The Men in her Life

not?’
    They walked away from the looming red brick edifice in silence, down towards the main road. There were no taxis now. Clare waited nervously beside Holly on the corner of the street, wondering whether to suggest the tube, not wanting to do anything to disturb the delicate accord between them. She could sense Holly’s agitation and felt she might at any moment walk away. When they eventually hailed a cab, they did not speak, except to discuss where to go. Wandering round the streets of South Hampstead the day before, Clare had found a small Polish wine bar where she had eaten a meal for less than five pounds. It had been open all afternoon even though there had been little custom. Holly said that sounded perfect.
    The windows were misted over and inside the steamy air smelled of boiled sausage. A couple of men who looked like shabby intellectuals were drinking black coffee and brandy at one of the tables. Clare and Holly sat down in a hard wooden booth and simultaneously picked up their menus, grateful for something to hide behind.
    It was a blind date, Holly thought. She knew so much about this woman and yet nothing at all. She could not even decide whether she liked her. Clare was fragile and pretty and her skin was fresh. Since she had found lines on her own face, Holly had started obsessively searching other faces for signs of ageing. Clare had none, but her eyes looked as if they had suffered pain, which made it difficult to hate her instantly for the looks and the smooth complexion.
    ‘I’ll have pierogi and red wine. A bottle. Is that OK with you?’
    Clare nodded. ‘I’ll have the blinis with apple and sour cream.’
    It was one of the cheapest items on the menu. Holly looked at her companion’s dress again. Either she was very mean, or poor. How could she be poor?
    ‘Tell you what,’ Holly said, drinking a glass of wine very quickly when it came, ‘the only way to do this is like a job application. Describe, briefly,’ she put heavy emphasis on the word, ‘your education, work and hobbies.’
    Clare laughed nervously.
    ‘You first,’ she said.
    ‘OK,’ Holly launched in, ‘Holly O’Mara. Bom 1961, June 1961, star sign Gemini, if that means anything to you, mother Mo, short for Maureen, father unknown until later. Lived on eleventh floor of tower block in Limehouse. What an awful place to grow up!’ she put on an upper-class accent, ‘says everyone now, before spending half a million on a loft in a converted warehouse in Docklands.’ She looked up to see how her story was going down so far. Clare smiled at her. ‘Spent most of youth reading, going to movies and staring out of the window dreaming of being rich and famous. Wrote film reviews for school magazine under the name Holly Wood. Worked as usherette in the Odeon on Saturdays. Left school with ten O levels and did a secretarial course...’
    ‘Didn’t you go to university?’ Clare asked, amazed that someone who seemed so confident had not.
    ‘They told me I could’ve. I got really good results, but I didn’t want to waste time with all those posey students when I could be earning money. Mo said I couldn’t go wrong with a typing qualification, which was the best piece of advice I ever had. So Colette and I...’
    ‘Colette?’
    ‘Best friend... Colette married her first boss, I got a career. Lucky in life, unlucky in love, or however that one goes... now I’m a screenwriters’ agent, busy? busy, busy...’ Holly took a deep breath and drank another glass of wine in one. ‘Shall we have another bottle?’ she asked.
    Clare nodded, although she had yet to finish her second glass.
    Their food arrived.
    ‘What does a screenwriters’ agent do?’ Clare asked.
    ‘I represent people who write screenplays, and television. I sell what they write,’ Holly explained.
    ‘And are you rich and famous... like you dreamed?’
    ‘Well, put it this way, right, I always wanted to work in the movies, but I wasn’t much of an actress, and how many female film directors are there? So, in a way, I’ve got exactly what I wanted, and relatively quickly...’ Holly sounded as if she was listing her achievements for herself as much as Clare. ‘To answer your question, I’m probably as rich and famous as I ever dreamed I’d be at sixteen, but as you know more about how things work your ambitions grow, don’t they?... Like, I buy real designer clothes now instead of Wallis and Next versions, and so I still have an Access bill I