Someone Like You

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘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?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dragging her suitcase behind her, Emma opened her front door and breathed in the scent of a house where the windows hadn’t been opened since she left. The peace lily in the hall looked like a weeping willow, its leaves drooping with thirst, while the newel post of the banisters was armour-plated with a selection of Pete’s raincoats and sweaters. Ignoring the mess, Emma abandoned the suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and headed for the kitchen.

  There was a note on the kitchen table, lying amid a week’s worth of newspapers, supplements and junk mail. Emma put down her handbag, shivered in the chill of the Irish August which seemed so icy after Egypt, and switched on the kettle. Only then did she read the note.

  Can’t wait to see you, darling. I’m at a match. Back at seven. I’ve dinner under control. Don’t do anything.

  Love, Pete

  She grinned. Dinner under control probably meant he’d stop off at Mario’s on the way home and pick up a giant Four Seasons pizza with a side order of garlic potatoes.

  She brought her tea and the luggage upstairs and started to unpack. Out of the suitcase came skirts, T-shirts and underwear, all mingled up with the postcards she couldn’t resis
t and the pretty fake alabaster Egyptian figurines she’d bought in the souk in Luxor. She took one out of its tissue wrapping, marvelling at the detail of the carving on the falcon god, Horus.

  It’d fall apart given a sharp knock, Flora the tour guide had warned the Nile cruisers, explaining that real alabaster statues were hand-made and built to last, unlike their cheap street-market relatives. Emma hadn’t cared. She’d wanted some cheap’n’cheerful souvenirs for the people in the office and, at three Egyptian pounds each, these statuettes fitted the bill perfectly. Happy with her purchases, she pulled the others from their wrapping until all six were uncovered and she began to plan which one she’d give to which colleague.

  She took her sandals from the plastic bags she’d wrapped them up in and threw dirty clothes into the laundry basket which was already groaning with Pete’s stuff.

  Her mind wasn’t really on unpacking: she was dying to see Pete and tell him everything; about her new friends and all the places they’d been…Then her hand touched something cool, soft and plastic. From under the folds of clothes she hadn’t worn, she unearthed the big pack of sanitary towels, an Egyptian brand she’d never heard of with a picture of a dove on the front. She took the packet slowly from the case and the pain hit her again. The pain of knowing that there had been no baby growing safely inside her, wrapped in fierce love and protected from the world by Emma’s body. No baby to rest its downy head against her breast, no soft mouth instinctively searching for the nipple, no crying, innocent little creature utterly dependent on Emma for everything.

  The pain came from deep within herself. Her chest hurt, her head hurt, it felt as if even the bones of her body ached with the very hurt of it all. She heard a noise and realized it was herself, crying, keening like a woman at a funeral.

  After days of holding on, she finally let the heartache out: every twinge of anguish, every pang of loss. It was as if a dam had burst.

  Now that she was here, crouched on her own bedroom floor, leaning against the bed, she could cry to her heart’s content over her lost baby. Because it was a lost baby to her. Another chance lost, another life she’d been so sure had been inside her gone. Leonie and Hannah had been good to her; they’d tried their best to understand and comfort her. But they didn’t understand. Leonie had children, three lovely kids. Hannah didn’t seem to want children yet, although Emma would never be able to understand how any woman could not want children. But she didn’t. So it was different for them.

  But Emma, she wanted her own baby with an intensity that was killing her. It had to be killing her, she thought as the tears ran unchecked down her cheeks, it hurt so much. That much hurt couldn’t be good for you. It had to be like cancer, eating away inside you until there was nothing left but a shell, nothing but hate and rage and anger at anyone who had that one simple thing denied her.

  Everybody else had children so effortlessly. People had babies by mistake, people had abortions. Emma was always reading about women in the newspapers who said things like: ‘Little Jimmy was an accident after the other six, we’d never planned him…’

  Even worse, her work with KrisisKids meant she was constantly exposed to the stories of abused and abandoned children, defenceless kids who’d been let down by the people who were supposed to love them most: their parents. It was as well, Emma reflected, that her role in the charity was administrative because if she had to personally deal with the crying kids who rang their helpline, she didn’t know how she’d have been able to cope. The counsellors found it hard enough, she knew. Sometimes they left abruptly after their shift, white-faced and drained, unable to chat with their colleagues because there was simply no way to go from hearing a child’s most terrible secrets to idly discussing the weather or what was on the TV that night. Emma knew she’d have been hopeless when faced with a child haltingly telling her about the cigarette burns or how daddy climbed into her bed at night and told her to keep a secret. Those people weren’t parents: they were evil creatures, demonic. What she couldn’t understand was why God gave them the gift of a child.

  But then, how did God work out who got kids and who didn’t? Who decided that Emma would remain childless while some blithe, unconcerned women had families the size of football teams? The rage she felt for those mothers shocked her. She wanted to kill them, women who took it all for granted. Who had no idea what it was like to yearn for a child, who simply laughed when the pregnancy test was positive, and said things like: ‘Oh well, another kid for the football team!’ or ‘We’ve always meant to start a family, we may as well start now!’

  She hated them, hated them with all her being.

  Nearly as much as those women who held their children like trophies, proudly and smugly letting the world know that they had babies, even if some poor helpless women couldn’t get the hang of it. Emma thought she hated those women most of all: they looked down at her, she knew it.

  Like Veronica in the office, who wore her motherhood like a badge of honour, never ceasing to tell all and sundry about little Phil and how cute he was, never forgetting to slyly ask Emma if she didn’t want children herself.

  Veronica knew. Emma was sure of it. That knowledge was her lever over Emma, her boss.

  ‘Phil is crawling around the house like a little rocket these days,’ she’d announced recently as they all sat in the back office having their lunch. Then she’d directed a comment at Emma who hadn’t really been paying attention: ‘I can’t believe you and Pete haven’t started a family yet, Emma. You don’t want to leave it too late, you know. And then find out you couldn’t have kids!’ she trilled, her voice grating.

  Emma could have killed Veronica there and then. Instead she’d smiled woodenly and managed to get a few words out: ‘There’s plenty of time, we’re in no hurry.’

  She thought of Veronica as she sat there silently on the bedroom floor, the tears drying saltily on her cheeks. How would she ever face Veronica on Monday? Phil was bound to have done something miraculous for a toddler of his age during the past week and no doubt Veronica would be discussing whether to ring the Guinness Book of Records or not. Everyone would be asked their opinion and Veronica would give the subject far more attention than she ever gave her work. She wasn’t a very good assistant. Maybe that was why she hated Emma and was so knowingly malicious. Emma was good at her job and childless. Veronica was bad at hers and was in training to be an earth mother. It was her only advantage and she used it.

  Emma shivered. It was cold in the house: Pete hadn’t thought to leave the heating on when he’d gone out. Her limbs felt stiff and achey, and she still had that lower back pain she got when she had her period. Finally, she got up and went into the bathroom to wash her face.

  A blotchy-faced woman stared at her from the smeary bathroom mirror. A woman who looked young enough if you just took in her unlined face and pale skin dusted with a faint tan, but who looked a thousand years old if you stared at the bruised, hurt eyes.

  The familiar pink bottle of baby lotion mocked her from its position on the shelf above the sink. She used it for taking off her eye make-up. Not that she didn’t have proper eye make-up removers, of course. But she loved the smell of it, the baby smell of it. Sometimes, she rubbed it on her skin as moisturizer and imagined the smell of a small baby, nuzzling close to her, scented with baby lotion. Today, she shoved the bottle in the medicine cabinet where she wouldn’t have to look at it.

  Emma splashed water on her face and forced herself to apply some make-up. She didn’t want to look like a death’s head when Pete arrived home. It wasn’t fair to lay all this grief on him, wasn’t fair to make him suffer the same pain purely because she wasn’t pregnant again. She had to go through too much agony because of her barren, useless womb: why should he have to go through it all too? Sometimes she wondered if she was right to keep her fears from him. Would it tear them apart, her longing for a baby and keeping it to herself? No, she decided. She wouldn’t let it.

  Just in case, she took one of her mother’s Valiu
ms. After a while, she felt marginally better, good enough to shove a load of clothes in the washing machine. She still moved around mechanically, but she could manage.

  She was curled up in an armchair watching the costume drama that Pete had kindly taped for her while she was away, when she heard his key in the lock.

  ‘I’m home, darling. Where are you?’

  ‘In the sitting room.’

  He was at the door in an instant, the back of his short dark hair still damp from the shower because he wouldn’t have bothered to dry it. Solidly built and reliable, he was the perfect defensive player for his soccer team and sufficiently dependable-looking to make a very good sales rep.

  His guileless face with the wide-spaced laughing brown eyes and the honest smile was appealing enough to make many a female office manager order far more stationery than she’d originally intended, simply because Pete told her she’d need it. He only said that when it was true. For his guileless expression wasn’t a put-on job: Pete Sheridan was one of nature’s gentlemen – kind, genuine and nice to children and animals. He’d never cheat on his expenses or walk out of a shop letting the cashier give him change for a twenty when he’d only paid with a tenner. Scrupulously honest was the perfect description of Pete.

  Now he threw himself on top of Emma joyfully and kissed her face and neck until she squealed that he was tickling her.

  ‘Missed you,’ he said.

  ‘Missed you too.’ She held on to him, gaining comfort from his closeness. She loved him so much, adored him. All she wanted, Emma thought, her face hard against the rough wool of his heavy sweater, was his baby. She felt her eyes tear up again and bit her lip harshly in an attempt to stop them. She was not going to break down in front of Pete. She’d promised herself.

  ‘Get off me, you big lump,’ she said jokily, trying to make her voice light-hearted. ‘You’re flattening me.’