The Men in her Life

Jack’s four films the central male character had a wife and a mistress, and yet it had never occurred to her before that he was writing auto-biographically.
    On the night they married he had told her with pride that she was the least wifey person he could imagine. They were lying in bed in the Ritz. The first night of their honeymoon was a gift from her older sister who had bad memories of her own wedding night spent in the discomfort of the night-train to Italy .
    ‘Wives are supposed to be angels in the kitchen and whores in the bedroom,’ Jack had pronounced, lying on his back staring at the curlicues and cornicing of the stucco ceiling. His hands supported his head, his elbows were bent.
    ‘But I’ve found myself an angel in bed and a whore in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or the hall, or...’ he turned onto his side and smiled at her. Jack smouldered with charm. He was not generous with compliments but when they came they were each so much better than a dozen from anyone else.
    ‘You won’t change, will you?’ he asked her, suddenly boyish in his fear.
    ‘I won’t change,’ she promised him.
    Had she changed, without being aware of it, so much that he had needed to find himself a mistress? The question tormented Philippa. And the not-knowing. She had been so sure, so arrogant in her possession of him.
    The bus crawled through the baked-mud landscape. The old woman got off after an hour or two, leaving Philippa two seats. She shifted over to the window and stared out at the dusty road and the dusty houses, occasionally sipping warm water from her bottle, oblivious to time passing.
    It was dark by the time she reached Granada . She asked a cab-driver to take her to the best hotel, longing to wash the sweat and smells of the journey from her skin. He looked bemused, asked a question, she repeated el mejor. He shrugged and drove up a steep road towards the Alhambra . The receptionist at the Parador looked at her suspiciously. The Louis Vuitton suitcase fitted, but the grimy T-shirt did not. Yes, they had a room. She swiped Philippa’s gold visa card through the machine and waited insolently for Philippa’s credit to check out before she would say whether she was prepared to let Philippa have it. Of course with a bath, she replied, as the positive response stuttered out of the machine. How long will you be staying? Philippa said she did not know. Time had lost all its meaning for her.

PART FOUR
July

Chapter 21

    Clare had been saying for days that they mustn’t leave everything until the last minute, but all her careful preparations meant that suddenly there was nothing to do but wait for Matt to arrive. His father was driving them into Truro to catch the train. Ella’s rucksack was packed and she had said goodbye to Joss and Tom who had gone down to the beach. They wouldn’t all fit in the car.
    It would almost have been better to be rushing around, ironing, searching for passports than sitting, listening to the seconds tick away. There was nothing to say. It was not the time to embark on a long, soul-searching conversation about life, and little questions like whether she had remembered her toothbrush seemed to annoy Ella disproportionately, making Clare aware that she was very nervous too. Ella was so cool, so well-prepared, it was easy to forget that she was just a teenager who had never really ventured outside Cornwall .
    Clare made coffee and the two of them sat in their usual places at the kitchen table cupping their hands like carol singers with mugs of hot chocolate at the end of a long cold evening’s walk. It was a bit like she imagined it must be saying goodbye to someone on death row. She wanted to say something significant, something that would make Ella’s parting OK for both of them, but she could think of nothing. She caught her daughter’s eye and they both laughed at their unaccustomed embarrassment.
    ‘You will come home if you don’t like it? I don’t care how much it costs. We’ll find the money, OK?’
    ‘Yes,’ Ella said through gritted teeth. It was at least the tenth time she had answered the question.
    Clare suddenly noticed Ella’s unadorned nose. ‘You’ve forgotten your ring.’
    ‘Not forgotten. I’ve taken it out.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘It had to go sometime. I don’t think it would have given my patients much confidence...’
    ‘Oh.’ For some reason, the absence of the nose ring and the grown-up reason for its disappearance made Clare want to cry. It