Second Chance (16 page)

Plus the barn was a bargain. At the time, it seemed so cheap they almost felt it would have been rude to say no. So cheap they paid cash for the entire thing, planning on starting the work immediately. Phil designed an incredible house. A modern stainless-steel and glazed-concrete kitchen, huge windows to take in the views, four bedrooms off a steel gallery upstairs: a huge master, a guest suite, and two bedrooms for the children that were undoubtedly on their way.

A local landscape architect designed a spectacular garden. There would be a cobbled courtyard with huge oversized terracotta pots that would hold olive trees in the summer. Lavender and rosemary would spill out of the raised beds on either side. The handful of old, gnarled apple trees that sat at the bottom of the hill would form the basis for an orchard – twenty fruit trees were going to be added, and a raspberry patch. The landscape architect added, ‘Your kids can spend hours picking their own fruit.’

It was Anna’s idea of heaven, and Paul, who mostly thought of himself as an urban creature, was happy doing what made Anna happy. Plus even he had to admit that the plans were remarkable, and they would
end up with an idyllic getaway. Anna made sure to include a study for Paul – all the way at the top of the barn, up a hidden staircase, the cupola would open into his office, flooding it with light. ‘If you can’t write the great British novel here,’ Phil joked when he showed the plans for the office to a breathless Paul and Anna, ‘I don’t know where you can.’

Now, over a year later, they can hardly bear to think about it. People assume that Paul and Anna are rolling in it, they assume that Anna makes a fortune; but the truth is that although the company is thriving, Anna only takes out a salary. And what used to be a comfortable salary has been eaten up by buying the barn, followed by back-to-back IVF treatments.

White Barn Fields is jokingly referred to by everyone they know, themselves included, as the Money Pit. Except it doesn’t feel quite so funny any more, not since finding out they weren’t getting pregnant and they weren’t going to take no for an answer.

Anna’s stubbornness is something Paul has loved about her from day one. So tough she is referred to by her father as a ball-breaker. Said lovingly, of course. She knows exactly what she wants and how she is going to get it, and nobody ever says no to Anna. She is charming and down-to-earth and persuasive, and she somehow always manages to get her own way.

She cannot understand why having children hasn’t come to her as easily as everything else in her life. She will tell the various journalists who interview her about Fashionista that she is stunned by its success, but in truth she is not stunned. It is exactly what she expected
to happen. Too many fashion websites had fallen by the wayside because they didn’t keep their stock on site, had to ship it from afar, running the risk of delivery being far later than their instant-gratification-obsessed customers would accept. And then when the clothing did arrive, it was badly packaged in ugly plastic envelopes or badly wrapped in wrapping paper.

Anna designed shocking-pink boxes, layers of delicate orange tissue paper carefully enfolding the purchases, all tied up with animal-print velvet ribbon. The boxes and the ribbon are a fortune, but worth it. They are always voted best packaging on the Internet, and the boxes are so beautiful her clients regularly write to her to say they can’t throw them away. Many is the time Anna has opened an interiors magazine to see someone’s dressing-room shelves piled with Fashionista boxes in assorted shapes and sizes.

And shipping is twenty-four hours. No matter where in the world you are, if you order an item on a business day, you will have it the next. Customer service is everything in Anna’s book. It is one of the reasons she loves having an Internet company – she is fed up with going into trendy boutiques and having young, imperious sales assistants ignore her as they chat on the the phone, only perking up when she hands over her credit card and they realize who she is.

So the fact that fashionista.uk.net is now the third most successful Internet company in the UK is no surprise to Anna whatsoever, although she would never admit that in public. The truth is that Anna has always felt blessed, always felt that her guardian angels were
looking after her. Where others see adversity and hardship, Anna has only ever seen a challenge that she will inevitably overcome. She always believes the glass is half full, even when everyone else is convinced it is empty, and because she has always believed her life is charmed, her life has always been charmed.

When she met Paul, she knew he was perfect for her. After she left him on the very first day he interviewed her and well before he started pestering her about things he had forgotten to ask, she phoned her mother. ‘Mum? I’ve met the man I’m going to marry,’ she said, and her mother knew that she had, because when Anna stated something, it always happened.

So when Anna announced they were trying for children, everyone knew that Anna would have a baby within the year. It was partly why they bought the barn: what a wonderful place for children, how perfect to spend summers out here with the kids, or come down on winter weekends for leaf-stomping, and hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire in the huge stone fireplace at one end of the enormous great room.

Anna’s obstinacy is why they cannot give up on IVF. Why Anna refuses to believe there will be a last time. She cannot believe that this will not work when everything else in her life has gone according to plan.

So far they’ve spent around fifty thousand pounds on IVF, a huge chunk of the savings they had put aside. The work on the barn has started. The walls that were rotten have been replaced with reclaimed barn siding they found at an auction, and the roof has been done. Kitchen and bathrooms were ordered and then cancelled.
The house is half done. Piles of sawdust everywhere, dust sheets on half-sanded floors, unpainted window frames. The last time they went up to have a look, Anna burst into tears.

‘This was our dream,’ she said to Paul. ‘And now we cannot even afford to finish it.’

‘We will one day,’ Paul said, so sorry that he wasn’t able to pull out a magic wand and make it happen, so sorry that his work didn’t provide him with enough money to take over when the going got tough. ‘I promise you, one day this will be finished.’

They left that night and stayed at a local B&B – a few hundred steps down from the Relais & Chateaux along the road where they used to stay before starting IVF, but a lot of things have changed since the treatment began.

‘If they could see me now,’ Anna sang, picking her way gingerly down the hallway, having run lukewarm water into a cracked bath in the bathroom at the other end of the hall, and Paul shrugged.

‘We have to stop the treatment, you know,’ he attempted carefully. ‘This is ridiculous that we can’t afford anything any more. We can’t keep going like this.’

‘Hopefully we will not have to.’ Anna squeezed his arm. ‘I have a feeling this one is going to work,’ and Paul sighed. She said that every time. But having to watch every penny was stressful, to say the least, particularly when it had never been an issue before.

Although if you didn’t know, you’d never know. Anna still looks the part – she has to for her job, and no one is a better PR for Fashionista than Anna herself
–but watch her carefully and you’ll see that she isn’t frivolous in the way she used to be.

Her make-up is always from work. No longer does she run to Space NK to replenish the jar of Eve Lom that’s almost finished. Now, if she can’t get it sent to her through Fashionista, she’ll change brands. Her finances have dictated that her brand loyalty is no longer important.

Her hair is no longer cut and coloured at Bumble & Bumble. For cuts she goes to the local hairdresser on the high street, and she has discovered that Sun In, thanks to her natural fair Swedish locks, does almost as good a job of highlighting her hair as Enzo used to.

They don’t go out to the expensive restaurants any more unless it is for work and either Anna is expensing it or someone else is paying, and frankly there is always more than enough to eat and drink at the hundreds of fashion parties that are going on all around London on practically any given night.

Not that they can’t afford to feed themselves – heavens, no! But where Anna used to absentmindedly put whatever she wanted in a shopping trolley with no thought to the price, now she will look at the price and, if it is too much, she will think about whether they really need it.

She will no longer wander round Graham and Green on a Saturday afternoon, filling her arms with throws and candles and interesting statuettes and lovely linens that she certainly doesn’t need, just because they’re there and because she can.

You would never know any of it. Looking at Anna
right now, sitting cross-legged on the floor as Violet – who, like all children who come into contact with Anna, has fallen completely in love with her – hangs around her neck squealing, you would think that she is beautiful, poised and perfect. You would think that nothing in her life could ever go wrong.

‘Hi.’ Sarah’s voice is listless as she comes into the room and sits on the sofa, dark shadows under her eyes, her hair still mussed.

‘We brought some photos of Tom.’ Paul thinks about going across the room to hug her, but something about her is so shut down he knows he’ll be rejected, and he stays where he is, unsure of what to say.

‘I know. Maggie said so.’

‘Would you like to see them?’

‘Sure,’ she says. Paul hands them to her and she starts to sift through the photographs. A ghost of a smile hovers over her lips as she stops at a picture of Paul, Holly and Tom, all of them with braces on their teeth, at Paul’s fifteenth birthday party.

‘God, look at that hair!’ Sarah says. ‘I never knew Tom had long hair. He looks awful!’

‘We all looked awful,’ Paul says, grateful that Sarah finally seems to be engaged. ‘Look at Holly’s shocking-pink lipstick. I think she thought it was sophisticated.’

‘Tom was so skinny,’ Sarah muses, tracing his arm in the photo with her forefinger. ‘You’d never think he’d become so buff.’

‘Buff?’ Paul asks.

‘Fit. He was forever in the gym. He got this thing
about Ironman contests. Crazy stuff where you bike 112 miles, swim 2.4 miles, then run 26.2 miles. He did one in Florida and was training for another.’ She shakes her head. ‘He was so fit. So strong. That’s what I find so hard to believe. I mean, I could understand almost anyone else not surviving, but Tom? How could Tom not have got himself out of there? How could anything take Tom down?’

There’s an awkward silence, neither Paul nor Anna knowing what to say, and after a while Sarah turns to the next picture and bursts out laughing. ‘Tom was in the army?’ she splutters.

‘TA,’ Paul says sheepishly. ‘Was the thing to do at the time.’

In the kitchen, getting a tray of tea ready to take inside, Maggie sits down heavily at the table.

‘Thank you,’ she looks up at a concerned Anna, ‘this is the first time Sarah has sounded anything like herself. Those photos are what she needed right now.’

‘What about you?’ Anna says gently. ‘What do you need right now?’

‘Oh I’ll be fine,’ Maggie says with a false brightness. ‘I’ll just finish making this tea and I’ll be right out. If you could just take Pippa outside to pee that would be wonderful.’

Anna leaves, but she turns just as she reaches the doorway to see Maggie collapsing in her chair. Anna hovers, unsure of whether to go back, but she knows Maggie thinks she is alone, thinks Anna has left the
room; she knows Maggie would never allow herself to drop her composure in front of anyone.

It is absolutely quiet. There are no more tears, there surely can’t be a drop of water left in her body, but Anna watches as Maggie leans her head on her arms on the kitchen table and groans softly as she rocks back and forth.

And Anna sees that this matriarch of what is left of her family, this strong, stoic, wonderful woman is finding the pain may be too much for a human being to bear.

As she listens to Maggie’s quiet groans, she understands that Maggie honestly doesn’t know how she can get through the rest of her life knowing she will never see her beloved son, her firstborn, again.

‘What’s the matter with you today?’ The receptionist at the animal shelter walks into the sitting room with a sandwich at lunchtime and collapses on the sofa as Olivia looks up in surprise.

‘What do you mean? Nothing’s the matter. Why?’

‘You’re acting like you’ve got ants in your pants,’ Yvonne says. We think it must be a man.’

‘What?’ Olivia attempts a laugh, then rolls her eyes. ‘Good lord, Yvonne. I’m the bloody director – haven’t you got anything better to do than gossip about my love life?’

Yvonne purses her lips. ‘Actually we all wish you had a love life for us to gossip about. Lovely girl like you, you deserve someone much better than that awful George.’

Olivia’s mouth falls open. ‘But you all said you loved George.’

‘Yes, well. That was before he dumped you for that American bimbo.’

‘Yvonne! How do you know all this?’

‘Know what? I don’t know anything. I’m just saying. You ought to have a lovely man who makes you happy.’

‘I’m not going to talk about it any more,’ Olivia says, picking up her coffee and walking out through the door. ‘But just for info, I do have a date tonight,’ and as Yvonne’s face lights up and she prepares to shower
Olivia with questions, Olivia shuts the door and walks off towards her office, giggling.

She is meeting Fred tonight. He is finally here. She shouldn’t be excited, sees no reason to be excited, particularly given that this is a five-day business trip, and she’ll probably hate him once she meets him anyway, but this is the first time she has felt there is something to look forward to. She has arranged to pick him up from the Dorchester at seven o’clock.

At three, she does something she never does. Pulls on her coat, picks up her bag, and announces to Sophie, her assistant, that if there’s anything urgent, she’ll be on her mobile. ‘But only call if it’s an emergency,’ she says, and Sophie, who has inadvertently seen a couple of emails from Fred, winks her approval and shoos her away, knowing that nothing, bar the shelter burning down, would cause her to interrupt Olivia on her date.