The Men in her Life

unspoken implication, don’t tell me what to do about mine who is dead.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Joss asked, more kindly, surprised at the firmness of her tone. ‘I mean, how do you feel about it?’
    Clare sat down on the bed and pushed her hair back from her forehead.
    ‘I feel very peculiar,’ she told him honestly, focusing on the photograph of Ella in a meadow of ox-eye daisies that she had taken of her when she was about five, ‘not exactly sad. It’s more selfish than that. I feel that my life was one way, and now it’s completely different. It’s as if my history has changed. I used to wonder what I would feel if he died, not recently, long ago... I didn’t think I would feel anything. I do, but I’m not certain what it is...’
    ‘I feel rather guilty myself,’ Toss said.
    ‘You? Why?’
    ‘I took away his only child,’ he said, ‘I saw Ella looking at me this evening and I thought I knew how Jack must have felt. You know how she sometimes looks just like me? It was like holding a mirror to my face and hating what I saw... she is the age you were when I...’
    ‘You didn’t take me away. I left,’ Clare interrupted, impatiently, surprised by how much she resented the denial of her personality contained in his melodramatic statement of guilt. Why did everything have to be something to do with him? Except the things he did wrong, of course, which were always, somehow, the fault of irresistible urges that swept him along in their wake.
    ‘I wonder how I’d feel if someone took Ella away,’ Joss went on, oblivious to her annoyance.
    ‘Ella is her own person. If she went, then it would be her decision. Anyway, she is going. I don’t know why we’re talking about it.’ Clare got up and pretended to be looking for something in the chest of drawers, hoping he would leave their bedroom. His presence seemed to fill the room and she wanted to be by herself-She felt brittle, as if she would snap if touched. Don’t you notice how she ignores you, she wanted to ask him-Don’t you realize that your behaviour has driven her away already?
    ‘When are you going then?’ Joss stood up.
    ‘Tomorrow. I’ll stay till the funeral.’
    ‘That’s nearly a week.’
    ‘There’s everything you need in the freezer...’
    ‘I meant that we will miss you...’he protested, and as she turned, flustered, he hooked his forefinger gently under her chin and tilted her face towards him.
    She felt herself blush.
    ‘You will take care of yourself...’
    Sometimes his voice sounded just the same as it had in the darkness of the student common room after they had made love for the first time. Joss was very attractive to look at, but it was the softly resonant masculinity of his voice that made him irresistible. An unrequested warmth began to spread through the lower half of her body and, as if he could sense the ebbing of her resistance, he kissed her mouth, pushing her gently back into the pillows, and kissed her again. Then he knelt on the counterpane, his legs astride her waist, and looked at her, his eyes exploring her as thoroughly as if they had just met.

Chapter 11

    The Central Line carriage was empty until Bank, when three sweaty young men in suits got in and flopped into the seats opposite Mo. It was only then that she became aware that she had been staring at her own reflection in the dark glass of the opposite window, watching the woman she saw there without recognizing herself.
    The men were drunk and happy.
    ‘New Labour, new bloody bonus, mate,’ one of them said, eliciting a cheer from the others. They were Thatcher’s boys, but a record day on the Stock Exchange had converted them to Blairites in less than twenty-four hours.
    ‘Cheer up, love, it may never happen,’ the one with cropped hair bleached like Gazza’s said, not unkindly? leaning towards Mo.
    To her surprise, she found herself laughing.
    ‘It just bloody has,’ she said.
    They laughed along too.
    Stop it. Mo tried to control herself. She was feeling everything wrong. Sitting there paralysed by pent-up anger then laughing like a bloody hyena. Jack is dead. It’s not bloody funny. The laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun and the anger flooded back. Why did he have to die? Why was he always leaving her?
    Mo decided to get off at Tottenham Court Road and Walk to Holly’s flat. It wouldn’t take much longer than changing onto the Northern Line and she needed some air. The City brokers blew her vodka kisses as she