The Men in her Life

it,’ Simon said with a smile, and the fact that he thought that even approached an acceptable response was proof, if proof were needed, that Simon was most definitely not a man Holly would ever dream of dating.

Chapter 8

    On the top of the cliffs there was a strong breeze that blasted Clare’s hair away from her face. The sea was deep blue and choppy, with white horses appearing and disappearing like random brush-strokes of bright white paint on ink. On the horizon there were three yachts with white sails, triangle boats as Tom called them. Close to the shore a windsurfer was struggling to pull his bright pink sail out of the water. Looking at the sea gave her a rush of confidence. The sea changed all the time and made her think that she could change too.
    Today everything seemed to be touched with a kind of momentousness. The whole nation had decided on change. And she had been part of that. For the first time in eighteen years, she realized, her vote had meant something. The childish wish Joss had teased her for had been granted. And then her father had popped up on television like the materialization of a thought she had not been aware of thinking. Curiously, she had not felt anger, or resentment, when she saw him, only a sensation that welled then disappeared, and felt oddly like fondness.
    Clare walked along the clifftop path. There were dandelions in the long grass and soon red campion would dance in the hedgerows. In Cornwall at this time of the year two realms of beauty touched one another: the minutely detailed world of the wild flowers, tiny pink-dipped daisy petals, speedwells like pinpoints of bright blue light in the pale wheat-grass, and above, the huge dome of sky, where vast clouds metamorphosed in the blue drift of wind.
    Clare sat down on a hillock tufted with clover absorbing the magnificence of the sky.
    After a few minutes she became aware that someone was walking up the field behind her.
    ‘I thought you might be up here,’ Ella said.
    ‘Oh?’ Clare patted the ground next to her.
    ‘It’s where you come when you want to think,’ Ella said, sitting down.
    ‘Is it? No lessons this afternoon?’
    ‘It’s only lunch-time. I had a yoghurt.’
    ‘Is it only lunch-time?’
    ‘Get a grip, Mum.’
    ‘It’s because I’ve been up so long today...’ Clare laughed and lay back in the springy turf.
    ‘What were you thinking about?’ Ella wanted to know.
    ‘I was thinking about my father, actually. I saw him on television last night.’
    Ella looked around at her as if she had gone completely mad.
    ‘No, really. Just for a moment. He was going into the Labour victory party.’
    ‘I thought he lived in the States.’
    ‘I thought so too.’
    ‘I was worried about you,’ Ella said, lying back beside her mother.
    ‘I’m all right, El,’ Clare said, staring at the sky, her arm across her forehead to shade the brightness, I know it’s not perfect, but we have a good life. You mustn’t worry about me. I’m responsible for the choices I make...’
    Ella was almost exactly the same age as she had been when she left home. In some ways her daughter was so much more mature than Clare had been then, but in others she was still young, young enough to think she had the power to make things right if she wanted to enough. Clare hoped that life was not going to be too much of a disappointment for her. Ella was going to be a doctor. She would be a marvellous doctor, but people in her care would die, through no fault of hers. It was going to be hard to watch her fierce idealism give way to the blunting disillusion of experience.
    ‘How did you feel?’ Ella asked.
    ‘About what?’
    ‘Seeing your father.’
    ‘I was trying to work that out, just now. I don’t really know what I felt... a bit strange...’ Clare said, ‘he looked softer than I remember. He was with a woman and he looked, well, happy. I don’t remember him as ever looking spontaneously happy. Triumphant, yes. Perhaps he’s mellowed...’
    ‘Perhaps you’ve mellowed,’ Ella suggested.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, you must have been pretty spiky to just walk out... it was a very confident thing to do.’
    ‘Was it? I suppose it was. I certainly didn’t think of it like that at the time...’ Clare had always thought of herself as a coward for not standing up to him. She remembered standing in silence absorbing his rage like a punchbag, and when he had finished, picking up her canvas bag and walking out of the