The Men in her Life

gingham.’
    ‘Not fashionable any more, according to Amelia. Everything’s got to have a natural undyed look about it. Lots of twigs, sacks, raffia, that kind of thing... can’t make an exception for jam.’
    ‘I’m not sure that the customers will want twigs with their cream tea.’
    ‘Nor am I, but Amelia is my customer, and she is always right,’ Clare said, lining the jars up inside a shallow cardboard box, with wodges of kitchen towel to stop them clinking together. Each customer at Amelia’s tea shop received a pot of Clare’s jam with their clotted cream and scones. At the height of the season that meant a hundred a week, but in early May, twenty-four Would last several days. Clare ladled the rest of the jam into a large jar and stuck a date label on it.
    ‘How was the party?’ Ella asked, opening the fridge and pouring herself a glass of orange juice.
    ‘Fine,’ Clare started to wash up. When she had returned the night before, she had opened the front door into the kitchen as noisily as she could to warn the teenagers of her arrival, then dumped the rice on the kitchen table and gone straight upstairs.
    ‘Matt said thank you for the rice. He had a terrible attack of the munchies...’
    ‘Yes, I thought there was rather a distinctive smell...’
    ‘You didn’t mind him having a joint here?’
    ‘It would be pretty hypocritical since Joss offers him one whenever he’s around... do you smoke dope too?’ she asked her daughter.
    ‘Not much. I hate the way it makes you think you’re saying something interesting when you’re talking balls. You were home early, didn’t you want to stay out?’ Ella put a piece of bread under the grill to toast.
    ‘Isn’t there something slightly the wrong way round about that question?’ Clare laughed.
    ‘Didn’t you want to watch the telly?’
    ‘I thought you might want to...’
    ‘Not on the sofa!’
    Ella could sometimes sound incredibly prudish, which was odd for someone with a nose ring.
    ‘Did you have a good time, anyway?’ Clare asked. ‘Not bad.’ Ella wiped her toast round the jam saucepan and put it in her mouth.
    ‘Things all right between you and Matt?’
    ‘Not bad... actually, I think I’m a bit bored with him, does that sound terrible?’
    ‘Not at all.’ Clare knew it was best to remain neutral in such conversations. She liked her daughter’s boyfriend well enough, although the fact that he had recently bleached his short hair peroxide blond made her think him rather vain. Ella was so very levelheaded, so very unlike she had been at seventeen, she never worried about her getting carried away by a boy who looked as if he should be singing with Boyzone. ‘He just didn’t get it last night... says he’s not interested in politics... how can you not be interested in politics?’ Ella demanded to know, with the righteous zeal of the newly converted. She had been furious that she was not quite old enough to vote in this election. ‘Actually, I rather fancy Tony Blair...’
    ‘You and half the women in the country,’ Clare teased her.
    ‘Including you?’
    ‘No, I think I’ve got past fancying men with curly hair and shiny white teeth who think they’re simply marvellous...’ Clare stopped. She hadn’t meant to make so direct a comparison.
    ‘Where is Dad, by the way?’ Ella asked.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Clare struggled to remain loyal. Your daughter could be your best friend in many ways, but you could not discuss her father’s infidelities with her.
    ‘I wish you’d leave him,’ Ella said.
    ‘It’s not that simple, El.’
    ‘You make most of the money in this household anyway,’ Ella argued.
    ‘It’s not just a question of money,’ Clare said.
    ‘I just can’t bear to think of you being miserable when I’m away...’ Ella said.
    ‘I won’t be. I’ve become immune, I think,’ she said, trying to make a joke.
    ‘But it’s awful for a woman of thirty-five to be immune, whatever that means,’ Ella said, unwilling to he jollied away from the subject. ‘You’ve got to get a life...’
    ‘I do have a lovely life with you and Tom.’
    ‘But that’s not enough... and it’s not fair. You have to have your own life, not just mine and Tom’s,’ Ella Said, matter-of-factly. She picked up her bag and left for School. Upstairs, Tom woke up and started shouting.
    The inadvertent cruelty of Ella’s observation stung. The great irony of motherhood was that if you did everything you could to bring up