The Men in her Life

dog Bran became bestsellers the Christmas they were released.
    Sometimes, lying in her room at the top of the big white house, Clare had wished her parents were dead, so that she could be adopted into a big happy family who would sit around a great wooden table at mealtimes, laughing, throwing their food around, then rushing out to play in barns and wheatfields, returning with straw in their hair and smiles on their ruddy faces. Ironically, this vision of family happiness derived solely from the sun-drenched adverts for Farmer Fred’s Bread.
    Clare shuddered. The peculiar coincidence of seeing Jack for the first time in many years on television, and then almost immediately hearing he was dead, kept making her think that she had had something to do with his death, and she remembered her wish guiltily, trying to suppress the giddy feeling of panic that her hangover was so keen to escalate.

    ‘Do men constitutionally lack the bit of the brain that deals with folding up dry washing and putting it away, d’you think?’ Ella said later as they chatted together in the steamy kitchen.
    It felt very nice being home.
    ‘…I only ask because it would be unfair to criticize Dad over something that he can do nothing about...’
    ‘Oh dear, has it been that bad?’ Clare asked.
    She was frying eggs in a large blackened frying-pan, suddenly ravenously hungry. Ella was sitting at the kitchen table with a picture of a human skeleton in front of her, testing herself on the names of the bones.
    ‘Dad told me on day one that he would do everything and I was not to do anything at all except revise for my exams,’ Ella looked up and registered Clare’s look of surprise, ‘yes, he was really nice. He was great at putting all Tom’s washing into the machine,’ she paused and chewed on a pencil, ‘I’m sure he would have been great at doing the washing-up in one huge load at the end of the week, which is obviously what he intended, except he didn’t seem to notice that we’d run out of plates by Tuesday. Still, that’s poets for you... I realized the poem “Broken Crockery” wasn’t as I’d previously assumed a metaphor for a failed marriage, but in fact a simple description of what would have happened if he’d added one more cup to the tottering pile on the draining-board...’
    Clare winced at the savageness of Ella’s wit.
    ‘Then, when I actually did the washing-up, and hung out Tom’s wet clothes, and took them in again and folded them up and put them away, Dad looks up from his paper and says crossly, “I said I’d do that”...’
    Clare threw back her head and laughed. She turned the heat down under the frying-pan, wiped her hands and sat down opposite Ella.
    ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
    ‘Oh no, you’re not pregnant again...’
    Clare was shocked at the degree of despair in her daughter’s eyes. It made her slightly nervous about what she was about to say.
    ‘No, nothing like that, although I suppose it is an addition to the family. I have a sister. Well, a half-sister, called Holly. She’s almost exactly the same age as me...’ Clare outlined the history as Ella listened intently.
    ‘What’s she like?’
    ‘She’s...’ Clare tried to think of a word to describe the combination of vivacity and quick-temperedness, ‘fun, well she is, but that’s not enough... I suppose she’s kind of tremendously fearless...’
    ‘Sounds great,’ Ella said eagerly, and Clare suddenly realized who Holly had reminded her of. Not Jack, although she looked a lot like him, but her forthright daughter.
    ‘I think you’d like her,’ Clare said.
    ‘Do you like her?’ Ella asked.
    How wonderful it was that Ella had such a clear idea of her own identity that she did not automatically assume that she and Clare would feel the same way.
    ‘Very much,’ Clare said.
    ‘And would Dad like her?’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ Clare said, wondering why she thought that, but her brain was still too fuzzy to figure it out. ‘When I was little I used to wish for a sister, and I didn’t know that all the time I had one living on the other side of town... So I got my wish, I suppose. I should have wished that someone would tell me I had a sister. You have to be so specific with wishes, don’t you?’
    Ella looked at her to see whether she was joking. Clare smiled. She was. Sort of. Ella’s disapproval of childishness could be rather intimidating.
    ‘So I’ll have an aunt in London when I go to medical