could hide the vibrancy of Leonie’s lively, animated face, which displayed a thousand emotions as she spoke. She wasn’t pretty but there was such warmth in her expression that it made her strangely attractive. And her eyes were the most amazing blue, glittering like Ceylon sapphires. Hannah had never seen anybody with such piercingly blue eyes apart from models in glossy magazines advertising coloured contact lenses. Leonie’s eyes could have been the result of coloured contact lenses, of course, but Hannah bet her life they weren’t. If only she wasn’t wearing all that panstick foundation and the heavy eyeliner. It was like stage make-up, a façade behind which she was trying to hide. Hannah smiled to herself. Everyone hid something. She’d been successfully hiding her lack of education for years.

‘It’d be lovely if we could have dinner together, maybe,’ Leonie was saying, hating herself for chattering away like a blackbird on acid. Terrified at the idea of being away on her own without a single friendly face to talk to, she was thrilled that she’d identified a fellow solo female traveller. But she didn’t want to come across as too lonely or too needy: Hannah, who seemed very self-possessed and assured, might not want a holiday companion. ‘If you don’t mind having dinner with me, that is…’ Leonie said, her voice fading.

‘Course not,’ said Hannah, who was perfectly happy on her own but felt oddly protective about the other woman, who was probably five nine in her socks and at least twice Hannah’s size. ‘It’s lovely to have company and we’ll be much safer from exotic, handsome Egyptians if we’re together. Or is it the male population who should be frightened of us?’ she joked.

Leonie laughed and looked ruefully at her sturdy body. ‘I think I’m quite safe enough and the male population needn’t worry.’ For once, she hadn’t felt the need to make some crack about men and how she couldn’t live without them. Those stupid remarks were only ever covering up her insecurities and she cringed hearing herself say them. Today, she hadn’t felt the need to pretend. Hannah was nice, calming. It’d be lovely sharing the holiday with her.

The bad-tempered bearded man, his wife and daughter got on the bus and plonked themselves at the front. Hannah and Leonie watched the trio with interest as the father kept up a critical monologue while his wife fanned herself weakly with a ridiculously out of place Spanish fan. Her long fair hair held back from her forehead was rather girlish for a woman of her age, as if she was acting the ingénue, while her tight-waisted, wide-skirted dress made her look vaguely as if she’d entered a fancy dress competition. She looked displeased, as if Egypt had been examined briefly and found seriously wanting. The daughter sat silently in the seat behind them, her face pale and her expression distant.

‘I hope to God we don’t end up with cabins anywhere near them,’ Leonie whispered fervently. ‘They look like the sort of people who complain if they don’t have something to complain about.’

‘The father certainly does,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but the person I feel sorry for is the daughter. Imagine being stuck with a loudmouthed tyrant like that.’

Watching the younger woman’s taut little face, Hannah was convinced it was sheer embarrassment at her father’s behaviour that made her look so distant. ‘She looks as if she’s going to cry any minute. Maybe we should get her to sit with us,’ Hannah suggested, overcome with a desire to save another lame dog, now she’d already saved one.

Leonie winced. ‘I’m not so sure…’ she said. ‘What if the other pair insist on making friends with us too and we get stuck with the lot of them for the entire cruise?’

‘Leonie,’ reproved Hannah, ‘you’ve got to live a little, experiment. Anyway, we’ll all end up sitting at tables of six or eight for meals on the boat, so if we’re allocated one with them, we’re stuck anyway.’

It was dark as the bus drove through the streets of Luxor on its way to the boat. Flora sat at the front, pointing out sights and welcoming them all to Egypt.

‘You’ll have a busy week,’ she explained, ‘because many of the tours start very early in the morning. We make early starts because the temples and sights get very busy with busloads of tourists during the day, and also because it’s cooler to sightsee in the early morning. But tomorrow you can have a lie-in as the boat sails to Edfu for the first visit which is after lunch. We’ll have a welcome meeting in the bar tonight at –’ she consulted her watch ‘ – half eight, which is in an hour, and I’ll go through the itinerary. Dinner is at nine.’

Hannah and Leonie peered out the window at the darkened, dusty streets, gazing at the one- and two-storey mudbrick dwellings which looked so different from anything at home. Many looked unfinished, as if another storey was to be built but everyone had lost interest. Scattered among these rural homes were palm trees and, far away from the road, luxuriant green crops could be seen growing several feet tall.

As they drove nearer to the lights of Luxor, Leonie noticed a solitary donkey leaning against a shed roofed with straw. He looked very thin, Leonie thought with a pang of pity. She could see his ribs sticking out painfully. She hoped she wouldn’t see animals being treated cruelly: it was bad enough at home seeing homeless dogs brought into the surgery after being hit by cars. At least she could do something for them at home, but here, she wasn’t a veterinary nurse: she was just a tourist.

A vision of Penny came to her, suddenly; those melting chocolate eyes filled with abject misery at being left behind. Leonie missed her desperately; she missed all the animals she loved. Poor Clover locked away in the cattery, and little Herman, watched endlessly by her mother’s ravenous cats. And she felt so far away from the kids. At least Ireland was nearer to Boston than here. Just a phone call away. Egypt was two continents away and she’d be travelling so they’d never be able to track her down. What if something happened and Ray couldn’t reach her and…

Stop it, she commanded. Nothing’s going to happen. Trying to put portents of gloom out of her mind, Leonie stared out the windows as the countryside gave way to straggly city streets with more traffic. Dust rose up into the air from the other vehicles on the road: battered Ladas with TAXI signs on them and stately old station wagons in bright colours, encrusted with dust. Electric signs in exotic Arabic shone over small shops and cafés, with bright English-language signs over the myriad souvenir shops.

Every few yards, she could see small groups of men sitting outside their houses, drinking coffee or watching football on television. Most wore the long simple cotton robes with white head-dresses tied into a neat hat. Young boys sat nearby, staring and pointing at the tourists in the bus, some waving excitedly.

‘I haven’t seen any women,’ Leonie whispered to Hannah, as if the men watching them from the roadside might read their lips.

‘I know,’ Hannah whispered back. ‘It does seem to be a very male-orientated society. There were no women at the airport either. It’s a mainly Muslim country, though, isn’t it? And that means the women dress modestly.’

Hannah thought ruefully of her holiday wardrobe, which contained quite a few skimpy clothes for sunbathing on the boat. As the guide books mentioned that women shouldn’t wear revealing shorts or sleeveless outfits for visiting temples, she’d brought plenty of cover-up clothes as well. But if the Egyptians frowned upon Western dress, her bikini would be staying in her suitcase. She didn’t want to offend people with her clothes. Mind you, she realized with a grin, the elderly parish priest back home in Connemara wouldn’t appreciate a pale pink crochet bikini any more than a religious Egyptian.

‘On your right is the Nile,’ Flora announced and the passengers craned their necks for their first sight of the great river. At first, Hannah couldn’t see anything but other people’s heads as everyone tried to get a glimpse out of the window.

Then she saw it, a great expanse of gleaming water, sparkling with lights from the large river boats that were moored by its banks. The mystical Nile, the gift of Egypt as Herodotus said – or was it the other way round? She couldn’t remember. Egyptian kings and queens had sailed up and down this river in their royal barges, pharaohs sailing to visit their temples and to worship their gods. Tutankhamun, Rameses, Hatshepsut: their names were a roll call of an exotic past world…

‘Look at the boats,’ breathed Leonie, who was dying to know on what sort of vessel they’d be spending the next seven days and who couldn’t concentrate on the glories of the Nile until she saw her cabin to see if it had enough room for her vast suitcase. ‘That’s a huge one,’ she added as they drew closer to a floating palace decorated with hundreds of fairy lights. ‘I hope that’s our boat.’

The bus sped past. ‘Oh well…’ Leonie shrugged.

The bus suddenly shuddered to a halt beside a much smaller boat which was painted French blue and had the words Queen Tiye written on the side in huge gold letters. Three decks high, the top deck was half covered with a large canvas awning, the other half open to the skies with wicker seats and sun loungers splayed around. The top deck shone with lots of small lights and they could see a few people sitting around a table, bottles and glasses in front of them. ‘Pretty, pretty,’ Leonie sighed happily.

Everyone trooped off the bus, identified their luggage for the porters as Flora commanded them, and then climbed carefully down the stone steps at the quay to walk along the narrow wood-and-rope bridge on to the boat.

Leonie held on to the ropes at the side of the bridge to balance herself and beamed back at Hannah who was behind her: ‘It’s very Indiana Jones,’ she said, thrilled with the adventure. ‘Is this the gangplank, do you think?’

‘Dunno,’ answered Hannah tiredly. She was beginning to feel the after-effects of her sleepless night with the energetic Jeff. All she wanted now was to fall into her bed and sleep until morning. But she shouldn’t really skip the talk with Flora. Otherwise, she might miss out on what was happening for the voyage – and Hannah couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on information. You could never rely on other people to tell you things.

When everyone had filled in a registration card, Flora organized cabin keys. Hannah and Leonie’s cabins were opposite each other.

‘Isn’t this fun?’ Leonie asked in childish delight as the two of them walked down a narrow passage to their cabins. She’d never been on a boat like this before.

The big ferries to France were different. Modern and boring. This was all so different, so exotic. The walls were covered in rich dark wood and hung with tiny prints of Victorian watercolour desert scenes offset by filigree gold frames. Even the cabin keys were decorated with little brass pyramids. Leonie wished the kids were here with her to experience it all. Mel would be thrilled at the thought of buying silky Egyptian scarves, Abby would be in raptures at the thought of seeing the temples, and Danny would be pestering the crew to let him steer the ship. She hoped they were having a good holiday.

She opened her cabin door in a fizz of excitement which quickly abated when she saw the room which was to be her home for the next week. The cabin was tiny, not even as big as her bathroom back in the cottage. There were none of the filigree gold paintings or rich wood of the rest of the boat: the cabin was painted plain cream all over with yellow curtains and yellow-striped covers on the two single beds.

A six-inch square ledge served as a dressing table, with another as a bedside table between the beds. There was a small fridge beside the wardrobe, which was really just a niche in the wall with doors. Leonie stuck her head inside the bathroom to find a minuscule room with a sink, toilet and a shower. Her suitcase would barely fit in the cabin, never mind trying to cram her vast store of clothes into the wardrobe, and as for dressing table space – she’d obviously have to use the other bed to lay her make-up and jewellery out.

‘Compact, huh?’ Hannah put her head round the door.

‘Compact is not the word. It’s just as well I haven’t brought my toyboy lover for a week of passionate thrashing around on the Nile.’ Leonie grinned. ‘We’d concuss ourselves every time we launched off the dressing table on to the bed!’

‘Lucky you with a toyboy,’ joked Hannah. ‘We must compare stories later.’ She disappeared as the porter brought her case along the corridor.

My side of that conversation won’t take long, Leonie thought regretfully.

She opened the curtains and let the quayside lights shine into the cabin. Opening the window, she looked down to see the placid dark waters of the Nile. She was really here, she realized with a happy shiver. She hadn’t balked with fear and run home; she’d taken her first holiday on her own. That had to be worth something in the independence stakes.

Once unpacked, she showered quickly, thrilled at the fact that the compact shower room had only a tiny mirror so she didn’t have to stare at her huge, pinky-white naked self. She spent the usual ten minutes trying on clothes, then ripping them off and throwing them on the bed when she looked awful in the long wardrobe mirror.

Her burgundy velvet embroidered dress was too hot even if it was the nicest thing she’d brought and her other dress, the sleeveless black one, revealed so much of her plump arms she couldn’t bear it. Hannah would not be having this problem, she sighed, thinking of what a fantastic figure her new friend had. Slim and elegant, Hannah had looked wonderful in her simple travelling clothes. Leonie would have killed to look that good in jeans.

Eventually, she settled on the sleeveless dress worn with an open pink silk shirt, the long tail covering up her bum, she hoped. She left the cabin full of anticipation for the night ahead.

The informal meeting before dinner in the top-deck bar was in half an hour but Leonie decided to go up now, so she could daydream quietly and watch the world go by.

In her daydreams, she had a vision of herself sitting on the upper deck, glass of wine in hand and a swarm of admiring men surrounding her like something from Scott Fitzgerald. Instead, she caught sight of herself in the smoky mirrors which lined the stairs and saw the familiar reflection: the solid peasant’s body and a mass of hair like untamed hay that no anti-frizz serum could help.

Scott Fitzgerald’s heroes would probably hand her their empty martini glasses and ask for refills, presuming she was the serving girl.

Wishing she’d stuck to a diet for her holidays, she stomped upstairs to the bar. Decorated in ornate carved wood, it was certainly from another era with its Art Deco furniture and French lithographs behind the counter.

She ordered a glass of white wine from the smiling, dark-eyed young barman and, once she’d signed her room number on the bill, took her glass outside to the bar-level deck where she could feel the night air on her skin and listen to the noises of the river.

There was nobody else there and she breathed in the silence broken only by a distant hum of Arab music from one end of the boat. It was still gloriously warm and Leonie felt herself relax finally as she stared out over the tranquil darkness of the Nile. She wasn’t going to obsess about being forty-something and manless: she was going to enjoy herself.

Moored to the other bank, she could see the tall sails of river boats. Feluccas, her guide book had explained. You could rent one and sail down the river for a couple of hours, travelling the way people had for thousands of years. How romantic.

She picked up her glass and was about to take a sip when she heard a hesitant, rather husky voice through the vast open doors order a mineral water with no ice.

Leonie smiled to herself and played one of her favourite games: guessing to whom the voice belonged. She thought of the couple of sedate blue-rinsed ladies who’d climbed on to the coach last of all, twittering with relief that one of their bags hadn’t been gobbled up by the carousel but had in fact been rescued from the wrong baggage cart by an apologetic airport official. Definitely one of them. Although that voice was very sexy, very whiskey and cigarettes as it said, ‘Thank you so much,’ in an anxious manner. Too sexy to be a genteel seventy-year-old, unless she’d had a lifetime of fierce chain-smoking behind her.

Twisting in her seat to see if she was right, Leonie was astonished to see that the owner of the voice was the anxious Saluki Woman with the parents from hell, still wearing her long cream outfit and still looking immaculate. But she looked different somehow.

Instead of her previously distant expression, the woman’s face was tired and, no, Leonie wasn’t imagining it, friendly. She even carried herself differently: her body was no longer tense and she gazed around as if some weight had been lifted from her. Before, she’d avoided eye contact like the plague. Now, she looked around, spotted Leonie and gave a half-smile that seemed almost apologetic.

Leonie, naturally friendly, smiled back and immediately regretted it. What if the woman and her awful family decided to sit with her and Hannah during dinner? Or attach themselves to them for the entire cruise? What a terrifying thought. Hannah was mad to think about it. Wishing she didn’t feel such a bitch, Leonie wiped the smile from her face just as abruptly and went back to studying the Nile as if she was about to sit an exam on What Sort of Objects You Might Find Floating By on a Summer’s Evening.

‘You look as if someone just pinched your bottom,’ remarked Hannah, sitting in the chair opposite and placing a glass of orange juice on the table. ‘Or is it because they haven’t pinched your bottom you look so glum?’ In loose white drawstring trousers and a simple caramel fitted T-shirt, she looked classy and comfortable at the same time. Leonie immediately felt overdressed in her floating pink silk.

‘I’m avoiding looking at yer woman in case Ma and Pa Walton decide to join us,’ Leonie explained in a whisper. ‘She smiled at me when she came in and I’m terrified of starting up a friendship I won’t be able to shake off. I can’t stand people like her father. I never lose my temper except with people like him and then I’m like a bomb, I just explode.’

‘I’d love to see you explode at him. Anyway, the poor girl’s lonely,’ Hannah insisted.

‘I collect enough lame dogs at home without collecting a few rabid ones abroad,’ Leonie groaned, knowing that Hannah was right. The poor girl was lonely and it wasn’t fair to ostracize her just because of the people she was travelling with.

They both sneaked casual glances at the woman, who had positioned herself at a table just outside the bar and was trying to take something from her handbag without anyone noticing. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, Hannah decided, and she looked thoroughly miserable, like a cat that had been locked out in the rain. The girl had a long face, Leonie was right about that. But having long straight hair trailing down her face didn’t help. Hannah suspected that some unkind person had once told her that wearing your fringe low detracted from a large nose. Probably that obnoxious father of hers. Hannah bet that if the girl smiled or if she wore something less colourless than that hideously old-fashioned cream thing, she’d be pretty in an understated way.

‘Let’s ask her over for a drink,’ she said now. ‘We’re asking her, not Ma and Pa as well,’ she added. After all, she thought silently, if she was befriending one lonely soul on this holiday where she’d planned for total solitude, she may as well befriend another. ‘I promise you, Leonie, if her father wants to sit with us and they drive us mad, I’ll get rid of them!’

Leonie laughed. ‘If he annoys me, don’t worry, I’ll do the honours.’

Hannah walked gracefully over to the other girl’s table, Leonie watching her new friend enviously. Hannah was so slim and God! so sexy. Leonie would have given five years of her life to look like Hannah for just one night.

‘Hello, I’m Hannah Campbell. Since you’re on your own, would you like to have a drink with us?’

The girl’s face creased into a pleased smile.

Hannah loved being right: the girl was pretty when she smiled. She had a sweet, shy smile and her eyes were a lovely smoky blue colour fringed with fair lashes. If only she’d do something with that hair.

‘I’d love to,’ Emma said in her hesitant, throaty voice. ‘I always feel so self-conscious sitting on my own with a drink. I’m Emma, by the way. Emma Sheridan.’

Carrying her drink, she followed Hannah over to the table and held her hand out to Leonie.

‘Emma Sheridan,’ she said formally.

Leonie grinned. ‘Leonie Delaney,’ she replied.

‘Do you mind me joining you?’ Emma asked.

‘Thrilled,’ Leonie said.

‘Right.’ Hannah decided she needed to do something to liven things up. ‘We all need a drink. What do you want, girls?’

‘I’ve loads of mineral water left,’ Emma said, holding up her glass.

‘Nonsense,’ Hannah said briskly. ‘You need a proper drink.’

The other woman’s expression faltered. ‘I shouldn’t, really. My father, you know…’ she hesitated, catching herself just in time. Imagine telling these two women that she wasn’t going to have a drink because her father disapproved of women drinking more than a sherry and she couldn’t face his disapproval. They’d think she was a complete nutcase. ‘My father says the beer here is supposed to be very strong.’

‘A glass of wine won’t kill you.’

Something fell to the floor and Hannah picked it up. It was a small bottle of Dr Bach’s Rescue Remedy, the herbal antidote to stress. You took four drops on your tongue to calm your nerves, she knew, having consumed enough of it when she was recovering from Harry’s round-the-world bombshell.

Emma gave her a wry look. ‘Travelling makes me stressed,’ she said bluntly. She left out the words ‘travelling with my father…’

Hannah handed the bottle back. ‘Well, you definitely need one drink then.’

Leonie pronounced her white wine unusual but drinkable, so that was that. The barman brought three glasses of white wine.

Emma, who seemed to be relaxing with every moment, took an enormous sip of her drink. She gasped and gave a happy little shudder. ‘I needed that. So,’ she said, ‘I presume you two are friends.’

‘No,’ Leonie said, ‘we met on the plane. I’m terrified of flying and Hannah swapped seats with me. But as we’re travelling on our own, we sort of linked up.’

‘I’m here with my parents,’ Emma explained, then felt herself redden because she knew damn well the other two knew that.

Everyone who’d been on the plane had known it: you couldn’t miss her father. Now they’d really think she was some sort of weirdo who was tied to her parents. ‘My husband had to go to a conference and couldn’t come with us,’ she added. Nervousness made her tactless: ‘Do your partners not like cultural trips either?’

Hannah grinned. ‘I’m not seeing anyone right now and my last lover’ – her full lips curved into a smile at the thought of Jeff – ‘well, I don’t know if he’d have been into a trip to Egypt.’

‘My husband and I are divorced,’ blurted out Leonie. ‘We meant to come to Egypt on our honeymoon, but we were too broke at the time. I figured that if I waited until I was married again to come here, I’d be waiting a long time.’ She slumped in her seat, feeling miserable. It must be jet lag or something.

‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ Hannah said kindly. ‘If you want something, you’ll get it. If you want a man, go out and get one.’

Leonie stared at her in astonishment. Most of her friends – well, Anita and the female members of the gang, really – changed the subject brusquely if she mentioned her single status. They muttered that men weren’t everything and, God, sure didn’t they nearly murder Tony/Bill/whoever every five minutes for leaving the loo seat up or for never washing up so much as a spoon. ‘Wouldn’t you be as well off on your own,’ they chorused with fake cheeriness. ‘Nobody to act hopeless around the washing machine. And you have the kids, after all…’

But Hannah had no such compunction. ‘We’ll help you find a nice single bloke on the cruise,’ Hannah said. ‘There’s bound to be someone on the boat who’s longing for the love of a good woman.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ Leonie protested.

‘I’m not saying it is, but you can do it if you want to. It just takes a different approach these days. You’ve so much going for you, Leonie, you’d get a man no bother if you really put your mind to it.’ She patted Leonie’s arm reassuringly.

Leonie was still mouthing in shock. How lovely of Hannah to say she had a lot going for her, but how mad as a bicycle to imagine that getting a man was just a simple matter of deciding to do so and accomplishing it. Perhaps that’s how it happened to people like Hannah but not to her. I mean, she thought, where had all the available men been over the last few years? Waiting for her to emerge from the chrysalis of having children under the age of fourteen?

‘What do you mean by “putting your mind to it”?’ she asked finally.

‘Dating agencies, magazine adverts, even carmaintenance classes,’ Hannah said matter-of-factly. ‘You’ve got to try them all. That’s the way to meet people these days.’

‘My friend Gwen met her boyfriend through a dinner club,’ Emma pointed out.

‘A dinner club?’

‘It’s a club for singles and you all go out to dinner once a month and see what happens. Gwen says she met loads of men. Some strange guys too, mind you. But she met Paul and that’s all that matters to her.’

‘I’d put any man off me if he saw me eating,’ Leonie said, only half joking. ‘Or I’d have to do like Scarlett O’Hara and eat before I went out so I’d be able to nibble daintily in front of Mr Right. Women with big appetites put men off, I’m sure of it.’

‘I’d probably order the sloppiest thing on the menu and end up with sauce all over my chin and chunks of bread roll flying off to hit other people in the eye,’ laughed Emma, getting into the swing of things now that she’d had that wonderful glass of wine. ‘I’m so clumsy when I’m nervous.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Hannah groaned.

Both Emma and Leonie thought that was unlikely. Hannah looked so self-possessed and calm. Even her hair obeyed her. Sleek and perfectly groomed, not a stray dark hair dangled from her neat ponytail.

‘Honestly, I am,’ she protested, seeing the looks of disbelief on their faces. ‘I went for a job interview a month ago and when I was supposed to be reaching into my attaché case to hand them details of this computer course I’d done, I stupidly reached into my handbag instead, and stuck my fingers right into my hairbrush. You know the way you get a bristle under the nail…?’

They all winced.

‘It bled like a ruddy artery and I had to get tissue, wrap the finger in it – all while my hand was still in my handbag! – and pretend nothing had happened for the rest of the interview. They must have thought I was hideously tense because I kept one hand clenched up all the time, trying to hide the tissue so I wouldn’t look like a casualty victim in need of a transfusion.’

‘You poor thing,’ Leonie said sympathetically. ‘Did you get the job in the end?’

Hannah’s grin of triumph lit up her face and the toffee-coloured eyes sparkled. ‘Yes. Bloody finger and all.’

She waved at a waiter and tried to order more wine.

‘I’ll have mineral water,’ Emma said quickly, thinking of both the baby and her father. She could still remember that awful moment at Kirsten’s wedding when he’d ticked Emma off in front of all the guests for having too much to drink.

‘So what is the job?’ asked Leonie. ‘What do you do?’

‘I was a hotel receptionist but I decided it was a dead-end job. It was a terrible hotel, really, but I took that job to get out of my old one which was even more dead-end, in a shop. My new job is office manager in an estate agent’s. I know it’s totally different, but I wanted to move jobs. I’ve done night courses in a management school for the past eight months and I’ve started an estate agent’s course. Not that I think I’d be lucky enough to branch into that part of things, you have to have loads of qualifications from what I can see, but it’s good to know all about the business.’

It was funny, Hannah realized. She hadn’t talked about herself to anyone for over a year, since Harry. And here she was, practically giving her life story to these two strangers. Holidays certainly had a bizarre effect on you – maybe it was the air.

‘Wow,’ Emma said admiringly. ‘A woman with a mission.’

‘I’ve got a mission all right – to make a career for myself. I got side-tracked for a few years,’ she added, not wanting to mention that the side-track had been nearly ten years with Harry, who’d let her sink into the squalor of coupledom before abandoning her for his South American trip.

‘And your mission,’ Hannah said to Leonie, deciding to change the subject, ‘is to find yourself a man, because that’s what you want. If I can turn myself into an office manager, you can find a man.’

‘Men, the root of all evil,’ sighed Leonie, starting on her second glass of wine. ‘I don’t mean that, really. I love men. That’s the problem,’ she added gloomily. ‘I think I scare them off. But I never thought of a dating agency. To be honest, I always thought only oddballs tried blind dating. Knowing my luck, I’d meet a serial killer or some nut with a fondness for PVC knickers and autoerotic asphyxia.’

Hannah laughed grimly. ‘I’ve met enough nuts without the help of a dating agency. Not PVC fetishists, mind you, but still mad. My last long-term boyfriend should have come with a government health warning and I met him in the safest place in the world: McDonald’s at lunchtime. So you may as well try dating agencies, Leonie. At least you get to pick who you’ll meet and who you won’t bother with.’

‘Harrison Ford,’ said Leonie dreamily. ‘I want a Harrison Ford clone who loves children, animals and overweight blonde divorcées.’

‘What about your man?’ Hannah asked Emma, who immediately smiled at the thought of Pete.

‘He’s lovely,’ she admitted. ‘I’m very lucky. He’s kind and funny and I love him to bits.’ Pete’s face appeared in her mind: the open, smiling face with the brown eyes, big grin and the dark hair cropped close to his scalp. Well, Pete always argued, there was no point wearing your hair long when there was so little of it. She loved his seriously receding hairline, loved kissing him on the top of his head and telling him that bald men were more virile. She wouldn’t have wanted Harrison Ford, or even Tom Cruise, for that matter. She couldn’t imagine either of them making her breakfast in bed when she felt ill, or massaging her shoulders when she got backache or insisting that she read a magazine while he made dinner on nights when she felt tired. Or leaving a lovely note buried in her suitcase telling her he loved her and that he couldn’t wait for her to get home. Pete adored her. Only his dislike of her father meant he’d let her go away for a week without him.

‘We’ve been married three years and he’s really good to me,’ she said. Then, because she couldn’t resist, she told them about the sweet note he’d left hidden between her T-shirts in the suitcase.

‘Oooh, that’s lovely,’ Leonie said.

She and Hannah were half-way down their second glasses of wine and they’d all been talking happily about why they’d decided to come to Egypt when the sound of Jimmy O’Brien’s booming voice could be heard from the doorway.

‘…if this is their idea of a first-class boat, I’ll be having words with that young courier woman, I’m telling you,’ he was saying loudly to another guest. ‘The shower’s useless and my towels got soaked because the shower curtain wasn’t any good. Call that first class? I don’t think so. Rip-off merchants, that’s what these bloody fellas are, pretending this is a first-class boat. Hmmph.

‘I’m not sitting outside,’ he added to his wife, ‘we’ll be eaten alive. Bloody mosquitoes.’

Hannah watched as Emma visibly shrank into her seat, her eyes briefly filled with an emotion Hannah could identify easily: wariness. Hannah’s mother’s face had often looked that way, usually when her father rolled home after a day at the races, roaring drunk, bad-tempered and looking for someone to take it out on. He’d been small and ran to fat, mostly beer fat, unlike Emma’s father who was a formidable man, tall and strong. A man who could intimidate people and liked doing it. He didn’t need alcohol to make him bad-tempered: it was obvious he was like that all the time.

Emma looked as if she’d rather have been keelhauled than face an evening with her parents. A surge of pity made Hannah reach out and touch her arm gently: ‘Would you like to sit with us at a separate table tonight?’ she asked quietly.

Emma looked relieved at the idea, then shook her head. ‘I couldn’t, they’ll expect…’

‘Say you’re sure they’d like their first evening to be just for themselves, a romantic evening where you’re not a gooseberry,’ Hannah urged.

Emma stifled the desire to snigger at the thought of her parents having a romantic evening. Her father reckoned romance was for wimps. He’d openly laughed at Pete for buying her a dozen red roses on Valentine’s Day.

‘Yeah,’ said Leonie, getting into the swing of things. ‘We need a third musketeer.’ Poor Emma was a lovely girl and obviously in need of saving from that obnoxious man. ‘Say you know one of us already and you want to chat.’

‘They’d never swallow that,’ Emma replied.

Mr O’Brien had spotted his daughter with two women he didn’t recognize and marched over to their table, his wife in his wake like a tug boat following a liner into port.

‘I don’t have a wide circle of friends and if we pretended, my father would give you the third degree and soon work out you were lying.’

Leonie tapped her nose enigmatically. ‘I happen to be a superb actress. We’ll say we know each other through your work. What do you do, anyway?’

‘I work for KrisisKids Charity. I’m in special projects,’ Emma said.

‘That’s run by that retired politician, Edward Richards, isn’t it?’ Leonie insisted. ‘His family owns Darewood Castle and the stud farm.’

Emma was pleased that Leonie knew enough about the charity to know who ran the organization. It meant their public relations company were doing their job. But she couldn’t see how Edward fitted into this particular evening’s equation.

‘I’m a vet nurse,’ Leonie added. ‘Our practice used to be their vets. Very posh, I believe,’ Leonie said.

‘Hello there,’ boomed Mr O’Brien, sizing up the seating arrangements and noticing with displeasure that there was only room for three chairs at the small table.

Emma immediately got up, smiled a nervous goodbye to the girls and led her parents to another table.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friends?’ her mother asked peevishly.

‘I thought you wanted to sit down, Mum,’ Emma said, not wanting to ruin her new friendship by making Hannah and Leonie meet her father. Grumpy after the flight, lord only knew what he’d come out with. ‘You can meet them later. Will I order you a mineral water?’

Her mother immediately started fanning herself with her hand and looked faint. ‘Yes, it’s so hot, that would be lovely.’

‘Sit down, Emma, and stop fussing,’ ordered her father brusquely. ‘The waiter will come – eventually. These Egyptians don’t seem keen to work. At home, you’d have a drink in your hand within a minute of arriving at the bar, but here…oh no, it’s a different kettle of fish altogether.’ He glared around at the bar where the waiter was busy serving a group of people who’d just arrived and were clamouring for cocktails. ‘No bloody concept of service,’ said Jimmy O’Brien loudly.

A few feet away, Hannah and Leonie grimaced at his rudeness. Emma cringed in her bamboo chair. This was a disaster. It didn’t matter that she was sitting in the balmy night air with the vibrant city of Luxor yards away and the treasures of the Nile waiting to be explored: she was on holiday with her father and he was going to ruin everything.

‘I’ll get the drinks,’ she announced suddenly, thinking she just had to get away before her father said something utterly offensive about the waiter.

Watching Emma practically run to the bar, her face bright pink with embarrassment, Leonie nudged Hannah: ‘Poor girl isn’t going to have much of a holiday if he carries on like that all the time. The man’s a pig and she’s mortified.’

‘I know,’ Hannah nodded. ‘But what can you do? He’s her father and she’s stuck with him.’

Leonie grinned wickedly. ‘Maybe not.’

Taking a deep breath, she rose from her seat and sailed across to the O’Briens’ table, one bracelet-bedecked hand outstretched.

‘Isn’t it a coincidence!’ Leonie trilled, shaking a surprised Jimmy O’Brien’s hand with the grace of a dowager duchess, flowing pink silk shirt rippling around madly. ‘Fancy Emma working with dear Cousin Edward in KrisisKids. Now that’s what I call a small world. I’m Leonie Delaney, from the Wicklow branch of the family.’ She took Anne-Marie’s limp hand and shook it gently, trying not to flinch at the cold-kipper sensation of the other woman’s handshake.

‘We’re the merchant banking side, rather than the political side. Daddy couldn’t have borne it if we’d gone into politics,’ Leonie added in a softer voice, as if this was some great family secret, ‘so low rent. De-lighted to meet you all.’

Hannah watched her in astonishment. One minute, Leonie had been sitting quietly; the next, she was a human dynamo, her collection of brass and enamel bracelets rattling as she twirled her curls in her fingers and pretended to be a merchant banking toff. It was a bravura performance, Oscar-winning stuff.

‘Edward Richards,’ Leonie was saying to Mrs O’Brien, determined to get the message home. ‘Dear Cousin Edward – Big Neddy is what we’ve always called him.’

Hannah nearly choked as her new friend described as ‘Big Neddy’ the elegant and aristocratic man she’d seen in the papers when he was a politician.

‘Of course,’ Leonie drawled in her recently acquired posh accent, ‘he hasn’t been to Delaney Towers for months. Daddy and Mummy do miss him.’

Realization dawned in Anne-Marie O’Brien’s face. This flamboyant woman with the unsuitable heavy make-up and that bizarre metal necklace thing was actually related to Emma’s boss, the madly rich and well-connected Mr Richards. He came from one of Ireland’s most famous political dynasties. This strange Leonie woman must be one of his cousins on his mother’s side. Well, Anne-Marie thought, arranging her face into a welcoming smile, the rich were allowed to be eccentric. Some of those computer millionaires wore nothing but jeans and desperate old T-shirts. You never knew where anyone came from any more.

And if Edward Richards’ cousin was on this cruise, then it must be one of the better ones, no matter what Anne-Marie’s suspicions had been when she’d seen the size of her cabin.

‘So pleased to meet you,’ Anne-Marie said in her breathy voice. ‘Anne-Marie and James O’Brien, of O’Brien’s Contractors, you know. Emma,’ she added, as Emma arrived with drinks and a wicked smile on her face at the sight of Leonie sitting with her parents, ‘you naughty girl, you should have introduced us to Leonie and told us who she is.’ She waggled a reproving finger at her daughter. ‘Why don’t you and your companion join us?’ Anne-Marie added.

‘We thought maybe Emma would sit with us,’ Leonie said dead-pan, ‘and leave you and your husband to enjoy a romantic evening à deux.’

Anne-Marie blinked at her, while Emma watched in a state of growing puzzlement. Her mother loved using French expressions, yet here she was staring at Leonie as if she didn’t understand à deux. How weird. Then again, this entire conversation was straight out of the X-Files anyway.

She felt bad about letting Leonie mislead her parents, but it would be blissful to have someone else to talk to on holiday. After an entire day with her father and no way of escaping him, she’d have gone off for a chat with someone in a straitjacket if they’d asked her.

‘That’s kind of you,’ said Jimmy O’Brien, who didn’t speak French but didn’t want to let on.

Emma’s mother was still staring at Leonie blankly. ‘What were we talking about again?’ she asked in a plaintive voice. There was something not quite right about her tonight, Emma felt. Something vague and distant. Her mother was never vague.

Leonie took charge. She relieved Emma of the two glasses of mineral water, put them down on the table in front of the O’Briens senior and slipped an arm through Emma’s.

‘We’ll leave you to it,’ she said sweetly.

‘What did you say to them?’ asked Emma when they were out of earshot, feeling as if she should scold a little bit.

‘I lied and said I knew your boss,’ Leonie said quickly, not wanting to get into a detailed explanation of her wicked ruse. ‘Said we wanted to chat. I mean, I know how it is with parents, they probably feel you’d be lost without them, when Hannah and I both know you’d like a bit of time out. And it gives them a chance to be on their own, second honeymoon stuff.’

Emma raised her eyebrows. Second honeymoon indeed.