The Men in her Life

into the sea, bending his knees and hurling it with such force in an effort to copy his father that he fell over. Joss picked him up and hugged him, brushing sand from the palms of his hands and kissing them better. What was the point of leaving him? For what? Just for the possibility of starting again with someone else who would love her more? There was no-one else who remotely interested her. The way the couples in the town periodically mixed and matched repelled her. They called it open marriage, but to Clare it had the insularity of inbreeding. She had never wanted anyone but Joss. She knew that thirty-five was too young to write herself off as a failure at love, but she was sapped of emotion. Joss had taken it all.

Chapter 7

    ‘I’ve discovered the secret of going to the hairdresser,’ said Holly from the doorway.
    ‘And...?’ Colette was eating Harvest Crunch in Holly’s kitchen.
    ‘You have to be drunk...’
    Colette looked up.
    ‘You went and did it! Looks fantastic.’
    Holly’s curls were cropped to within an inch of her scalp.
    ‘I went to the victory party and I bumped into Jack. We had bacon rolls at this kiosk where taxis stop for snacks... then he had to get home and I was walking past my hairdresser and I just went in on the off-chance and the first appointment had cancelled. Normally you have to wait three months... what do you think?’
    ‘It’s fantastic,’ Colette said, ‘it really suits you... I never knew you had a beautifully shaped head.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Holly touched her head, still unable to believe what she had done. ‘New Labour, new haircut. Everything’s changed, so I thought I would too...’ She was riding high on champagne and the exhilaration of being up all night. Suddenly her spirits bumped back down to earth as she registered Colette’s presence properly.
    ‘You haven’t been here all night?’ she asked.
    Colette smiled wickedly.
    ‘Piers,’ she said, in a fake posh accent, ‘no wonder you wouldn’t tell me...’
    Holly had always refused to reveal the name of her lover to anyone, preferring not to mention him at all to most people and to refer to him only as the married man or MM to Colette. She knew that if his name had been something less pretentious like Peter or Paul, she would have found it harder to be so unusually discreet.
    ‘You were here?’ she asked, unnecessarily, trying to gather her brain together to figure out what Colette must have heard.
    ‘Fell asleep. I dashed into the bathroom when you came in. You can’t hear much in there. Promise. Well, well, well, Piers eh?’
    ‘Why didn’t you go into the spare room? What would you have done if one of us had wanted a wee?’ Holly wanted to know.
    ‘I was hiding behind the shower curtain. I just bolted. I didn’t have time to think of the sensible option,’ Colette defended herself.
    ‘But you can see behind the shower curtain from the loo...’
    ‘Only if you’re a girl... think about it... or is he the sort of man who doesn’t mind having a crap in an unfamiliar bathroom?’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Holly couldn’t help asking, even though she knew Colette was deliberately diverting her from her justifiable outrage.
    ‘Well, I never do. Not until I know someone really well. Do you?’
    They had been friends since they were children, but there were still things they didn’t know about each other, Holly thought. Didn’t want to know.
    ‘Anyway. I finished with him,’ Holly said, helping herself to cereal and looking at her watch. The euphoria of the victory, the party, the unusually hot sun outside had made her lose all sense of time. It seemed long ago that she had said goodbye to Piers, almost another life.
    ‘I thought it was over rather rapidly...’ Colette remarked waspishly.
    ‘No, really finished. That’s it. Finito. I really feel as if things have changed. D’you know what I mean?’
    ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life,’ Colette mocked.
    ‘No, really. Something has changed. I suddenly feel as if life is full of possibilities... the Tories conned us into thinking we had to just accept things as they are. But we don’t. We can do something about it. I’ve got an in-tray this high, but I’ve decided to take today off work and devote it entirely to celebrating.’
    ‘You’re getting a worryingly evangelical look in your eye. Have you taken E or something?’
    ‘No. And another thing...’ impatiently Holly tried to think of another