Someone Like You

CHAPTER SIX

Dragging her suitcase behind her, Emma opened her front door and breathed in the scent of a house where the windows hadn’t been opened since she left. The peace lily in the hall looked like a weeping willow, its leaves drooping with thirst, while the newel post of the banisters was armour-plated with a selection of Pete’s raincoats and sweaters. Ignoring the mess, Emma abandoned the suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and headed for the kitchen.

There was a note on the kitchen table, lying amid a week’s worth of newspapers, supplements and junk mail. Emma put down her handbag, shivered in the chill of the Irish August which seemed so icy after Egypt, and switched on the kettle. Only then did she read the note.

Can’t wait to see you, darling. I’m at a match. Back at seven. I’ve dinner under control. Don’t do anything.

Love, Pete

She grinned. Dinner under control probably meant he’d stop off at Mario’s on the way home and pick up a giant Four Seasons pizza with a side order of garlic potatoes.

She brought her tea and the luggage upstairs and started to unpack. Out of the suitcase came skirts, T-shirts and underwear, all mingled up with the postcards she couldn’t resist and the pretty fake alabaster Egyptian figurines she’d bought in the souk in Luxor. She took one out of its tissue wrapping, marvelling at the detail of the carving on the falcon god, Horus.

It’d fall apart given a sharp knock, Flora the tour guide had warned the Nile cruisers, explaining that real alabaster statues were hand-made and built to last, unlike their cheap street-market relatives. Emma hadn’t cared. She’d wanted some cheap’n’cheerful souvenirs for the people in the office and, at three Egyptian pounds each, these statuettes fitted the bill perfectly. Happy with her purchases, she pulled the others from their wrapping until all six were uncovered and she began to plan which one she’d give to which colleague.

She took her sandals from the plastic bags she’d wrapped them up in and threw dirty clothes into the laundry basket which was already groaning with Pete’s stuff.

Her mind wasn’t really on unpacking: she was dying to see Pete and tell him everything; about her new friends and all the places they’d been…Then her hand touched something cool, soft and plastic. From under the folds of clothes she hadn’t worn, she unearthed the big pack of sanitary towels, an Egyptian brand she’d never heard of with a picture of a dove on the front. She took the packet slowly from the case and the pain hit her again. The pain of knowing that there had been no baby growing safely inside her, wrapped in fierce love and protected from the world by Emma’s body. No baby to rest its downy head against her breast, no soft mouth instinctively searching for the nipple, no crying, innocent little creature utterly dependent on Emma for everything.

The pain came from deep within herself. Her chest hurt, her head hurt, it felt as if even the bones of her body ached with the very hurt of it all. She heard a noise and realized it was herself, crying, keening like a woman at a funeral.

After days of holding on, she finally let the heartache out: every twinge of anguish, every pang of loss. It was as if a dam had burst.

Now that she was here, crouched on her own bedroom floor, leaning against the bed, she could cry to her heart’s content over her lost baby. Because it was a lost baby to her. Another chance lost, another life she’d been so sure had been inside her gone. Leonie and Hannah had been good to her; they’d tried their best to understand and comfort her. But they didn’t understand. Leonie had children, three lovely kids. Hannah didn’t seem to want children yet, although Emma would never be able to understand how any woman could not want children. But she didn’t. So it was different for them.

But Emma, she wanted her own baby with an intensity that was killing her. It had to be killing her, she thought as the tears ran unchecked down her cheeks, it hurt so much. That much hurt couldn’t be good for you. It had to be like cancer, eating away inside you until there was nothing left but a shell, nothing but hate and rage and anger at anyone who had that one simple thing denied her.

Everybody else had children so effortlessly. People had babies by mistake, people had abortions. Emma was always reading about women in the newspapers who said things like: ‘Little Jimmy was an accident after the other six, we’d never planned him…’

Even worse, her work with KrisisKids meant she was constantly exposed to the stories of abused and abandoned children, defenceless kids who’d been let down by the people who were supposed to love them most: their parents. It was as well, Emma reflected, that her role in the charity was administrative because if she had to personally deal with the crying kids who rang their helpline, she didn’t know how she’d have been able to cope. The counsellors found it hard enough, she knew. Sometimes they left abruptly after their shift, white-faced and drained, unable to chat with their colleagues because there was simply no way to go from hearing a child’s most terrible secrets to idly discussing the weather or what was on the TV that night. Emma knew she’d have been hopeless when faced with a child haltingly telling her about the cigarette burns or how daddy climbed into her bed at night and told her to keep a secret. Those people weren’t parents: they were evil creatures, demonic. What she couldn’t understand was why God gave them the gift of a child.

But then, how did God work out who got kids and who didn’t? Who decided that Emma would remain childless while some blithe, unconcerned women had families the size of football teams? The rage she felt for those mothers shocked her. She wanted to kill them, women who took it all for granted. Who had no idea what it was like to yearn for a child, who simply laughed when the pregnancy test was positive, and said things like: ‘Oh well, another kid for the football team!’ or ‘We’ve always meant to start a family, we may as well start now!’

She hated them, hated them with all her being.

Nearly as much as those women who held their children like trophies, proudly and smugly letting the world know that they had babies, even if some poor helpless women couldn’t get the hang of it. Emma thought she hated those women most of all: they looked down at her, she knew it.

Like Veronica in the office, who wore her motherhood like a badge of honour, never ceasing to tell all and sundry about little Phil and how cute he was, never forgetting to slyly ask Emma if she didn’t want children herself.

Veronica knew. Emma was sure of it. That knowledge was her lever over Emma, her boss.

‘Phil is crawling around the house like a little rocket these days,’ she’d announced recently as they all sat in the back office having their lunch. Then she’d directed a comment at Emma who hadn’t really been paying attention: ‘I can’t believe you and Pete haven’t started a family yet, Emma. You don’t want to leave it too late, you know. And then find out you couldn’t have kids!’ she trilled, her voice grating.

Emma could have killed Veronica there and then. Instead she’d smiled woodenly and managed to get a few words out: ‘There’s plenty of time, we’re in no hurry.’

She thought of Veronica as she sat there silently on the bedroom floor, the tears drying saltily on her cheeks. How would she ever face Veronica on Monday? Phil was bound to have done something miraculous for a toddler of his age during the past week and no doubt Veronica would be discussing whether to ring the Guinness Book of Records or not. Everyone would be asked their opinion and Veronica would give the subject far more attention than she ever gave her work. She wasn’t a very good assistant. Maybe that was why she hated Emma and was so knowingly malicious. Emma was good at her job and childless. Veronica was bad at hers and was in training to be an earth mother. It was her only advantage and she used it.

Emma shivered. It was cold in the house: Pete hadn’t thought to leave the heating on when he’d gone out. Her limbs felt stiff and achey, and she still had that lower back pain she got when she had her period. Finally, she got up and went into the bathroom to wash her face.

A blotchy-faced woman stared at her from the smeary bathroom mirror. A woman who looked young enough if you just took in her unlined face and pale skin dusted with a faint tan, but who looked a thousand years old if you stared at the bruised, hurt eyes.

The familiar pink bottle of baby lotion mocked her from its position on the shelf above the sink. She used it for taking off her eye make-up. Not that she didn’t have proper eye make-up removers, of course. But she loved the smell of it, the baby smell of it. Sometimes, she rubbed it on her skin as moisturizer and imagined the smell of a small baby, nuzzling close to her, scented with baby lotion. Today, she shoved the bottle in the medicine cabinet where she wouldn’t have to look at it.

Emma splashed water on her face and forced herself to apply some make-up. She didn’t want to look like a death’s head when Pete arrived home. It wasn’t fair to lay all this grief on him, wasn’t fair to make him suffer the same pain purely because she wasn’t pregnant again. She had to go through too much agony because of her barren, useless womb: why should he have to go through it all too? Sometimes she wondered if she was right to keep her fears from him. Would it tear them apart, her longing for a baby and keeping it to herself? No, she decided. She wouldn’t let it.

Just in case, she took one of her mother’s Valiums. After a while, she felt marginally better, good enough to shove a load of clothes in the washing machine. She still moved around mechanically, but she could manage.

She was curled up in an armchair watching the costume drama that Pete had kindly taped for her while she was away, when she heard his key in the lock.

‘I’m home, darling. Where are you?’

‘In the sitting room.’

He was at the door in an instant, the back of his short dark hair still damp from the shower because he wouldn’t have bothered to dry it. Solidly built and reliable, he was the perfect defensive player for his soccer team and sufficiently dependable-looking to make a very good sales rep.

His guileless face with the wide-spaced laughing brown eyes and the honest smile was appealing enough to make many a female office manager order far more stationery than she’d originally intended, simply because Pete told her she’d need it. He only said that when it was true. For his guileless expression wasn’t a put-on job: Pete Sheridan was one of nature’s gentlemen – kind, genuine and nice to children and animals. He’d never cheat on his expenses or walk out of a shop letting the cashier give him change for a twenty when he’d only paid with a tenner. Scrupulously honest was the perfect description of Pete.

Now he threw himself on top of Emma joyfully and kissed her face and neck until she squealed that he was tickling her.

‘Missed you,’ he said.

‘Missed you too.’ She held on to him, gaining comfort from his closeness. She loved him so much, adored him. All she wanted, Emma thought, her face hard against the rough wool of his heavy sweater, was his baby. She felt her eyes tear up again and bit her lip harshly in an attempt to stop them. She was not going to break down in front of Pete. She’d promised herself.

‘Get off me, you big lump,’ she said jokily, trying to make her voice light-hearted. ‘You’re flattening me.’

‘Sorry.’

While her husband levered himself off the armchair, Emma wiped her hand over her eyes, whisking away the tears.

Pete threw himself on to another chair from where he could reach over and hold her hand.

‘Tell me everything. How was the trip and how was your father? He didn’t get arrested and thrown into an Egyptian prison or anything, did he?’

In spite of herself, Emma grinned. ‘No, although I’m surprised the tour guide didn’t arrange it. You want to have heard him giving out yards to her when he discovered we had to pay extra to bring cameras into some of the sights.’ She shuddered at the recollection and her face burned in remembered shame.

‘Oh God, a female tour guide,’ groaned Pete. ‘That won’t have gone down well.’ It was no secret that Jimmy O’Brien believed women were less evolved than men. Certainly no secret to his daughter, who’d been brought up hearing the impatient words, ‘Here, let me do that. Women are useless at practical things,’ all the time. It had never bothered Kirsten because she liked other people doing things for her and had no intention of learning to do anything that involved being practical.

‘Tell me about it,’ Emma sighed. ‘He lost his temper totally in the Valley of the Kings and started yelling at Flora about how we’d paid for the tour and shouldn’t have to pay any extra to use our cameras. Then he said that it was obvious the ticket-office people were taking advantage of her because she was a woman and they knew she’d fall for a scam like that, so why didn’t he go in and sort things out.’

‘Business as usual,’ Pete remarked sagely. ‘He’s quite a character, your father.’

Character, felt Emma, wasn’t the word.

‘Egypt was incredible,’ she enthused, squeezing Pete’s hand to show him that she was thrilled to be back, ‘but if it hadn’t been for these two women I met on the trip, Leonie and Hannah, I don’t think I’d have remained sane. Dad drove me mad and Mum is definitely losing her marbles, or losing something.’

‘It’s your father,’ Pete said. ‘He has that effect on everyone.’

‘No.’ Emma shook her head emphatically. ‘It’s nothing to do with Dad, for once. She’s getting very forgetful. She kept wittering on about the foreign currency and trying to work out how many Egyptian pounds there were to Irish ones. Normally she’d leave that sort of thing to Dad, but this time she became obsessed with working it out. She was vague a lot of the time, as if she wasn’t aware of where she was. I don’t know, I can’t put my finger on it but there’s something not quite right.’

‘Come on.’ Pete got to his feet and held out a hand to pull Emma from her chair. ‘Let’s put the pizza in the oven and you can tell me about these two women you met on the trip. If they can perform the phenomenal feat of keeping your mind off your parents, can they come and stay with us for Christmas?’

‘There’s a thought,’ Emma groaned, thinking of the trauma of enforced festive jollity in the O’Brien house, a place where peace and goodwill to all men was an alien concept. ‘You’d love them, Pete. Hannah is really confident and fun. Dad couldn’t stand her, naturally. And Leonie is sweet. She’s got three kids, she’s divorced, and I think she’s really lonely. Hannah insists our mission in life is to find a nice husband for Leonie.’

‘Neil is looking for a sweet divorcée,’ Pete said, referring to one of his old schoolfriends. ‘We could fix them up.’

‘Neil is looking for a sex-bomb housekeeper whom he doesn’t have to pay and, no, I wouldn’t dream of setting poor Leonie up with him,’ Emma said sternly. ‘She’s been through enough in her life without getting stuck with Neil, his dandruff and his Newcastle fetish.’

‘I’ll tell him you said that.’ Pete inexpertly cut the plastic wrapper off the pizza and jammed it into the oven, which was so dripping with blackened tomato and burnt mozzar-ella that Emma knew he’d eaten nothing but frozen pizzas all week. ‘We’re meeting him down the pub later.’

She groaned. ‘Do we have to, love? I thought we’d have a quiet night in now that I’m home.’

Pete completed his cordon bleu preparations by switching the oven on, and then put his arms round Emma.

‘I know, but I couldn’t help it. It’s Janine’s birthday and Mike wants us to celebrate with them.’

Mike worked with Pete in the stationery business and the two couples often went out together for dinner. Emma was very fond of them, but wasn’t in the mood for being sociable. She wanted to snuggle up with Pete and maybe, just maybe, talk to him about the whole baby thing.

‘Why’s Neil coming?’ she asked.

‘He was at the match today and Mike asked him along. Seems that some of Janine’s single friends will be there and you know Neil, mention single females and he’s drooling to be asked.’

‘Mention single chimpanzees and Neil’s drooling,’ Emma pointed out. ‘And you wanted to fix him up with Leonie?’

‘I don’t know what she’s like,’ protested Pete. ‘They might be perfect together.’

Regretting being so grumpy about the night out, Emma patted her husband’s denim-clad bum fondly. ‘No, darling, perfect is you and me. Now tell me: did you eat any of the beautiful home-cooked meals I left in the freezer for you, or did you plough all your wages into the frozen foods section of the supermarket?’

The Coachman’s was buzzing with a Saturday evening crowd when Pete and Emma pushed their way through to the corner where Mike and Janine were holding court.

‘Hiya, guys,’ roared Mike, getting up off his barstool to give it to Emma. ‘Sit in beside Janine. She’s giving out yards to me because it’s her birthday and we’ve been talking footie all night.’

Janine was everything Emma was not. Like a modern Gina Lollobrigida, she had curves in all the right places and favoured sex goddess eyeliner, vermilion lips and clothes from Morgan which she probably had to be sewn into. She and Emma got on like a house on fire, having the same sense of humour and problems with families. Although, in Janine’s case, her mother was the domineering one, ruling her family with an iron fist in a floral oven glove. They’d spent many companionable hours discussing home life while their respective spouses discussed the shocking performance at Shelbourne Park the previous day.

‘Welcome back,’ she said now, planting a pout of Mac’s Ruby Woo lipstick on Emma’s cheek. ‘Tell me everything about your holiday. Was it wonderful?’

It was closing time when they finally left, Janine leading the way because otherwise the boys would never go home, she declared. As Pete had been smiling at Emma all evening, whispering into her ear that he’d missed her and was going to do all sorts of erotic things to her when they got home, she didn’t think she’d have any trouble getting Pete to leave the pub.

‘I’m shattered and if I don’t get to bed soon, I’ll collapse,’ Janine announced as they stood in the pub hallway waiting for the men to make their way through the crowds. ‘We had such a mad day yesterday, Em. Mike’s sister was having her baby christened and it turned into an almighty party.’

Beside her, Emma stiffened. Another baby; Jesus, was there no escaping this?

‘Honestly, you want to hear Mike’s mother when she’s got a few drinks in her. She’s delirious about being a granny for the first time and she was dropping hints like bricks about me and Mike.’ Janine chuckled at the very idea, oblivious to how quiet Emma had gone. She rooted in her handbag and dragged out a Polaroid photo of a smiling baby with huge eyes and not a scrap of hair.

Emma took the photo and made all the right noises as she looked at it. What a beautiful baby, she thought, longing and misery building up inside her. Why, oh why couldn’t it be hers?

‘It’s a lovely baby, don’t get me wrong, but God, the mess! That child is only two months old and to bring him anywhere, you need a vanload of stuff. Bottles, nappies, pushchairs! Get off!’ she squealed as Mike finally caught up with them and grabbed her from behind. ‘I thought you’d be too shagged after today for anything kinky,’ she laughed.

‘How could he be too shagged?’ demanded Pete with a glint in his eye. ‘He did nothing on the pitch, failed to score twice and nearly fell asleep when he was marking the other team’s winger. He’ll have loads of energy!’

They went their separate ways, clambering into taxis and arranging to phone each other during the week. Emma knew she was being very quiet on the way home, but she couldn’t help it. All the fun had gone out of the evening thanks to Janine’s comments. Someone else with a baby. Mike’s sister was only a year or so younger than Mike, which made her around twenty-nine. Younger than Emma. It killed her when women who were younger got pregnant. Was that what women felt years ago when their younger sisters got married before them? Being older and left on the shelf was supposed to be some sort of shame. Now the shame was being childless when girls younger than you were dropping babies like rabbits.

At home, Emma climbed the stairs slowly, still in her baby dreamworld. She was almost surprised when Pete didn’t go into the bathroom to brush his teeth but instead pulled her down on to their bed, kissing her passionately. It wasn’t his fault, she thought blankly as she let him unbutton her blue shirt. He was telling her he adored her but his words seemed to roll off her.

They’d made such wonderful love in the beginning, she remembered. Neither of them had been exactly experienced – well, Emma didn’t count the year dating her first teenage boyfriend as experience. But they’d both taken to the concept of fun in bed like fish to water. Her sister Kirsten had jokingly given them a Joy of Sex book as a secret engagement present, and they’d gone through the whole thing from beginning to end, never quite getting the hang of some of the more athletic positions.