The Men in her Life

really. She knew that the rest of her mother’s friends would go on drinking until one or other got up to sing, and then they would all take their turn, becoming more and more maudlin as the evening went on. Simon had done his duty spectacularly well. It would be unfair to impose on him further.
    ‘If you’ve got other plans...’ Holly began, politely offering him the opportunity to be shot of her for the evening.
    ‘No.’
    ‘How about the Chuen Cheng Ku then?’ Holly immediately suggested.
    ‘How about Mr Kong?’
    ‘Good idea,’ on this particular evening, Holly couldn’t be bothered to argue over the merits of their two favourite Chinese restaurants, ‘it’s on me,’ she said firmly.
    ‘Taxi or tube?’
    ‘Stupid question,’ said Holly, sticking her arm in the air at the sight of an orange light and only remembering as the cab screeched to a halt beside them that she had still to collect her jacket and bag from inside the hall.

    The great thing about eating Chinese food with Simon was that he never said, ‘Don’t you think that will be enough?’ when the waiter was taking the order. She didn’t know whether it was the saltiness or the sweetness or simply the monosodium glutamate that gave Oriental food its addictive qualities, but she knew it must be something that was bad for her. Simon didn’t mind as long as her choices included something loaded with chilli. Simon was a bit of a vindaloo man, if truth be told, but he never forced his predilection for an Indian upon her. Nor did he ever complain about the huge bills Holly always ran up. So many men let themselves down with meanness, Holly thought, but not Simon. He was a man of few complaints. When Simon had a cold, he either struggled manfully on, or he said that he had a cold, and that was that. Most men Holly had known were incapable of having anything less than an itis. A sore throat was tonsillitis, indigestion was suspected appendicitis and a headache sinusitis. They would emerge in a cloud of steam from under a towel with bleary eyes and a self-pitying expression, leaving the room stinking of eucalyptus for days. Simon just made himself a Lemsip and went to bed quietly without bothering anyone.
    ‘So, how’s Tansy?’ Holly asked for no good reason.
    ‘Fine,’ Simon replied.
    ‘Right.’
    The food arrived.
    Steamed scallops, salty spicy squid, Singapore fried noodle. Two bottles of Tsing Tao beer.
    ‘If I had to eat just one food for the rest of my life it would be salty spicy squid,’ Holly announced.
    ‘No, you’d get sick of it...’
    ‘I wouldn’t. What would yours be?’ she asked him.
    ‘My favourite food?’
    ‘No, not your favourite food necessarily, the food you would eat if you had to eat the same thing every meal until you die...’
    It was important to get the rules absolutely straight in this sort of pointless game.
    ‘This is not the same as if you were food, what would you be?’ Simon asked warily, remembering the occasion when Holly had pronounced him mashed potato and gravy, after he had put great thought into a description of her as creme brulée with exotic fruit.
    ‘Quite different,’ Holly said.
    ‘OK then, how many veg am I allowed?’ Simon
    asked.
    ‘As many as you want, within reason, but you can’t start slipping in dishes that are really main courses and saying that they’re veg...’ Holly warned.
    ‘Right. Well, I suppose, roast chicken, new potatoes and runner beans and butter.’
    ‘God, how boring!’
    However hard Simon tried to succeed at one of Holly’s games there was always something wrong with his response. He couldn’t decide whether that was his fault or whether it was just Holly’s unbelievable competitiveness.
    ‘Dessert?’ Holly demanded.
    ‘You first.’
    ‘I think it would have to be ice-cream, no, wait a minute, lemon meringue pie...’
    ‘I once had a lemon meringue ice-cream in Devon ,’ Simon suggested.
    ‘You’re a genius! I’ll have that then.’
    ‘You haven’t even tried it.’
    ‘I trust you.’
    He was delighted to have been of some help.
    ‘You?’ Holly asked.
    ‘I’m not really a pudding kind of person.’
    ‘I always forget to say pudding,’ Holly mused, ‘I know it’s what posh people say, but where I grew up it was posh to say dessert. It’s the one thing that makes me sound like Mo. .. anyway, you have to choose something...’
    ‘Why should I?’ Simon asked. But she could see that he was enjoying the stupid game as much as