The Men in her Life

unavailable?’ Holly asked, throwing her bag onto the kitchen table and opening the fridge to see if there was any wine. ‘Is that the same as accidentally celibate?’
    That had been last year’s way of saying on the shelf.
    ‘No, accidentally celibate is all about having so much in your life you just don’t have time for a relationship. Emotionally available is about being open to love and commitment. I mean, we tell ourselves we are, but are we really putting up barriers to intimacy?’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Holly couldn’t help asking as she poured them each a glass of Pinot Grigio. Colette’s theories were a bit like astrological predictions. Your first instinct was to dismiss them as ridiculous, but something made you just have a quick read (for a laugh) and by the time you got to the end you couldn’t help wondering how they knew that about you.
    ‘Well, take you and your married man... you’re always saying that it’s the perfect relationship ’cos he’s bright and you have great sex and you never have to Pretend to feel sorry for him when he’s got a cold, but maybe you’re just using him as a kind of shield against a real relationship...’
    I sometimes wonder what I’d do with a real relation-ship if I had one,’ Holly said, dismally.
    Settle down, have children...’ Colette suggested wistfully.
    ‘You’ve done all that once,’ Holly responded.
    Colette had married her first boss, a plastic surgeon. It had been an unqualified disaster.
    ‘We didn’t have kids...’
    ‘Well, that’s what you want to do,’ said Holly, ‘it’s not what I want to do. I hate people just assuming that every woman once she reaches thirty-five can only be fulfilled by children. It’s like in movies, as soon as you see in the script the description “she is an ambitious career woman”, you just know that by the end of it, she’s going to be dead or pregnant.’
    ‘All right, all right, you don’t have to bang on,’ Colette protested.
    ‘Well, why can’t women be fulfilled by something else?’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘Well, I don’t know, housing the homeless, or something,’ Holly said, feeling rather pleased with her example.
    ‘I’m sure some people could be.’ There was a definite trace of sarcasm in Colette’s voice.
    ‘Meaning?’ Holly asked.
    ‘Well, I just saw you look the other way from that Big Issue seller.’
    ‘Well, I’ve never noticed you buying it,’ Holly shot back.
    ‘No, but I’ve never said I wanted to house the homeless.’
    ‘Oh, piss off.’ Holly wandered into the room where she kept her clothes. ‘So what’s it to be, little DKNY black dress or long Nicole Farhi black dress?’ She held up two hangers.
    ‘Short.’
    Holly began to strip.
    ‘Perhaps there’s no such thing as a real relationship?’ she called from the shower.
    ‘Well, why does it bother us both so much that we don’t have one then?’ Colette answered, lying back on Holly’s bed and staring at the paper tropical fish that dangled from a nail in the ceiling. She loved Holly’s bedroom. It was so different from her own home, like a magical cave, full of brightly coloured bits and pieces: the patchwork quilt Mo had made of all Holly’s childhood dresses, a string of Indian elephants for a light-pull, beads slung over the corner of the mirror and the dressing-table cluttered with lipsticks and earrings. Holly emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped round her head. ‘You washed your hair!’
    ‘I know, I only remembered I’d had it done after I’d slapped on the shampoo. I don’t think I’m very good at sleek,’ Holly said, pulling on a black jersey dress with an asymmetric neckline.
    ‘VPL,’ Colette warned, pointing at Holly’s bum. ‘You see what I mean?’ Holly bent and pulled off her knickers. ‘Better?’
    ‘Yes. Aren’t you going to wear tights?’ Colette asked as Holly slipped her foot into one chisel-toed suede pump and hopped round the room in search of the other.
    ‘Black is out and flesh-coloured never looks anything like my flesh. What? Do I need a wax? Well, why are you staring then? Come on. I’m going to miss the Exit poll unless we get a move on. Are you going home?’
    Colette lived in the suburbs, in the colonial-style house she had shared with her husband. They were still arguing about the divorce settlement. The house had five bedrooms, a patio and a pergola. It cost a fortune to keep up, but her ex was still responsible for half the bills.