Someone Like You (38 page)

Leonie looked at herself critically in the mirror. Heavily made-up in preparation for the onslaught of harsh hairdresser lights and the big, cruel mirrors, Leonie thought she’d looked quite reasonable when she’d left the house.

Somehow, now, she merely looked over made-up, tarty almost. Her hair was awful, she realized in desperation.

Bottle-blonde meets Amsterdam’s red-light district with a detour into a Soho sex shop.

‘I don’t know, Nicky,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s terrible. I’ve been dyeing it myself for years and the ends are dry, over bleached and well…’ she sighed, ‘a mess. Maybe I’m too old to be blonde.’

‘Nonsense.’ Nicky was brisk. ‘The colour’s wrong for you; you need a more subtle blonde to tone in with your skin. Skin fades as we get older, so you’ve got to go for a more toned-down hair colour. What you need are lots of tawny browns to break up the golden blonde, with some pale golds running through it. You may have to rethink the make-up too,’ she said appraisingly. ‘Heavy eyeliner will be too strong for your new look.’

‘You think so?’ Leonie was unsure. ‘I’ve always done it this way. My eyes are so indistinct without kohl and lots of mascara.’

‘Nonsense, you’ve beautiful eyes. I’ve never seen anyone with such blue eyes,’ Nicky said earnestly. ‘While you’re under the drier waiting for the colour to take, I’ll get one of the girls from the beauty salon upstairs to come down and do your eyes for you. You won’t believe it when I’ve finished with you. Now, do you want tea or coffee?’

Emma, who was only having her hair cut, was finished first.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Leonie anxiously, angling her head in the mirror to look at her new haircut from every angle. The long strands which had hidden her amber-flecked eyes had been cut back and, although Emma had only allowed two inches to be cut from the longest layers, the whole effect was very different. You could see Emma’s sweet, patient face properly and she didn’t need to pull strands of hair out of her eyes any more. She looked older without the schoolgirl hair, although you’d still never guess she was thirty-one.

‘It’s fantastic!’ Leonie said warmly.

Hannah was finished next. Her once-long hair had been cut to shoulder level and lowlighted, so that cinnamon and chocolatey strands rippled through her own dark brown colour. Glossy and bouncy, it swung as she walked, framing her face elegantly. Her full lips glistened with bronze gloss and she looked like a supermodel.

‘Get you,’ said Leonie, feeling very ugly in comparison, as her hair was now adorned with scores of tinfoil flaps which looked like some sort of medieval headdress perched on her head.

The new colours made Hannah’s almond-shaped eyes even more striking and matched the smattering of amber freckles across her cheeks.

‘Do you think it’s all right?’ she asked, running her fingers through the glossy strands apprehensively.

‘Fantastic,’ Leonie said. ‘And if you wonder will Felix love it, he’d want to be mad not to.’

Emma and Hannah arranged to come back in an hour.

‘If my hair isn’t cooked by then, it’ll never be done,’

Leonie said gloomily.

They left and Leonie returned to her magazines. Fed up with looking at impossibly gorgeous people in the social columns of Tatler, she got her hands on a tattered Hello! Everyone in that was stunning, too. There had to be scope for an ‘Ordinary People’s Weekly’, Leonie felt. A magazine with normal people in it, normal people with big backsides, blocked pores and clothes that looked as if they’d been purchased in the ‘two-blouses-for-fifteen-quid’ section of a chain store and put on in the dark.

She was marginally cheered up when the beautician arrived and turned out to be a pretty but plump girl who was bursting out of her white beautician’s dress.

‘Oh, you’ve lovely skin,’ cooed the girl in a lilting Cork accent. ‘And your eyes are amazing. I’ve just the colour for you.’

It was a shock to see her heavy kohl and pancake foundation being removed. Leonie closed her eyes and reminded herself that she could run into the nearest pub loo when she left the hairdresser’s and reapply her heavy-lidded glory.

Only she didn’t need to. When she opened her eyes, the face that greeted her looked like a stranger. Gone was the heavy smoky kohl and the lipstick line that had circled her mouth since she’d been twenty. In its place was a subtle melange of golds and fawns. Her eyes stood out, thanks to beautiful shading and a slender line that opened them up. Her usual sooty black mascara had been replaced with rich brown and her mouth was a full pout thanks to a caramel shade with no visible liner.

‘Gosh,’ was all she could think of to say.

‘It’ll be better when the tinfoil is gone,’ said the beautician sagely.

When the tinfoil was gone, Leonie thought her hair looked quite dark.

‘It’s still wet,’ said Nicky comfortingly. ‘Wait till it’s dry. You won’t recognize yourself. You’ll look amazing.’

And she did. After half an hour of expert blowdrying, the golden brassy colour had vanished and in its place was a mop of wavy hair, a mass of honeys, pale golds and hazel browns. Leonie touched it in wonder. She looked like another version of herself, like the rich, elegant twin of her old brassy self. All she needed now was a wardrobe of subtle cashmere clothes, some discreet but expensive jewellery and a BMW, and she’d be a lady who lunched.

She grinned at her reflection.

‘Never mind my friends not recognizing me, I don’t think my kids will!’ she joked.

Hannah laughed loudest and smiled the most at the Dwyer, Dwyer Sc James staff Christmas party in McCormack’s.

She roared with laughter when the stripping vicar turned up as a surprise for Gillian because it was her birthday the day after Christmas, and when the vicar was down to his boxer shorts and looking for somebody else to kiss, Hannah gave him a cheeky grin and earned herself a big hug. Nobody watching her glowing face lit up with mirth would have imagined that, inside, Hannah felt about as festive as a turkey in a poultry farm.

‘Goodness, what are we doing here?’ gasped Donna at half ten, throwing herself down on the banquette beside Hannah after they’d queued for half an hour to go to the ladies because the pub was jammed with festive drinkers.

‘Yes, we’re mad,’ Hannah agreed, doing her best to make her eyes sparkle happily as she said it. It would be too, too humiliating to admit to Donna that once again Felix had let her down. ‘I’ve still got a load of Christmas shopping to do and I don’t fancy getting up first thing in the morning to brave the city-centre shops. I know I should be home in bed but I feel like having fun.’

‘Buying presents on Christmas Eve is murder,’ agreed Donna, ‘especially with a hangover. I’ve got everything already, thankfully. Believe me, it’s so much harder when you’ve got kids to think about. You daren’t leave buying Santa’s presents until Christmas Eve in case there’s been a run on Barbie’s pony or whatever. Tania would go berserk if Santa didn’t come up trumps.’

Hannah nodded. She’d lied about the Christmas shopping as she’d already bought presents for everyone she needed to buy for. She’d been holding off buying anything for Felix because she wanted to buy him something utterly perfect. Now there was no point going near the shops, but it sounded so sad and single to say so.

‘What are you up to for the day, anyhow?’ asked Donna, pouring tonic into her vodka. ‘I’m so glad I’m staying at home this year. Every Christmas we trek to my mother’s in Letterkenny. This year, I told them all to come to us.

The house will be full, mind you, but it’ll be fun. I get nightmares at the thought of cooking for ten!’

Hannah grinned. ‘I can’t see you getting nightmares at anything so simple,’ she joked. Donna was one of the most organized people she knew and probably had the entire dinner pre-cooked and already frozen, waiting to be defrosted half an hour before the meal was due to begin.

‘My kitchen is so small it’s hardly designed for large scale catering,’ protested Donna. ‘What about you? Staying here with the glorious Felix, or do you go home to the West?’

For a millisecond, Hannah considered her options. She could sit at home, eating a solitary Christmas dinner and pleasing herself about what to watch on the box, fortifying her spirit with plenty of wine. With no Felix to share it all with, she couldn’t face cooking the pheasant she’d bought, and what would be the point of decorating the table with fat beeswax candles, gleaming holly sprigs and intricately tied red and gold ribbons if there was nobody to admire her efforts? Or she could do what had seemed unthinkable before - go home to Connemara with her tail between her legs. Her mother hadn’t given up asking Hannah to come home for Christmas even though she’d been absent for the past two years. Hannah had claimed she was working in the hotel the previous year, the year she’d been Harry-less and embarrassed by the fact. Her family all knew Harry and, even if they weren’t incredibly impressed by him, having him was better than being without him. Everyone she’d grown up with at home was now married with kids, so Christmas was like a parade of accomplishments from the returning thirty-somethings. Outside the church on Christmas Day was reminiscent of a beauty pageant with proud locals showing off their spouses and kids. Hannah had allowed herself to dream of future Christmases when she’d roll up with the famous Felix Andretti and really get people talking. So much for that idea.

In late November, she’d told her mother she had plans for the holidays. Which had been true at the time. She’d planned a gloriously romantic idyll with Felix, a time where they could take long walks in the icy afternoons after spending sensuous mornings in bed giggling over Willie Wonka and watching re-runs of Little House on the Prairie. They wouldn’t see anybody or go to any parties: it would just be the two of them on their own. Sheer bliss. Felix had put the kibosh on this darling plan by saying pointblank that he was going home to his mother in Birmingham.

He hadn’t invited Hannah or even appeared to consider that she might be hurt by being left out of his festive arrangements.

‘Family problems,’ he’d said blandly on the phone, as if that absolved him from having to think about anything or anyone else. ‘I’ll call you when I get there.’

But he hadn’t. Left to simmer in her own misery, Hannah decided that she’d just joined the ranks of Felix’s ex-girlfriends, another one to add to the not-so-select band of those who hated him. Three days had elapsed since that final phone call and she’d retreated into herself in depression. She couldn’t bear to think about him, to remember the wonderful times they’d shared. It was so painful, like having a tooth extracted without an anaesthetic.

Felix had been the one. She was sure of that. But it now appeared that while he was her one, she wasn’t his.

More numb than she’d been at any time since Harry had left, she existed on automatic pilot and tried to stop herself wondering why she picked men who dumped on her and then dumped her. That was a no-go area, one for another day, another century, perhaps. Hannah didn’t want to look into her subconscious and work out what was wrong with her. She wanted to get incredibly drunk instead, and the office party was providing a pretty good opportunity for this.

She threw her eyes to heaven at Donna’s enquiry about her Christmas plans. Hannah’s current Christmas arrangements were non-existent. Unless…

‘Going home to the West, I’m afraid. Felix is furious with me because he wanted us both to visit his mother, but I promised my mother last year that I’d be there this time…” Hannah broke off and sighed deeply to give Donna the impression that being a good and dutiful daughter was tough but that Hannah simply had no option. ‘I’ll miss him but I couldn’t let Mum down. My brother, my sister-in-law and their little boy are going to be away for Christmas so my parents will be on their own. Anyway, Felix and I will see each other for New Year,’ she lied.

Who knew what Felix was up to for New Year? Probably bungee-jumping from some Australian bridge or something equally wild. Maybe partying with honey-skinned models turned actresses who longed to hang out with real actors.

Whatever he was doing, he hadn’t discussed it with Hannah.

‘You deserve a medal!’ exclaimed Donna. ‘If it was me, I think Felix’s charms would win and I’d be telling my poor mother she’d have to live without me for one more year.’ Donna laughed. ‘You’re a hell of a woman, Hannah Campbell. Your word is certainly your bond.’

‘I know, I’m a saint.’ Hannah drained her drink, hating herself for lying to someone as good and kind as Donna.

‘I’m going to brave the bar again. Do you want another?’

‘Go on,’ Donna groaned. ‘Just one more and then make me go home, please!’

‘I promise,’ grinned Hannah.

She felt almost happy, bizarrely enough, now that she’d decided to go home for Christmas. Lolling around in misery since Felix had delivered his bombshell three days previously, Hannah hadn’t been able to manifest any enthusiasm in anything. She’d felt adrift, unmoored. But with the notion of going to her home in Connemara, she felt like a part of something again. She wasn’t a lonely woman destined to a solitary existence of Lean Cuisines, single pots of creamed rice and the television guide. She was Hannah Campbell, a person with roots and a family, even if she didn’t see them a great deal. It was as if a punishing weight had been lifted from her and she bounced up to the bar, insinuating herself into the anxious crowd yelling for drinks before closing time kicked in.

A couple of good-looking guys in rugby shirts smiled at the pretty woman with the glittering eyes and the provocative smile on her face. Hannah had worn a silky pewter-grey blouse to the pub and she’d deliberately unbuttoned it so the top of her black lacy bra was just barely visible. Subtle but sexy as hell. It had made her feel better to dress up.

‘Go ahead, love,’ said one of the rugby blokes, making a space where Hannah could squeeze past him and get nearer to the bar.

‘Thanks,’ she breathed, giving him a blast of unrestrained Hannah. If Felix didn’t want her, there was no reason not to flirt with other men. Her confidence needed a lift, she decided firmly.