The Men in her Life

overstay his welcome by half an hour in the expectation of a legal Marlboro.
    ‘Well, it’s two blokes sharing a flat, right, but one of them is an alien, right?’ Jeff was unable to stop himself chuckling at his own wit, ‘so... all he knows about human behaviour is what he’s seen on TV. Like, he doesn’t know what the toilet is for, because people never crap on TV, so he just pours Frish down the whole time and buys a labrador puppy to run around with the bog roll...’
    Holly smiled weakly. Only half an hour to go before she was meeting her best friend Colette for a drink. Surely she could last without nicotine until then?
    ‘Great, look, Jeff, there are a couple of calls I’ve got to make...’
    ‘And then,’ said Jeff, warming to his theme, ‘he gets this can of deodorant but he has to find a leaf with a V in it before he sprays it on his back!’
    ‘Don’t you think we’ve had aliens in flats in Third Rock from the Sun?’ Holly interrupted him sharply.
    ‘You may be right,’ Jeff conceded, ‘I’ve got a couple more...’
    ‘Jot them down and fax them over, OK?’ Holly stood up and walked to the door.
    Jeff got to his feet, slightly bewildered by his sudden dismissal.
    ‘Have you given up smoking?’ Holly asked him as he walked past her.
    ‘Three weeks ago,’ he announced with the absurdly triumphant smile of the recent ex-smoker.
    ‘Good for you!’ Holly said, smiling broadly as he left.
    Holly dialled her voice mail. In the time Jeff had been talking, she had missed eleven calls. She looked at her notepad. Below Jeffs name and the date she had written Men BB + Mars — crap, loo roll, dog. She tore off the sheet and threw it in the bin, then picked it out again, suddenly feeling rather heartless. When she had first become an agent she had been grateful to people like Jeff for providing her bread and butter, and now she didn’t have time to listen. When she had first joined the company, Holly reflected, her ultimate goal had been to have an office of her own. She closed the window as the early evening frying sent up thick clouds of burger. Now her ambition was to have an office of her own with a view, air-conditioned, preferably in a building with a gym and a swimming-pool in the basement. Ideally the building would be beside the river, within easy walking distance of some terrific restaurants. There would always be a line of cabs outside and she would be so successful nobody would dare to object to her smoking. And then there was the masseur...
    Holly called her secretary in.
    ‘Messages?’ she demanded.
    ‘None,’ said Jemima with a sheepish smile.
    ‘So what have you been doing for the last hour? I’ve got eleven on my voice mail. I should have thought you could have fielded one or two.’
    ‘I was filing...’ Jemima blushed with guilt.
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake...’
    Having risen from the secretarial ranks herself, Holly was well-known as the worst boss in the building. She was the only one who knew every excuse in the book because most of them she had invented herself.
    ‘You’re a bit like a child-abuser,’ Robert had once told her, ‘people who abuse have always been abused themselves. You’d think they’d know better.’
    ‘I don’t mind people lying to me,’ Holly had defended herself, ‘as long as they put some effort into making it a good lie. Otherwise, it’s insulting.’
    ‘It’s a class thing,’ Robert had teased, stepping out of the way of a friendly punch, ‘you common people just don’t know how to treat servants...’
    Jemima’s dressing-down was interrupted by Holly’s phone ringing. Holly picked it up, dismissing her secretary with a glance.
    ‘Anji, hi!’
    Anji was one of Holly’s brightest stars. Her self-help book Single File had been the previous year’s surprise bestseller and her writing was so witty it had generated a lot of interest amongst producers. She had a sitcom in development with Channel 4, and she was working on ideas for feature films. She was also one of Holly’s nicest and most modest clients.
    ‘Do you have a moment?’ Anji asked, ‘it’s just I came up with this idea in the bath last night and well...’
    ‘Go ahead.’
    ‘Well,’ Anji began very tentatively, ‘I’m calling it The Men in her Life and it’s about how you think that there must be someone out there with your name written on...’
    Holly had a fleeting vision of a man with a tattoo on his arm that read HOLLY.
    ‘Go on...’ she said,