The Men in her Life

why people have them as pets,’ Tansy confirmed.
    ‘Don’t you think you’d better ring Mo and let her know what’s happening?’ Simon asked, as Holly prepared to leave.
    Holly tried to think of a genuine reason why that would be a bad idea, but it was too early in the morning.
    ‘Say if she rings when you’re away, and gets no reply and then rings work and they tell her you’ve gone away. She’ll worry,’ Simon said reasonably.
    ‘Oh, all right. How much does she bloody pay you to be on her side?’ she asked him.
    He raised his eyes to the ceiling.
    ‘I’m going to Cornwall ,’ she told her mother in a clipped businesslike voice when she answered the phone.
    ‘That’s nice,’ Mo replied, ‘I think you probably need a bit of a holiday...’
    Mo was a lovely kind mum and she had been horrible to her. Holly’s voice began to well with emotion.
    ‘Mum, there’s a rat in my flat...’ she sobbed, ‘and my whole life’s a mess...’
    ‘Oh dear,’ said Mo, remembering Holly standing screaming on the kitchen table when they’d once had a visit from a mouse. ‘Do you want me to come and sort it out?’ she asked.
    ‘No, Simon’s going to,’ Holly blubbed into the phone.
    ‘It’ll be all right,’ Mo assured her, adding with a slight, almost indetectable smirk, ‘I bet you’re sad you didn’t have Frank Cooper now.’
    Snapped back from little girl to grown-up, Holly was on the point of retaliating but stopped herself. It was Mo’s way of getting even and she thought just maybe she’d better let it go.

Chapter 29

    Clare was standing by the ticket barrier waiting for her. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a white T-shirt, but the T-shirt was so huge on her small frame that the shorts were barely visible. Her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail. From a distance she looked about twelve. Close up, she only looked about twenty-three.
    ‘There’s a bus in an hour,’ she told Holly, taking her bag, ‘let’s go and have a coffee while we’re waiting.’
    ‘Can’t we get a taxi?’ Holly asked.
    ‘All the way back? It would cost a fortune. Anyway, we’re not in a hurry, are we?’
    ‘No,’ Holly agreed, as they emerged from the coolness of the station into a street humming with shoppers, ‘no, I suppose we’re not.’
    She felt as if an almost infinite amount of time stretched ahead of her. She had informed them at work that she was taking two weeks’ break, but if she wanted to there was nothing to stop her staying longer. Most of the senior staff had children on school holidays and were away — there was very little going on that Jemima couldn’t cope with. In an emergency she could always be contacted at Clare’s. Holly had forgotten to ask Simon to retrieve her mobile phone from the flat. On the way down on the train, when other people’s mobiles had rung, she had sat up abruptly from her hungover doze with a guilty feeling, as if she had been caught truanting, then sunk back in her seat with relief remembering it couldn’t be hers.
    ‘There’s one of those new cappuccino places,’ Clare suggested. There was excitement in her voice. In London , Holly thought, it was almost impossible to get a bad cup of coffee any more, but down here the espresso machine was still a cause of wonder.
    ‘I’m so pleased you’ve come,’ Clare said, as they sat down with large white cups brimming with foam and powdered chocolate, ‘I’ve been dying to talk to you for ages...’
    ‘Where’s Tom?’ Holly asked, as if she had just noticed that he wasn’t there. Whenever she pictured Clare she saw Tom around her legs. ‘I’ve missed him,’ she added.
    Clare smiled. ‘Yes, he does grow on you. I’ve left him with Joss for the morning.’
    ‘And how is Joss?’ Holly asked.
    ‘I’ll tell you later,’ Clare said, ‘first, you tell me why the surprise visit?’
    ‘I’ve got a rat,’ Holly announced gravely.
    ‘What?’
    ‘There’s a rat in my flat,’ she repeated, staring into the speckled froth of her cappuccino.
    ‘Ugh, how horrible. Have you got poison down?’ Clare asked.
    ‘Simon’s doing everything.’
    Holly briefly recounted the previous evening’s events.
    Clare threw back her head and laughed, and then realized that she wasn’t meant to.
    ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘good old Simon though. Actually, I’m quite good with things like that.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Holly asked alarmed. How could you know you were good at dealing with rats unless you’d