The Men in her Life

obtaining qualifications, careers and suits with shoulder-pads. Clare had raised a child and turned their little smallholding into a source of food. Her peers whiled away their evenings networking in metropolitan wine bars, while Clare washed nappies and patched clothes. Sometimes one of them would remember her and ring for a chat, but she could not afford to make long and gossipy calls back to them, and anyway, they had very little to talk about any more. It had not worried her then, because she had felt so lucky to have Joss and Ella, but recently she had begun to find it increasingly difficult to believe in a way of life that no-one else seemed to value. Joss thrived on being different from everyone else, but she began to yearn for the normal. It was one of the many ways they had grown apart.
    ‘Do you think Labour will really win?’ she asked, taking his arm as they approached their door.
    ‘The question is, will it make any difference if they do?’ he replied.
    When she had first known him, the habit he had of rephrasing everything she said had made her think him profound, now she just found it deflating.
    ‘At least the mood will change...’ she suggested, letting her arm drop again.
    ‘Will it?’ He put his key in the front door and ducked his head to step in.
    Clare fell silent. Surely things were going to change,, she thought. They must.

    In the garden, as she tugged at a handful of dark green crinkly leaves, she thought how ironic it was that their way of life seemed to have become fashionable at the very moment she had begun to grow dissatisfied with it. The papers were full of stories about women of her age who had put all their energy into careers which they were now giving up to raise their children. There were endless articles about middle-class people deciding to live in poverty, which the journalists called downshifting. Organically-grown food, like the spinach in her hand, fetched extortionate prices in supermarkets, and the latest health advice extolled the benefits of antioxidants from fresh fruit and vegetables. Clare stooped to pick a bunch of parsley. People were actually choosing to come to Cornwall from London so that their children could grow up in fresh air and go to a village school. It was perverse to dream about leaving now.
    In any case, there was no way they could ever afford to go back to London , she told herself, even if Joss wanted to, which he did not. Life in Penderric suited him.
    Clare tried to shake herself into a more positive mood. There was a party on the beach later, and before that she had to make supper, get Tom bathed and into bed, and change. She straightened up and paused for a moment to look over the fence at the view. It was the first real summer day that year and the sky was cloudless and blue. A small fishing-boat, as tiny in the distance as one of Tom’s bath toys, chugged towards the harbour, and following it the white wings of gulls glinted in the late afternoon sun.
    Somewhere on the other side of the bay she could hear tinny blasts of the campaign theme tune wafting from the Labour candidate’s car like the jingle of a distant ice-cream van.
    ‘Things can only get better!’

    Clare put on clean black jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt and went into the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror above the sink. That morning, in a fit of whimsy, she had sewn tiny roses she had made out of narrow red ribbon round the neck of the vest. It worked surprisingly well. She brushed her hair, feeling suddenly excited at the prospect of the beach party.
    ‘How do I look?’ she asked Ella as she came down to the kitchen.
    Ella was preparing supper for herself and her boyfriend. They had volunteered to babysit for Tom.
    ‘Lovely.’
    Even though Ella wore Doc Martens and heavily distressed clothing all year round, she had good manners.
    ‘Where’s Joss?’ Clare asked.
    ‘He said he’d see you there,’ Ella said, stirring the saucepan of pasta that was bubbling on the cooker.
    ‘Oh...’ Inside Clare’s tummy, the little burst of optimism she had allowed herself to feel collapsed like the centre of a too-little baked cake. ‘I made some leek an d bacon sauce, if you fancy it,’ she told Ella, trying not to let her feelings show.
    ‘Matt’s vegetarian.’
    ‘Of course he is. Well, I’m sure there are tomatoes. And some cheese...’
    ‘Just go, Mum. We’ll be fine,’ Ella told her.

    When Clare and Joss had first arrived in Penderric there