The Men in her Life

were quitting.’ He looked round quickly to check that no-one was within range of hearing such an injudiciously familiar comment.
    ‘I am, if Labour win,’ she told him.
    The Labour candidate in Edgbaston was making her victory speech.
    ‘When the people elect a German woman in a relatively safe seat, the Tories know their time’s up... enjoy this, it may be your last,’ Piers said, offering her a Marlboro, then, bringing his voice down to a whisper, ‘shall we go?’
    ‘You go if you want. I’m enjoying myself,’ Holly found it gave her rather a kick to see him denied, ‘anyway, I thought you were meant to be writing something about it.’
    ‘We could always watch the television at your place...’ Surreptitiously, he ran a finger down her spine.
    ‘I want to be with people... just another hour or so,’ she compromised.
    The mood at the party changed from excitement to euphoria. People had become so disillusioned, Holly thought, they had not even dared to hope for a better life. And now it was being offered, they did not yet know how to greet it. It was fashionable to be negative, to say that things wouldn’t change much anyway, to talk of the global economy and the powerlessness of government, but at some point between ten o’clock and one o’clock in the morning there was a subtle change of style and people started using words like renewal and regeneration as if they really meant something.
    ‘Extraordinary evening,’ Piers remarked, as they finally left the party in the early hours of the morning.
    ‘It’s like fantasy Election night,’ Holly said. ‘You start off thinking you’d be grateful for a narrow Majority, then you’re looking at a landslide, things really are going to change...’ her eyes sparkled. ‘I feel empowered...’
    ‘Really?’
    The short, dry sneer that normally made her feel stupid merely disappointed her. For the first time since she had known him, Piers’s acute mind had failed to read the Zeitgeist. There had been a slight shift in the World’s axis. The country had exchanged a man who spoke in a flat grey monotone for a man who grinned like a cartoon cat. In his minimalist black suit, Piers suddenly looked out of date.
    They stepped out of the cab in the narrow street by the National Gallery where Holly lived. She put her key in the entrance gate then paused before turning it.
    ‘Hey, why don’t we go down to the South Bank and join the party? You could include it in your piece.’
    ‘We haven’t got invitations.’
    ‘We can crash...’
    ‘We’ve let the cab go,’ Piers argued.
    ‘For God’s sake, it would only take us ten minutes to walk!’
    ‘But I’ve only got a couple of hours before my copy has to be in.’ Piers clasped her waist in his hands and kissed her there in the street.
    ‘All right,’ she said, half-annoyed, half-flattered by his open desire to have sex with her.
    ‘Did you hear a rustle?’ Piers asked as they walked up the stairs.
    They both stood still and listened for a moment.
    Silence.
    ‘Maybe you’ve got a mouse,’ Piers suggested as they continued.
    ‘Don’t,’ Holly said, ‘I hate mice.’
    ‘Or a rat...’ he said.
    ‘Oh, I know I’ve got a rat.’ She turned and kissed him.
    They went straight to her bedroom and stripped. It seemed colder inside the flat than out. Holly jumped into bed and pulled the covers right up to her chin.
    ‘Aren’t you going to put something on?’ Piers asked, pulling back the quilt, staring at her bare, goosebumpy flesh.
    He meant underwear. He had started to buy her underwear just after the episode where she had threatened to stop seeing him if he couldn’t promise that she was the only woman he screwed apart from his wife. It was as if he needed to assert his power again after her small victory.
    At first, she had quite enjoyed receiving high-quality silk and pure cotton in pale feminine colours, wrapped in tissue paper and nestling in boxes with designer names on. She had been slightly shocked to realize that there was something erotic about putting on a slip of satin from Janet Reger costing a hundred pounds and having it ripped off ten minutes later with passionate urgency. Instead of making her feel cheap it seemed to have the opposite effect, conferring on her a curious kind of status as a high-class mistress. Now, as she rose wearily from the bed, stepped into camiknickers and hunted around in a drawer for a pair of clean stockings, it seemed a ridiculously tawdry