Someone Like You (7 page)

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 checkin 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, AnneMarie?’ 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, 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 checkin 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, oil 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 I 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 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 facade 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 ingenue, 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.