The Men in her Life

said. ‘He wasn’t even a film director then, he was still directing adverts. Maybe he got more relaxed when he had real money and acclaim?’
    Clare looked at Holly as if expecting an answer. Holly didn’t know what to say.
    ‘I’ve seen all his films,’ Clare said, ‘so it sort of felt as if we were in touch...’
    ‘Isn’t it funny how you and I are so different?’ Holly asked, trying to leaven the intensity of Clare’s analysis, ‘must prove something.’
    She knew there was an obvious phrase but she couldn’t locate it.
    ‘I know, nature over nurture or something... no, the other way round...’
    ‘Do you think we’re so unalike?’ Clare asked her, ‘I was thinking that we’re rather similar.’
    ‘Well, that just proves how unalike we are, because I think we’re unalike, and you think we’re similar, if you see what I mean...’ Holly heard her words and noted that she was getting drunk.
    ‘What do you mean, similar?’ she asked, trying to quieten herself down and resist the urge to step in and control the conversation. She was swamping Clare, she realized. Simon had once told her that she could be too much of a good thing, and when she had demanded that he explain, he had said that she had a tendency to overwhelm people on first meeting. When Holly had protested that she only did that because she was nervous, he had said that he knew that, but it still had the same effect.
    ‘Well, we’re the same age, same colouring...’ Clare began to list their similarities.
    ‘Wrong,’ said Holly. ‘Your hair is long, glossy, strawberry blond and mine is a ginger Brillo pad... I’m ambitious, and you’re...’ Holly was going to say not, but stopped herself. Perhaps she was assuming too much.
    ‘I used to think I wasn’t,’ Clare said, ‘I saw what ambition did to people, you see. Jack and Philippa are, were, so ambitious, living with them was like having ambition aversion therapy... but now I don’t know. I sometimes feel like I’m waiting for something to happen...’
    ‘It just did. Our father died,’ Holly said, gloomily.
    ‘Yes, that’s another way in which we’re alike, and another way is that we’ve just met one another.’
    Holly didn’t say ‘so what?’ but her expression did.
    Clare didn’t know whether it was the wine that was making her so undaunted in the face of someone who could sometimes look as contemptuous as Jack at his worst, but she pressed on, determined to explain what she meant.
    ‘I didn’t know I had a sister, and I don’t know how it’s going to affect my life, but even after knowing you for an hour, I know it will...’
    ‘I think I did know about you, you see,’ Holly decided to confess, ‘but I didn’t want to. I’m the most competitive person in the world...’
    ‘No wonder Jack liked you,’ Clare said.
    ‘How do you know he did?’ Holly was instantly suspicious.
    ‘I told you I saw you on television on Election night, just a glimpse, and I saw his face. I wondered who it was who made him so happy...’
    ‘Really?’ Holly divided what was left in the second bottle between their glasses, beaming. ‘How do you think Jack would have felt about us meeting?’ she asked.
    Clare thought for a moment.
    ‘He would have hated it,’ she said.
    Holly’s face fell.
    ‘You’re right,’ she said, picking up her glass and chinking it against Clare’s, ‘well, he can’t do anything about it now, the old bastard...’
    Clare looked shocked.
    ‘I hate all this reverence just because he’s dead, don’t you?’ Holly said.
    And suddenly they were both laughing together.
    They spent the afternoon exchanging stories about their father, tentatively piecing together a jigsaw of half-forgotten memories and attempting to find a chronology into which they fitted in relation to one another.
    ‘I went to your house once,’ Holly revealed, ‘I thought it was like a castle. I didn’t get a guided tour or anything, just in the kitchen bit at the back...’
    ‘When? Why did he take you there?’
    ‘I suppose I was about twelve. We were on our way somewhere. He’d forgotten his wallet. You must have been out with your mother...’
    ‘We spent summer in the Hamptons once. Philippa had a project in New York . I had a wonderful time...’ Clare thought that it was the summer between primary and secondary school. ‘I remember kissing a boy on the beach. It was probably the beginning of my downfall,’ she joked.
    ‘Mo stayed in the car, but I