The Men in her Life

years. She was kind and sweet and she was family. And Joss was her husband, the father of Ella and Tom, whom she had stuck with through thick and thin for the sake of her children. She looked back at Joss and his sparkling eyes.
    Dear God, if I deny myself this man, will you get rid of the rat for ever and make it so that I meet someone who loves me and live happily ever after? she bargained silently.
    ‘Actually, I think I’ll pass,’ she said, ‘I’ve been drinking a bit too much recently. It’ll do me good to cut down.’
    Joss looked surprised. ‘Right, well, if there’s nothing going on down here, I’ll get back to my work,’ he said, and the empty space that he left in the room was not entirely filled by Holly’s feeling of righteousness.
    As she sat down next to Clare on the sofa, Clare patted her hand distractedly as if she were one of her children. They watched the news together and after-wards Clare went to check Tom.
    ‘Both asleep,’ she announced, when she came downstairs, ‘shall we have some tea?’
    She filled the kettle, then suddenly said, ‘I’m going to leave him.’
    ‘Who?’ Holly asked.
    ‘Joss.’
    ‘You’re going to leave Joss?’ Holly repeated. She tried to form her face into an appropriate expression of sympathetic concern, but inside it felt as if she were jumping up and down screeching ‘There is a God!’
    ‘It’s such a relief to finally tell you...’ Clare said, drawing up a chair at the table and sitting down. ‘I decided on my birthday. Just after Ella left, you know. I thought it would be so awful when she went and it was... is... but it kind of liberated me too, I can’t explain...’
    ‘But where are you going to go?’ Holly asked, trying to think of something appropriate to say.
    ‘I might not go anywhere. I might ask him to go,’ Clare said.
    ‘Is that possible? Isn’t it his house?’
    ‘I thought you might know. The thing is, I daren’t speak to anyone round here... it’s just so good to say it. It makes it seem so much more real...’
    ‘But why now?’ Holly asked. Just as she had begun to see the point of Clare’s way of life, she was giving it up.
    ‘Ella’s gone, and Tom is still young enough to be portable. He doesn’t start school for another couple of years, so I won’t be disrupting anything. I’m too young to slide into middle age. I don’t want to settle for putting up with my life. I want to see if there’s something I can do, not just fade away... I thought,’ she looked at Holly, disappointed, ‘I thought you’d be pleased...’
    ‘Of course I’m pleased,’ Holly said, ‘if you’re sure it’s
    the right thing
    ‘If we decided to, could we come and stay with you, like you said?’ Clare asked.
    ‘I’ve got a rat, remember?’ Holly replied.
    ‘You won’t always have one...’ Clare said, a little desperately.
    ‘Isn’t it weird that we both see each other’s home as an escape
    ‘I suppose so,’ Clare said, pouring boiling water into the pot. She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t bitterly disappointed by Holly’s reaction. She was talking about the biggest decision she had ever made in her life, and Holly was comparing it with a minor job for pest control.
    ‘I’m just shocked,’ Holly said, sensing that she had not delivered the correct response to the situation, ‘it’s just a bit confusing, that’s all.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Clare said, ‘I probably shouldn’t have told anyone until I’d thought it out a bit more.’
    ‘I mean, what would you do in London ?’ Holly persisted.
    ‘I don’t know. Oh, let’s not talk about it any more,’ Clare tried to quash the panic that was rising inside her. She had thought that Holly would help, show her how, but she realized suddenly that nobody could help. She alone would face the consequences, and that was scary.

    Clare lay awake staring at the ceiling. Sometimes a full moon would light the room with silver, but tonight the sky was black. She had put so much faith in talking to Holly, but Holly had nothing to say to her that she did not already know and she was beginning to realize that Holly saw things only in relation to herself, anyway.
    Next to her Joss snorted and then rolled over, his arm flopping across her body like a large dead fish. A few days before he had rolled on top of her in the middle of the night and fucked her as she slept. Except that she hadn’t been asleep, but he didn’t seem to know that, or to care. Lying