Someone Like You

‘Well, you’d better go and put on another outfit, hadn’t you? Or we’ll be later,’ Jimmy said impatiently.

Emma decided not to mention that their chances of being upgraded were non-existent because there was no first class on a charter flight. Her mother’s fantasies about an elegant lifestyle never had the slightest basis in reality, so what was the point?

For a moment, she toyed with the idea of saying she wasn’t changing her outfit. But the sight of her father’s taut face made up her mind. As she’d learned during her twenty-eight years living under her father’s roof, he hated ‘butch’ clothes and women in trousers.

‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she said with false gaiety and ran back upstairs.

In the bedroom, she got down on her knees and banged her head on the bed. Coward! You decided yesterday that your dungarees were perfect for travelling in. You should have said something!

Still berating herself, Emma fished the little red book out from under her side of the bed and opened it on the affirmation page: ‘I am a positive person. I am a good person. My thoughts and feelings are worthwhile and valid.’

Repeating those three phrases over and over again, Emma ripped off her dungarees and T-shirt and pulled on a cream knitted long skirt and tunic she sometimes wore to work in the summer when all her other clothes were in the wash.

Today, all her decent summer clothes were in the suitcase at the bottom of the stairs. Bought on a hateful shopping trip with her mother, the cream knit suit made her look like an anaemic café latte come to life – tall, straight as a schoolboy and colourless.

While the soft blues of her denim clothes made her pale blue eyes with the amber flecks stand out, creams and taupes reduced her face to monotones: pale skin, pale hair, pale bloody everything. She sighed; she felt so boring and colourless.

She’d never been good with make-up and, anyway, lipstick only made her thin lips look even thinner. If only she’d had the courage to have a nose job, Emma thought. Long and too big for her face, it was hideous. Barry Manilow’s nose was practically retroussé beside hers. Wearing her fringe long was the only way to hide it. Her sister Kirsten had been blessed with the looks in their family. She was vibrant, sexy and a huge hit with the male of the species who loved her unusual sense of style and her joiede vivre. The only unusual thing about Emma was her voice, a low, husky growl that seemed at odds with her conservative, shy image. Pete always told her she could have worked in radio with a voice like that.

‘What you mean is that I sound like a bombshell so I’d be perfect for radio where people can’t see me and realize I’m not one,’ she’d tease him.

‘You’re a bombshell to me,’ he’d say lovingly.

‘Come on,’ roared her father from downstairs. ‘We’ll be late.’

Emma closed her eyes for a brief moment. The idea of an entire week with her parents made her dizzy. She must have been mad to agree to go with them.

She’d always wanted to go to Egypt and take a Nile cruise, longed to go since she’d first read about the dazzling Queen Nefertiti and the beauty of Karnak Temple as a child. But she’d dreamed of going with Pete, Emma thought miserably, tucking her self-help book into her small handbag.

She hadn’t planned to bring Positive For Life – Your Guide To Increasing Your Self-Esteem by Dr Barbra Rose with her. She must have been off her rocker. On this trip, she wouldn’t simply need the book – she’d need Dr Rose herself, complete with a case packed with the most cutting-edge pharmacology to keep her father in a coma. Now that would be the holiday of a lifetime.

Satisfied that her daughter was now suitably dressed and wouldn’t disgrace the family en route to the pleasures of the Nile, Anne-Marie O’Brien happily kept up her monologue all the way to the airport: ‘You’ll never guess who I met this morning,’ she said cosily, with not the slightest intention of drawing breath long enough for either Emma or her father to guess. ‘Mrs Page. Lord Almighty, if you could have seen the get up she was wearing. Jeans. At her age! I wouldn’t have bothered to talk to her at all, but she was beside the toothpaste and I wanted an extra tube in case I can’t get any when we’re away. I can’t imagine the Egyptians will be too keen on the hygiene products,’ she added.

Squashed in the back seat of the Opel with the luggage threatening to fall on top of her every time they went round a corner, Emma closed her eyes wearily. Was there any point in explaining that the Egyptians lived in a sophisticated, highly civilized society, built the pyramids and studied astronomy when the O’Brien ancestors were still banging rocks together and trying to figure out how to make things with sharp stones?

‘…If you’d heard her going on about that Antoinette of hers, well.’ Mrs O’Brien’s voice registered the fiercest of disapproval. ‘Scandalous, that’s what it is. Living with that man with two children and not a ring on her finger. Does she not think that those little children deserve the sanctity of marriage instead of being…’ her voice sank to a whisper, ‘illegitimate!’

‘Illegitimacy doesn’t exist any more.’ Emma had to say something. Antoinette was a friend of hers.

‘It’s all very well for you to say that,’ her mother said, ‘but it’s not right or proper. It’s a mockery of the Church and the ceremonies. That girl is making a rod for her own back, mark my words. That man’ll up and leave her. She should have got married like normal people do.’

‘He’s separated, Mum. He can’t get married until his divorce comes through.’

‘That’s more of it, Emma. I can’t understand young people today. Does the catechism mean nothing to them? At least your father and I never had any problems like that with you. I told Mrs Page you and Peter were so settled and happy, that Peter is Assistant Sales Director at Devine’s Paper Company and that you’re Special Projects Co ordinator.’ Pleasure at remembering a most enjoyable bit of boasting made Mrs O’Brien smile.

‘He’s one of the assistant sales directors, Mum,’ Emma said in vexation. ‘There are six of them, you know.’

‘I didn’t say anything wrong,’ her mother insisted, tart at being corrected. ‘And you are Special Projects Coordinator. We are so proud of our little girl, aren’t we, Jimmy?’

Her father never took his eyes off the road where he was busily making it a dangerous morning for cyclists. ‘We are,’ he said absently. ‘Very proud. Of both of you. I always knew our Kirsten would do well,’ he said happily. ‘Chip off the old block there.’

Emma smiled weakly and made a mental note to phone Antoinette Page when she got home to apologize for her mother’s insensitive remarks, which would no doubt have filtered through by then. If Anne-Marie O’Brien continued boasting about Peter and Emma’s brilliant careers as if they were rocket scientists with matching Porsches and millions in the bank, they wouldn’t have a friend left. Pete worked as a salesman in an office-supply company and her job involved huge amounts of exhausting work of the envelope-stuffing-and-organizing-shifts variety rather than swanning around at posh charity lunches, which was the way her mother explained KrisisKids to everyone.

Emma’s job was administration rather than fund-raising. She organized the phoneline, which abused or frightened kids could phone anonymously, as well as taking care of the day-to-day running of the KrisisKids office. There were glamorous lunches where rich, well-connected ladies paid hundreds of pounds for a ticket, but Emma never went to those functions, to her mother’s dismay.

Still, Emma thought, determined to see the positive side of things, it was nice to think that her parents were proud of her, even if they only voiced it when they were trying to lord it over other people, and never to her personally. Naturally, they were prouder of her younger sister Kirsten. It was just as well that Emma adored Kirsten, because a lifetime of hearing how clever/pretty/cute Kirsten was could have destroyed any relationship between the sisters. But they were close, in spite of Jimmy’s unwittingly divisive tactics.

‘Mrs Page was delighted to hear about Kirsten’s new house in Castleknock,’ Anne-Marie continued. ‘I told her there were five en suite bathrooms and that Patrick was driving a…oh, what’s that car called?’

‘Lexus,’ Jimmy supplied.

‘That’s it. “Hasn’t she done well for herself?” I said. And I told her Kirsten didn’t have to work any more but was involved in raising funds for that environmental project…’

Emma could have written a book on her younger sister’s achievements as dictated proudly by her mother. Kirsten had managed to pull off the treble whammy of marrying an incredibly rich stockbroker, avoiding seeing her parents except at Christmas, and still being the prodigal daughter all at the same time.

Even though she loved Kirsten and, with only one year between them, they’d grown up almost like twins, Emma was sick and tired of hearing about how wonderful Kirsten’s charity work was when she knew for a fact that her sister was only interested in environmental charity on the grounds that she might meet Sting and so that she had something to talk about with the other ladies who lunched when they were teeing up at the ninth. Emma was also fed up with the way Kirsten and Patrick managed to wriggle out of all the Sunday lunches, leaving Pete and herself to suffer through at least seven hours of ‘What I Think is Wrong With the World – A Personal View by Jimmy O’Brien’ every two weeks. Driving home after the last lunchtime rant against emigrants arriving in Ireland looking for work, Pete had asked Emma if there was such a word as ‘pan-got’.

‘What’s that?’ she’d asked merrily, happy in the knowledge that their duty was done for another fortnight.

‘A person who’s bigoted against everything and everyone. You know, the way “pan” means everything.’

‘Probably not until Dad came along, but I’m sure we could tape him and send it into the Oxford English Dictionary people,’ she suggested. ‘Pan-got would be in the next edition, certainly.’

Anne-Marie was fretting as they neared the airport. ‘I hope Kirsten will be all right for the week; she told me on the phone that Patrick is going to be away.’

Emma raised her eyes to heaven. In direct contrast to herself, Kirsten was one of life’s survivors. Put her on the north face of the Eiger with nothing but a tent and a jar of Bovril and she’d turn up twenty-four hours later with a tan from skiing, lots of new clothes and a host of phone numbers from all the other interesting people she’d met en route, who’d all have yachts, villas in Gstaad, personal trainers and Rolexes. A week without Patrick meant Kirsten would have carte blanche to go mad with her gold card in Brown Thomas’s and would end up knocking back vodka tonics in some nightclub every evening, with a besotted admirer in tow. Emma didn’t think her sister had been unfaithful to her stolid and reliable husband, but she certainly enjoyed flirting with other men.

‘She’ll be fine, Mum,’ Emma said drily.

At the airport, her father let them off outside the departures hall with all the luggage and then drove off to find a parking spot. Anne-Marie went into fuss mode immediately: tranquil when her husband was there and bossing everyone around, she became anxious and hyper as soon as he was out of sight.

‘My glasses,’ she said suddenly as she and Emma joined the slow-moving queue at the check-in desk. ‘I don’t think I brought them!’

The note of rising hysteria in her mother’s voice made Emma gently take her hand and pat it comfortingly. ‘Will I look in your handbag, Mum?’ she said.

Anne-Marie nodded and thrust the small cream leather bag at her. The glasses were in the side compartment in their worn tapestry case, blindingly obvious if only her mother had looked.

‘They were here all the time, Mum.’

Her mother’s anxiety faded a little. ‘I’m sure I’ve forgotten something,’ she said. Closing her eyes as if running through a mental list, she was silent for a minute. ‘Have you forgotten something?’ she said abruptly.

Emma shook her head.

‘Sanitary stuff and things like that,’ her mother hissed, sotto voce. ‘Who knows what you’ll be able to buy out there. I bet you forgot. I should have got some for you this morning in the supermarket, but that Mrs Page took my mind quite off what I was doing…’

Emma tried to tune out, but her mother’s words mocked her. Sanitary stuff. She probably should have brought tampons with her but had hoped it would be tempting fate to bring them.

Her period was due in four days and maybe it wouldn’t come this time. This could be it: pregnant! She’d been so tired all week and she was sure her nipples felt sensitive, the way her pregnancy book said they would. They never felt like that normally. So she’d been reckless and left all her period paraphernalia out of her suitcase, hadn’t brought even one single tampon or pair of heavy-duty, enormous knickers in case they would bring her bad luck. Emma allowed herself a little quiver of excitement at the thought.