The Men in her Life

like a ghost town, Holly thought.
    ‘Has everything closed down?’ she asked.
    ‘Only till Monday,’ Ella said.
    ‘Oh, right.’ Holly wasn’t used to opening hours. In her neighbourhood, nothing closed before midnight, and lots of places didn’t even open until then.
    The pub had an unpolished wooden floor that was gritty with sand from fishermen’s boots. There were nets draped across the ceiling, dotted with dusty sea-urchin globes. It smelled of beer and a stale sea tang like the inside of a mussel shell. Holly lit another cigarette and bought a round. They sat together at a circular table so small their three pint glasses barely fitted onto it. Matt and Holly were drinking bitter, Ella mineral water. Holly thought it was a bit goody-goody of her until she realized that in a town as small as this the bartender was bound to know that Ella wasn’t yet eighteen. She wondered whether the weather-beaten men at the bar who were staring at her could tell that she was a generation older than Ella and Matt. People were always telling Holly that she didn’t look her age, but, beside these two, she felt positively raddled.
    ‘Does everyone round here stare?’ Holly asked loudly, trying to shame the men into looking away.
    ‘Only at grockles,’ Matt told her.
    ‘Grockles?’ Holly repeated.
    ‘That’s our word for tourists,’ he said.
    ‘Not exactly welcoming, is it?’ Holly said. ‘I’d have thought that tourists were the only thing that kept the economy of this godforsaken dump going...’ She said it without thinking, her brain unable even to contemplate the notion that the people who lived here might actually like it.
    There was a short shocked silence and then Ella laughed out loud.
    ‘Cheers!’ she said, clinking her glass against Holly’s, ‘oh come on, Matt, she’s right, it is a bloody dump. We’re always talking about how to get out of it.’
    ‘You are,’ he corrected. ‘It’s better when the sun’s shining,’ he informed Holly.
    ‘So, what’s it like where you live, Holly?’ Ella asked.
    It was the first time she had used her name.
    ‘You’ll have to come and see,’ Holly instantly responded to the overture of friendship, ‘you’re coming to live in London , aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Ella, ‘and I can’t bloody wait.’

    ‘How did you get on with Ella?’ Clare asked Holly later that evening, as they stood side by side washing up the supper things. Ella and Matt had gone to Matt’s house to watch a video.
    ‘You know what we were saying about genetics? Well, she reminds me of me,’ Holly said, ‘at that age. She doesn’t make it easy. But then, why should she? I like her a lot. She seems to know herself very well...’
    ‘Yes, doesn’t she? Far better than me, I sometimes think. Perhaps it’s just her age. Maybe we had that kind of certainty at that age...’ Clare suggested.
    ‘I don’t think so, although I probably looked as if I did. Maybe Ella only looks as if she does... she’s extraordinary-looking, isn’t she? Really beautiful when she smiles and almost ugly when she’s pissed-off...’
    ‘What did you think of Matt?’ Clare wasn’t sure she liked discussing Ella with Holly, even though she was the one who had initiated it.
    ‘Sexy,’ Holly said immediately. ‘Lucky Ella. I’m assuming that “going to watch a video” means bonking... Can you imagine him in bed?’
    It hadn’t even occurred to Clare to imagine it.
    ‘He’s half your age...’ she said, slightly shocked.
    ‘Yes, but I get worse as I grow older. I wish I’d never read that men reach their sexual prime at eighteen.’
    ‘I certainly don’t remember any evidence of that,’ Clare said, recalling embarrassed fumblings at muddy gigs before she met Joss.
    ‘No,’ said Holly, thinking about it, ‘no, but it might have been our fault because we’re only just coming into our prime right now...’
    ‘I thought our prime was supposed to be thirty...’
    ‘I’m having a very long prime,’ Holly snapped back and they both began to giggle.
    ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t looked at Matt and wondered what it would be like,’ Holly said, as they sat down again at the table with mugs of tea.
    ‘I have not. I really have not,’ Clare told her.
    ‘And is that because Ella’s your daughter, so he’s out of bounds, or because you’re a happily married woman?’ Holly asked, trying to establish whether it was marriage or children that deadened sexual