The Men in her Life

when they had finished shouting at each other, she had come downstairs to find Holly gone. On the table the Yellow Pages lay open at Taxis, so Clare assumed that she had called one and checked into a hotel. For a moment she felt oddly sad that they had not said goodbye. And then she remembered Holly’s face frowning with concentration on the task of pleasuring Joss, and she was glad neither of them had suffered the indignity of her apology.
    Seeing that the sofa bed was vacant, Joss had said he would sleep there. Clare had not wanted him in the house, but, suddenly coldly rational and exhausted by their row, she could not see what would be gained by making him leave in the middle of the night. She had returned upstairs without speaking to him.
    Early in the morning he had brought her tea, as if nothing had happened, and sat down on the edge of her bed.
    ‘How do you feel?’ he asked, as if she were convalescing from flu.
    She had slept better than she had for weeks and her brain felt as if it had been rinsed with clear spring water. She finally saw how he always manipulated history to make her somehow the culprit and him the victim of his poetically uncontrollable urges. And she understood as she never had before that to stop him she must refuse to engage with the run of his questions.
    ‘You can see Tom whenever you want by prior arrangement, but I do not want to see you, or to talk to you except to discuss Tom’s well-being or Ella’s, should that be necessary,’ she told him.
    The pleasure it gave her to see Joss’s surprise was immeasurable, and she marvelled at her use of the words ‘prior arrangement’. It made her sound as if she had been talking to a lawyer.
    ‘And don’t even think about telling him that Mummy made you leave, because if you lie to him, I shall be forced to tell him the truth. Do you understand?’
    He had merely nodded, and for a moment he looked beaten. She fought the Pavlovian urge to feel sorry for him. It must be awful to live your life on an illusion of strength, she thought, and then to be exposed as weak. Far better to think you are weak and discover you are strong.
    Wearily he had started to put a few things into a bag, very slowly, as if expecting her to relent with each pair of socks he added, but she did not.
    He went in to say goodbye to Tom and she jumped out of bed to stand outside Tom’s door listening.
    ‘Daddy’s going away for a little while,’ he told him.
    ‘To a poet thing?’
    ‘Yes, something like that.’
    ‘Can I still go to the beach?’ Tom had asked, with a child’s glorious selfishness.
    ‘Yes, with Mummy.’
    In the end, he had done as she asked. If she had asked before, would he...? Standing outside her son’s bedroom door, Clare had gulped back tears. It was too late now. It was over.

    The funeral cortège had finally reached Westminster
    Abbey.
    ‘What are they doing now?’ Tom asked.
    ‘They’re taking that box with the flag on and carrying it inside,’ Clare told him.
    ‘But WHY?’
    ‘Because they’re going to sing some nice songs and remember the nice lady.’
    ‘Oh. That OK then,’ Tom allowed.
    At that moment the phone rang.
    Surely it couldn’t be Joss. Surely even he had enough respect to wait until the funeral was over. She decided not to answer it, then Tom slid off the sofa and said, ‘I’ll get it.’
    And Clare leapt up to reach the receiver before his little hands could.
    ‘Clare? It’s Philippa...’
    ‘Philippa, where are you?’ She sounded a long way away and in distress.
    ‘In a bar in Granada . But I’m coming home.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘As soon as I can get a flight... Could I see you?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Are you all right? I’m thinking about you... I wanted...’
    And then her mother’s money ran out, and the congregation in the Abbey rose.

    It was a bit like the Oscars, Holly thought. When the Prime Minister arrived she had assumed it was a plain-clothes policeman behind him who looked just like Tom Conti, then the commentator said, ‘And there’s Tom Conti...’
    Richard Branson waved at the crowd. She was surprised that everyone so far had resisted the temptation to sign autographs. Chris de Burgh was there looking even more pious than ever. George Michael was in the Abbey, and Elton John really was going to sing ‘Candle in the Wind’. It was going to be the campest funeral showbiz had ever seen.
    Holly tried to get comfortable on the beige sofa.

    Simon had been right about the