The Men in her Life

‘will you tell me what you think?’
    ‘Of course.’
    She disappeared into her clothes room for a few minutes, then came back wearing the English Eccentrics dress she had stopped off at Fenwicks to buy on her return from the dating agency. It was almost floor-length and made of devoré velvet in soft sea colours. Who needs a man when you can look like a Thirties film star? she had asked herself, twirling in front of the mirror. The dress fitted her like a mermaid’s skin. It was made for her. Problem solved, Holly had thought triumphantly as she handed over her credit card.
    ‘You don’t like it,’ she said, dismayed, as she saw Simon’s face.
    ‘No, I do like it...’
    ‘But? I can tell there’s a but coming...’
    ‘Well, I just wondered what Mo’s wearing and what time of day the wedding is and all that...’
    ‘Noon at Camden Register Office,’ Holly said impatiently.
    ‘Why Camden ? You can get married almost anywhere nowadays...’
    ‘Eamon lives there. I don’t know. What does it matter anyway?’
    ‘Have you ever been to Camden Register Office?’ Simon asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘It’s right outside St Pancras...’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Well, to me that dress says champagne and caviar ball at the Ritz, and, well, Camden Register office is more mug of tea at a greasy-spoon cafe opposite a sleazy main-line station...’
    ‘Oh...’
    Crestfallen, Holly tried hard to hold back the overwhelming urge to cry. Whatever was the matter with her these days? It had always been a point of principle for her not to be the sort of woman who cried, and now she seemed to cry all the time. Recently, all the things that used to give her pleasure had become hurdles to jump. She couldn’t seem to get up the enthusiasm to work, no-one wanted to play, and whenever she drank she wondered whether she was becoming an alcoholic. There were articles everywhere about totally normal people who were alcoholics and they seemed to drink far less than she did.
    ‘I mean, it is fantastic. It makes you look so glamorous...’ Simon tried to backtrack.
    His eyes travelled up and down her body in a way that made her feel slightly self-conscious, as if there were a draught blowing round her waist.
    ‘All right, no need to sound so bloody surprised...’ she said, swallowing the tears.
    ‘You look really, well, slinky... it’s just that you’re so tall and Mo isn’t and...’
    ‘And you think she might think I was upstaging her...’ Holly slumped into the low armchair. ‘Oh bloody hell!’ she said, ‘I don’t even want to go to this fucking wedding...’ She looked up at him desperately as the tears began to course down her cheeks. ‘You wouldn’t do me a big favour, would you?’
    ‘Of course I would,’ Simon said immediately. In all the years he had known her, he had never seen Holly cry.
    ‘Come with me?’ Holly pleaded.

    Everyone else in Penderric had known for weeks about Joss’s affair with the Italian woman from the poetry festival. Apparently Joss had told Jeremy, Olivia’s husband, during one of the poets’ meetings. When she heard that, Clare wondered briefly, why Jeremy? She didn’t think he and Joss had ever been particularly close and she was almost certain that Joss and Olivia had been having an affair earlier in the year, but, of course, that was it! The juicy titbit had been tossed in Jeremy’s direction as a kind of consolation prize for Joss’s dalliance with his wife. Jeremy had always been rather a weak character. Clare could imagine him preening with the knowledge that he had become Joss’s confidant.
    She learned all the facts sitting in Amelia’s tea shop after dropping Tom at his playgroup. Amelia was overbearingly concerned about Clare’s welfare at the same time as being visibly cross that Clare had completely forgotten to deliver any jam for the past two weeks.
    ‘I do think you might have called,’ she chided Clare.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Clare said.
    ‘I had to buy a few jars of Tiptree to tide me over,’ Amelia said, looking hurt. ‘I will be getting my usual order this week, won’t I?’ she asked with a slightly threatening edge to her voice. Deliver or die was the message.
    ‘No, I’m afraid you won’t,’ Clare heard herself saying, ‘I’m not making any more jam...’ Her hands were shaking with the shock of her unexpected resolve. She drained the willow-pattern cup. Amelia did make a very nice cup of Earl Grey, she thought, as she stood up and walked out.
    Vivienne