The Men in her Life

a passionate thing with a nineteen-year-old boy.’
    Holly’s phone rang the instant she put it down.
    ‘You old tart,’ said Colette.
    ‘Why didn’t you answer?’
    ‘I’m monitoring my calls. I’m only speaking to Philip through my solicitor now.’
    Holly had a fleeting vision of Colette with her face against a besuited lawyer’s tummy and her ex-husband with his ear to the lawyer’s back.
    ‘Who is he, where did you find him, are there any more where he came from?’ Colette demanded.
    Holly told her.
    ‘What does he see in you?’ Colette asked.
    ‘Thanks a lot.’
    ‘You’re old enough to be his mother...’ Colette started humming the theme tune from The Graduate.
    ‘I’m not that bloody old. Just because you’re jealous…’
    ‘ Just because you’re fast...’
    ‘That’s just what Mo would say...’
    ‘You haven’t told Mo?’ Colette sounded alarmed.
    ‘No, I haven’t... I’m waiting to see where it goes…’
    ‘Where it goes?’
    Colette’s voice confirmed Holly’s instinct. In the privacy of her flat in the middle of the night when the streets outside had become eerily quiet she could look at the beautiful unlined contours of his sleeping face and the gold tips of his waxed hair and think why not? If it’s gone on for two weeks, it could go on for two more, and then two more, and after a while he would be twenty, and that wouldn’t seem quite so bad...
    ‘Nobody complains when an older man goes out with a younger woman,’ Holly argued.
    ‘They always say that in articles about older women going out with younger men, and it’s not true. People do mind older men screwing younger women. They mind a lot. I mean what did you think when Bill Wyman married Mandy Smith?’
    ‘Inadequate jerk,’ Holly admitted sadly.

    Mo felt odd talking about it without having told Holly.
    ‘I’ve left loads of messages,’ she told Sonya, as they leafed through Brides magazine in the staff canteen, ‘I hope she’s OK.’
    ‘Holly’ll be happy to see you so happy,’ Sonya said. Mo wished she could be as confident.
    ‘It’s not as if I need her permission,’ she joked feebly. ‘A nice suit, then, or are you going for a dress...?’ asked Sonya.
    ‘Do you think I can get away with white, I mean pure white,’ Mo asked, ‘because Laurel have some lovely separates with just a bit of gold on the button and I thought I could mix and match them afterwards, you know, so they wouldn’t only get one wear...’
    ‘Are we talking morals or skin tone?’ Sonya asked, giving serious consideration to the white question, before taking a bite of her sandwich.
    ‘Goodness, nobody thinks you have to be a virgin any more, do they?’ asked Mo.
    ‘They wouldn’t sell many white dresses if they did, I suppose,’ Sonya admitted, giving Mo’s face and neck a lengthy perusal. ‘I think you’ll need a tan for pure white,’ she decided, ‘you could always fake it...’
    She and Mo exchanged a look and broke into girlish giggles.
    ‘No, seriously, there’s some lovely new preparations. No more orange streaks between your fingers. The secret is to exfoliate first...’
    ‘Sounds rude,’ said Mo, giggling again.
    ‘Tell you what, I’ll come over the morning of the wedding and do the whole thing. Body scrub, moisturize, fake tan, nails, a real top to toe. My wedding present to you. Be better than a wok, wouldn’t it?’
    ‘Be lovely,’ said Mo, ‘so you reckon white?’
    ‘Perfect,’ said Sonya.
    Mo smiled at her.
    ‘I’d better go and give Holly another try,’ she said, her spirits sinking again.

    Holly had always thought that the woman Kim Basinger played in 9½ Weeks was a silly cow, but now, staring blankly into the ventilation shaft outside the window of her office, she understood how she felt. She didn’t know whether it was love or just lack of sleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Matt. It was mad to imagine it could last. He was from the generation they were always talking about in the newspapers before the election, the young people who had never known anything but Tory rule. If she were to ask him who his favourite Beatle was, he probably wouldn’t even know all their names, because he had only been a toddler when John Lennon was shot. He wasn’t even Julian Lennon’s generation, he was Sean’s. The fact was that he only knew who the Beatles were because of their influence on Oasis.
    They had nothing else in common either. And yet she liked having him