The Men in her Life

gig that Matt wants to go to... might as well end on a happy note...’
    ‘Yeah, what’s going to happen with you and Matt?’ Clare asked.
    ‘Not sure. He’s all right, you know, but I can’t see how we can survive with me there and him here, and I’m not sure I want to anyway. He’s talking about reapplying to colleges in London and I really don’t want that, but I don’t know how to tell him without hurting his feelings...’
    ‘Better now, than if he gets a place and then...’
    ‘I suppose so. It’s just, well, he’s nice, you know, and he really likes me, and I sometimes wonder whether anyone else ever will.’
    ‘They will.’
    ‘You think so? Even though I’m moody and difficult?’
    A thought of Holly still single in her thirties flitted across Clare’s mind.
    ‘Of course,’ she reassured her daughter, hoping she was right, ‘you’re really not that bad.’
    ‘I want to have lots of men, and I don’t want to love any of them,’ Ella said.
    I’m not going to make the same mistakes as you, she seemed to be saying.
    ‘Sometimes you don’t have a choice,’ Clare said.
    ‘Oh come on...’
    ‘No, really, when I fell in love with Joss that is what it felt like — free-falling, like I imagine doing a bungee jump is — totally exhilarating and really frightening too...’
    ‘And then you had me and all that stopped...’
    Something in the tone of Ella’s voice made Clare turn her head on the grass. There were tears in Ella’s eyes.
    ‘Then I had you, and it was even more wonderful...’ Clare said, sitting up.
    ‘Oh, come on, Mum. Having me stopped you doing anything...’ Ella sat up too.
    ‘I didn’t do nothing, I did something very important. I don’t know why everyone these days attaches so little value to bringing up children...’ Clare said. ‘I mean, you and I are perfect examples,’ she put her arm around Ella, ‘I had a mother who resented the merest second of time that I took her away from her personal ambition and what happened? I fell into the arms of the first man who said he loved me at the age of eighteen. You’ve had a mother who was there at least, if nothing else, and at the age of eighteen you’re going abroad, then to medical school, you’re sussed about men, you know you can choose to do what you want when you want to. I was too insecure to allow myself that choice, even though I had known about a woman’s right to choose from my cradle,’ she gave Ella a squeeze. ‘I’m not saying your achievement is my achievement... I don’t really know what I am saying...’ but I’m glad you’re like you are...’
    In some ways she had never had to worry about Ella because she was such a sensible and reasonable person, and yet she realized she had worried this last year about whether Ella, who had always coasted through her schooling, would raise herself to get the qualifications that would give her real options in her life. She had worried about not putting enough pressure on her, or too much. Ella had sailed through, having done enough before she even sat the exams to be offered a place at her chosen medical school, and still studying right up to the last minute in order to achieve perfection. It made Clare smile to think that she had set such a good example for her daughter: Ella was completely determined not to end up as she had done.
    ‘I’m glad you’re like you are too,’ Ella said, giving her a kiss, ‘honestly, Mum, I didn’t mean...’
    ‘I know,’ Clare told her, embarrassed now by her outburst. She had wanted to say something for Ella to take away with her, but she had ended up talking about herself. It was all the wrong way round.

Chapter 20

    A two-day-old English Sunday newspaper caught Philippa’s eye on a kiosk at the bus station. Philippa was moving on. She had deliberated about having a car drive her across Andalucia but could not bear the thought of being enclosed with a stranger for so many hours. A cab-driver would be bound to ask questions which she had neither the language nor the inclination to answer. In a bus she would be uncomfortable but nobody would bother her, and she found she was quite enjoying slumming it. Her small Louis Vuitton case looked charmingly out of place slung in the space under the bus alongside turquoise and pink nylon rucksacks. It was bound to get stolen, but she did not seem to care. She found herself quite enjoying freedom from the pressure of material possessions.
    The bus was hot and the seats