Free Someone Like You by Cathy Kelly Page B

fact that the compact shower room had only a tiny mirror so she didn’t have to stare at her huge, pinky-white naked self. She spent the usual ten minutes trying on clothes, then ripping them off and throwing them on the bed when she looked awful in the long wardrobe mirror.
    Her burgundy velvet embroidered dress was too hot even if it was the nicest thing she’d brought and her other dress, the sleeveless black one, revealed so much of her plump arms she couldn’t bear it. Hannah would not be having this problem, she sighed, thinking of what a fantastic figure her new friend had. Slim and elegant, Hannah had looked wonderful in her simple travelling clothes. Leonie would have killed to look that good in jeans.
    Eventually, she settled on the sleeveless dress worn with an open pink silk shirt, the long tail covering up her bum, she hoped. She left the cabin full of anticipation for the night ahead.
    The informal meeting before dinner in the top-deck bar was in half an hour but Leonie decided to go up now, so she could daydream quietly and watch the world go by.
    In her daydreams, she had a vision of herself sitting on the upper deck, glass of wine in hand and a swarm of admiring men surrounding her like something from Scott Fitzgerald. Instead, she caught sight of herself in the smoky mirrors which lined the stairs and saw the familiar reflection: the solid peasant’s body and a mass of hair like untamed hay that no anti-frizz serum could help.
    Scott Fitzgerald’s heroes would probably hand her their empty martini glasses and ask for refills, presuming she was the serving girl.
    Wishing she’d stuck to a diet for her holidays, she stomped upstairs to the bar. Decorated in ornate carved wood, it was certainly from another era with its Art Deco furniture and French lithographs behind the counter.
    She ordered a glass of white wine from the smiling, dark-eyed young barman and, once she’d signed her room number on the bill, took her glass outside to the bar-level deck where she could feel the night air on her skin and listen to the noises of the river.
    There was nobody else there and she breathed in the silence broken only by a distant hum of Arab music from one end of the boat. It was still gloriously warm and Leonie felt herself relax finally as she stared out over the tranquil darkness of the Nile. She wasn’t going to obsess about being forty-something and manless: she was going to enjoy herself.
    Moored to the other bank, she could see the tall sails of river boats. Feluccas, her guide book had explained.
    You could rent one and sail down the river for a couple of hours, travelling the way people had for thousands of years. How romantic.
    She picked up her glass and was about to take a sip when she heard a hesitant, rather husky voice through the vast open doors order a mineral water with no ice.
    Leonie smiled to herself and played one of her favourite games: guessing to whom the voice belonged. She thought of the couple of sedate blue-rinsed ladies who’d climbed on to the coach last of all, twittering with relief that one of their bags hadn’t been gobbled up by the carousel but had in fact been rescued from the wrong baggage cart by an apologetic airport official. Definitely one of them.
    Although that voice was very sexy, very whiskey and cigarettes as it said, ‘Thank you so much,’ in an anxious manner. Too sexy to be a genteel seventy-year-old, unless she’d had a lifetime of fierce chain-smoking behind her.
    Twisting in her seat to see if she was right, Leonie was astonished to see that the owner of the voice was the anxious Saluki Woman with the parents from hell, still wearing her long cream outfit and still looking immaculate. But she looked different somehow.
    Instead of her previously distant expression, the woman’s face was tired and, no, Leonie wasn’t imagining it, friendly. She even carried herself differently: her body was no longer tense and she gazed around as if some weight had been