The Men in her Life

of hours. If we slipped away now, we could be back in time for Edgbaston.’
    ‘Edgbaston?’
    ‘It’s the first key marginal.’
    ‘You’re such a sweet-talking guy,’ she hissed and wandered away in search of Robert, who was talking to a very handsome Irish actor who had recently appeared in a film one of her clients had written.
    ‘Ruffled again,’ Robert said, looking at her wild hair and leaning forward to give her a kiss, ‘piss off, eh, darling, I rather fancy my chances,’ he whispered before straightening up.
    The swing in Sunderland South was eleven per cent. It was real. There was going to be a change of government. There was going to be a landslide. Even the Tory ex-cabinet minister on the television looked despondent as he insisted they reserve judgement until some more results were in.
    Champagne corks started popping all over the room-For the first time in her life, Holly felt as if she were participating in a moment of history. In the future, people would ask each other what they were doing the night the Labour government swept to power and she would remember this room, these people, the faint smell of red roses and cigarette smoke, this moment. Under the cover of all the celebratory kissing and hugging, Holly found herself in Piers’s arms.
    ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked, stepping back quickly, as if there were a danger of contracting emotion.
    ‘It’s the first time I’ve voted for the winning party,’ Holly told him, brushing away the tears that had surprised her as much as him. ‘I think it’s the first time I’ve had a sense of democracy being something to do with me...’ she tried to explain.
    ‘Do you mind if I use that?’ Piers took out his notebook.
    ‘Are you writing this party up?’ She couldn’t believe he wanted to lift something she had struggled to articulate and use it in an article.
    ‘Well, the editor did ask me to do a kind of how-was-it-for-you column...’
    ‘And how is it for you?’ Holly demanded to know. The sharpness of her tone made several people glance in their direction.
    ‘Well, as I said in my column last week, practically, I don’t think it will make a great deal of difference,’ Piers said, over-loudly, as if he were talking to a stranger.
    His coldness had always both repelled and fascinated her. When she first met him, a couple of years before, at one of the lunch parties the agency occasionally threw, to which they invited a selection of current opinion-formers, she had thought him amusing, in a conceited kind of way. He had a brilliantly sharp mind but the icy, untouchable beauty of a statue.
    The lunch had gone on until late in the afternoon. When the last of the other guests had drifted away, and her colleagues had gone back to their offices to pick up their messages, she had suddenly found herself alone in the circular boardroom with him. He had picked up the last claret bottle and, finding it empty, asked her if she would like to go for a drink somewhere else, and even though she instinctively did not like him, she was paradoxically flattered that he found her interesting enough to want to spend more time with.
    They found a musty basement wine bar and drank a lot of armagnac, laughing a great deal at each other’s wit, and a few hours later, when she took him home, at whose suggestion she had never been sure, she discovered that under a white shirt that smelt deliciously of starch his skin was smooth and warm, his body pliable, responsive to her touch.
    ‘I’m going to get another drink,’ Holly said. Piers followed her up to the kitchen at a suitably discreet distance.
    ‘Have you noticed that everyone has a least favourite cabinet minister they’re betting will lose his seat?’ she asked him, pouring herself another glass of claret. ‘My personal choice is Malcolm Rifkind, but there’s a lot of money on Ian Lang and some optimistic punters are even having a flutter on Michael Portillo.’
    ‘That’s good,’ he said, taking out his notepad again, ‘that’s very good.’
    She wondered why, after nearly two years, she still got a buzz when he praised something she said. It was so illogical. She was a successful woman, old enough to know better, young enough to do better, a feminist for God’s sake, enslaved in an affair with an arrogant, sexist shit, someone she knew was bad for her, but she couldn’t seem to give up. It was a bit like smoking.
    ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ she asked Piers.
    ‘I thought you