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 14

Leonie stood in front of the Temple of Hathor and knew why she’d come to Egypt. Blazing white heat shone down on her, lighting the dusty scene with a burning white intensity. The temple in front of her, carved by the fiercely proud Rameses II for his beloved queen Nefertari, was beautiful.

Rameses’ own temple at Abu Simbel was twice as breathtaking: towering figures of the great king himself looming over the tourists, majestic and exquisitely proportioned. To stare up at the fierce face of the great ruler made the long trip in the bus worth it. Just standing there in the desert sun, listening to the age-old sounds of hawkers trying to sell their wares and the hum of insects droning lazily overhead, Leonie felt as if she could have stepped back in time. She wondered what it must have been like to be one of the archaeologists who’d discovered the fabulous temple after it had lain buried in the desert sands for three thousand years. Or even better, she clutched her golden Egyptian cartouche pendant to her chest, imagining what it would have been like to be the Egyptian queen, Nefertari, honoured by all, beautiful, covered with priceless gold jewellery and awaiting the grand opening of the temple. Lost in her magical world of romance, Leonie felt exhilarated and dazed at the same time.

This was what people felt when they saw the Taj Mahal, she thought reverently. Stunned into silence by the physical proof of what mankind could do. For love. Like the Taj Mahal, built as the biggest love token ever, Nefertari’s temple had been built by her besotted husband because he loved his wife so much. No other Egyptian ruler had ever built such a monument, the tour guide had explained as the bus trailed slowly along the road in convoy from Aswan deep into the Nubian desert. They built temples in their own honour or richly decorated great tombs for their journey to the afterworld. But a temple dedicated to one they loved, never.

Imagine being loved so much by such a great king, Leonie thought dreamily. Imagine such a symbol of enduring love in your name…

‘Leonie, the tour’s starting. Are you coming?’

Hannah’s clear voice broke into her thoughts. Hannah and a relaxed-looking Emma were following their group towards the temple. As Leonie had discovered during the past two days on the tour, you could easily lose your group in the thousands who thronged around each Egyptian monument. She’d nearly lost them in the giant and confusing Edfu Temple and she was determined it wouldn’t happen again. Picking up her canvas bag, Leonie ran after them.

‘Wow,’ she gasped as she reached the shady spot to the left where Flora was waiting with the others, ‘it’s too hot to run.’

‘Too hot to do anything,’ Hannah agreed, pulling a strand of hair away from her damp forehead. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to cope with an hour of this.’

‘And then the bus journey back to the boat,’ groaned one of their fellow travellers, tired after the three-and-a-half-hour bus journey into the desert.

‘It’s wonderful,’ Emma said gaily. Her pale face was flushed in the heat and her hair was tied up in a ponytail to keep it away from her face. Wearing a little blue T-shirt and cotton Bermudas in a pretty madras check, she looked about twenty, and utterly carefree, Hannah thought fondly.

For the first time during the trip, Emma felt about twenty. Her mother was suffering from stomach problems and had decided she wasn’t up to the bus journey to visit Abu Simbel. Which meant that her father had cried off too, leaving Emma to enjoy the first Jimmy and Anne-Marie-free day since she’d got to Egypt. It was such a relief, like painkillers after a nagging, three-day toothache.

Neither of the O’Briens was enjoying the trip: her mother because she was in a state of high anxiety the whole time, even more so than usual. She’d behaved very strangely the previous evening at dinner, refusing to eat anything and sitting in a world of her own for the whole meal, staring into space. The heat was getting to her, Jimmy insisted. He, who’d instigated the trip to Egypt, was now telling anyone who’d listen that it hadn’t been his idea to come and muttering darkly about how Portugal had always done them very well up to now.

To make the day even more utterly delightful, Emma’s period still hadn’t come. She was pregnant, she knew it. Every time she went near the loo, she panicked in case a tell-tale trickle of pale pink stained the white loo roll. But nothing. Bliss.

Sighing with happiness, she linked both Leonie and Hannah’s arms and led them into the temple after Flora, who was holding a royal blue Incredible Egypt clipboard above her head to make sure her busload of people could see her.

In her state of expectant happiness, Emma was one of the few people who wasn’t mildly put out when the bus broke down only half an hour after leaving the temple on the drive home. Crunching to a noisy halt on the outskirts of a dusty little town, it refused to start up despite much swearing and banging on the bus driver’s part. Buses and taxis to Abu Simbel always travelled in convoys, Flora had explained earlier, in case one broke down mid-desert. But they were unfortunately the second-last bus in the convoy back to Aswan and the only vehicle behind them was a crowded mini-bus which couldn’t take any extra passengers.

‘Don’t worry, folks, it’ll be all right,’ Flora said bravely as the mini-bus driver and their driver fiddled around with the engine and talked volubly with much irate hand-waving.

Leonie, fascinated by the exotic signs of life around them, was happy enough to sit and look out of the window, but it did begin to get hot with the bus, and therefore the air conditioning, switched off. Emma was just happy full stop. Nothing could touch the blissful happiness inside her.

They’d get back eventually and she was quite content to sit there, one hand gently on her belly. Small, dark-eyed children waved up at the tourists on the bus and Emma beamed down at them, waving back. Soon she’d have her own darling child. Would it take after Pete or her? She’d prefer a dark-eyed baby, she decided. The vision of a dark-eyed baby in cute denim dungarees lulled her into a contented fantasy.

As well prepared as ever, Hannah had an extra bottle of water in her small backpack and she shared it between the three of them. Emma had boiled sweets, which filled the gap in Leonie’s stomach.

‘I’m getting used to three massive meals a day on the boat,’ she said ruefully. ‘I’m ravenous.’

‘Me too,’ Emma said. ‘But don’t worry, they’ll fix the bus,’ she added confidently.

‘I doubt it.’ Hannah wasn’t as confident. She hated disruptions to her routine. The bus was supposed to be back in Aswan at seven thirty in time for dinner at eight. They’d been stopped for at least, she checked her watch, twenty minutes, which meant they’d be late. Shit. She hated being late, hated disorder in her very ordered life. She could feel her pulse increase as the tension got to her. Beads of perspiration that had nothing to do with the heat broke out on her skin. Her nerve ends tingled in that familiar, agitated way. Calm down, Hannah, she commanded herself. If you’re late, so what? There’s nothing you can do about it and everyone else will be late too. It had been ages since she’d had a panic attack, she couldn’t be getting one now.

Flora clambered up the steps into the bus. ‘We’ll all have to get off, I’m afraid,’ she said, still looking calm in the face of mutinous passengers. ‘I’ve phoned the bus company and they’ll have another bus here in an hour and a half. I know it’s a long time, but it’s coming from Wadi al-Sabu which is half-way between here and Aswan. Hassan says there’s a lovely little restaurant in the town and I’ll buy us all dinner there as we’re going to be late back to the boat.’

A rush of angry mutterings greeted her words from the front of the bus, while the people at the back seemed more resigned to the news.

‘I’m starving,’ Leonie said. ‘Let’s find this place quickly.’ She looked around and realized that Hannah looked strangely put out. Which was unusual because Hannah was always so relaxed, so sure of herself. Hannah never appeared to worry about what to wear, what to eat or what people thought of her. Now she looked as taut as a tug-of-war rope at the news that they’d be delayed by a few hours.

Leonie wasn’t sure what to say to calm Hannah down but Emma said it for her, Emma, who was used to people getting anxious over delays.

‘There’s nothing we can do, Hannah,’ Emma said in firm tones they’d never heard her use before. ‘We’re stuck, we may as well make the best of it. We’ll be home eventually, so let’s not panic. Food will do us good.’

‘I know,’ Hannah agreed, taking as deep a breath as she could. ‘I hate delays, I’m so impatient. Hanging around for any length of time stresses me out.’ She followed Emma obediently off the bus while Leonie went last, forever amazed at people and the chameleon changes they could make. It was a mystery to her that quiet, nervous little Emma could suddenly become the cool, calm one, while Hannah became a wreck. Talk about role reversal.

As the group straggled up the town, people watched them; adorable dark-eyed children giggled and pointed at the foreigners, laughing at Emma’s bare legs and her pale skin. Proud-faced men in Arab dress looked darkly at Leonie, resplendent in flowing white silk, her golden hair tumbling wildly around her shoulders, her mouth a vivid crimson slash. With her golden cartouche and several strings of vibrant beads she’d bought locally wound around her neck, she looked utterly exotic in this dusty desert town where the dominant colour was beige.

‘Your husband is lucky fellow,’ smiled one local man admiringly before proffering some postcards of Abu Simbel.

Leonie tried not to grin but she couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth turning up slightly. For once, she was the one getting all the attention. ‘Thank you but no thank you,’ she said primly and grabbed Emma’s arm the way the guide book had warned single women should do to avoid harassment.

‘I won’t let anyone run away with you,’ teased Emma, watching the men watching Leonie. ‘You’re the big hit around here, and no mistake.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Leonie said, immeasurably flattered and trying not to show it. ‘I’m a mother of three who wears support tights, hardly a siren.’ But she couldn’t help feeling a little bit siren-ish. People – well, men – were looking at her. Not at Hannah with her cool elegance or at Emma with the milky-white skin and long, coltish grace.

It was the same in the restaurant: a large cool place with rough bench seating and faded cushions, it was staffed by three waiters who were obviously delighted to see a flamboyantly blonde, female tourist.

Flora, with her clipboard and mobile phone, was ignored as the men stared at Leonie appreciatively, treating her like a movie star.

‘Pretend you’re Madonna,’ suggested Hannah, her mood improving. It was ridiculous to get uptight because the bus had broken down. She really must learn to snap out of these moods.

Emma started singing ‘Like a Virgin’ as the three of them were escorted to their table, a large one in a spacious corner with much softer, more opulent-looking cushions than the rest and an elaborate candelabra.

Leonie, who couldn’t sing to save her life, joined in tunelessly, her voice wavering on the long drawn-out notes. She stopped long enough for the oldest waiter to usher her to the best seat, bowing formally as he did so. She bestowed a gracious smile on him and gave him a blast of sapphire eyes. He bowed even lower and hurried off, to return with three fragile painted glasses for them.

‘More Ribena,’ said Hannah, picking up her tiny glass and breathing in the scent of the non-alcoholic fruit drink they’d got used to on the boat.

‘I don’t need to tell you ladies to enjoy yourselves,’ Flora said, arriving at their table when everyone else was settled. ‘Just don’t forget you have to buy any alcoholic drink yourselves and the bus will be here at around eight.’

‘Leave?’ said Leonie in mock horror. ‘Flora, I may never leave this place.’

Although most local restaurants didn’t serve alcohol, when Leonie saw one of the waiters emerge from the back with a bottle of red wine, she said they must order one.

‘Now, let’s have a real girlie chat,’ she said happily when the first course of mezes had arrived and they each had a glass of Cru des Ptolemees.

By the main course – kofta lamb for Emma and Hannah, vegetarian hummus and kebabs for Leonie – they’d gone through men in general and were on to Hannah’s story of Harry. It had been quite a relief to tell someone about how devastated she’d been the day he’d announced that he was travelling round South America and that it was all over.

‘You think you know someone and then they drop a bombshell like that.’ Even a year later, talking about it hurt. She’d felt so betrayed, so abandoned. All the love and time and hope she’d invested in their relationship, and to have it all thrown back at her because he felt stifled and needed a break. He was like all men: feckless and uncaring. But she’d loved him so much. All the aerobics classes in the world couldn’t dim the pain of that. At least her new plan to steer clear of men – apart from the odd bit of fun with guys like Jeff – would protect her from having her heart broken again. It just wasn’t worth it.

‘What is he doing in South America?’ asked Leonie.

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Hannah said fiercely. ‘I haven’t heard from him since he left. Not a dicky-bird. He took all his stuff from the flat when I wasn’t there and left a note asking for letters to be forwarded to his sister. Huh! He had two chances of me doing that. I threw his new chequebook in the bin when it arrived, and all his tax forms.’ She grinned at the memory. ‘Then I kept getting phone calls from his boss at the paper because he was supposed to be writing this book for them on political scandals and he’d just left the country without telling them. That was Harry all over: run away instead of face the music,’ she said bitterly.

Both Leonie and Emma had been gratifyingly eager to castrate Harry if they ever slapped eyes on him, and Hannah found herself thinking how nice it was to have female friends to confide in again. She’d been too hurt by Harry to seek out all the female friends she’d let go by the wayside when she fell for him first. It was comforting now to have a bit of sisterly outrage and support.

‘I doubt I’ll ever trust a man ever again,’ she admitted slowly. ‘I shouldn’t have trusted Harry in the first place. I should have known.’

‘How could you?’ Emma asked. ‘You’re not a mind-reader.’

‘It’s nothing to do with mind-reading. It’s to do with men. They can’t be trusted, full stop,’ Hannah insisted. ‘Well, I can’t trust the men I meet, anyway. Your Pete sounds lovely, but I think some of us just aren’t cut out for relationships. They mess you up. Some women are better off on their own and that’s the sort of woman I am. I can take care of myself and I don’t need anyone else. That’s my plan.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ Leonie argued. ‘You’re beautiful, Hannah, you could have any man you want. You simply ended up with a guy who was weak and left you. That’s no reason to give up on men in general. You have to dust yourself off when it all goes wrong and start again.’

By dessert – fruit for all of them – they’d moved on to their personal theories on how to get over a man. Emma hadn’t had many boyfriends before Pete, so she pointed out that she wasn’t much of an expert. ‘I met Pete when I was twenty-five and I’d only been out with three men before that. Dad ran the last one off the premises when he arrived smoking a roll-up cigarette. Said he didn’t want me corrupted with drugs.’

They all laughed at that.

Leonie admitted that Ray had been her first real boy friend and that their split had been mutual, more or less, so she hadn’t needed to dust herself off. What Leonie couldn’t understand was how Hannah had decided to simply give up falling in love until she felt strong enough to cope with men on her own terms. They’d heard about the fabulous Jeff and how Hannah had decided that a post-Harry bonk would be good therapy.

‘How can you do that?’ asked Leonie, fascinated.

‘Do what?’ Hannah bit into a piece of watermelon, little squelches of juice slithering down her chin.

‘Decide that you won’t get involved with any guy but just treat him like a friend who happens to be a lover. I mean, what if you met someone gorgeous and you couldn’t help yourself and fell hopelessly in love?’

Leonie wanted to believe that someone gorgeous was always waiting around the corner, that it was a matter of kismet, destiny and the right Daily Mail horoscope when it happened. You’d fall in love, it was inevitable. Hannah wasn’t convinced.

‘Feeling terrible for months after Harry left, that’s how I can do it,’ she said. ‘After the pain I went through, I’m not about to go through it again. If I turn into a heartless cow who uses men, I don’t care. That happy, coupley love thing is not for me. I spent years doing that and where did it get me?’ she demanded. ‘Bloody nowhere. Harry upped and left when it suited him and all I had for ten years of love and affection was a huge spare tyre and a dead-end career. Men are a waste of space, apart from for rumpy-pumpy in the bedroom department.’

Emma broke out laughing at the pair of them. They were a howl. She loved sitting with her feet curled up on the cushioned bench, giggling and talking about men and sex.

She shifted to get more comfortable and felt a familiar ache ripple through her. An ache that turned swiftly from a distant pain into a hard one, gnawing at her insides. Her period. God, no, she shrieked silently. It couldn’t be. She was pregnant, she was sure of it.

Emma stared at the others in dread, hoping they’d developed a similar pain, something to do with the lamb or a dodgy shrimp or anything…It rippled through her again. An unmistakable pain, the sort teenage girls who’d just had their first period could never adequately explain to their non-menstruating friends. Once felt, it was never forgotten.

Her period. There was no baby, Emma realized. There never had been. Probably never would be. Grief hit her in a wave.

She pushed herself away from the table clumsily, dropping her napkin and spilling what was left of her single glass of wine. ‘Must go to the loo,’ she said shakily.

In the dusty toilet with no lock on the door, Emma’s fears were confirmed. She was numb as she looked at the tell-tale droplets of red in the toilet bowl. Using a wad of loo roll as a make-shift sanitary towel, she walked slowly back to the table, feeling lifeless and drained.

One look at Emma’s white face and Leonie and Hannah knew something was wrong.

‘Are you sick?’ Hannah asked in concern.

‘Was it something you’ve eaten?’ said Leonie.

Emma shook her head dazedly.

‘It’s my period,’ she said simply. ‘I thought I was pregnant, I was sure I was and now…’ her voice broke as she started to cry, ‘I’m not.’

She sank into her seat beside Leonie, who immediately flung an arm round her. ‘You poor, poor thing,’ Leonie crooned in the same soft voice she used when the children were sick or upset.

As Emma cried, great heaving sobs that shook her entire fragile body, Leonie was shocked at how thin she was under her T-shirt: not elegantly slim, the way Leonie longed to be. But bony, almost skeletally thin, her ribs sticking out like rack of lamb.

‘You poor darling. I know it’s awful, but you’re so young, you’ve years ahead of you, Emma,’ Leonie soothed, hoping it was the right thing to say. ‘Lots of couples take months to conceive.’

‘But we’ve been trying for three years,’ Emma said between giant hiccuping sobs. ‘Three years and nothing. I know it’s me and I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t have a baby. What’s wrong with me? Why am I different? You have children, why can’t I?’

Leonie and Hannah’s eyes met over the table. There was nothing they could say. They’d both read of women tortured by their inability to have a child: neither of them had ever met anyone in that appalling position. Or, if they had, the women in question had obviously kept it a secret. Leonie dredged her memory for information on infertility. Hadn’t she read something about couples who finally had babies when they stopped trying so frantically and relaxed? And Emma being so thin couldn’t help. The poor girl was literally wasting away with nerves and strain: she didn’t have a hope of getting pregnant while she was like that.

‘The stress of wanting a baby so badly may be affecting you,’ Leonie said finally. ‘You know, some people make themselves ill because they want it so much and then, once they take a step backwards, they get pregnant.’ It sounded so lame the way she’d said it, like telling a fairy story about Santa Claus to a knowing and deeply suspicious ten-year-old.

‘Why didn’t I get pregnant when we were first married?’ sobbed Emma. ‘We weren’t really trying then. Or before we got married. Pete was always terrified the condom would burst and I’d get pregnant. He said my father would kill him. Maybe we’re being punished for something, sex before marriage or…I don’t know.’ She looked at them both wildly, her face pink and streaked with tears. ‘What is it? I’m not really religious, but I’d pray for hours every day if I thought it’d work.’

‘Look at me,’ Hannah urged. ‘You’re not being punished for anything, Emma. Don’t be so daft. I’m five years older than you and I haven’t even met the man I want to have kids with, so you’re doing miles better than I am. If you work on the everything-that-goes-wrong-in-your-life-is-a-punishment theory, I must have done something terribly wrong to get landed with Harry and then get dumped. Now I don’t have even one prospective father of my unborn children on the horizon.’ She didn’t add that children were the last thing on her mind, prospective father or no prospective father.

Emma’s sobs subsided a little.

‘Maybe you could investigate what’s wrong,’ Leonie suggested. ‘Even if there’s a problem, doctors can do incredible things nowadays if you’re infertile. Look at all the babies born thanks to in vitro fertilization.’

Emma shook her head miserably. ‘I couldn’t put Pete through all that. It’s a nightmare, I saw a programme about it on the telly. And…’ she wiped her eyes in despair, ‘he doesn’t know how I feel, not really. He loves kids, he doesn’t understand that if you can’t have one after three years, you’ve no hope. I can’t tell him that.’

The others looked at her in alarm.

‘You haven’t told Pete any of this?’ Hannah asked gently.

‘He knows I want a baby, but I couldn’t really tell him how desperately I want one.’

‘Why not?’ Leonie asked in disbelief. ‘Surely you have to share this with him – he loves you, after all.’

Emma shrugged her thin shoulders helplessly: ‘I keep thinking that if I don’t say anything, the problem will be in my imagination and I might still get pregnant. If we do something about it, I know it’ll be my fault and they’ll tell me I can never have a baby…I just know it.’ Her eyes glazed over, her mind off in some faraway place.

‘Ladies, we’re going. The bus is here.’ Flora’s crisp, clear voice startled them and they realized that the other people from the tour were collecting their belongings and wandering out of the restaurant, clutching the inevitable plastic bottles of mineral water.

Hannah waved the waiter over and quickly paid for the wine, shaking off Leonie’s suggestion of going halves. Emma didn’t say a word.

A subdued trio climbed back on the bus, Emma red-eyed and Hannah staring blankly out into the night. What was wrong with her, she wondered. Why didn’t she want children with the same blinding intensity as Emma? Was she abnormal? They’d simply never been a part of her life-plan, a plan that revolved around one facet: security. Making her way in life and being secure so that she’d never have to rely on a man again, the way her mother had had to rely on that feckless lump of a father of hers. Those years with Harry had been a fatal blip in her mission, years when she’d gone all cosy, practically married and ambitionless, and had forgotten that when you most needed them, men had a habit of failing you. Well, never again. She’d build her career up and make sure she never needed a man ever again.

Flings with men like Jeff Williams were allowed: simple physical relationships with people who wouldn’t dare to mess with her life. And as for children, they didn’t feature in her plans either. Maybe she was heartless, but she didn’t think she’d make a very good mother. She still pitied Emma though. She knew how destructive it was to long for something you simply couldn’t have. She knew too damn well. Harry’s fault, again. Bugger Harry.

Leonie, Emma and Hannah sat on the upper deck in the late afternoon as the boat sailed up the river towards Luxor. With three weak cocktails in front of them, they watched the golden, glowing disc of the sun set on the left-hand side. The rays turned the mountains to the right a deep, mysterious rose gold. Palm trees clustered around the banks, as if planted by a clever gardener who knew how to achieve that artistically pleasing random effect.

‘I half expect to see elephants charging from out of the trees, like in Africa,’ said Emma dreamily.

‘You are in Africa,’ said Leonie with a grin.

‘Oh no, the sun’s finally affected my brain,’ Emma groaned.

‘Sun my ass, it’s all those Fuzzy Navels you’ve been guzzling,’ Hannah pointed out. ‘I know they’re weak ones, but you’ve had two.’

It was a perfect time of day to sit quietly and watch the valley pass by. The air was cooler than in the early afternoon and as the boat sailed north along the Nile, a refreshing breeze blew against them, rippling Emma’s loose hair like a hairdryer.

It was the second last day of their holiday and they were all eager to take in every single detail of the country, determined not to forget a thing. The next day they were going to be busy the whole time, visiting the Valley of the Kings and Queens in the morning, and Karnak in the afternoon. There wouldn’t be a spare moment in their exhausting itinerary, Flora had warned, advising everyone to take advantage of their afternoon off.

The girls had been only too pleased to comply. Emma’s parents had decided to join in the card game in the inner bar after lunch and Jimmy O’Brien had done his best to get Emma on their team. But she’d refused.

‘I’m going to sunbathe, Dad,’ she’d said firmly.

He looked genuinely surprised. ‘But wouldn’t you rather be with me and your mother?’

Hannah and Leonie finished their coffee and began to leave the lunch table discreetly, not wanting to embarrass Emma by being present for what seemed like an inevitable spat with her father. But Emma took strength in their presence. She couldn’t imagine either Hannah or Leonie being browbeaten by their father.

‘Dad,’ Emma said pleasantly, with an unaccustomed hint of steel in her voice, ‘of course I like being with you and Mum, but we’re not joined at the hip. I want to sunbathe and I don’t want to play cards. Enjoy yourself.’ She got up and kissed him lightly on the cheek, hoping to defuse her words with the gesture. It worked. Her father remained uncharacteristically silent.

Or plain old shocked because Emma had stood up to him, Hannah guessed shrewdly. If she’d been a psychiatrist, she could have written an entire thesis on Jimmy O’Brien. After five days of watching him, she’d decided he was a horrible man with an inflated opinion of himself.

On Wednesday, he’d insulted the pretty young belly dancer who’d arrived on the boat with a band of musicians by telling her loudly that she ‘should put some clothes on and not strut around with everything hanging out like some common floozie’. Only Flora’s immediate interference had prevented an international incident, because the lead musician looked as if he was ready to smash his electric keyboard down on Jimmy’s head.

‘Let’s not be hasty,’ Flora had said soothingly, placating all around her and gently leading Jimmy and Anne-Marie off to another part of the bar where she had to listen to ten minutes of a lecture on ‘Why It Was A Shame These People Weren’t Respectable Catholics’. Emma had been crimson with shame and had barely been able to look the belly dancer in the eye.

Somebody as self-effacing as Emma didn’t stand a chance of standing up to her father, Hannah realized, taking another sip of her cocktail. Her mother was plain odd. Chatty one minute, she’d lapse into silence the next, staring off into the middle distance with a vacant expression on her face.

‘She’s not normally like that,’ Emma had said worriedly one day when Anne-Marie had broken off what she was saying mid-sentence and begun humming. ‘Dad insists the heat is affecting her badly, but she’s normally so alert. I can’t imagine what’s wrong.’

The three women had spent a blissful afternoon sunning themselves on the top deck, reading, chatting, sipping mineral water and listening to the endlessly replayed disco classics record that emanated from the boat’s speakers. Whoever was in charge of the music on the boat had a limited selection and veered between seventies disco hits and songs from old musicals.

‘If I hear “Disco Inferno” one more time, I’ll kill someone,’ Leonie said, finishing her Fuzzy Navel and wondering if she’d have another before dinner.

‘At least they’ve lowered the volume,’ Emma interjected.

‘Only because it was frightening the cows,’ Leonie pointed out.

In places where the river widened, there were isolated grass banks surrounded by water, where cows grazed serenely, none of them appearing concerned that there was no obvious way back to the land.

‘There must be strips of land back to the bank, a pathway we can’t see,’ Hannah said, peering at the latest batch of cows on a marshy island, her eyes peeled for a walkway. ‘They couldn’t swim, surely? The crocodiles would get them.’

‘Sobeks would get them – descendants of the crocodile god, Sobek,’ said Leonie, who loved hearing about the Egyptian gods and studied her guide book every night to learn more about the sights they were going to see the next day.

‘Teacher’s pet,’ teased Hannah, lobbing her drink’s cocktail umbrella over at her.

‘You’re just jealous,’ retorted Leonie good-humouredly, throwing the little umbrella back. It bounced on the table and flew off over the side of the boat. ‘I’m going to get a gold star on my copybook for figuring out the great mystery of the fish sacrifice.’

‘That was a marvellous piece of deduction,’ Hannah admitted.

They’d all laughed heartily the night before when Leonie had come up with a reason why fish were never shown as offerings to the gods on the various temple carvings. Flora, the guide, usually left them with an unanswered question at the end of a tour and told them that she’d explain it the next day.

Yesterday, Flora had answered the question about why Hatshepsut was the only queen buried in the Valley of the Kings and had posed another conundrum – about the fish sacrifices.

Leonie, who was fascinated with Egyptian myths, decided that the answer to the question lay in the story of the god Osiris. Hannah and Emma, sitting in the comfort of Hannah’s cabin sharing a bottle of peach schnapps as a nightcap, laughed so much at her solemn explanation that they nearly fell off the bed.

‘When Osiris’s evil brother, Seth, killed Osiris and dismembered his body, scattering it around Egypt, Osiris’s distraught wife, the goddess Isis, found all the pieces and put them back together,’ Leonie explained enthusiastically. ‘The only part she couldn’t find was his penis, which had been eaten by a fish. So that’s it.’

Hannah crowed with laughter. ‘You’re telling us that fish can’t be used as a sacrifice because a fish ate Osiris’s willy?’

‘Yes, it’s perfectly sensible to me.’

Emma, who had discovered that she really liked peach schnapps, got a fit of the giggles. ‘But we had fish for dinner tonight,’ she managed to say, between laughs. ‘I think I’m going to puke!’

‘You’re a right pair of cultural illiterates,’ Leonie said loftily. ‘I don’t know why you came to Egypt at all. You should have gone off to Ibiza with a couple of blokes with tattoos and a ghetto-blaster.’

Emma fell off the bed with a resounding bump. She put a hand over her mouth and giggled at the noise she’d made.

‘Your father will be up in a moment to haul you off to bed,’ Hannah squealed. ‘I’ll tell him I’ll set Seth on him…geddit, set Seth…’ She roared with laughter and Emma joined in.

‘I’d like to see his face with his willy gobbled up by a fish,’ roared Emma.

Leonie, who’d been so intent on her ancient Egyptian theory that she’d only had a quarter as much peach schnapps as the other two, gave up. She hauled Emma back on to the bed and then poured herself a huge drink. If you can’t beat them, join them, she decided.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to tell people when I get home and they ask me who I met in Egypt,’ she said, downing her drink in three gulps. ‘They’ll all think I had this cultured time talking about ancient civilizations with like-minded people, when in fact, I’ve been stuck with two insane, sex-mad alcoholics who think the pyramids are secretly flying saucers.’

‘You mean they aren’t?’ demanded Hannah.

‘Shut up and have another drink,’ Leonie ordered.

The Fuzzy Navels they were drinking on the upper deck the following evening helped with the hangovers.

‘Wave at the waiter and order us another round, will you?’ Hannah asked Emma, who was facing the small upstairs bar where the waiters hung out.

‘I need to go to the loo,’ Emma said, ‘but I can hear my father from here. He’s downstairs and I don’t want to have to go down or he’ll try to make me sit with him.’

‘He’s a bit bossy,’ Leonie ventured. She’d love to have said that Jimmy O’Brien was a domineering bully but knew she couldn’t.

‘You have no idea,’ Emma said fervently. The Fuzzy Navels were going to her head. ‘He has to be in charge and he has to be right all the time. It’s a nightmare.’

‘But you stood up to him earlier,’ Leonie pointed out.

‘And I’ll have to pay later. He hates his authority being questioned publicly.’

‘Do you see much of your parents at home?’ Hannah enquired.

‘I see them all the time,’ Emma explained. ‘They live around the corner from us. Pete and I couldn’t have afforded a house on our salaries so Dad loaned us the deposit, then he insisted on our buying this house he liked. It’s about five minutes from my old home.’

Hannah winced. ‘So he feels he can drop in when he wants to and tell you what to do, on the basis that he’s funded you.’

‘Bingo.’ Emma thought of how her father manipulated things so that she and Pete had Sunday lunch at the O’Briens’ every fortnight, and how the question of what to do for Christmas never came up. It was the family do at the O’Briens’ and that was it.

‘Are you the only child?’ Leonie asked.

‘I’ve a younger sister, Kirsten, the one who got away. She’s married and her husband is very successful. Dad adores her. But she’s managed to get out of all the family stuff. She’s managed to get out of having a job, too, because Patrick, my brother-in-law, is loaded. Basically, Kirsten does what Kirsten wants.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Hannah remarked. ‘My brother, Stuart, is the same. When we were growing up, I had to look after my mother’s hens in the summer and baby-sit for our relatives. Stuart never had to so much as wash a cup. Lazy pig. He was my mother’s pride and joy, now his wife is the same. Pam treats him like he’s next in line for the throne. We’re not close, I should add.’

‘Kirsten and I get on really well,’ Emma said. ‘She’s great fun and I love spending time with her. It’s a miracle I don’t hate her, really, since Dad is so besotted with her. Do you have brothers or sisters, Leonie?’

‘No, just me and my mother. And we get on really well,’ she added, feeling almost guilty that she wasn’t like the other two, both of whom appeared to have problem families. ‘My father died years ago and Mum just gets on with her own life. She works part-time, goes to the cinema and hill-walks, oh yes, she’s started playing golf. She does more than me, actually. She’s never at home in the evenings, while I catch every episode of every soap on TV. Mum is very easy-going and easy to be with.’

‘Like you,’ Hannah said.

‘I suppose I am easy-going,’ Leonie agreed. ‘Most of the time. But I do have a ferocious temper which explodes once in a blue moon and then…watch out.’

The other two pretended to duck under the table in fear. ‘Will you warn us when you’re about to explode?’ Emma asked in a meek voice.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll see it coming! I’ll be sorry to go home,’ Leonie said wistfully as they watched the sun sink.

‘That’s the sign of a good holiday,’ Emma said.

‘I mean, I’ll be happy to be home, but it’s been wonderful here. And I’ll miss you two.’

Hannah smiled but said nothing.

‘Me too,’ Emma added earnestly.

Hannah spoke then. ‘I know they always say that holiday romances never transfer to the real world when the holiday is over, but it can’t be the same for holiday friendships. We’ve had great fun together. Let’s meet up when we get home and try and stay friends. What do you both think?’

Emma grinned delightedly. ‘I’d love that. We all get on so well, it’d be great.’

‘Yeah, we could have dinner once a month or something,’ Leonie suggested enthusiastically. ‘We could meet at some midway point between where we all live.’

She thought about it. Her home was in Wicklow, south of the city and an hour’s drive from the centre of Dublin. Emma was in Clontarf in north Dublin, which was a forty-minute drive into the centre of the city, while Hannah lived in the city near Leeson Street Bridge.

‘My place is pretty much half-way between you two,’ Hannah said. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to do all the driving.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Leonie said. ‘This holiday was about starting something new and since I didn’t fall in love with some Omar Sharif lookalike, making two fabulous new friends is the next best thing.’

‘You mean we’re second best?’ asked Emma, throwing her cocktail umbrella at Leonie.

Leonie laughed and threw it back. ‘Only kidding. Right, let’s plan the first get-together now. Two weeks after we get back so we still have a bit of a tan to wow the rest of the world. Oh, yeah, we can get our photos developed and bitch about our fellow travellers.’

‘It’s a deal,’ Hannah said.

They clinked their now-empty glasses.

‘To the Grand Egyptian Reunion,’ Emma said loudly. ‘Now, shall I order more drinks?’