The Men in her Life

was equally concerned, and dying for the opportunity to bitch about Joss. Clare was not surprised by the level of support when it was so clear that Vivienne felt Joss had betrayed her too.
    ‘We wondered what had happened to you,’ she said.
    ‘I’ve been in London ...’ Clare told her, ‘but what I don’t understand is how? How did they communicate?’
    ‘Apparently they wrote each other poems,’ Vivienne said.
    ‘But I’m always up earlier than Joss. I always see the post...’
    She thought of the large phone bill, but she couldn’t imagine Joss extemporizing poetry or even reading it on the phone, and she could not recall any awkward moments when she might have caught him talking.
    ‘E-mail,’ Vivienne said. ‘We feel so guilty about it because when he asked Pepe about Internet servers and all that we had no idea...’
    It took a while for the information to sink in, then the thought of Joss using Ella’s computer for his billets-doux made her feel physically sick.
    ‘Are you going to be OK?’ Vivienne asked.
    ‘I’m going to be fine,’ Clare assured her.
    As they walked back up the hill towards the little cottage, Clare asked Tom, ‘How would you like to go to nursery school in London ?’
    ‘ London is a big city,’ Tom told her, ‘Philpa, who called Granma, live there.’
    Clare didn’t know how much Philippa was going to like being called Grandma all the time.
    ‘Yes, but how would you like to live there too, for a while?’
    ‘Will my tractor be there?’ Tom asked.
    For one moment as he said the first two words, Clare’s heart stopped. She thought he was about to say daddy rather than tractor and she needed more time to work out what to tell him.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she said, picking the child up and hugging him, ‘your tractor will most definitely be there.’

Chapter 33

    ‘I, Maureen O’Mara, do solemnly swear that I know not of any lawful impediment...’
    Mo’s voice was strong and clear. The confidence of it moved Holly as she understood for the first time that this was something her mother truly wanted to do. It was quite romantic really, she thought, fighting back the urge to cry. Mo’s obvious happiness radiated from her and made the tasteful plain white dress and jacket she had chosen to wear almost luminous in the functional room. Her skin looked fresh and glowing with health, as if she had just returned from a wonderful holiday. A simple Alice band of tiny white rosebuds and forget-me-nots held her long hair away from her face, and it fell around her shoulders looking as if it had been brushed a hundred times that morning. When she reached the end of her vows her smile lit up the room.
    It was the first time Holly had seen Eamon in a suit and she had to admit that from the back he looked what her mother would call a fine figure of a man. She imagined that Mo had had a hand in choosing the suit, which was dark navy and well cut. His voice was less certain than Mo’s and he jumbled some of the words up and had to say them again several times which made everyone in the room smile. Holly watched as her mother’s hand reached out for her new husband’s, and, encouraged by the touch of her small palm on his, he managed to say the sentence correctly, and everyone spontaneously started clapping.
    Just before Holly signed the register as Mo’s witness, she caught her mother’s eye. Mo’s look said a whole lifetime of things to her. It said, I know that this is all the wrong way round and that I should be giving you away, but thank you for coming round to it. It said, I hope that you’ll find a nice man to look after you. It said, just because I’m marrying him doesn’t mean you’re not still the most important person in the world to me, you know that, don’t you? Holly nodded and tried to speak significantly and silently back, but all her effort was used up trying not to cry. Her hand shook as she wrote her name and she had to wipe her eyes with the soft sleeve of her jacket because, as usual, she didn’t have a tissue, and although she knew Mo would have a packet in her handbag she couldn’t ask at this moment, nor could she let her tears smudge the signatures.
    In a second the moment had passed. Holly sniffed and was able to smile again. The wedding party moved outside where there was a ghastly concrete garden with a pathetic dribble of a fountain, like the centrepiece of a run-down shopping mall, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter because Mo and Eamon’s