The Men in her Life

didn’t cry when he died. Not once. I don’t miss him exactly, but I regret...’
    ‘Yes. It somehow gave a focus, didn’t it?’ Philippa said, and Clare was astonished that her mother had chosen the exactly appropriate word. Diana’s death had given a focus to everything that was sad in people’s lives. Perhaps people had felt able to cry because it did not seem as selfish to cry for someone else as for all the insignificant little tragedies that made up their own existence.
    ‘You are her age,’ Philippa said.
    Then Clare began to understand, seeing the tears welling in Philippa’s eyes. Even Philippa, cold, hard Philippa had been moved. She did not think she had seen her mother cry before and she did not know what she would do.
    Philippa looked away, staring out towards the pool. ‘What a bad mother I’ve been to you...’
    Clare watched her mother’s thin little body trembling with silent sobs, and she did not know whether to comfort her or to leave her. The oddness of it frightened her. Then Philippa stretched back a thin arm towards her and Clare could not bring herself to take it, unable to find it in herself to forgive so much so soon.
    ‘I’ve left Joss,’ she said, in the strange silence that followed, ‘or at least he’s left me, at my request, but it feels as if I’ve left him...’
    ‘When?’ Philippa sniffed.
    ‘Saturday morning, ironically.’
    ‘But you seemed so very happy together...’
    As soon as Philippa said it she knew it was not true. How painful it was being honest. On the rare occasions she had thought about Clare’s life, she had consoled herself that her daughter had chosen two options, just as she had. Two different options. Clare had chosen the man and the children. Clare’s love for Joss was all-enveloping, as hers had been for Jack. Now she knew she had lied to herself about that too. She had known that Joss was not half the man that Jack was. Jack could be difficult, no-one more so, but his power derived from his quick intelligence, and Joss’s from his inferiority, which made him a bully. Over the years she had seen how her daughter had been ground down, but it had been easier to believe Clare’s proud story that they were very happy and not to see them much. Far easier that way than to admit that her daughter had chosen a pale imitation of her real father because she had lost the love of the real thing.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
    ‘I’m not,’ Clare replied, ‘I feel liberated... although I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do, where I’m going to go...’
    ‘You can stay here... always...’
    ‘We’ll see,’ Clare said, unwilling to leap from one oppressive household to another. That would be going backwards. In the days since Joss left, she had felt gloriously, irrationally optimistic, and she did not want to let go of her freedom so soon.
    They both sat in silence, then Philippa said, ‘Clare, there’s something I have to tell you.’ The sentence started off loud and then dropped, as if she was unused to hearing her voice and the sound of it frightened her.
    Philippa looked so stricken, Clare’s heart began to thump in her chest. Not cancer, she thought, please don’t let her have cancer.
    ‘There’s no easy way of saying this...’
    ‘What?’ Clare interrupted, impatient for the news that seemed to weigh so heavily on her mother’s shoulders.
    ‘Your father had another child, a daughter...’ Philippa stared out of the window.
    ‘How long have you known?’
    ‘Since the night he died...’ The relief of saying it was immense. Philippa looked at Clare for the first time directly. ‘You knew?’ she said, accusingly.
    ‘Only since the funeral...’ Automatically, Clare began to defend herself.
    ‘Who told you?’
    ‘She did. I met her at the funeral.’
    ‘She was at the funeral?’
    ‘I just told you,’ she sounded like a sulky teenager.
    ‘How old is she?’ Philippa demanded.
    ‘She’s my age,’ Clare said, thinking what an odd question it was, then suddenly understanding.
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Hysteria was beginning to rise in Philippa’s voice.
    ‘You didn’t give me much of a chance... why didn’t you tell me for that matter?’ Clare shouted back.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You said you knew the night he died... so why didn’t you tell me then?’
    ‘Because... because...’ Philippa’s angry expression melted into fear. ‘Because I thought that telling me had killed him... I thought I had