The Men in her Life

technique of aggressive, rapid-fire banter to avoid talking about something.
    ‘Get on?’ Holly enquired disingenuously.
    ‘At the agency...’ Colette persisted.
    ‘Decided against,’ Holly told her, lighting and drawing on a cigarette. ‘It wasn’t so much the shame of having to find someone that way, as the idea that someone, one of my clients, even, might find me there... what are you having?’ she asked, looking at the menu, ‘have you ever noticed how it looks like you have the most enormous choice when you pick up the menu in Mexican restaurants, but when you actually read the descriptions they’re all exactly the same... it’s all tortillas and refried beans, even the do-it-yourself ones …how’s Mr Jock Strap?’
    ‘We’re thinking of going on holiday together...’
    ‘How tall is he?’
    ‘Err...’
    ‘Too short for me to borrow for a day...?’
    ‘Sorry,’ Colette said.
    ‘So, he’s short, then...’
    ‘You’re so judgemental... no wonder you never find anyone,’ Colette sniped.
    ‘I may still find someone,’ Holly said, rising to the challenge, ‘there’s two and a half weeks to go. Anyway, I’ve bought my dress... by the way,’ she retaliated, ‘you can’t be judgemental about something like height which is an objectively measurable quantity. Why do you think it is you always choose short men?’ she added, with the implication that there might be some deep psychological explanation for Colette’s behaviour.
    ‘Why do you always choose married men?’ Colette shot back.
    ‘Married men can get divorced,’ Holly told her, ‘short men never grow.’
    As soon as she said it she knew she had gone too far. Having said that she was ravenous, Colette would only have a starter and then declined her invitation for more beer at the flat. Holly wandered back alone through the thronging crowds in Leicester Square .
    She saw Simon before he saw her. He was walking up the street from the Trafalgar Square end, looking a little preoccupied, but the moment he identified her in the darkness he stopped and smiled broadly.
    ‘Long time, no see...’ he said.
    ‘Whose fault is that?’ Holly asked tetchily.
    ‘Mine, I suppose,’ he conceded.
    His disarming pleasantness made Holly instantly ashamed of her petulance.
    ‘I’m sorry, I sound like a nagging wife.’
    He smiled.
    ‘Coming up for a drink?’ Holly asked.
    Simon looked at his watch, then at her. It was after midnight, so she expected him to decline.
    ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘why not?’
    It seemed like ages since they had done this. Holly opened a bottle of white rioja she had bought with Colette in mind, but forgotten to put in the fridge. They drank it warm.
    ‘How’s insurance?’ she asked him, hoping that for once she had remembered his field of expertise correctly.
    ‘Fine. How’s the agency?’
    ‘Pretty dull at the moment. Or maybe it’s me that’s dull. I feel a bit stale, need a holiday, that sort of thing.’
    ‘You just had a holiday...’
    ‘When? Oh, you mean Cornwall ... that wasn’t much of a holiday...’ she let out a brief, rueful laugh, realizing that they had not spent much time alone together since her precipitate return.
    Simon raised an eyebrow.
    ‘... what with Princess Diana dying, and all that...’
    Simon said nothing, but she knew he knew she was hiding something.
    ‘I misbehaved...’ Holly admitted, then because he still said nothing, ‘with Clare’s husband...’
    ‘My God, Holly, first the boyfriend, then the husband... what’s got into you?’
    ‘What boyfriend? Oh, Matt... how did you know?’ she asked.
    ‘It’s summer. You open windows in summer...’
    ‘All right, don’t go on. It’s embarrassing enough... I only gave the husband a blow-job,’ Holly said, in her defence.
    Simon threw back his head and roared with laughter.
    ‘Clare hates him anyway...’ her brain tried to spark some more mitigation, but failed, ‘still bad, isn’t it?’
    ‘Very bad,’ Simon said, but he sounded more amused than critical.
    ‘How’s Tansy, anyway?’ Holly asked him.
    ‘All right.’
    The conversation seemed to be petering out, but Holly was desperate for him to stay. She knew that if he went she would only finish the bottle on her own, and maybe start the next, and she knew that it was bad to drink alone, although she was never quite sure why it was so much worse than drinking with some other wreckhead.
    ‘I bought a dress for Mo’s wedding,’ she said suddenly,