The Men in her Life

was in my twenties. I always wanted to be in the film business. I was an usherette, and when I left school I learned to type and worked in the music industry and then somebody told me about the Guardian on a Monday, Creative and Media, and there was this secretary’s job at Louis Gold. So I got it and as soon as I’d worked out what my boss did, I thought I could do it just as well, so I just worked on them until they let me.’
    ‘That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?’ Charlie said.
    ‘Yeah, I suppose so. There are loads of Oxford graduates swanning about who have a daddy in the business,’ she laughed drily, thinking of the irony in that, then looked up.
    ‘Oh, I suppose you’re now going to tell me that you’re an Oxford graduate...’
    ‘Yup.’
    ‘Shit.’
    ‘But Charlie was the first person from his terrible East London comprehensive to go to Oxford . Surely he’s told you that? He tells absolutely everybody,’ Ginger said, ‘he’s the biggest inverted snob in the business...’
    ‘I thought you were genuine East End ,’ Holly told him.
    ‘And not just some poser putting on the voice?’ he said.
    ‘Yeah
    They began to swap anecdotes about their schooldays.
    By the end of the evening Holly was aching with laughter. Charlie called a cab for her, and when the doorbell rang, Ginger said, ‘Holly, before you go, come and see the most beautiful sight in the world...’
    Holly followed her up the stairs. The walls in the nursery were painted as a panorama of sky with clouds and hot air balloons drifting across towards a sunset, and on the side of the room where the cot was, it had grown dark and there were stars and a crescent moon.
    ‘What a fantastic room!’ Holly said.
    ‘Come and look,’ Ginger whispered, peering over the top of the cot.
    Her little boy was fast asleep. Around his head a halo of black curly hair fanned out on the mattress and in his sleep he was smiling. He looked a bit like Tom. She wondered if all little boys were so angelic, and when it was that they changed.
    There was obviously some sort of conspiracy going on, Holly thought as the cab sped down Ladbroke Grove, to make her want to have a relationship. Until recently she had found that her friends who married became instantly dull. Not just Colette and Dr Implant, but all the ones who had wedding lists and then got you round to see their soft furnishings and said things like ‘I expect you find all this very boring’ and never invited you back when you said yes.
    Holly sometimes envied people having a relationship, but she never wanted to have the relationship they actually had. She had never fancied one of her friend’s men. But she did want Ginger’s relationship. In fact she wanted Ginger’s life, house, children, husband, everything, but she couldn’t seem to think of any reasons why Ginger shouldn’t have them and she should. Too much wine. Charlie was the One for Ginger and vice versa, and there was something just so right about that.
    What was so strange was that seeing Ginger and Charlie had actually made her feel optimistic rather than depressed. Ginger was the chaotic and opinionated sister who wasn’t supposed to live happily ever after, she thought. Pic was the sensible, feminine one, the sort of person who followed the washing instructions on her underwear, and yet Pic was on her own. In an odd sort of way the thought gave Holly hope.

Chapter 19

    ‘Is Ella taking her computer, do you know?’ Joss asked Clare on one of the rare mornings they had both woken up before Tom. He had made her a cup of tea and they were sitting in bed together passing the time of day under the companionable warmth of the duvet. It was like a scene from a domestic drama, Clare thought. On television, couples were always sitting up in bed together talking. In real life, there was always a small child in there with them, or calling proudly from the landing that he was just about to jump all the way down the stairs, or a teenager shouting up from the kitchen unable to decide what to take to school for lunch.
    ‘Her computer? I don’t think so. Why should she?’ Long experience had taught her to look for a subtext in everything Joss said, but she couldn’t for the moment second-guess what he was after.
    ‘She guards it so jealously here...’
    The state-of-the-art Powerbook had been Philippa’s most recent Christmas gift to Ella and she spent many hours shut in her room with it. Clare thought of it as the 1990s