The Men in her Life

you tempted into my flat with all your bloody Canadian muffins,’ she told him sharply, ‘nothing good ever came out of Canada ...’
    He looked bewildered.
    ‘Jacques Villeneuve,’ he said.
    ‘David Cronenberg, I suppose,’ Holly admitted, ‘Crash? The Fly ?’
    He was too young to have gone to The Fly, she realized, as his face registered no trace of recognition.
    ‘You got a job for the summer...’ she said, more reasonably.
    ‘Yeah. I do this every year...’ he said.
    ‘So you were always going to come back after a couple of weeks in London ?’
    ‘Yeah... I always work August...’
    His look said what did you think? That I was going to stay with you? She had seen it before, many times, on the faces of men she had slept with.
    ‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked.
    ‘Take it out of what I owe you. I’ll buy you a drink as well if you’re around...’
    ‘I don’t think I am really,’ Holly said, with all the dignity she could muster, ‘thanks all the same.’
    She walked down the beach wondering whether his predilection for covering her breasts with ice-cream had been learned over many summers selling Mr Whippy on the Cornish coast and not, as she had previously imagined, by the adverts for Haagen-Dazs.
    ‘Holly don’t want a lolly,’ Tom shouted at his mother.
    Clare looked up and wondered why Holly was blushing furiously.
    ‘Was it Matt?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Holly abruptly.
    ‘I wonder if he’s called Ella,’ Clare said, fishing around in her bag for a tissue to wipe Tom’s face. He looked as if someone had painted a white clown’s mouth on his chin.
    ‘How is she getting along?’ Holly asked as nonchalantly as she could manage.
    ‘I think she’s a bit homesick, actually, but you know Ella, she’d never say that.’
    ‘Missing Matt?’
    ‘Perhaps. I don’t really know what she sees in him, do you? I mean, he’s all right, but he’s not nearly as intelligent as she is...’
    ‘No, that’s true,’ said Holly, desperately trying to suppress a fit of giggles and racking her brains for something else to talk about.

    Simon rang in the evening to say that the poison was down. The pest-control officer had found a gnawed hole at the bottom of Holly’s stairs leading from the flat downstairs which was unoccupied. He thought that the rat was probably still in Holly’s flat but lying low. When they were sure that it was dead they would seal up the hole.
    ‘But in the meantime, the rat can invite all his friends in for a party at my place?’ Holly asked.
    ‘He says they don’t do that. They’re opportunists... from the footprints, he thinks there’s only one...’
    ‘Footprints? No, don’t tell me anything... how will he be sure that the rat’s dead?’ Holly wanted to know, but didn’t want to know.
    ‘Apparently, there’s a smell. He says it’s lucky it’s hot weather. It’ll smell quicker... I’ll ring tomorrow with a progress report,’ Simon said.
    ‘I am grateful, Simon, even though I probably don’t sound it...’
    ‘I know,’ Simon said, ‘send my love to Clare.’
    ‘And mine to Tansy...’
    ‘That sounded so sincere,’ Simon said.
    ‘Oh, piss off.’ Holly put down the phone.
    ‘Why is it that when a disaster happens in this country we immediately start talking about luck?’ she asked nobody in particular. ‘E.g.: a bomb goes off killing two people, “Oh, lucky it wasn’t the rush hour otherwise it would have been hundreds,” we say, but it wasn’t very lucky for the two who copped it... when got mugged, everyone said she was so lucky that the muggers hadn’t been carrying knives, so there’s Mo in hospital with a black eye and no wages telling me, “I was lucky really...’ And now I get a rat, and I’m supposed to think I’m lucky that it’s summer because it’ll putrefy quicker... shall I go and buy some wine? I think I need a drink.’
    ‘I’ll come with you,’ Joss volunteered, adding, ‘it’s getting dark.’
    His timing was just slightly out on the explanation, Holly thought. He’d given a reason for accompanying her just a little bit too quickly, and that had betrayed the fact that he fancied her. She suddenly knew that she could have Joss if she wanted him, and he was gorgeous. And he was her sister’s husband and she was his son’s aunt. She looked at him, and then at the silhouette of Clare’s head as she sat watching television in the back room. Clare was the best thing that had happened to her for