The Men in her Life

nose, so I assumed your ears were, too...’
    ‘Mum!’ Ella shot Clare an exasperated look that said, "'hat are you doing talking to strangers about my nose? Wearily, she flicked back her hair to reveal three studs on one ear and four on the other.
    ‘Oh. Only got you one pair, I’m afraid,’ Holly said.
    Matt laughed. Ella scowled at him but took the box Holly was holding out towards her and opened it. The earrings were tassels made of fine jet beads. Holly watched the girl’s face and knew that she had chosen well.
    ‘Oh... oh... they’re really beautiful,’ Ella said, ‘they’re like tiny pieces of coal...’ the wide, unexpectedly dimpled smile changed her face from glum to beautiful, ‘sorry, that didn’t sound right... the way that the edges of coal are sometimes like a mirror... I really love them...’ she added, taking a pair of studs from her lobes and fastening the jet earrings in place. ‘Matt?’ she asked.
    ‘Wicked!’
    Clare and Holly exchanged grown-ups’ glances and Clare breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t like Ella to be rude, but there had been a distinct froideur in the room when she came in that had now thawed. It had not occurred to her that Ella might be put out by her new-found closeness with Holly. She remembered how she herself had felt when Ella was at the stage of talking to her best friend on the phone every night for hours, laughing at jokes that Clare could not hear as she wiped down the surfaces in the kitchen doing her best not to eavesdrop.
    ‘Right,’ she said, looking at her watch, ‘it’s nearly six. I’m going to give Tom his tea and I’ll make supper for us at eight. It’s not raining too hard. D’you guys want to show Holly round? Borrow a pair of boots,’ Clare advised, looking with concern at Holly’s shoes.
    Holly had bought a pair of cream suede trainers with lots of eyelets and bright white laces specifically for the holiday. It was about as casual as she had intended to get. The only wellingtons that fitted her in the pile beside the door were a pair of giant green things farmers wore. Reluctantly she jammed her feet in, hating the cold space around her feet and the dank sweatiness of the rubber.
    It wasn’t really raining any more but the air was soft and wet like a cloud. She and Matt and Ella clomped silently down the road.
    ‘Are there any good pubs around?’ Holly asked, pulling a packet of ten Marlboro out of her pocket. She would have stood in a downpour for the chance to smoke.
    ‘A couple,’ said Matt.
    ‘Smoke?’ she offered Matt.
    ‘Not cigarettes,’ he told her, looking right back into her eyes.
    Ella just shook her head.
    Cupping her hands round the flame, Holly lit up and inhaled deeply. Her feeble attempt to be cool had shown her up as distinctly the opposite. It wasn’t cool to smoke any more.
    ‘So what do you do round here for fun?’ she asked, ‘you’ve just finished your exams, right? How did they go?’
    ‘Not bad,’ Ella replied.
    ‘She’ll get straight As,’ Matt told Holly, ‘she’s very clever.’
    ‘Matt!’
    ‘What about you?’ Holly asked him.
    ‘Did mine last year.’
    ‘Oh.’ For some reason, it was a relief to know that he was slightly older than Ella. ‘So, what do you do?’ Holly asked him, hearing herself sound like a London dinner-party hostess, something she never quite managed in London , even when she was hosting a dinner party.
    ‘I play in a band,’ smiling, he mimed playing a guitar for her.
    Holly watched his fingers pick out imaginary notes very close to his denim-covered crotch, then looked away quickly.
    ‘He’s having a gap year,’ Ella interrupted, ‘he’s going to university in September.’
    ‘Or maybe not. Depending on the band...’
    ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ Ella told Holly, only half-joking.
    ‘But it doesn’t matter how you sing these days, does it?’ Holly interjected. ‘Only how you look...’
    How middle-aged she sounded. She had a fleeting memory of Colette’s mother who used to ask without fail ‘Is that a man or a woman?’ every time a longhaired singer came on Top of the Pops during the Seventies. Even when the singer had a beard she’d still have to say it, and Holly and Colette would exchange exactly the same conspiratorial look that was passing between Ella and Matt.
    They walked past a small supermarket, a greengrocer, a post office and, as they approached the sea front, several souvenir shops. Everything was shut. It was