The Men in her Life

kind.
    ‘It just keeps getting browner,’ Mo said desperately, staring at herself as if she would stop the tone deepening if she looked at it disapprovingly enough.
    ‘Don’t worry, everyone’ll think you’ve gone to the Bahamas for your honeymoon... where are you going, by the way?’
    ‘ Ireland ... flying out tonight, staying at the Shelboume Hotel, if you please,’ Mo hesitated and took a deep breath. There was never going to be a good moment for what she had to say. ‘And tomorrow we’re driving across to Galway to look at properties...’
    ‘You’re going to move to Ireland ?’ Holly’s tone was immediately hostile.
    ‘Not right away,’ Mo tried to back off. How cowardly she was to try to slip it in at a time when it would be virtually impossible for Holly to make a fuss.
    ‘Well, there’s no point in us keeping two places here and you’d be surprised what Eamon’s little terraced house is worth now... he’s got the offer of early retirement. It’s a good package... and his brother says there’s tons of work there these days...’ She found herself disclosing all their plans in Holly’s stunned silence.
    ‘So Eamon’s going to move into our, I mean your, flat?’ Holly asked eventually.
    ‘In the meantime, yes... oh come on, Holly. We’ll probably see each other as much as we ever do. There are flights every hour and it doesn’t cost a fortune...’ The words had the strange echo of a plea Holly herself had made years ago when she left home. It’s not like I’m moving to the other end of the earth, she had told her mother. It’s only a tube ride away. She remembered Mo’s sad, brave look, and she now understood how lonely her mother must have felt. For all her insistence on independence, Holly realized that Mo’s flat had always been there for her, a bolt-hole in times of trouble.
    ‘I’ll miss you a lot,’ Holly said.
    ‘We’ll still see each other, of course we will...’
    Mo stretched out her hand, and Holly took it. The two women looked at each other in the mirror above the row of sinks.
    ‘Do you think if Jack hadn’t died you’d still have married Eamon?’ Holly asked her mother’s reflection.
    ‘No, I don’t suppose I would,’ Mo’s reflection admitted, after a long pause, ‘but I’m glad to be free to marry Eamon. We are happy together...’
    ‘But if I told you that it was all a joke and that Jack was sitting outside in a white Rolls-Royce waiting for you, like in Pretty Woman, or something, what would you do?’
    ‘Oh Holly,’ Mo’s reflection laughed and turned and Mo took her by both hands, ‘why do you always ask such difficult questions?’

    How was it that Mo’s body was so neat, Holly wondered, as she watched her mother take to the floor for the first dance. If people thought that dancing was all about using your body to express emotion, they should look at Mo, because it was just the opposite. With Mo, it was as if the dance was using her body, not the other way round. Her long practice of Irish dance had made her precise and obedient. Where Eamon led, she followed, making him look as graceful as she was. It was a great gift.
    ‘Can you two-step?’ Simon asked Holly.
    ‘Not really,’ Holly said, ‘Mo always tells me I’m too bossy to be a very good dancer.’
    ‘Shall we have a go?’
    ‘Can you dance?’ Holly asked him, suddenly remembering the karaoke bar in Brighton and Simon’s amazing ability to sing.
    ‘A little bit,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, bloody hell, why not?’ Holly said.
    She trod on his toes a couple of times before they got the hang of it, but when they did, the feeling was pure triumph as they grew confident enough to look where they were going rather than at their feet. The band twanged away, banjo, Hawaiian guitar, fiddle all taking their turns and if she closed her eyes Holly could imagine herself as Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy, a film she had always liked more than the reviewers.
    Formal dancing was a turn-on, she realized, throwing off her jacket in the direction of her table and revealing a black jersey vest and bare arms. They circled round again. It involved total concentration, co-operation and consent. It was like giving your body up to a greater purpose, and if you got it right, the feeling of triumph did something to your pheromones or hormones, or whatever mones they were that made you feel sexy. Whoever put a stop to it in the Sixties had been crazy if they thought it was sexier to strike poses by