The Men in her Life

you so nice?’ Holly asked suddenly, ‘I mean, your mother’s been a bitch to you, and your father for that matter, so what makes you so understanding?’
    ‘I don’t know if I am, really. It takes two people to have an argument, and it takes a lot of pride to keep it going for so long. I think I’m much more like him than I would like to admit...’
    ‘There you go again,’ Holly said, ‘the difference is that you weren’t much more than a child and he had a responsibility to you.’
    ‘Did you think Jack had a responsibility to you?’ Clare asked.
    ‘No,’ Holly said immediately, ‘but that’s different. I thought Mo had...’
    ‘Well, anyway...’ Clare said, sniffing and trying to put on a cheerful face.
    ‘You’re not happy, are you?’ Holly suddenly saw the depth of misery in Clare’s eyes. ‘Why aren’t you happy? I can’t see how anyone could be happy living in the back of beyond, but it’s not that, is it?’
    ‘How do you know when you’re happy?’ Clare asked. ‘How do you know that what you think is unhappy isn’t what other people would think is normal?’
    Clare was very practised at avoiding direct questions, Holly thought.
    ‘What I do is divide my life into sections and give it points out of ten,’ she told her, ‘it’s a method Colette and I devised when we were kids. You think of the five things that are most important to you and then you give them marks out of ten, then you double your final score to make a percentage...’
    Clare looked at her disbelievingly.
    ‘I haven’t done it for a while...’ Holly said. ‘Work: Nine, could even approach ten if I sell The One to a Hollywood studio. I feel as if I’m on the cusp of something at work, as if I just need one more push to get really successful and then... and then I won’t have to worry, or maybe I’ll do something different. Anyway. Nine. Or eight. Something in that area. Family: difficult one since Jack died, but I’ve found you and I’ve got a lovely mum, so let’s say nine. Men: zilch. Friends: eight. Simon’s great, but Colette’s been a bit funny recently. Flat: ten. So add up the categories. I should have a maximum of fifty but in fact I’ve scored thirty-six. Which means I’m seventy-two per cent happy. It’s only a rough guide...’ she said, ‘although, funnily enough, however I do the figures, it always seems to come out at about seventy-two...’
    Clare just threw back her head and laughed. Holly loved it when she did that. Her laughter was like a child’s, and it was the only time that she didn’t seem to be holding something back.
    ‘Come on, your turn,’ Holly cajoled.
    ‘I can’t...’ Clare said, still laughing.
    She had opened up to Clare and Clare had to open up to her, otherwise it wasn’t fair, Holly thought. But then she had to ask herself whether that was true. Had she really opened up to Clare or had she done her usual brilliant act of appearing to say everything she was thinking, but never quite admitting to her worst fears? Sometimes, late at night, especially when she had drunk too much, Holly would lie awake wondering whether everything she said and did was a front, or whether the fact that the act was so convincing meant that it really was part of her. Mo had once told her that people were like onions with lots of different layers, but Holly thought of herself as more like a water melon. There was a very hard outside and a load of sweet pink pulp inside, but there were also even harder black pips that you had to spit out before you could enjoy the nice pink stuff. When she had tested this metaphor out on Mo, Mo had said that was getting a bit too complicated for her. Holly found herself explaining this to Clare. ‘What would you be?’ she asked her.
    ‘Maybe I’m a Seville orange,’ Clare said, picking up Philippa’s postcard and sticking it back under its fridge magnet, ‘I look sweet, but I turn out to be sour.’
    ‘You’re not sour,’ Holly protested, ‘now you’re doing exactly what I do, you’re seeing only the bad bits and not giving yourself any credit...’
    ‘I’d give my marriage three out of ten,’ Clare suddenly stated, ‘there, now I’ve said it. I’m not very good at confiding, I’m afraid, because everyone I’ve ever confided in has almost instantly jumped into bed with Joss...’
    ‘But...’ Holly couldn’t believe what she had just heard. Clare was so pretty and she had lovely hair and she was sweet and slim. But her