The Men in her Life

woman the world had ever known. The face that launched a thousand magazines, and yet one word would define her for ever.
    Mummy.
    The bartender came over to take her order. Philippa saw that he was startled by the tears rolling down her cheeks. They did not go with the elegance of her sleeveless black dress, the Loewe leather knapsack, the tortoiseshell RayBans perched on her forehead.
    ‘Agua mineral. Sin gaz.’
    The funeral procession was nearing Buckingham Palace . All eyes were on the Queen, but Philippa’s mind was elsewhere.

    Long ago, on her wedding day, she had received a warning.
    ‘You cannot have a husband and a career and children.’
    It was her boss who had issued it, smiling, but she had been deadly serious. She was one of the few women then who had reached board level in an advertising agency. She was the woman Philippa wanted to be. Her long painted fingernails were exactly the same red as the Campari and soda she was drinking.
    ‘You can have two out of three, but you cannot have all three.’
    Philippa had laughed, and pulled in her stomach, praying that her boss had not detected the small curve that lay beneath the tiny white shift, and looked across the room at Jack. He had not wanted a big reception but he had got the Ritz. He had not wanted to wear a suit but she had taken him to Simpsons. He despised her parents’ wealth and class, and yet he was telling her mother a joke, a perfectly-pitched joke, for her mother was smiling, spellbound by her new son-in-law’s charm. He had done all this for her. Watching him, Philippa loved him so much that she ached, and she had decided at that moment which two of the three options that lay before her she would choose.

    Now she stared at the small rectangular card moving along the Mall, and in its wake two boys trying so hard to be brave.
    Mummy.
    Philippa had relinquished motherhood in a Faustian exchange for her career and husband long ago. And now her career was over and her husband gone.
    Mummy.
    The woman in the coffin was almost exactly the same age as her own daughter.
    The cacophony of questions in Philippa’s brain that had been clamouring for answers since Jack died grew suddenly quiet. You could not begin to repair the past, only the future. Long ago she had given up the right to be called Mummy and she did not know whether Clare needed or wanted her any more, but she knew that she needed her. Clare was the only person in the world she wanted to see.
    Picking her leather knapsack from the chair beside her, Philippa made her way across the dingy bar to the payphone by the cigarette machine. She put in some coins but paused before dialling. How do you begin this conversation, she wondered, trembling. Losing her nerve, she replaced the receiver and was startled a moment later by the clatter of coins. She would ring from the Parador, from the privacy of her room. She glanced at the television again. Dignitaries were arriving at the Abbey. Everyone in England would be watching the service. If she rang now she would be almost certain of speaking to Clare, if she waited until she returned to the Parador the moment might have passed and having waited so long, she could not wait any longer. Philippa dropped the coins in again and stabbed out the number.

    * * *

    ‘Who’s that funny lady?’
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘That funny lady with the funny hat...’ Tom pointed at the screen where the camera had zoomed in on the latest arrival at the Abbey.
    Clare laughed. ‘She’s called Mrs Thatcher.’
    ‘She’s funny.’
    It was wonderful to have a child’s innocent perspective on the funeral and when you were trying to think of answers to the constant stream of questions, it was almost impossible to cry.
    Why are those horses going so slowly?
    Why are those men wearing big black hats?
    And, when the procession was joined by people representing Diana’s favourite charities. What is the man doing in that pushchair?
    They were both sitting on the sofa, Clare’s feet on the floor, Tom’s just reaching over the edge. They had eaten biscuits instead of breakfast and the crumbs were everywhere. She put her arm round his shoulders and squeezed, thinking how nice it was, just the two of them, together, chatting and watching an event that in years to come might be his first remembered memory.
    ‘The day my father left us,’ Tom might say, ‘it was the funeral of the Princess of Wales ...’
    Clare did not know where Joss had gone.

    The night before,