Second Chance (3 page)

Joanie had not been able to put her finger on it, but if you asked her, if you gave her the words, she would nod in wonder, for that is exactly what she felt. And
all these years on, she worries that Holly isn’t happy. Worries that, despite outward appearances and despite the children, Marcus has become too difficult, too imperious for Holly to stay.

Holly could judge Marcus, could find the faults his mother finds unbearable but, on the whole, she doesn’t. She knows that there is a different Marcus, wouldn’t be with him still, surely, if there wasn’t a different Marcus hiding behind the pomposity and grandness.

Holly knows that deep down there is a frightened little boy who doesn’t feel good enough; and in order to try to feel good enough he has to surround himself with people he deems worthy; fraternizing with anyone less than himself would diminish him in other people’s eyes, so he doesn’t bother with anyone he regards as inferior.

It was one of the reasons he fell in love with Holly. She came from the background he wished he had, was the ultimate trophy wife. Except once he had her, he had to subtly put her down, make sure she never thought she was better than he was, make sure that he was still able to feel superior.

Despite all this, Marcus has good points. Of course he does; why else would Holly have married him? For starters, he loves her, or at least Holly believes he loves her. He performs random acts of kindness, thought-fulness. When he passes the newsagent on the way home from work and sees the latest
Hello!
or
heat
, he will always pick it up for her. He frequently sends her beautiful flowers, and occasionally comes home with
a Crunchie or a Kit-Kat, Holly’s favourite forbidden indulgence.

He is, when home, great with the children. Not for very long, and only when the children are behaving as he thinks appropriate, i.e. no screaming, whining, crying or hitting – all the behaviours, incidentally, that Holly has to put up with all the time – however, the children are too terrified to behave in ways anything other than exemplary, and on those occasions Holly’s friends will watch him approvingly and murmur what a wonderful father he is.

And he is a wonderful husband too, Holly tells herself during those moments in the middle of the night when she wakes up gripped by panic, panic that her marriage won’t be for ever, that she has never been more lonely than she is now, that she never sees him, that she has nothing in common with him, that they are growing further and further apart.

Marcus wouldn’t see this. Why would he, when Holly, like most women, is a consummate chameleon? During the day, when Marcus isn’t around, she can be herself, can have girlfriends and their children round for lunch, throwing together salad, pitta bread and dips to eat around the kitchen counter as the kids make a mess of fish fingers and ketchup around the kitchen table.

She can break open bottles of wine and put Shakira on the stereo, she and Frauke shaking their hips while Daisy, attempting to imitate them, shocks Holly at how a four-year-old can appear to be so mature, so womanly, o – good lord, she can’t believe she thinks this – sexy.

But she can have fun, can throw on ratty old cargos and trainers, hoodies and no make-up, and not worry about impressing anyone.

And when Marcus comes home, she can slip into what he likes. If they’re staying in she’ll swiftly change into crisp, dark jeans and a cashmere sweater, small diamond studs in her ears, or, if going out to supper, smart woollen trousers, high-heeled boots, a velvet jacket.

The music goes off, the cushions are plumped to perfection. Holly finds herself running through the house every night before Marcus comes home, checking that all is exactly the way he likes it. The children are not allowed to build forts out of the sofa cushions in the living room, and Frauke is in charge of making sure Marcus doesn’t know that almost every afternoon every cushion in the house is piled up in the centre of the room.

The children are also not allowed to run ‘naked like savages’ through the garden, and on the rare summer afternoons when Marcus announces he’s coming home early, she and Frauke beg, cajole and plead with the kids to put their swimsuits back on before Daddy comes home.

Her own father had stopped showing interest in Holly soon after the divorce. She remembers very clearly being fourteen years old, her father taking her to the soda fountain at Fortnum & Mason for tea and, over a huge chocolate sundae, telling her that he loved her, would always be there for her, and that no matter
what happened he was going to see her every week and every other weekend.

He didn’t say that the reason for the divorce was his persistent infidelity. Holly only found that out later.

For a while, he kept his word about seeing Holly. For six months. And then he met Celia Benson, and suddenly he was jetting off to Paris, or Florence, or St Tropez with Celia, and soon he had a new family, and Holly was largely ignored.

Her father, she realized as an adult, was weak. Celia Benson didn’t want the child from his first marriage being around, and he acquiesced, allowed himself to give her up. To this day Holly blames Celia.

Is Holly happy? Happiness is not something Holly thinks about very often. She certainly has everything a woman could want in order to be happy, so how could she be anything but? The fact that they sleep in a king-sized bed, both on the far edges, a huge expanse of space in the middle, Holly furious if a leg or an arm should wander over to her side, doesn’t mean she’s unhappy, surely? The fact that they rarely have sex any more, and when they do it’s perfunctory, doesn’t mean she’s unhappy, surely? The fact that Holly finds herself withdrawing more and more from life, having already given up several friends Marcus deemed ‘unsuitable’, doesn’t mean she’s unhappy.

Surely?

Distractions do a wonderful job of keeping her mind off the fact that her life is not quite what she expected it to be. There are her children, for starters. Her house.
And, of course, work. A freelance illustrator for a greeting-card company, Holly can lock herself away in her studio at the top of the house and lose herself for hours in a delicate watercolour of a little girl and a puppy, only coming out of her reverie when she hears Frauke and the kids returning from the park. A couple of days a week she goes to the studio at the company, but mostly to keep her hand in and to remove herself from the isolation of working alone at home, to feel part of the company.

She hasn’t been in that much recently, not least because of her exhaustion. Sleep is becoming a growing problem, and Holly’s defences are nowhere in sight when she wakes up in the middle of the night, her heart pounding with fears she refuses to acknowledge. She is finding herself sleeping more and more in the middle of the day, yet however much sleep she gets, she never feels truly energized.

Now, sitting at the kitchen counter after another daytime nap, Holly finds herself thinking about when she had last been truly happy. School? Well, no. She hadn’t been happy there, but outside school, when she, Olivia, Saffron, Paul and Tom had been together, then she’d been happy.

And at university. She and Tom, best friends, in love with one another since the day they met at fifteen, but somehow never managing to make it happen… Those had been happy times.

Holly smiles as she remembers those days. She hasn’t spoken to Tom for weeks. They kept in touch for ages
with phone calls, then dwindling emails; but once Tom had met Sarah while she was working in his London office, then moved to her home town in America to marry her, their friendship never seemed quite the same, although Holly always thought it was just a phase.

Olivia, she has discovered, works for an animal charity. Every now and then Holly will spend an afternoon Googling friends from a previous life, hence her discovery of a picture of a smiling Olivia holding a kitten at a benefit to raise money for her charity. She had looked the same, other than that her beautiful waist-length hair was now in a short bob. Holly had sent her an email, years ago, to which Olivia had responded warmly, but somehow they had never managed to follow through.

Saffron, as befits someone named Saffron, is now a semi-famous actress trying to become a movie star in Los Angeles. She has been in several low-budget British films, has had tiny parts in major films, and is often recognized in the streets. She is regularly profiled in British magazines and newspapers as the next big thing; however, at thirty-nine – even though Saffron would never admit it – Holly knows that Saffron is unlikely to be the next big
anything
in Hollywood movies.

Holly hasn’t seen Paul for years. He and Tom have kept in touch. Tom, in fact, seemed to keep in touch with everyone, albeit sporadically, but now and then he’d send Holly an email, making her laugh with stories of what Paul, the eternal womanizer, was up to.

Tom would say, once he married Sarah, that he was able to live his life vicariously through Paul, but Holly
remembers that Paul got married a couple of years ago, to a beautiful girl, someone successful, if Holly remembers correctly, and Paul had sworn to Tom that she had changed him completely.

Holly remembers sitting at the hairdresser’s, flicking through
Vogue
, and stopping short when she turned the page and suddenly came across Paul, lounging across an oatmeal-coloured Eames sofa, dressed head to toe in Prada, looking suspiciously like a male model, with a gorgeous blonde draped between his legs, a Chloé dress on her spectacular figure, her head thrown back, hair like a silken wave over his arm.

Her mouth had dropped open as she started reading about the marriage of this new power couple: Paul Eddison, journalist and man-about-town, and Anna Johanssen, founder and CEO of fashionista.uk.net.

Of course Tom had told her that Paul was getting married, but she had no idea it was such a big deal. She had pored over the pictures, stunned at how trendy Paul had become, but when she’d phoned Tom to squeal about it, Tom had just laughed.

‘It’s not what he looks like,’ Tom had said.

‘But I saw it with my own eyes,’ Holly had insisted. ‘He looks like a bleeding model. What happened to the permanent stubble because he couldn’t be bothered to shave? Paul’s hair was always a complete mess, and frankly the Paul I used to know wouldn’t have known Prada from a pencil.’

‘Trust me,’ Tom had cracked up, ‘Paul’s still exactly the same. I was his best man, and I had to stand over
him with the razor and supply the hair gel to make him look half decent. He’s still happiest in his scruffy old jeans and T-shirts with holes in them.’

‘I don’t know,’ Holly had said dubiously. ‘It sure as hell looks as if he’s changed. What’s she like, anyway? She looks terrifying.’

Tom had sighed in sorrow. ‘Don’t be so bloody jealous, Holly. She’s lovely. You think she must be a bitch because she’s beautiful but she’s not. She’s incredibly sweet, and she adores him.’

‘You’re right, you’re right. I was making assumptions because she is completely stunning. Lucky Paul. Lucky couple.’ She’d sighed. ‘Looks like they have a completely glamorous, perfect life.’

‘Not so much,’ Tom had said, serious now. ‘
Vogue
made it look like that, but trust me, their life isn’t nearly as glamorous as it looks, and nobody’s life is perfect.’

‘Mine is,’ Holly had said wryly, and Tom had snorted.

With these memories Holly gets up from the kitchen counter and switches on her computer. Why not email Tom now? It’s been, what, seven months? Eight months? Ages, anyway, since their last contact, and she misses him. He and Marcus had never seemed to gel, and Sarah wasn’t exactly Holly’s cup of tea, hence their drifting apart.

Not that Sarah wasn’t nice, she had always been perfectly pleasant when they’d attempted to get together on the rare occasions Tom had brought Sarah back
to England to see his family, but Holly had found her cold, unyielding. Polite without giving any more than she had to.

Holly first met Sarah after she got back from Australia, the trip on which she met Marcus, marrying him a year later.

She hadn’t spoken to Tom the entire six months she’d been away, but soon after getting back she got in touch again. It wasn’t long before Tom started talking about this cute American girl who was working in his London office.

‘How’s the Yank?’ Holly would tease, secure once again in their friendship now she had Marcus, unable to believe that she had ever had feelings for Tom, ever thought of him as anything other than her best friend, even after that night…

‘She’s pretty amazing actually,’ Tom would say hesitantly, going on to tell Holly how much she would love this Sarah, how he couldn’t wait for them to meet, that they should all get together as a foursome.

And so they did. The four of them going to a pizza place in Notting Hill one night, Holly excited about meeting this girl that Tom had been talking about for so long, who had now become his girlfriend, whom he was talking about moving in with him.

Holly wanted to love her. Was convinced she would love her. But she approached Sarah with a warm smile and an open heart and found Sarah to be prim, proper and cold.

‘God, she’s awful,’ she hissed to Marcus when they
were safely in their car on the way home. ‘What does he see in her?’

‘She’s quite sexy in a stand-offish kind of way,’ Marcus said, instantly regretting it as he watched Holly’s eyes narrow.

‘Sexy? What’s sexy about her? What? Because she’s clearly addicted to the gym? Is that why she’s sexy? She’s had a complete sense-of-humour bypass as far as I’m concerned, plus she’s intense beyond anything I’ve ever known. Christ, do you think she’d even crack a smile? Gender politics all evening. Please. Does this woman even know the meaning of the word
relax
?’

‘You liked her, then?’ Marcus had said with raised eyebrow and a grin.

‘Did you like her?’ Tom phoned first thing from the office.

‘I thought she was great,’ Holly lied smoothly.

‘Isn’t she? I knew you’d think so.’

‘She’s quite serious, though,’ Holly ventured.

‘Is she? I think it’s probably because she doesn’t know you that well, but you’ll get to know her much better now she’s moving in.’