The Men in her Life

with her fat-bore red-nosed fiancé who looked like an alcoholic and yet had the nerve to be a bloody teetotaller so he was never any fun either? Well, good bloody luck to them.
    Holly gulped another glass and picked up the bottle, staring at its contents, trying to remember whether it was the last bottle in the fridge or whether there was another one. It was so hot she was drinking it like water, but she was still thirsty. She put the neck of the bottle to her lips and drained it, then got up, inadvertently kicking over her glass, and staggered through to the kitchen.
    A few hours later, when she was calm enough to let herself remember what followed, she wondered whether she would ever have encountered the rat if she hadn’t at that moment had an urgent need for more wine. They might have gone on living together, never meeting, like ships that pass in the night, for months, or even years. Sooner or later, the rat would have realized that Holly was a rotten host and found somewhere more hospitable to stay. He had probably only been attracted in the first place by the appetizing scent of Matt’s midnight snacks. The muffin, Holly thought with a flash of triumph as if she had just won at Cluedo, the rat was the explanation for the disappearing Canadian muffin. But all that was afterwards.
    At the time, Holly simply screamed.
    The rat was sitting on her toaster, its tail like an extra flex on the work surface. It probably wouldn’t have moved if she hadn’t screamed. She learned later that rats have very bad eyesight. It probably hadn’t even seen her, but it heard her. Everyone within a square mile of Trafalgar Square heard her. Except herself. Holly was so drunk and so frightened that she thought that it was a bad dream where her mouth was open and no sound was coming out. The rat slid off the toaster and scampered down between the rubbish-bin and the sink, the bit of the kitchen Holly sprayed with Dettox occasionally and tried to ignore, and then she heard it scuttling somewhere she couldn’t see, and the scuffling noise was even more frightening than the sight of it. The idea that it was there, somewhere very near, waiting to jump out at her... Holly’s legs felt as if rats were scratching at them. Her body felt as if rats were running all over it. Banging the kitchen door behind her she fled down the stairs, slamming the front door and standing gibbering in the courtyard outside.
    To his eternal credit Simon dropped everything when he heard her scream, and she was only in the courtyard for seconds before his own front door banged and he was looking at her, asking her to tell him what had happened.
    ‘Rat, rat, rat...’ was all she could say, so of course Simon automatically assumed she was talking about a man.
    Imagining her assaulted, or raped, he put his arm around her very gently and helped her upstairs to his flat. Then he put a blanket around her and she shook and shivered on his sofa.
    ‘Should I call the police? An ambulance...’
    ‘No, I’ll be all right,’ she heard herself saying, like a brave victim in Casualty.
    ‘Is he still in there?’
    ‘Simon, it’s a rat...’ she told him, suddenly feeling very sober, ‘I mean a real rat...’
    ‘So why the underwear?’ Simon asked bewildered.
    ‘Oh, I do like to slip into something comfortable when I’m entertaining rodents...’
    A slight breeze through the window made the newspaper on the floor rustle and Holly screamed again and put her feet up on the sofa.
    ‘You don’t like rats, do you?’ Simon said, with a little amused smile.
    ‘Completely phobic,’ Holly admitted, ‘I think I read 1984 too young... have you got the number for Rentokil or something? I’ve got to get it sorted right now...’
    Simon looked dubious.
    ‘I’m not sure that they can just sort it overnight. I think they have to lay poison,’ he said.
    ‘But I want it sorted now,’ Holly wailed, flapping through the Yellow Pages in panic, ‘I can’t go back in there until it’s sorted.’
    ‘Let me call.’ Simon took the phone from her, suddenly aware that she was the worse for alcohol.
    He made several calls, taking quotes, patiently asking about the procedures and writing down a list of telephone numbers and prices.
    ‘Just get them round,’ Holly kept hissing at him, but he would not be distracted from his methodical ways. Finally he made his report.
    ‘You’ve got two choices. You can pay to get a private firm round now, but all they’ll do is lay