The Men in her Life

house for ever.
    ‘Who was the woman?’ Ella asked.
    ‘What woman?’
    ‘You said your father was with a woman,’ Ella sighed impatiently, ‘honestly, Mum, you’re just not with it today...’
    ‘I don’t know. Much younger than him... I wonder if Philippa knows... I wonder what she thinks about the new government...’
    ‘I bet she loves it.’
    ‘Do you think so? She was a great supporter of Margaret Thatcher, you know.’
    ‘Philippa loves whatever’s in fashion,’ Ella said.
    It was a perceptive remark. Clare remembered Philippa’s reaction when she told her she and Joss were going to live in Cornwall on a smallholding and try to be self-sufficient.
    ‘But it’s the beginning of the Eighties,’ she had said, dismayed, ‘people did that in the Sixties...’ The rights or wrongs of the way of life had not concerned her, it was out of date and that was a cardinal sin.
    ‘I’d better be getting back,’ Ella said, looking at her watch.
    ‘Me too,’ Clare said, linking her arm through her daughter’s.
    By the time she reached the house, Joss and Tom were back and were eating chips in front of the television.
    ‘Your mother rang,’ Joss told her.
    ‘Philippa?’
    ‘How many mothers do you have?’
    ‘How weird,’ Clare said, ‘we were just talking about her.’
    She sat down on the sofa watching the crowds outside Downing Street .
    ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she said, delighting in the joy on People’s faces as Tony Blair pressed hands with the enthusiasm of a novice and the camera-awareness of a well-trained professional.
    ‘They’re all New Labour plants, you know,’ Joss told her, ‘they’ve been given those flags by the PR guys.’
    The Blairs posed on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street . They were the perfectly proportioned family. Watching them waving to the cheering crowd brought a lump to Clare’s throat. She picked up Tom and his digger from the floor and hugged him tight.
    ‘That’s our new Prime Minister,’ she told him, pointing at the television.
    ‘I wonder how long they debated what clothes the kids should wear,’ Joss remarked, ‘to make them look so relaxed and informal...’
    Oh don’t spoil it, she wanted to say, but she didn’t think she could bear to get into an argument. Joss was so critical she often wondered what would happen if he ever got what he wanted. He wouldn’t know what to do. His whole raison d’être was negative. It occurred to her suddenly that Joss did not after all want to change the world, he just wanted to criticize endlessly.
    Her father had known what Joss was like immediately. Clare wondered why her thoughts kept going back to him.
    ‘He’s the sort of man who thinks the world owes him a living,’ he had told her, after their one and only meeting, ‘and he won’t make anyone happy...’
    ‘He does make me very happy,’ she had replied, smiling triumphantly, and for a long time after that she had not let herself admit that she was anything else, unable to bear the idea of her father being right.
    The Blairs gave a final wave and stepped over the threshold of their new home.
    ‘Philippa sounded a bit upset,’ Joss suddenly remarked.
    ‘Oh?’ That was unlike Philippa. Even if she was capable of being upset, she would never allow her voice to betray it. Perhaps Jack was leaving her. He had looked radiant with that young woman at the Festival Hall. But she doubted her mother would even ring her to tell her that. Every couple of years or so, Philippa booked herself a weekend in the best hotel in the area and dropped in to see them for a day. At Christmas, and on the children’s birthdays, a Federal Express van would stop outside the cottage and the driver would walk up the garden path to deliver large boxes containing presents and clothes for the children, like hugely expensive aid packages from Hamleys or Harrods. Even more rarely, Philippa rang, but they never discussed Jack or what their relationship was these days. He lived most of his life in LA and Philippa in London but they always appeared together at film premieres. Clare assumed that they were as besotted with each other as they had ever been. If you had money, then distance didn’t really matter these days, did it? It had never even occurred to her they might now have other people in their lives.
    Clare went into the kitchen and picked up the phone, hesitating for a second before dialling. Afterwards, she realized she must have somehow known that the call was