Second Chance (39 page)

‘You didn’t feel even a little bit of love?’ Anna asks.

‘Nothing?’ Holly shakes her head. ‘What about in the beginning? You must have done then.’

‘I didn’t,’ Holly says sadly. ‘I mean, a sort of love, perhaps. He is, after all, the father of my children, but not a love you’re supposed to feel, not the kind of love you have with Paul.’

‘So you’re not going back, then?’ Will has, until this point, been quiet, not wanting to get too involved.

‘No.’ Holly raises her eyes to meet Will’s. ‘I’m not going back. I just can’t face telling him that yet.’

The thrill and excitement of commune living is beginning to pall somewhat. No arguments, not yet, but Olivia is starting to miss her flat, miss her animals, and is wondering exactly how long she will have to stay here. Saffron seems… fine. Not as fragile as she had expected, certainly not fragile enough to need to be surrounded by five people looking after her.

Saffron always was strong, Olivia realizes. Stronger, perhaps, than all of them. They ought to have changed so very much, she thinks, since school. Ought, as they approach forty, to feel grown-up, surely, but Olivia certainly doesn’t. She doesn’t feel much different at all. Just older, more tired, and, with this pregnancy, sicker.

Holly
feels
different, which is not to say she is. Holly always thinks that if she were to pass people from her class on the street, they would not recognize her. She is surely better-looking now, her hair sleeker, her cheekbones more pronounced. But in fact Holly, like all of them, has barely changed. Look just slightly below the surface and they are all exactly the same.

In so many ways, Holly is slowly coming back to herself. In just a few days, she has stopped acting like Marcus’s wife, is rediscovering who she is.

But it’s a Holly she doesn’t quite remember, a Holly
she has to get used to. And this Holly has a different life to the one she has lived these past fourteen years. She no longer has a home to go back to, no longer has the safety and familiarity of her old life.

This stay in the country is like a time out, a break from her real life, a holiday that she doesn’t want to end, because whatever the changes going on in her life, she is trying to stay focused on the present and not think about the future.

She lost herself for a while this evening. The kids had just left with Marcus, Will was finishing off the kitchen cupboards, and Paul and Anna, Olivia and Saffron were reading the papers in front of the fire. Holly poured herself a vodka and went to sit outside.

It was cold. Too cold really to be outside, but she kept her hat and gloves on, and snuggled down in one of the beaten-up wooden chairs that Anna found in a junk shop on their last trip up here.

At first everything was pitch-black. As her eyes adjusted, she started to see the outline of the trees. The noises of the country seemed so loud, yet so calming. For a while she was just… being. Listening to the noises, no thoughts at all.

After a few minutes, as the vodka warmed her up and her body started relaxing, her mind started wandering. She thought back to a girl she had done the NCT childbirth classes with when she was pregnant with Oliver. Her name was Julia. They had become friends through their shared experiences, not a friendship that would otherwise have happened but one born of having children within a week of each other, of being neighbours
and in a similar plight. Not that Holly admitted it at the time.

Julia had married Dave, she said, because she thought that no one else would marry her. She had married him, she said, because he seemed to be everything she ought to be looking for in a husband. He had a good job, was kind, treated her like a princess, and he loved her.

‘So are you happy?’ Holly remembers asking her, trying not to compare her own marriage, trying not to go to a place from which there was no return.

Julia had shrugged. ‘I’m… fine,’ she’d said. ‘And now there’s Felix.’ She had jiggled her baby on her knee and covered his chubby cheeks with adoring kisses. ‘We’re a family. It is what it is. I think,’ and she had looked up at that point and met Holly’s eyes, ‘I think there are many different kinds of marriages. I think there are some people who are lucky enough to find a soulmate, to find the person with whom they are destined to be, but I think those people are few and far between. I think most of us just make a choice and get on with it. Do I love Dave? Sure. Could I be happier with someone else?’ She had shrugged. ‘Probably. But this is my choice, and it’s enough.’

Enough. Holly had shivered when she heard this, knowing that she felt the same way but refusing to dwell on it. Refusing to consider that while it may have been enough for Julia, it may not be enough for Holly.

Last year she bumped into Julia at the book shop. It was one of those dull, drizzly London afternoons. Daisy was at a playdate and Oliver was bored, Holly more so. He couldn’t amuse himself at home, none of his friends
were around. Holly felt too guilty about planting him in front of the television for a further two hours.

She stuck him in the car and went to the local Waterstone’s. Admittedly he was a little old for the Thomas the Tank Engine train set, but she promised him a hot chocolate in the café, and he settled himself in a corner with a
Star Wars
book as she went up to join the queue of mothers who had all had the same idea.

‘Holly?’ It was Julia. They exchanged a hug, both of them genuinely delighted to see one another.

‘How
are
you?’ Holly pulled back, looking at her. ‘You look
great
!’ And it was true. Julia did look great. Holly had only known her pregnant and then for the three years or so after the birth, when Julia didn’t seem able to lose her pregnancy weight, always what Holly would describe as ‘a big girl’.

Yet now she was skinny. Like a gazelle. Tall and graceful, there was nothing of her. And her whole face had changed – was it Holly’s imagination or was she… glowing?

‘I
am
great.’ Julia beamed. ‘Have you time to sit down? Can we have a coffee together?’

‘So what’s your secret?’ Holly insisted, stunned by the change.

‘I’m getting divorced,’ Julia said, and Holly’s mouth fell open.

‘What? How? Why?’

‘Oh God.’ Julia rolled her eyes. ‘I was so unhappy. I’ve been so unhappy for such a long time. Don’t get me wrong, Dave isn’t a bad guy, he’s just entirely wrong for me, and we never should have got married.’ She
shrugged, used to telling her story, used to sitting opposite women like Holly who quizzed her for the answers to their own unhappiness.

‘I knew, walking down the aisle, that I was making a terrible mistake,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t know how to stop it, I just let myself get pulled along, caught up in the momentum and excitement of planning a wedding, and I thought I’d make it work. I knew things were missing but I thought it would be enough.’

Holly had so many questions she wanted to ask. And so many questions she didn’t. Questions that she already knew the answers to because she had been there herself, was just trying for a different outcome.

‘But the divorce… isn’t it awful? Everyone says going through a divorce is ghastly, and yet here you are looking amazing and seeming so… happy.’

‘I am happy.’ Julia laughed. ‘Everyone says they’re so sorry I’m getting divorced and I always tell them not to be. And then, of course, there are the people who tell me I haven’t got a right to feel this happy, that I need to give myself time to grieve for my marriage, that I won’t get out of this scot-free, that something will come back to bite me.’

‘And will it?’

‘I doubt it. Frankly I did my grieving for my marriage while I was in it. Since the moment I left him, I’ve felt nothing but relief. Sure, there are moments when I am down, when I wonder how I’m going to do it, but I’ve been liberated. I feel like I’ve discovered myself, I’m being true to myself again.’

She looked at Holly intently, and Holly shivered.

‘How are you?’ Julia then asked gently. ‘How is Marcus?’

And Holly raised her eyes to meet Julia’s and shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered, ‘I can’t go there, Julia. Not yet. I’m not ready. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about Felix, he must be enormous now, how’s school?’

She hasn’t seen Julia since then, she realizes. They left, saying they would get the boys together, would get together themselves, and Julia phoned, but Holly wasn’t able to return her call. She was too scared to see her.

For this, she realizes, is why you lose friends when you get a divorce. Not because, as she had always assumed, you are suddenly a threat, a glamorous divorcee who may steal all your friends’ husbands, but because in getting divorced you force people to question their own marriages. And we never know what goes on behind closed doors. We may assume that our friends’ marriages are strong and sacred, but when people listen to the reasons why you left and how you knew it was wrong, they realize that their own marriages aren’t so strong. And if it can happen to you, then certainly it can happen to them too.

It is so much easier to bury our heads in the sand, to pretend that everything is fine. Even when things are crumbling all around us.

What about grief? Holly thinks, swishing the vodka gently in her glass as she shivers, the cold starting to seep in through her winter coat. Will
she
grieve? She
doesn’t think so, is sure she will feel the same as Julia, that she has done enough grieving during her marriage. As for loneliness, she couldn’t possibly feel any lonelier than she has felt the last few years.

Not that she’ll get out of it scot-free, of course not, but there is no denying that at her very core she feels the same thing Julia felt: relief.

Even Will doesn’t seem quite as relevant now. It is as if, by finally giving in to this attraction, her eyes have cleared again; she is able to see him for who he is, rather than as her saviour.

And who is he? Handsome, wonderful, sweet brother of Tom. The man who, she realizes, gave her the strength to get out; for in her obsession, she didn’t stop to think of the fear or stop to consider how frightened she was to live life on her own. She wasn’t scared of being bullied into submission as she always had been in the past.

Marcus stopped having power over Holly because she was too distracted to give it to him. And in detaching from her fear, she was able to detach from her marriage.

But all this obsessive thinking that Will might be the man for her, getting through these last few months only because she was lost in thoughts of Will, now seems unrealistic. He’s already talking about his next trip. He can’t wait for the sun, for Thai beaches and fat joints at sunset.

It’s a world she left behind many years ago, not a world she wants to be in now, not even to dabble in
for a second. While it might be tempting to pretend to be a teenager again, the fact is she has children of her own, she is now a grown-up. There is no place in her world for Thai beaches and fat joints at sunset.

Holly sighs and tips the dregs of the vodka back, standing up and going inside to see what’s happening for dinner.

‘So what can I do to help?’ Saffron walks into the kitchen and leans over Olivia’s shoulder, reaching down to steal a carrot.

‘Are you…?’ Olivia turns around and looks at Saffron, then, with panic in her eyes, at Anna and Holly.

‘Oh God.’ Holly shakes her head. ‘You’re drunk, aren’t you?’

‘I am not!’ Saffron says, and were it not for the tiny weave as she sits down, the slight misfocus of her eyes, you might not notice.

‘You bloody are,’ Holly says. ‘Where did you get it? How much have you had?’

Saffron sighs and leans her head on her arms. ‘Not much,’ she mumbles into her arms. ‘Just a tiny bit.’

‘I’ll go,’ Olivia says, leaving to hunt for the source of the alcohol. She comes back a couple of minutes later, a nearly empty bottle of vodka in hand.

‘But we still
have
all the vodka.’ Holly frowns and opens the cupboard to prove it and, sure enough, the bottle of vodka that she and Will bought in town is still there.

Olivia groans. ‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe how sneaky she is. I’m just realizing that she said she left
her purse in that gift shop and ran back to get it when we got to the car. She must have…’

‘Oh stop being such a killjoy,’ Saffron snaps. ‘Yes, that’s exactly when I got the vodka. So what? I’ll start my sobriety again in the morning. At least let me enjoy myself tonight.’

‘I just do not know what to do,’ Anna says helplessly, looking to Olivia and Holly for help. ‘I am completely out of my depth here.’

‘Me too,’ they say in unison.

‘Good!’ Saffron laughs, getting up to pour herself a glass of wine. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound. Cheers!’ And oblivious to the worried looks of everyone around her, she takes a large sip. ‘Oh relax.’ She puts the glass on the table with a laugh. ‘At least I’m a fun drunk. You should just enjoy me while it lasts.’

It’s true. Saffron is fun while she’s drunk. Still the centre of attention, perhaps more so. She is the one who remembers all the funny stories from school, helps them all remember things they hadn’t thought about for years.

‘Who is that?’ Anna frowns at the headlights shining brightly through the window. ‘Oh Marcus, I forgot.’

‘Ah, my number-one fan, Marcus.’ Saffron grins. ‘I’ll go.’ And before anyone can stop her she is up and out through the door to greet Marcus.

‘Guess what?’ She reappears in the doorway. ‘He’s staying for a drink!’

And Holly’s heart plummets as she scoops the children up and upstairs to bed, wondering if she can stay up there until he’s gone, not wanting to spend a minute
in his company, furious with Saffron for inviting him to stay.

What the hell was she thinking?

Marcus is clearly not comfortable. He is staying for a drink because he wants to spend time with Holly. He is convinced that given a chance he will prove to her how much he loves her, how much she needs him. He does not accept for a moment that this is it. He may have made his threats, but he didn’t mean them, doesn’t think for a moment that this hiccup will end in divorce.