Cathy Kelly - Someone Like You

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.