Second Chance (37 page)

‘Hmmm. I seem to recall human biology never was your best subject.’

‘Oh thanks. That was largely due to you looking at me and making me giggle every time they talked about the human reproductive system.’

‘That wasn’t me. That was Holly!’ Saffron is indignant.

‘It was both of you. I hadn’t thought about that for years. That dragon Mrs Steener, who used to tower over us and bellow…’

‘Mrs Steener came to see me in a play I was in after I left university. She was really nice actually. It was the first time I realized that teachers were human beings too.’

Olivia gives her a sideways look. ‘At St
Catherine’s
? Are you
sure
?’

‘Oh yes, I’m sure. I kept in touch with Jane Fellowes
for years, although I haven’t actually spoken to her for about a year.’

‘Miss Fellowes? The music teacher? That’s completely mad. Why would you do that?’

‘I really liked her. She was having a raging affair with Martin Hanover, you know. For years.’

‘You’re kidding!’ Olivia is truly shocked. ‘Miss Fellowes and Mr Hanover? How did we not know that?’

‘They had to be enormously discreet. The headmistress would have had both their heads on a platter if she’d known.’

‘God. But Mr Hanover! I had a bit of a crush on him myself.’

‘I think everyone did. Not that he was exactly crush-worthy, but as the only man in a sea of young females with raging hormones…’

‘… beggars can’t be choosers and all that.’ Olivia laughs.

‘I know. You do see how these mad affairs happen, with male teachers jumping into bed with dangerous adolescents. All-girl schools are just hotbeds of yearning and lustful fantasies. Anyway, back to the subject in hand…’

‘You were the one who digressed.’

‘I did.’ Saffron nods. ‘And I apologize. So, no protection even in these dangerous days of STDs and all kinds of nastiness, but tell me more about this Fred. And more to the point,
where
is Fred?’

‘He’s in Boston. Back home. He’s gorgeous, Saffron. Exactly the kind of man I would have fallen in love
with when I was younger, but he’s young. Thirty-three, and it really was just a fling. There’s no reason for him to know.’

‘You don’t think he has a right to know, given that it is his child?’

‘Saffron, I don’t see the point in freaking him out. I’m never going to see him again. Why ruin his life or give him this information when I’m not going to have this child? Why bother giving him the heartache? My child, my body.’ She sighs deeply. ‘My decision.’

‘So… you haven’t thought about Paul and Anna’s offer, then?’

‘I have. It’s about all I have been thinking about. I just don’t know. One minute, I feel I have to do what’s right for me, however selfish, and I can’t face going through a pregnancy, particularly feeling as awful as this, and for what? Then the next minute, I think about Paul and Anna and how hard they’ve been trying, how desperately they want a baby, and the most wonderful thing in the world would be for me to give them mine. I keep jumping from one to the other. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do.’

Saffron puts an arm around her shoulders and squeezes for a second. ‘Whatever decision you make it will be the right one for you. It has to be the right one for you. I understand you wanting to make Paul and Anna happy, and I think it’s probably the most selfless, giving thing you can do for a friend, but you would have to be fine with it, have to be fully reconciled, I would think; and, if you’re not, then you know what your decision is.’

They walk for a while in silence until they reach a gift shop that is obviously doing a brisk trade in catering to American tourists. The window is filled with a miniature village, tiny thatched Cotswold cottages, some of which light up, a couple of which play music.

Saffron yelps with laughter. ‘Oh joy!’ She stands outside the shop, smiling with delight. ‘Aren’t they the most ghastly things you’ve ever seen? My American friends will love them!’

Olivia turns to look at her in horror. ‘Because they’re ghastly?’

‘Absolutely. No one I know back in Los Angeles has any taste. They assume they can buy it by employing the best decorators, so all their houses look exactly the same, and they’re all mad Anglophiles – they’d go crazy over this shit.’

They go inside and Saffron quickly sweeps almost a dozen assorted houses onto the counter. The young girl smiling shyly and serving them keeps stealing looks at Saffron. At first she thinks she must be someone she knows, there is something so familiar about her, but she doesn’t know anyone that posh, has never known anyone that posh, and as she watches the two women walk around the shop, she realizes who it is.

Saffron Armitage! The film star! For the publicity has served to elevate Saffron’s status enormously in the eyes of the world at large, particularly naive shop girls in the Cotswolds.

‘You’ll never guess what!’ she whispers on the phone to her best friend when they have gone. ‘You’ll never guess who just came into the shop! Saffron Armitage!’

‘You’re joking!’ her friend says. ‘You should call the papers! The
Sun
is printing a number asking for her whereabouts! Go on! You could make yourself some money.’

The girl laughs. ‘Nah,’ she says. ‘I’m too shy. Anyway, she was nice. I don’t want to mess up her life. Still, a bit bloody exciting. Not too often we get a film star in the shop. I wish I’d asked for her autograph.’

On the other side of town, Holly and Will sit in a tea shop. They are surrounded by elderly women with blue and pink rinses, sipping English breakfast tea out of delicate floral-printed, mismatched china cups, a few chips here and there, which nobody seems to mind, slightly tarnished silver trays on each table, piled high with tea sandwiches, tiny cakes and lopsided scones studded with dried-out raisins.

Will ordered the tea, but neither of them is eating anything, neither of them having the slightest appetite today, too high on each other to do anything other than gaze, kiss, touch.

Even now, tucked away at a table in the corner, they are kissing. Like teenagers, utterly oblivious to the rest of the people in the tea shop, some of whom are openly staring at them with envy, big smiles on their faces, others tutting disapprovingly and trying not to look.

Holly and Will don’t care. Their passion doesn’t have to be hidden any more. This is the first time since last night they have been able to touch each other openly, kiss each other openly, lay heads on shoulders, no holds barred.

‘I can’t believe this has happened to me,’ Holly says, unable to stop smiling. Unable to stop taking Will’s face in her hands and planting soft kisses all over it – on his forehead, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks.

Will is adoring being adored. As the apple of his mother’s eye, he has always adored being adored. But he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little apprehensive about this. Holly isn’t just anyone, she’s
Holly
. Holly Mac! Almost family, not to mention the fact that she’s married.

He got involved, seriously involved – the flings through work don’t count – with a married woman once before. He had thought she was on the verge of finalizing a divorce but, in fact, she had only recently separated, was still in couples’ counselling, had a husband who thought they were going to be mending the marriage.

Will found himself involved in the divorce. He was named in the petition, had to deal with a woman who wasn’t, as he had thought, fun and clever and independent, but one who coped with the stress of the divorce by crying and screaming and clinging. He wanted to leave, but he felt he was in too deep, didn’t know how to extricate himself.

He swore he’d never go down that road again.

Yet here he is with Holly. Object of his teenage fantasies, a fantasy he never dreamt he’d fulfil.

Although isn’t it true that you should never fulfil your fantasies because the reality rarely measures up? As much as he adores Holly, as much as he has loved
this friendship they have built, he is unprepared for this outpouring of affection, unprepared for the way the floodgates of adoration seemed to burst open in Holly last night.

Anyone who has known Holly from when she was young would describe her as passionate. Holly, much like Saffron, would love or she would hate. She, much like Saffron, saw the world in black and white. She was luckier than Saffron in that she didn’t have the addictive gene. Or perhaps she wasn’t luckier. Perhaps that would have helped.

In marrying Marcus, Holly tried to change who she was. Passion hadn’t ever served her well, she decided. She wasn’t going to be black and white any more. She was going to live in shades of grey. So much healthier, she thought. Now, she decided, she was thinking like a grown-up. So she suppressed her passion. Neither loved nor hated. Mostly she just existed.

And now, since last night, she feels as if Will has awoken feelings in her she didn’t know she still had. She trusts him enough to be honest with him about those feelings, never thinking that he might not feel the same way. Never thinking that Maggie didn’t tell her to be careful with Will because Maggie doesn’t love her son, but because Maggie knows that the one thing guaranteed to send Will running for the hills, quite literally for that matter – Thailand, New Zealand, Vietnam – is adoration.

Maggie remembers who Holly was. She knows who
Holly is. She still sees the stream of passion bubbling away underneath and knows full well that if anyone could bring it to the surface, it would be Will.

Maggie is the one person who knows about the night that Tom and Holly slept together. Maggie had held her breath with anticipation, fighting the excitement that made her shiver inside, for she had always hoped that Tom and Holly would get together, had always thought they had the ability to bring out the best in each other, to be one of those couples that could change the world.

Tom was too young then. He wasn’t ready. Maggie always hoped that time would work its magic, that they would find their way back to being lovers again through their friendship, but then Marcus had come along, then Sarah, and she knew that was one wish she would have to set aside.

And now Will.
That
she had never imagined. Although, naturally, she is not surprised. But her fear is that once Will has unleashed a passion in Holly, he will not be able to deal with it.

She doesn’t know what she has done wrong, but Will has always been frightened of commitment.

Others say he just hasn’t met the right woman, and she is willing to accept that may be so. But there are those other times when she knows she has babied him too much, given him unrealistic expectations that have taken away any responsibility he may have had to deal with, in case it caused him discomfort or pain.

If she were to walk past the tea shop today, look inside and see Holly and Will, Holly gazing adoringly
up at Will, resting her head on his shoulder as she strokes his hand and turns his head towards hers for a kiss, Maggie would groan.

‘Oh God,’ she would whisper. ‘Not again. Please not Holly.’ Other people might look at Will and think he feels the same way, but not Maggie. And she is, after all, his mother. She is the woman who knows him better than anyone else in the whole world.

The old Land Rover bumps over the driveway as Holly, Saffron, Olivia and Will head back home with the boot filled with food for tonight’s dinner and, of course, Saffron’s prized Cotswold cottages.

There is another car in the driveway as they pull up to the house. From afar, Holly catches her breath, but it couldn’t be… could it? A black Mercedes, a recognizable number plate.

‘Whose car is that?’ Saffron wonders out loud. ‘Doesn’t look like the plumber’s.’

‘No.’ Holly’s heart sinks to her knees. ‘It’s Marcus.’

Her first instinct is to hide. Childish, she knows, but she doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to face him, wants to continue to pretend, as she has been pretending these last few days, that she has no husband, that she is as free and single as Will.

Oh God.
Will
. How difficult this will be. How uncomfortable. Is it possible that Marcus will be able to see the guilt in her eyes? Is it possible he will look at her and know –
sense
– that she has been unfaithful?

Although she is still telling herself she has not been unfaithful. If ever she were impeached, she thinks wryly, she knows what she would say: ‘I did not have sex with that man.’

She turns her head, aware that Will is looking at her.

‘You okay?’ he mouths, and she nods, swallowing hard. She is shocked but not surprised that Marcus is here. Marcus is a man who believes he must get what he wants.

Memories flood into her head as they drive closer. The countless times Marcus decided he wasn’t being treated importantly enough. In restaurants, hotels, airports. Marcus demanding to see the manager, never introducing himself as Marcus Carter, always insisting on being called Mr Carter – even when he was in his twenties – to men who were far more important and senior than himself, then explaining imperiously why their behaviour wasn’t acceptable.

He usually bullied them into submission. He got upgrades, freebies and letters of apology. It didn’t matter that all of them disappeared into their offices thinking he was a pompous arse, rolling their eyes when their secretaries buzzed through to inform them that Mr Carter was on the phone. What mattered to Marcus was that he got what he wanted.

He always got what he wanted.

He was treated as important because he demanded it. People kowtowed to him, pretending to be happy to see him because he expected it and because he made too much of a scene if they didn’t.

Holly has always been embarrassed by the way Marcus treats people. Holly treats everybody exactly the same. She doesn’t judge them by what they look like or how important they are; and there have been times, so many times, when she has been mortified by Marcus’s
behaviour and wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole as she listened to him rant and rave about someone’s unacceptable behaviour.

These last few days have been the happiest days she’s had in years. Fourteen years, to be precise. She has barely given Marcus a second thought, and – oh God, why?–now he’s here, and as Holly climbs reluctantly out of the car, she doesn’t even realize that the veil of unhappiness, the veil that has always protected her from Marcus, has kept her both withdrawn from the rest of the world and safe from harm, has silently and stealthily slipped over her head.