Kitabı oku: «Someone Like You», sayfa 4

CHAPTER FOUR

Four hours later, Leonie stood in the queue at the airport clutching her guide book to her chest and wishing the plane journey was over. Ever since she’d seen that disaster movie about the guys in the Peruvian mountains who’d had to resort to cannibalism to survive after a plane crash, she’d hated flying. Loathed it.

‘I’ll give you some ketamine for the trip,’ joked Angie the previous day, referring to the heavy-duty animal tranquillizer.

‘I’d almost take it,’ Leonie had replied, not joking. She’d bought a bottle of herbal relaxant tablets, her travel sickness wrist-bands and some aromatherapy oil to rub on her temples, but she still felt more stressed than Mrs Reilly’s hyperactive cat when it was getting its claws clipped. A lovely, sweet animal in the home – or so Mrs Reilly regularly assured them immediately after Sootie had mauled somebody – the five-year-old tabby was labelled ‘dangerous’ in the surgery. Heavy gloves and sedation were required to calm Sootie before even the simplest job. Leonie wished that cabin crew sedated their patients.

She pushed her trolley further along the queue and looked at the other passengers taking Flight MS634 to Luxor. Nobody else appeared to be sweating with fear. Especially not the very slim woman at the front of the queue who had the nervous expression of a purebred Saluki hound. Long, silky, light brown hair that fell over her big saucer-like eyes added to the effect. In an unflattering cream knit outfit, she looked terribly thin and unhappy. She must have been about thirty, Leonie guessed, but she carried herself with the unease of a teenager going on a hated family holiday when she longed to be at home.

An older woman, obviously her mother, stood beside her talking animatedly. The older woman was wearing a very old-fashioned floral dress, the sort of thing Leonie’s rather Bohemian mother would have refused to wear years ago because she might have to wear gloves or a pill-box hat with it. A giant of a man with a beard appeared beside them and started arguing with the girl behind the airline counter, his booming voice easily audible along the length of the queue as he roared.

‘I’d make a complaint to you, young lady, but I don’t see the point,’ he thundered at the airline girl. ‘I’ve made my feelings more than plain to the travel people. You mark my words, they won’t be taking advantage of me.’

The Saluki Woman looked away, eyes wide with embarrassment, and caught sight of Leonie gazing at her. Abashed, Leonie looked down at her trolley. She loved people-watching but hated being caught. Figuring out what they did and what sort of people they were from peering into their trolleys in the supermarket was her favourite hobby, and she couldn’t sit on the train into Dublin for longer than five minutes without speculating on the relationship between the passengers sitting opposite her. Were they married, going out, about to break up? Did the woman with a trolley full of Häagen-Dazs chocolate chip but a figure like Kate Moss actually eat any of the ice cream or did she have a fat portrait of herself in the attic?

Up ahead, the woman at the desk said ‘Next’ with a relieved voice. When the difficult trio finally walked back down the queue after checking in, Leonie kept her eyes averted but risked a surreptitious glance at the younger woman.

As she walked past, carefully stowing her travel documents into a sleek little handbag that wouldn’t have held a quarter of Leonie’s cosmetic junk, Leonie noticed that the Saluki Woman had pink varnished nails which had been bitten down to the stubs. She looked resolutely ahead, as if she knew the entire queue had heard the argument and was terrified of making eye contact with anyone. Definitely not keen on holidaying with the parents, Leonie decided.

The queue shuffled forward and, with nobody interesting to gaze at, Leonie toyed with the idea of skipping off and driving home. Nobody would have to know: well, her mother would, because that would be her first port of call, to take her beloved Penny and the animals home. But nobody else had to know.

Meaning Anita. Safely on the way to West Cork, Anita wouldn’t be in Wicklow for another three weeks and would remain oblivious that her flamboyant, outwardly dauntless, divorced forty-two-year-old friend had cried off from her first single holiday ever because of fear of flying.

‘I’m going to the loo. I won’t be long,’ said a soft female voice behind her.

‘I’ll miss you,’ answered a male voice.

‘Oh,’ sighed the woman. ‘I love you.’

‘Love you too,’ answered the man.

Newlyweds, Leonie realized wistfully.

She pretended to look around her in boredom and got a glimpse of a young couple kissing gently before the woman, wearing a virginal pale pink short cotton dress that wasn’t exactly suitable for travelling in, hurried off in the direction of the toilets, looking back at her husband all the time, giving him sweet little waves and smiling with sheer joy.

He smiled back at her, one hand holding two suitcases on which some joker had written ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’ in sprawling white Tipp-Ex letters.

Had she ever been that happy and that much in love, Leonie wondered, turning back and gazing blankly at the rest of the queue. She didn’t think so. Surely she deserved it. Wasn’t there someone out there for her, someone who couldn’t bear to let her off to the loo without kissing her goodbye and telling her to be careful? There must be. And she wouldn’t find him sitting at home weeding the garden. She gave her trolley a determined shove along the slowly diminishing queue. Egypt here we come.

They’d put her in 56C, a window seat at the back of the plane. Leonie winced as she sat down in it and looked longingly at the two empty seats beside her. If only she could swap with one of the other people. But what if they didn’t want to move? Hating herself for being so nervous, Leonie peered down the aisle and looked for a stewardess she could accost and ask about changing seats. Instead, she saw a graceful woman striding towards her, confident and slim in jeans and a white T-shirt with a navy cotton cardigan slung casually over her shoulders.

She held her small holdall aloft so she wouldn’t bump into anything, but when she collided with a large man shoving a bag into the overhead locker, the woman gave him a dazzling smile, flicked back her long nutbrown hair, and strode on. The man’s eyes followed her, taking in the gentle sway of her slim hips and long, long legs. She was aware of his gaze, Leonie was sure of it, from the small smile that tilted up the corners of her full mouth as she progressed up the plane. She looked perfectly elegant and brimming with confidence, the sort of woman who was born to go on a Nile cruise, from the tips of her spotlessly clean deck shoes to the designer sunglasses perched on top of her head. When Leonie stuck her sunglasses on her head, they inevitably fell off.

The woman reached row 56 and smiled in a friendly manner at Leonie, who decided to take the bull by the horns.

‘I did ask not to get a window seat,’ she gasped up at the glamorous brunette, fear at having to look out the window overcoming her hatred of being a nuisance.

‘You can have mine,’ the woman said in a gentle voice with just a hint of a West of Ireland accent. ‘I hate the middle seat.’

They swapped and Leonie smelled a heady waft of Obsession perfume as the woman arranged herself in the window seat, put on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, took a very serious-looking guide book from her small bag and settled back to read it. No wedding ring, Leonie noticed. Perhaps she was travelling alone too and they could team up. Leonie felt very grateful to be sitting beside this nice woman. Everything was going to work out.

She tried to relax and peered out of the window from the comfort of the middle seat. She could see the baggage handlers hoisting giant suitcases on to the conveyor belt to the plane’s hold.

Practically everyone was on board before anyone arrived at the seats in front of them. Leonie, by now bored looking at the baggage handlers because she could imagine them shaking all her clothes and make-up to bits, watched the late arrivals. The family she’d observed earlier were marching up the aisle towards her. The younger woman came first, her too-long fringe and her downcast eyes ensuring she didn’t meet anyone’s gaze as she shoved a small rucksack into the overhead bin and sank quickly into the window seat. Behind her came the other pair. Leonie grimaced. From the performance she’d seen at the check-in desk, she could imagine the fun and games they’d have on the flight with Mr Conviviality himself.

‘Number 55B,’ muttered the older woman. ‘There we are. Maybe I should sit on the window seat.’

Silently, the girl got up and let her mother into the seat. She appeared to be waiting to see if her father wanted to sit beside her mother.

‘Get in, Emma,’ snapped the big man impatiently.

‘Sorry,’ the girl murmured, ‘I just thought…’

‘Do you want me to put your bag up, Anne-Marie?’ he interrupted her rudely.

‘No, well, let me see,’ began the older woman, ‘I’ll want my glasses and my tablets and…’

Leonie looked out the window again. Family life, what a pain. When she was that age, she wouldn’t have gone on holiday with her mother and father for all the tea in China. That girl must be mad – or simple.

When the plane finally took off, Leonie closed her eyes with terror; Hannah closed her eyes and grinned at the memory of Jeff’s powerful lovemaking, which was certainly as uplifting as the thrust of a jumbo; and Emma sucked a mint, feeling calmer because of the half a Valium she’d taken in the loo beforehand. She tried to get comfortable but it was hard because her father was taking up a huge amount of space on purpose.

Half a Valium couldn’t harm the baby, she hoped, but her father was in a terrible mood and was determined to make everyone else suffer too. Emma had seen several people watching them in the queue when he’d argued furiously with the poor check-in girl over not being able to smoke his pipe on the flight. It was going to be a hellish holiday if he behaved like that the whole time. Why, oh why had she come?

Hannah sank gratefully on to a seat in the air-conditioned bus and decided that the only way she’d ever be cool in Luxor was if she went around naked with a bag of ice strapped to her body. It was half six in the evening and she was roasting after just fifteen minutes outside the airport. She’d have escaped to the cool of the Incredible Egypt tour bus more quickly had it not been for the two porters in Arab dress who fought volubly over who got to haul her suitcase over to the bus.

‘Great double act, guys,’ she grinned at them, giving them each a tip.

It must be eighty degrees at least and it was nearly pitch-dark. Who knew how hot it’d be during the day. She fanned herself with the itinerary the tour guide had handed out as she greeted her party of thirty-two travellers.

‘Make your way to the bus and I’ll finish rounding our gang up,’ the tour guide had said brightly as she pointed people in the direction of the buses waiting like gleaming silver monsters in the shimmering heat.

Fresh as a daisy in a royal blue cotton blouse and cream shorts, the tour guide was a young woman named Flora who exuded calm efficiency. She’d need to be calm to deal with that horrible man who’d sat in the row ahead on the plane, Hannah thought. He’d complained throughout the journey, saying the meal was cold when it should have been hot and demanding to know if they’d get a refund for taking off an hour late. What a bully, she thought with disgust.

He’d been rude as hell to the sweet, dark-eyed stewardess who’d haltingly told him they didn’t serve any sort of alcohol on the flight, and during the scramble for visas in the arrivals hall in Luxor, only the deaf would have been spared his sarcastic comments about Egyptian inefficiency.

‘Call this an airport?’ he’d roared when the crowds from the plane began milling around the arrivals hall, looking for their tour guides, trying to change money and queueing for visas in disorganized groups. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace asking Westerners to come into this sort of makeshift place. No signs, no authority, no proper air conditioning, nothing! No wonder these fellas were ruled by foreign powers for so long – couldn’t arrange a piss-up in a brewery, if you ask me. I’ll tell you, I’ll be writing a letter to the Irish Times and the Egyptian embassy when I get back.’

Hannah couldn’t figure out why he’d bothered coming to a foreign country if all he was going to do was whinge about the heat and make racist and jingoistic comments about the inhabitants.

Taking a gulp from her bottle of mineral water, she watched sweating people haul themselves up the bus steps, panting heavily and repeating ‘It’s hot!’ to each other every few minutes.

‘It’s hot,’ gasped her large blonde next-door neighbour from the plane as she shoved her canvas holdall into the luggage rack and flopped heavily on to the seat beside Hannah.

‘That’s what we get for not listening to the travel agent who warned it was unbearably hot in August,’ Hannah said with a grin.

‘Did they say that?’ The woman rummaged around in a bulging black suede handbag until she triumphantly extracted a small orange juice carton. She stuck the tiny plastic straw in, drank deeply and then said: ‘Mine never mentioned the heat. I just said I could only travel in August and they booked it for me. My kids are away for August, you see. I’m Leonie,’ she added.

‘Nice to meet you. I’m Hannah.’

Leonie knew her face was pinker than usual, while her shaggy blonde hair was frizzing in the Gas Mark 7 dry heat. On the plane, Leonie had barely talked to her neighbour at all because she’d been desperately trying to concentrate on reading a thriller for the whole flight, hoping that she’d forget the fact that she was on a plane at all if she could immerse herself in a book. Safely on terra firma, she was all talk, loquacious with relief. Hannah didn’t look hot at all: she looked as if she was used to the sort of temperatures that could cook a chicken out of doors.

‘Wasn’t it mad in there,’ Leonie said, referring to the arrivals hall. ‘These men kept taking my case and trying to stick it on their trolley and I kept having to take it back. I think I ruptured something dragging it off the last time.’ She massaged her shoulder.

‘They’re porters and they’re hoping for a tip if they bring your luggage out for you,’ Hannah explained.

‘Oh. I never thought of that. But I’ve no Egyptian money yet,’ Leonie pointed out. ‘I’m going to change currencies on the boat.’

She began fiddling around in her bag to check for her purse, giving Hannah an opportunity to study her. Leonie’s uptilted nose was strangely childlike, Hannah decided, and her make-up was a bit heavy for the torrid heat of North Africa. But nothing could hide the vibrancy of Leonie’s lively, animated face, which displayed a thousand emotions as she spoke. She wasn’t pretty but there was such warmth in her expression that it made her strangely attractive. And her eyes were the most amazing blue, glittering like Ceylon sapphires. Hannah had never seen anybody with such piercingly blue eyes apart from models in glossy magazines advertising coloured contact lenses. Leonie’s eyes could have been the result of coloured contact lenses, of course, but Hannah bet her life they weren’t. If only she wasn’t wearing all that panstick foundation and the heavy eyeliner. It was like stage make-up, a façade behind which she was trying to hide. Hannah smiled to herself. Everyone hid something. She’d been successfully hiding her lack of education for years.

‘It’d be lovely if we could have dinner together, maybe,’ Leonie was saying, hating herself for chattering away like a blackbird on acid. Terrified at the idea of being away on her own without a single friendly face to talk to, she was thrilled that she’d identified a fellow solo female traveller. But she didn’t want to come across as too lonely or too needy: Hannah, who seemed very self-possessed and assured, might not want a holiday companion. ‘If you don’t mind having dinner with me, that is…’ Leonie said, her voice fading.

‘Course not,’ said Hannah, who was perfectly happy on her own but felt oddly protective about the other woman, who was probably five nine in her socks and at least twice Hannah’s size. ‘It’s lovely to have company and we’ll be much safer from exotic, handsome Egyptians if we’re together. Or is it the male population who should be frightened of us?’ she joked.

Leonie laughed and looked ruefully at her sturdy body. ‘I think I’m quite safe enough and the male population needn’t worry.’ For once, she hadn’t felt the need to make some crack about men and how she couldn’t live without them. Those stupid remarks were only ever covering up her insecurities and she cringed hearing herself say them. Today, she hadn’t felt the need to pretend. Hannah was nice, calming. It’d be lovely sharing the holiday with her.

The bad-tempered bearded man, his wife and daughter got on the bus and plonked themselves at the front. Hannah and Leonie watched the trio with interest as the father kept up a critical monologue while his wife fanned herself weakly with a ridiculously out of place Spanish fan. Her long fair hair held back from her forehead was rather girlish for a woman of her age, as if she was acting the ingénue, while her tight-waisted, wide-skirted dress made her look vaguely as if she’d entered a fancy dress competition. She looked displeased, as if Egypt had been examined briefly and found seriously wanting. The daughter sat silently in the seat behind them, her face pale and her expression distant.

‘I hope to God we don’t end up with cabins anywhere near them,’ Leonie whispered fervently. ‘They look like the sort of people who complain if they don’t have something to complain about.’

‘The father certainly does,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but the person I feel sorry for is the daughter. Imagine being stuck with a loudmouthed tyrant like that.’

Watching the younger woman’s taut little face, Hannah was convinced it was sheer embarrassment at her father’s behaviour that made her look so distant. ‘She looks as if she’s going to cry any minute. Maybe we should get her to sit with us,’ Hannah suggested, overcome with a desire to save another lame dog, now she’d already saved one.

Leonie winced. ‘I’m not so sure…’ she said. ‘What if the other pair insist on making friends with us too and we get stuck with the lot of them for the entire cruise?’

‘Leonie,’ reproved Hannah, ‘you’ve got to live a little, experiment. Anyway, we’ll all end up sitting at tables of six or eight for meals on the boat, so if we’re allocated one with them, we’re stuck anyway.’

It was dark as the bus drove through the streets of Luxor on its way to the boat. Flora sat at the front, pointing out sights and welcoming them all to Egypt.

‘You’ll have a busy week,’ she explained, ‘because many of the tours start very early in the morning. We make early starts because the temples and sights get very busy with busloads of tourists during the day, and also because it’s cooler to sightsee in the early morning. But tomorrow you can have a lie-in as the boat sails to Edfu for the first visit which is after lunch. We’ll have a welcome meeting in the bar tonight at –’ she consulted her watch ‘ – half eight, which is in an hour, and I’ll go through the itinerary. Dinner is at nine.’

Hannah and Leonie peered out the window at the darkened, dusty streets, gazing at the one- and two-storey mudbrick dwellings which looked so different from anything at home. Many looked unfinished, as if another storey was to be built but everyone had lost interest. Scattered among these rural homes were palm trees and, far away from the road, luxuriant green crops could be seen growing several feet tall.

As they drove nearer to the lights of Luxor, Leonie noticed a solitary donkey leaning against a shed roofed with straw. He looked very thin, Leonie thought with a pang of pity. She could see his ribs sticking out painfully. She hoped she wouldn’t see animals being treated cruelly: it was bad enough at home seeing homeless dogs brought into the surgery after being hit by cars. At least she could do something for them at home, but here, she wasn’t a veterinary nurse: she was just a tourist.

A vision of Penny came to her, suddenly; those melting chocolate eyes filled with abject misery at being left behind. Leonie missed her desperately; she missed all the animals she loved. Poor Clover locked away in the cattery, and little Herman, watched endlessly by her mother’s ravenous cats. And she felt so far away from the kids. At least Ireland was nearer to Boston than here. Just a phone call away. Egypt was two continents away and she’d be travelling so they’d never be able to track her down. What if something happened and Ray couldn’t reach her and…

Stop it, she commanded. Nothing’s going to happen. Trying to put portents of gloom out of her mind, Leonie stared out the windows as the countryside gave way to straggly city streets with more traffic. Dust rose up into the air from the other vehicles on the road: battered Ladas with TAXI signs on them and stately old station wagons in bright colours, encrusted with dust. Electric signs in exotic Arabic shone over small shops and cafés, with bright English-language signs over the myriad souvenir shops.

Every few yards, she could see small groups of men sitting outside their houses, drinking coffee or watching football on television. Most wore the long simple cotton robes with white head-dresses tied into a neat hat. Young boys sat nearby, staring and pointing at the tourists in the bus, some waving excitedly.

‘I haven’t seen any women,’ Leonie whispered to Hannah, as if the men watching them from the roadside might read their lips.

‘I know,’ Hannah whispered back. ‘It does seem to be a very male-orientated society. There were no women at the airport either. It’s a mainly Muslim country, though, isn’t it? And that means the women dress modestly.’

Hannah thought ruefully of her holiday wardrobe, which contained quite a few skimpy clothes for sunbathing on the boat. As the guide books mentioned that women shouldn’t wear revealing shorts or sleeveless outfits for visiting temples, she’d brought plenty of cover-up clothes as well. But if the Egyptians frowned upon Western dress, her bikini would be staying in her suitcase. She didn’t want to offend people with her clothes. Mind you, she realized with a grin, the elderly parish priest back home in Connemara wouldn’t appreciate a pale pink crochet bikini any more than a religious Egyptian.

‘On your right is the Nile,’ Flora announced and the passengers craned their necks for their first sight of the great river. At first, Hannah couldn’t see anything but other people’s heads as everyone tried to get a glimpse out of the window.

Then she saw it, a great expanse of gleaming water, sparkling with lights from the large river boats that were moored by its banks. The mystical Nile, the gift of Egypt as Herodotus said – or was it the other way round? She couldn’t remember. Egyptian kings and queens had sailed up and down this river in their royal barges, pharaohs sailing to visit their temples and to worship their gods. Tutankhamun, Rameses, Hatshepsut: their names were a roll call of an exotic past world…

‘Look at the boats,’ breathed Leonie, who was dying to know on what sort of vessel they’d be spending the next seven days and who couldn’t concentrate on the glories of the Nile until she saw her cabin to see if it had enough room for her vast suitcase. ‘That’s a huge one,’ she added as they drew closer to a floating palace decorated with hundreds of fairy lights. ‘I hope that’s our boat.’

The bus sped past. ‘Oh well…’ Leonie shrugged.

The bus suddenly shuddered to a halt beside a much smaller boat which was painted French blue and had the words Queen Tiye written on the side in huge gold letters. Three decks high, the top deck was half covered with a large canvas awning, the other half open to the skies with wicker seats and sun loungers splayed around. The top deck shone with lots of small lights and they could see a few people sitting around a table, bottles and glasses in front of them. ‘Pretty, pretty,’ Leonie sighed happily.

Everyone trooped off the bus, identified their luggage for the porters as Flora commanded them, and then climbed carefully down the stone steps at the quay to walk along the narrow wood-and-rope bridge on to the boat.

Leonie held on to the ropes at the side of the bridge to balance herself and beamed back at Hannah who was behind her: ‘It’s very Indiana Jones,’ she said, thrilled with the adventure. ‘Is this the gangplank, do you think?’

‘Dunno,’ answered Hannah tiredly. She was beginning to feel the after-effects of her sleepless night with the energetic Jeff. All she wanted now was to fall into her bed and sleep until morning. But she shouldn’t really skip the talk with Flora. Otherwise, she might miss out on what was happening for the voyage – and Hannah couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on information. You could never rely on other people to tell you things.

When everyone had filled in a registration card, Flora organized cabin keys. Hannah and Leonie’s cabins were opposite each other.

‘Isn’t this fun?’ Leonie asked in childish delight as the two of them walked down a narrow passage to their cabins. She’d never been on a boat like this before.

The big ferries to France were different. Modern and boring. This was all so different, so exotic. The walls were covered in rich dark wood and hung with tiny prints of Victorian watercolour desert scenes offset by filigree gold frames. Even the cabin keys were decorated with little brass pyramids. Leonie wished the kids were here with her to experience it all. Mel would be thrilled at the thought of buying silky Egyptian scarves, Abby would be in raptures at the thought of seeing the temples, and Danny would be pestering the crew to let him steer the ship. She hoped they were having a good holiday.

She opened her cabin door in a fizz of excitement which quickly abated when she saw the room which was to be her home for the next week. The cabin was tiny, not even as big as her bathroom back in the cottage. There were none of the filigree gold paintings or rich wood of the rest of the boat: the cabin was painted plain cream all over with yellow curtains and yellow-striped covers on the two single beds.

A six-inch square ledge served as a dressing table, with another as a bedside table between the beds. There was a small fridge beside the wardrobe, which was really just a niche in the wall with doors. Leonie stuck her head inside the bathroom to find a minuscule room with a sink, toilet and a shower. Her suitcase would barely fit in the cabin, never mind trying to cram her vast store of clothes into the wardrobe, and as for dressing table space – she’d obviously have to use the other bed to lay her make-up and jewellery out.

‘Compact, huh?’ Hannah put her head round the door.

‘Compact is not the word. It’s just as well I haven’t brought my toyboy lover for a week of passionate thrashing around on the Nile.’ Leonie grinned. ‘We’d concuss ourselves every time we launched off the dressing table on to the bed!’

‘Lucky you with a toyboy,’ joked Hannah. ‘We must compare stories later.’ She disappeared as the porter brought her case along the corridor.

My side of that conversation won’t take long, Leonie thought regretfully.

She opened the curtains and let the quayside lights shine into the cabin. Opening the window, she looked down to see the placid dark waters of the Nile. She was really here, she realized with a happy shiver. She hadn’t balked with fear and run home; she’d taken her first holiday on her own. That had to be worth something in the independence stakes.

Once unpacked, she showered quickly, thrilled at the 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.