Someone Like You by Cathy Kelly

married quickly and were blissfully happy until the honeymoon wore off and they discovered just how unsuited they really were.
    It was a testimony to something, Leonie always thought, that they went through another ten years of being civilized and kind to each other, even though there were more sparks in the fridge than there were in their relationship. She’d lived with the knowledge for a long time, enduring it and the barrenness that was her marriage for the sake of Danny, Melanie and Abigail. But finally, something had snapped in Leonie and she knew she had to get out. She felt suffocated, as if she was slowly dying and wasting her life at the same time. There had to be more, she knew it.
    She didn’t know how she found the courage to sit Ray down and ask him what he thought about them splitting up. ‘I love you, Ray, but we’re both trapped,’ she’d said, given Dutch courage by two hot ports. ‘We’re like brother and sister, not husband and wife. One day, you’ll meet someone or I’ll meet someone and then this will turn into a nuclear war of retribution, you fighting me and vice versa.
    We’ll hate each other and we’ll destroy the kids. Do you want that? Shouldn’t we both be honest about this instead of kidding each other?’
    It had been a tough time. Ray had insisted that he was happy, that their way of muddling along suited him. ‘I’m not a romantic like you, Leonie, I don’t expect great love or anything,’ he’d said sorrowfully. ‘We’re happy enough, aren’t we?’
    Once the doubts were out in the open, it was as if the wound couldn’t heal. Gradually, Ray and Leonie drifted apart until, finally, he had said she was right, it was a half-marriage. He’d shocked her by how quickly he found another life, but she was too busy trying to explain things to three uncomprehending children to think about it. Away from her, he’d blossomed. He had scores of friends, went on interesting holidays and changed jobs. He went on dates, bought trendy clothes and introduced the kids to his girlfriends. Leonie had worked hard, looked after the kids and hoped that Mr Right knew he could safely step into her world now that she was a single woman again. So far, zilch.
    As she told Penny sometimes: ‘I should have stayed married and had affairs. That was the right way to do it! True love and romance with a safety net. Trust me to get it wrong trying to do it right.’
    She and Ray were still the best of friends and he was a good father.
    Now the only people who saw Leonie as she really was were her three children.
    With them, she only wore two coats of mascara and a bit of lipstick and they were allowed to see her in her dressing gown. God, she missed them.
    Determined not to blub over the kids again, Leonie thought of how she’d always wanted to visit magical Egypt.
    Fear of flying was no reason to cry off. For a start, she couldn’t afford to waste the money the holiday had cost her and, secondly, when did Leonie Delaney balk at anything?
    She got out her eyeliner brush and fiercely painted on a thick line of dusky kohl that’d have made Cleopatra proud.
    How could you jump-start your life if you quailed at the very first fence - a holiday on your own?

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