Cathy Kelly - Someone Like You

‘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.