LITMIR.BIZ

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I’m Hannah Campbell. Since you’re on your own, would you like to have a drink with us?’

      The girl’s face creased into a pleased smile.

      Hannah loved being right: the girl was pretty when she smiled. She had a sweet, shy smile and her eyes were a lovely smoky blue colour fringed with fair lashes. If only she’d do something with that hair.

      ‘I’d love to,’ Emma said in her hesitant, throaty voice. ‘I always feel so self-conscious sitting on my own with a drink. I’m Emma, by the way. Emma Sheridan.’

      Carrying her drink, she followed Hannah over to the table and held her hand out to Leonie.

      ‘Emma Sheridan,’ she said formally.

      Leonie grinned. ‘Leonie Delaney,’ she replied.

      ‘Do you mind me joining you?’ Emma asked.

      ‘Thrilled,’ Leonie said.

      ‘Right.’ Hannah decided she needed to do something to liven things up. ‘We all need a drink. What do you want, girls?’

      ‘I’ve loads of mineral water left,’ Emma said, holding up her glass.

      ‘Nonsense,’ Hannah said briskly. ‘You need a proper drink.’

      The other woman’s expression faltered. ‘I shouldn’t, really. My father, you know…’ she hesitated, catching herself just in time. Imagine telling these two women that she wasn’t going to have a drink because her father disapproved of women drinking more than a sherry and she couldn’t face his disapproval. They’d think she was a complete nutcase. ‘My father says the beer here is supposed to be very strong.’

      ‘A glass of wine won’t kill you.’

      Something fell to the floor and Hannah picked it up. It was a small bottle of Dr Bach’s Rescue Remedy, the herbal antidote to stress. You took four drops on your tongue to calm your nerves, she knew, having consumed enough of it when she was recovering from Harry’s round-the-world bombshell.

      Emma gave her a wry look. ‘Travelling makes me stressed,’ she said bluntly. She left out the words ‘travelling with my father…’

      Hannah handed the bottle back. ‘Well, you definitely need one drink then.’

      Leonie pronounced her white wine unusual but drinkable, so that was that. The barman brought three glasses of white wine.

      Emma, who seemed to be relaxing with every moment, took an enormous sip of her drink. She gasped and gave a happy little shudder. ‘I needed that. So,’ she said, ‘I presume you two are friends.’

      ‘No,’ Leonie said, ‘we met on the plane. I’m terrified of flying and Hannah swapped seats with me. But as we’re travelling on our own, we sort of linked up.’

      ‘I’m here with my parents,’ Emma explained, then felt herself redden because she knew damn well the other two knew that.

      Everyone who’d been on the plane had known it: you couldn’t miss her father. Now they’d really think she was some sort of weirdo who was tied to her parents. ‘My husband had to go to a conference and couldn’t come with us,’ she added. Nervousness made her tactless: ‘Do your partners not like cultural trips either?’

      Hannah grinned. ‘I’m not seeing anyone right now and my last lover’ – her full lips curved into a smile at the thought of Jeff – ‘well, I don’t know if he’d have been into a trip to Egypt.’

      ‘My husband and I are divorced,’ blurted out Leonie. ‘We meant to come to Egypt on our honeymoon, but we were too broke at the time. I figured that if I waited until I was married again to come here, I’d be waiting a long time.’ She slumped in her seat, feeling miserable. It must be jet lag or something.

      ‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ Hannah said kindly. ‘If you want something, you’ll get it. If you want a man, go out and get one.’

      Leonie stared at her in astonishment. Most of her friends – well, Anita and the female members of the gang, really – changed the subject brusquely if she mentioned her single status. They muttered that men weren’t everything and, God, sure didn’t they nearly murder Tony/Bill/whoever every five minutes for leaving the loo seat up or for never washing up so much as a spoon. ‘Wouldn’t you be as well off on your own,’ they chorused with fake cheeriness. ‘Nobody to act hopeless around the washing machine. And you have the kids, after all…’

      But Hannah had no such compunction. ‘We’ll help you find a nice single bloke on the cruise,’ Hannah said. ‘There’s bound to be someone on the boat who’s longing for the love of a good woman.’

      ‘It’s not that easy,’ Leonie protested.

      ‘I’m not saying it is, but you can do it if you want to. It just takes a different approach these days. You’ve so much going for you, Leonie, you’d get a man no bother if you really put your mind to it.’ She patted Leonie’s arm reassuringly.

      Leonie was still mouthing in shock. How lovely of Hannah to say she had a lot going for her, but how mad as a bicycle to imagine that getting a man was just a simple matter of deciding to do so and accomplishing it. Perhaps that’s how it happened to people like Hannah but not to her. I mean, she thought, where had all the available men been over the last few years? Waiting for her to emerge from the chrysalis of having children under the age of fourteen?

      ‘What do you mean by “putting your mind to it”?’ she asked finally.

      ‘Dating agencies, magazine adverts, even carmaintenance classes,’ Hannah said matter-of-factly. ‘You’ve got to try them all. That’s the way to meet people these days.’

      ‘My friend Gwen met her boyfriend through a dinner club,’ Emma pointed out.

      ‘A dinner club?’

      ‘It’s a club for singles and you all go out to dinner once a month and see what happens. Gwen says she met loads of men. Some strange guys too, mind you. But she met Paul and that’s all that matters to her.’

      ‘I’d put any man off me if he saw me eating,’ Leonie said, only half joking. ‘Or I’d have to do like Scarlett O’Hara and eat before I went out so I’d be able to nibble daintily in front of Mr Right. Women with big appetites put men off, I’m sure of it.’

      ‘I’d probably order the sloppiest thing on the menu and end up with sauce all over my chin and chunks of bread roll flying off to hit other people in the eye,’ laughed Emma, getting into the swing of things now that she’d had that wonderful glass of wine. ‘I’m so clumsy when I’m nervous.’

      ‘Aren’t we all?’ Hannah groaned.

      Both Emma and Leonie thought that was unlikely. Hannah looked so self-possessed and calm. Even her hair obeyed her. Sleek and perfectly groomed, not a stray dark hair dangled from her neat ponytail.

      ‘Honestly, I am,’ she protested, seeing the looks of disbelief on their faces. ‘I went for a job interview a month ago and when I was supposed to be reaching into my attaché case to hand them details of this computer course I’d done, I stupidly reached into my handbag instead, and stuck my fingers right into my hairbrush. You know the way you get a bristle under the nail…?’

      They all winced.

      ‘It bled like a ruddy artery and I had to get tissue, wrap the finger in it – all while my hand was still in my handbag! – and pretend nothing had happened for the rest of the interview. They must have thought I was hideously tense because I kept one hand clenched up all the time, trying to hide the tissue so I wouldn’t look like a casualty victim in need of a transfusion.’

      ‘You poor thing,’ Leonie said sympathetically. ‘Did you get the job in the end?’

      Hannah’s grin of triumph lit up her face and the toffee-coloured eyes sparkled. ‘Yes. Bloody finger and all.’

      She

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