The Men in her Life

would be randy and she felt she would not be able to bear it if he touched her. She braced herself, trying not to flinch, managing to maintain the evenness of her breathing long enough to convince him that she was asleep. As he left the room, she let out a long sigh of relief. She heard him padding downstairs, saying something to Holly, and then a muffled giggle. They had both been drinking. She heard the unmistakable creak and boing of the springs in the sofa bed uncoiling, and the thump of pillows. Holly was turning in for the night, which meant that Toss would soon return. Clare tensed, then relaxed as minutes ticked by and he did not appear. Perhaps they had both dozed off in a drunken stupor. The television was still on downstairs. Clare closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

    Joss took off his trousers and underpants. His body was thicker than Holly had imagined it, and he had grey hair on his chest and at the base of his spine. He was a man, she reminded herself, not a boy. He turned round, his penis hanging limp as he got into bed beside her. She could feel him hardening slightly as he put both arms around her and kissed her savagely.
    ‘Lie on top of me,’ he instructed as she struggled to break free for air.
    She sat with her legs astride his hips, hovering above him. Then she started to lift and dip her body, brushing herself against him. He groaned a little and closed his eyes. She kissed his mouth softly, then ran her tongue down his body to his penis, licking the tip in little circles before taking it in her mouth and sucking. At last, the tissue began to respond. She sucked and he moaned, and from time to time she opened her eyes to look up his body to his face, but his eyes were closed. Her jaw was beginning to ache. Matt with his ever-ready erection had made her lazy. She had forgotten how much effort sex could involve, especially when you were tired and drunk. She was beginning to wish that she had never started, when she looked up again and saw first Joss’s face frowning with concentration, and above, six feet away in the door-frame, the outline of her sister standing staring at them. Their eyes met.
    Holly let the penis flop from her mouth.
    Then Clare started shouting.
    ‘GET OUT. GET OUT. BOTH OF YOU. JUST GO.’
    For a few moments, no-one moved. Then Clare fled upstairs and suddenly Joss was on his feet, ripping the sheet from the sofa bed to cover himself, then leaping up the stairs after her.
    Holly listened at the bottom of the stairs like a naughty child eavesdropping.
    ‘DON’T TOUCH ME,’ Clare shrieked, ‘I HATE YOU.’
    She broke down crying, and then stopped suddenly.
    ‘What the hell did you think you were doing? In our house?’ she asked him coldly, trying to keep her voice down so that Tom would not wake up.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he faltered.
    ‘You don’t know...?’
    ‘I suppose I found the poetic symmetry of fucking the whore downstairs while the Madonna slept innocently above irresistible,’ he laughed weakly.
    ‘Is that supposed to be some sort of compliment? You’re disgusting, you disgust me,’ Clare hissed at him. ‘I want a divorce.’

Chapter 30

    There were thousands of people milling on the Mall, and yet it was quiet. A stillness had fallen, like the moment just before Mass in a great cathedral, interrupted only by an occasional wail from a baby too young to understand his surroundings, a sound that made strangers smile at one another, just briefly, acknowledging human frailty, then look away again, absorbed in their own private thoughts.
    The department store had closed for the day. There had been a strange, hushed atmosphere there all week and very few shoppers. Outside, the pavements were awash with flowers. The staff talked about nothing else. Everyone had conducted their own inquest and reached their own verdict. Accident, manslaughter, murder or even assassination. Mo understood that people wanted to believe that it was not an accident. It seemed such a stupid, unnecessary end for Diana and Dodi, but she still thought it was the most likely explanation.
    ‘Drink causes more deaths than all the other drugs put together,’ Eamon said knowledgeably.
    Mo had felt a special affinity with Diana right from the start, not just because she had bought the outfit she announced her engagement in from her department — she hadn’t served her, but she’d recognized the blue suit when she saw it on television — but because she was the mother of a tall,