The Men in her Life

had been prepared to ask her. Colette had lots of room, but her house was so far out of town, Holly might as well be away on holiday. Clare. No. But why not? Holly imagined Penderric like it was on the picture postcards. Sunshine, sea, not a rat for miles. She needed a holiday, she needed a rest, she needed to recharge her batteries. All the old clichés filtered soothingly through her head as her mind began to turn a vague thought into an imperative. She imagined the simple pleasure of building sandcastles with Tom, some good late-night girls’ chats with Clare, and if she happened to bump into Matt, so what? They were both grown-ups. Well, she was, anyway. It wasn’t as if they had parted on bad terms.

    Clare had given Tom his supper, read him The Teddy Robber for the millionth time, and put him into bed. Then she had come downstairs and tidied up the kitchen. Overhead she could hear the boards creak as Joss walked from the bathroom to the bedroom. She wondered whether to make a batch of jam to avoid joining him while he was still awake, but she hadn’t enough empty jars to make it worthwhile. She sat and flipped through the pages of Tom’s book, wondering whether she had allowed Joss enough time to drift off. Yawning, she decided to risk it but when she was halfway up the stairs, the phone rang. Clare glanced at the kitchen clock. It was very late. The sound of the ringing irritated her as it was bound to wake Joss, or Tom, or both, and alarmed her because of the hour. Then she thought of Ella. It would be early evening for her. Clare leapt to the phone.
    ‘Clare it’s Holly... can I come and stay?’ The whisper had a trace of desperation in it.
    ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Clare asked.
    ‘I have to leave my flat. I can’t explain...’
    ‘But what’s wrong, you sounded fine earlier...’
    ‘I can’t talk about it...’
    ‘What about work?’
    ‘Oh, stuff the bloody work,’ Holly said.
    Clare’s brief annoyance that it was not Ella gave way to pleasure at the prospect of having Holly there. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘when are you coming?’
    ‘At first light,’ Holly replied, melodramatically.

    In the early morning, Simon could not disguise his relief at Holly’s decision.
    ‘I hate leaving it all to you to sort out,’ Holly told him, trying to sound sincere.
    ‘No, that’s fine,’ he said, ‘if I can get through to the council when they open, I should only need to take the morning off work. Give me a list and I’ll get whatever you need from your flat right now.’
    Tansy appeared in the kitchen wearing just a towel and looking very at home considering she had only known him a month or so, Holly thought.
    ‘They say they’re very intelligent,’ Tansy said, putting a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster, ‘d’you want some?’
    ‘No thanks,’ said Holly — she didn’t think she’d ever be able to eat toast again. ‘Who?’ she asked politely, trying to be friendly to Tansy, wondering why she had taken such an instant and irrational dislike to her.
    ‘Rats,’ said Tansy, ‘you can’t give them straightforward poison because they would soon get the idea it was doing them harm, so you have to give them this stuff that thins the blood. My dad had to have it for his heart.’
    ‘Do we have to talk about it?’ Holly asked, appealing to the woman’s sympathy, ‘it makes me feel really agitated.’
    ‘I think you’ve got a phobia,’ Tansy said, ‘it seems to me that you’re more frightened than you should be.’
    ‘Where did you meet Simon?’ Holly asked her.
    ‘Didn’t he tell you, I’m the personnel officer.’
    ‘Ahh,’ said Holly, thinking she might have guessed. In her experience people whose job depended on putting other people at their ease were always notoriously bad at it.
    ‘I mean we’ve fancied each other for ages, but neither of us realized, you know, and then, well, it just kind of happened...’
    ‘A wink as you spooned out the Gold Blend?’ Holly joked.
    ‘How did you know?’
    ‘Just call it intuition,’ Holly said.
    ‘Simon said you were funny,’ Tansy told her.
    ‘Did you see it?’ Holly asked, trembling as Simon returned from her flat with another pair of jeans and a selection of T-shirts, ‘oh I wanted the stripey one... not to worry...’
    She could see that Simon’s patience was tested to the limit.
    ‘You hardly ever see them, they’re not stupid...’
    ‘No, I was just saying, they’re very intelligent. That’s