The Men in her Life

smell in her flat. When the taxi that had driven her all the way from Cornwall had dropped her at seven in the morning she had been relieved to be home at last. It felt as if she had been away for months. Her key slid into the lock with a satisfying click and then she had pushed open the door. The smell that assaulted her nostrils had an initial sweetness that made her think, oh, it’s not so bad, and then suddenly it was so searingly disgusting, like an infinite multiplication of rotting cabbage and blocked drains, that she knew she would throw up if she took another breath. She banged the door shut again and stamped her foot in frustration. The one place that she had made her home, where she felt safe, had been taken from her and she had nowhere left to go.
    Then Simon and Tansy had appeared in the courtyard, arm in arm and looking cloyingly couply. She was the sort of woman who blow-dried her hair even at this time on a Saturday morning.
    ‘Where are you going?’ Holly asked them.
    They looked at her oddly.
    ‘To watch the funeral,’ they said simultaneously.
    ‘Am I the only person in this country who hasn’t gone mad?’ Holly asked.
    She had just been stuck for six hours in a car with a cab-driver who wanted to air his particular theory which was that Diana and Dodi were not really dead at all, but that there had been a getaway car, and look-alike bodies had been placed in the Mercedes.
    ‘Anything’s possible these days,’ he had told her in his annoying West Country burr that sounded like a cider advert, as they sped over Dartmoor .
    ‘Do you mean that French doctors gave heart massage to a look-alike before pronouncing her dead, or that there are several dozen people in on the escape plan?’ Holly asked, never able to let a theory go untested, although as soon as she’d said it she wished she hadn’t.
    In the rear-view mirror, the driver’s face fell.
    ‘I’m not saying it happened,’ he said, ‘I’m just saying it’s possible.’
    ‘I think I’ll try to get a bit of kip if you don’t mind,’ Holly told him, lying down across the back seat. She had woken up on Salisbury Plain and sat up with an aching back.
    ‘Nobody’s traced that white Fiat Uno, though, have they?’ the driver asked, and she wondered whether he had been droning on all the time that she had been sleeping without noticing that he was getting no response.
    ‘So, where do you think they are?’ Holly asked, Wearily.
    ‘On some paradise island, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he said, as they pulled into a lay-by for a coffee break.
    ‘Well, if that’s true, the News of the World will find them soon enough,’ Holly said.
    ‘Not if they’re not looking for them,’ he replied sagely, unscrewing his Thermos flask.
    ‘Think of all the people who’d see them on the way...’ Holly argued.
    ‘Plastic surgery,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, but then you’re adding a surgeon and at least a couple of nurses to the picture,’ Holly said, ‘and do you really think that all her family and Prince Charles who presumably saw the body, would either be fooled by a look-alike, or be able to keep the secret?’
    ‘Well, they didn’t let her sons see her,’ said the driver as if that constituted irrefutable proof.
    Holly lay down again. The next time she woke up they were on the Chiswick flyover.
    ‘We’ve made good time,’ he told her, ‘is there anywhere near where you live I could park up? Now I’m here, seems a pity not to watch the procession...’
    And Holly suddenly realized why it had been quite so easy to negotiate a cab journey to London in the middle of this particular night. He was being paid two hundred pounds to do something he dearly wanted to do.
    ‘What’s the point of watching a coffin with a look-alike in it?’ she asked him as she got out of the car. He pulled away muttering something about lack of respect.
    And now here were two people who favoured beige and pastel shades standing in front of her dressed in black at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, when anyone with a brain would be asleep in bed. If they had a bed to go to. Holly seized her opportunity.
    ‘If you’re out, could I have a sleep in your flat?’ she asked Simon.
    ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you’ve got a key, haven’t you?’
    Tansy’s face fell dramatically.
    ‘I think so,’ Holly said, diplomatically, as if it were something she’d never used before.
    Simon smiled gratefully at her.
    Even though she felt exhausted, she hadn’t