The Men in her Life

rather than a full-scale election party because Jack would still be jet-lagged, and she didn’t want the house full of people at breakfast. Most of the people Jack would want to see were anyway already going to Louis Gold’s bash down the road. So she had invited six people for dinner who were bound to be invited to Louis’s do, and hoped that they would be gone by ten o’clock, leaving her and Jack alone together. The sale of her management consultancy company and the problems he had had editing his new film meant they had not been together for six weeks, the longest they had been parted in all their years of marriage. She wanted to touch every inch of his skin, to feel his weight upon her and his breath damp in her hair. She wanted her body to melt on the warmth of his.
    She heard his key in the front-door lock and his footsteps along the hall. One of the pleasures of knowing someone so long was being able to tell from the rhythm of their footfall what kind of mood they were in, and she knew that Jack was happy. His meeting with the distributors had clearly gone well. Now he would be able to relax and enjoy the time that stretched before them. She went to greet him.

Chapter 5

    ‘Would you rather be Kristen Scott Thomas or Juliette Binoche?’ Holly asked Colette as they emerged from the cinema into Leicester Square and walked diagonally across the little patch of park. It was beginning to get dark and a great cloud of blackbirds swirled around the tops of the trees, filling the city air with birdsong.
    ‘Juliette Binoche,’ Colette answered without hesitation.
    ‘Why?’ Holly demanded to know.
    ‘Because I loved that scene with her swinging around the church looking at the frescoes. I thought it was the most romantic bit...’
    ‘Give me steamy afternoon sex in Cairo with Ralph any day.’
    ‘But she dies...’
    Colette could be infuriatingly rational about these things.
    ‘The trouble with you is that you want it all,’ Colette went on. ‘You want the silent, difficult, handsome man and yet you’re always moaning on about men being bastards...’
    ‘There’s not a lot I wouldn’t do for Ralph Fiennes,’ Holly said.
    ‘Even with his face all burned?’ Colette asked.
    ‘God, no! No, then he looks like ET and I was the only person in the world who didn’t think that ET was cute.’
    ‘You can’t love someone when they look all right and then go off them when they’re in trouble...’
    ‘Who can’t?’ Holly asked.
    They started walking in the direction of Holly’s flat. ‘Who would you prefer... Ralph Fiennes before the bums, or Robert De Niro?’ Colette wanted to know.
    ‘I’d have Robert De Niro in Godfather II above anyone, but he’s got a bit paunchy recently, so if I had to choose today, it’d have to be Ralph Fiennes... Who would you have?’ Holly asked.
    ‘For me it’d be Ralph every time.’
    ‘But I’m not prepared to share...’
    ‘Well, that’s not fair because if Robert De Niro came along looking like he did in Godfather II, you’d drop Ralph just like that,’ Colette argued.
    ‘Why d’you have to have one of mine anyway? I thought you fancied George Clooney. Why can’t you just have him and leave me alone? I wouldn’t touch him...’
    ‘That’s because you don’t fancy him, but I do fancy both of yours...’
    They had been playing the same game since their childhood, although the men in question had changed over the years. There had been a time, Holly remembered, when they had almost come to blows over which one of them would get off with David Cassidy if he ever turned up in the concrete playground at the foot of their block of flats.
    ‘Well, for God’s sake get a grip of yourself,’ Holly burst out laughing, ‘lucky we never meet any men otherwise we’d be in trouble.’
    They stopped outside the wrought-iron gate that led into the courtyard where Holly lived.
    ‘Are you coming up?’ Holly asked, putting her key in the lock of her front door. Her flat was on the first floor and her front door led straight onto a flight of stairs.
    ‘We do meet men,’ Colette said, following her up, ‘just not the right men. Do you think that’s it, or do you think we’re emotionally unavailable?’
    Colette was a receptionist for a Harley Street dermatologist. She read all the women’s magazines and always had the latest psychological jargon. Colette could make a syndrome out of a vague anxiety in the time it took to say Cosmopolitan.
    ‘Emotionally