The Men in her Life

right.’
    ‘What sort of sports equipment?’
    ‘Athletic supporters.’
    ‘What’s an athletic supporter?’
    ‘A jockstrap, if you must know...’
    ‘And how much athletic support does he need, if I may ask?’
    ‘No you may not, nor will you attempt to find out,’ Colette told her.
    ‘Don’t worry. I’ve had enough men for one summer,’ Holly said, ‘anyway, it’s not really about men... it’s about the direction of my life. I’ve got all these contradictions. My life is full, but essentially empty. Any success I have is not my success, it’s the success of my clients, except if they’re not successful, then somehow it’s my fault. Where will I be in ten years’ time? Will I still be doing the same thing, living in a glorified student flat, just me, the odd affair, cirrhosis of the liver and a cat...?’
    ‘You hate cats.’
    ‘True, but they’re what single middle-aged women have... and rats don’t like them.’
    ‘The trouble with you is that you do want a man, but you’re just not prepared to compromise...’
    Same old tune, thought Holly, different band playing it. Why the hell was everyone so keen for her to compromise?
    ‘The only reason I want a man is I’ve got to find someone to take to Mo’s wedding,’ she said briskly. ‘I just can’t bear the thought of everyone asking if I’m going to be next. They wouldn’t dare if I had someone with me...’
    ‘Try my dating agency. What have you got to lose?’
    ‘My dignity
    Colette just looked at her.
    ‘I’ve only got a month...’ Holly said, tacitly agreeing to the idea.
    ‘Has to be the agency then. If you put an ad in a mag, by the time it’s gone in and you’ve sifted the responses, you’d probably only just have met the first batch... and you can’t start off “Hello, you look OK, will you come to my mother’s wedding,” can you?’
    ‘True.’
    ‘Unless you’re planning on finishing what you started with Joss...?’
    ‘No,’ said Holly wistfully. She couldn’t deny that the thought had crossed her mind that he would follow her to London . It had been such a romantic moment down on the harbour wall, but somehow the romance had evaporated on the sagging sofa of Clare’s living-room. ‘It was a bit like me and Robert De Niro...’ she said.
    Colette arched the thin lines of her eyebrows.
    ‘In the flesh, he was a bit of a disappointment,’ Holly said with a dirty laugh.

    ‘So Jack had a wife and a mistress,’ Philippa said when she had heard everything Clare knew, ‘except he chose a mistress for a wife, and a wife for a mistress. Typical of him to be so contrary...’ She said it almost fondly, but there was a bitter edge to her voice.
    ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that,’ Clare said.
    It was dark outside now. She could see her own reflection bouncing back at her from the glass side of the room.
    Perhaps that was what all men wanted, she thought. Perhaps one woman could never be both things as she had tried so hard to be with Joss. In the end what men wanted was a madonna and a whore. Just as Joss had said that night. The memory was still raw enough to make her wince with physical pain. Madonna and whore. It had not occurred to her before that she and Holly had simply followed the pattern that their mothers had set, and the idea filled her with horror.
    ‘A shop assistant,’ Philippa said, disgusted.
    ‘She was his childhood sweetheart,’ Clare rose to Mo’s defence. ‘She didn’t have the benefit of rich parents and a good education. That doesn’t mean she’s stupid...’
    ‘Stupid enough to get pregnant...’ Philippa said, a
    ‘But you were pregnant when you got married, weren’t you?’
    Clare had worked out the dates in her early teens and it had explained then why both her parents seemed so indifferent to her. She had not been wanted in the first place. But now, even in the darkness, Clare could see the depth of her mother’s blush and she knew that she had not got the story quite right.
    ‘Oh, I see,’ she said.
    ‘What do you see?’ Philippa asked, but she knew that she had already given herself away.
    ‘You weren’t stupid enough to get pregnant, so you must have done it deliberately... I didn’t realize that contraception was so sophisticated then...’
    ‘It was, if you knew where to go. And if you had money... but it’s always been easy to get pregnant...’
    ‘But why?’ Clare asked. Clearly her mother had never wanted to have a child.
    ‘I had to have