Second Chance (42 page)

‘Darling girl.’ Saffron links her arm through Anna’s as she walks her through the lobby to a small, cosy living room to one side, with a blazing fire and shelves lined with books. ‘Between Pearce and me, we get paid a fortune, and frankly I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than gather my friends together for my thirty-seventh birthday.’

‘Don’t you mean fortieth?’ Anna is confused. ‘I thought you were all in the same year at school.’

‘Sssh.’ Saffron holds a finger to her lips. ‘As far as everyone here is concerned, I’m thirty-seven. Hollywood birthdays always have a few years shaved off.’

‘
Everyone?
’ Holly raises an eyebrow. ‘It’s not just us, then?’

‘God, no!’ Saffron says. ‘It’s all the people we love. Close friends and family. We’ve flown people in from England, LA, there are even a couple from Australia.’

‘I take it things are great with you and Pearce?’ Anna grins. ‘I just keep thinking of that whole fiasco when it first came out and you came to stay in the country. You did not expect, well,
this
, did you?’

Saffron laughs. ‘I didn’t expect anything. I was too bloody drunk. But no, I didn’t think he’d leave Marjie and, even if he did, I didn’t expect us to be together.’

‘You look so happy.’ Holly looks at her and sighs as Saffron tears up again.

‘Okay,’ she leans forward and whispers, ‘we’re not supposed to be saying anything until tonight, but you’re not here for my birthday…’

Anna squeals and gasps, knowing what she’s going to say.

‘… we’re getting married!’

Shouts of delight and hugs all around, interrupted only by the sound of footsteps approaching and a baby crying.

‘That is Tommy!’ Anna leaps up and goes out into the lobby to get him as Olivia appears in the doorway.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘He desperately needs a nap but he won’t go down.’

‘Do you want me to take him for a walk?’ Anna says, rocking the baby up and down on her hip as he starts to gurgle.

‘Would you?’ An exhausted and grateful Olivia sinks into the sofa and reaches for a cup of tea from the tray that has just appeared with a silent, smiling waitress.
‘This place feels like Buckingham Palace.’ Her eyes are wide as the waitress disappears.

‘I know!’ Saffron smiles. ‘And the whole place is ours for the weekend. Now that you’re here, I’ve got some news,’ and soon the only sound in the room is the excited chatter of a group of old friends who want to know all the details, with nothing left out.

It is a road Saffron never expected to walk. How long ago was it, those days when she fell apart, hit rock bottom when she had vowed never to hit rock bottom again. Nights of drinking and blacking out, days of vomiting and nausea, Pearce staying with her, holding her hand, promising he’d never leave her.

Then rehab. Three months. AA meetings all day, therapy, group therapy. Her family and friends coming in and telling her what she was like when she was drunk, the shame of being in that dark, lonely hole again. So lonely that nothing and no one could fill her up.

She finished rehab and walked out with head held high. A new sponsor, a new resolve. For the past year she has been to a meeting every day, and Pearce has been right by her side.

He finally stood up to his manager, his agents, and said screw his career. He wasn’t going to pretend any more. He wasn’t going to continue to stay in a marriage that was dead. It was against everything he believed in.

He moved into his beach house in Malibu, and Saffron joined him a month later. The press drove them crazy. There were times Saffron didn’t think she could
do it, didn’t think she could cope with the loss of normality, because there was nothing about her life that was the same.

She couldn’t run to the corner store for a pint of milk, couldn’t dash out in the evenings to grab a movie and a burger with Pearce. They tried, but even if they managed to escape the press, they’d be sitting in a restaurant trying to pretend that the buzz wasn’t singing in their ears, that they didn’t know that all eyes were upon them, that people’s heads kept swivelling towards them. People constantly coming over with words of praise or words of criticism. It didn’t much matter; there was no such thing as privacy any more.

The job offers started pouring in. Saffron has worked constantly this past year, and between recovery, Pearce and work, she hasn’t had time for much else. She hasn’t seen her friends since that time in the country, but knew she couldn’t get married and not have them here.

Married! Saffron, married! Who would have thought? Pearce proposed on the beach one night. It should have been romantic but the dogs had been swimming in the water and had soaked them both, and it was freezing. When Pearce put his arms around her and said he loved her and wanted to marry her, she said, teeth chattering, ‘Fine, can we just go inside?’

He asked her again inside, and this time she burst into tears, crying so hard she forgot to say yes. The third time he asked, she said yes.

Pearce is planning to relay the story tonight during his speech.

It has taken months of planning to keep this secret, to
keep the press away. They have taken over the inn for the weekend, have had everyone involved sign confidentiality agreements, have managed, thus far, to keep it private, largely by not telling even their friends and family, by gathering them here under false pretences.

Pearce comes into the living room to greet everyone, and Holly watches Pearce and Saffron together with a smile on her face, for their joy is infectious, their love for one another is genuine and real. And as she watches, her mind wanders over the ocean to her little Georgian house in Maida Vale.

She isn’t divorced, and it has not been easy, largely because Marcus has made it as difficult as he possibly can. He is, just as she suspected, unwilling to pay alimony, unwilling to pay a decent amount of child support, unwilling to do anything because, as he puts it, ‘
You
wanted this divorce, why should I have to pay?’

The only times when she has felt really low and wondered if she has the ability to do this on her own have been when she has been ill, but thankfully those early days of staying in bed all weekend when the children were at their dad’s, those days when her headaches were so blinding she thought her head was going to split open, have passed.

Marcus has kept the house. She thought she would mind, but, in fact, she found she just wanted to close the chapter and move on. They went through the inventory of furniture in the house, all of which had been chosen by Holly, and Holly found there was little she wanted.

Marcus demanded he keep the master bed, and Holly
had laughed at the irony. Who would want the marital bed from an unhappy marriage? But then she remembered the bed was a Hastens, a bed made of natural materials from Sweden, a bed that cost more than some people’s annual salaries. Of course he’d want the bloody bed, she thought, if nothing else just to bring up the subject at dinner parties–‘Oh, you only have a Dux? I have a Hastens, it’s
glorious
.’

The best thing she ever did, her greatest moment, was spending the afternoon at Dream Beds Superstore and choosing her own mattress, her own bed.

Of course the worst thing she did, she now realizes, was buy a king size. When she was married, she couldn’t think of having anything smaller than a king, just in case she should wake up in the middle of the night and become aware of Marcus. Now, though, she wishes the bed was smaller, wishes she could cuddle up to Jonathan, finds herself frequently waking up squeezed against him in the middle of the bed, his arm across her chest, her legs across his.

Jonathan. Ah Jonathan. Just thinking about him, she smiles. I love him, she whispers to herself over and over as she goes about her day, delighting in the joy of loving, of having found someone who not only adores her, but who she, in turn, adores.

He is her neighbour, three doors up. Such a cliché, she smiles to herself, too good to be true. He came and introduced himself on the day she moved in, returning twenty minutes later with his toolbox to put up shelves, pictures, flat-pack furniture for the kids’ rooms that had been delivered from Ikea.

She thought he was lovely, but nothing else… perhaps just a smattering of intrigue. He has two children, the same ages as Daisy and Oliver, who are with him every other weekend and one night during the week. They started doing things together at the weekends, just because both were lonely, and the kids liked one another.

She didn’t think about him other than to think how much she liked seeing him when she did, and soon she would look for his car as she returned home. When she heard his voice on her answerphone, she would smile – there was something about him that made her feel good. Happy.

It has been five months since they kissed. They had both been in to kiss Daisy and Abigail goodnight – Abigail was having her first sleepover – and as they stood outside the door in the darkened corridor, smiling at each other as they listened to their girls happily chatting away, Jonathan kissed her.

Five months on, it has been five months of the happiest, healthiest relationship Holly has ever had – a relationship that surpasses anything she might have dreamt of. She is constantly astounded by their kindness to each other, the sense that each of them values the other, and the appreciation they have for one another.

This, she finally realizes, after all these years, is love.

She remembers with shame her marriage to Marcus. Because however awful he might have been, she played a large part as well. She was guilty too. Holly was never kind to him. Never treated him gently or carefully.
Choosing instead to engage in a battle of words and wits until she didn’t have the strength to continue, and withdrew.

These days she has never felt so peaceful. So safe. And watching Saffron with Pearce, Holly can see echoes of her own relationship with Jonathan. She can see that despite what the newspapers may report about Saffron and Pearce, despite what the outside world sees, and the difficult start to this relationship, they have what she has with Jonathan, and it is only because of her own marriage to Marcus that she knows how rare and precious this is.

‘I am so happy for you,’ she reaches over and whispers into Saffron’s ear. ‘You deserve this, my darling.’ And Saffron squeezes her hand and nods. For the first time in her life, she does think she deserves this. She thinks she is good enough. She deserves to be in this wonderful relationship with this wonderful man.

‘So how do you find single motherhood?’ Holly turns to Olivia, who rolls her eyes at the question then laughs it off.

‘It’s amazing,’ she says. ‘Exhausting. But amazing. I never thought I could love anyone as much as I love Tommy. I never thought I could do the mothering thing, never thought I wanted to, but it works. It’s working. He’s the light of my life and I’m managing.’

‘And how is Fred doing?’

‘He’s actually been fantastic. After I told him, he wanted to get involved. I never asked anything of him, but he’s been right next to me the whole time.’

‘Is he still coming over every few weeks?’ Paul asks.

‘He’s over every month, and talking about coming over more.’

‘And things are okay? I mean, are you two…’ Holly doesn’t want to pry too much.

‘No, we’re not. And it’s fine. I know to other people it looks weird, but we’ve made a decision to co-parent and to raise Tommy together even though we’re not together. I have to say, I wouldn’t recommend falling pregnant with someone you barely know, but in this case Fred’s really come through.’

‘I guess Tom didn’t do so badly with his choice after all.’ Saffron smiles.

‘He obviously saw things I couldn’t,’ Olivia says as Anna walks back in, shushing everyone as she parks a buggy containing a sleeping baby by the door.

It is strange for Anna to think that there was a time when she wouldn’t have been able to take a friend’s baby for a walk without feeling inadequate or being eaten up with jealousy. Without thinking of everything in life she was missing, instead of everything in life she is lucky to have.

There is indeed something large missing from her life since we last saw her. Fashionista.uk.net was sold several months ago to a huge public company, Anna retaining a role as consultant and getting paid far more money than she could ever have dreamt of.

She didn’t do it for the money. She did it because she realized that Fashionista had been her baby for too long and that the stress of running it was probably contributing to her problems in getting pregnant. She
wanted to stop, to jump off the conveyor belt and see what it was like to be a real person again.

Of course somewhere in the back of her mind was that secret, nudging hope that as soon as she left she would fall pregnant – it happens all the time to other people, so why not her?–but seven months later she is not pregnant nor has she contemplated another course of IVF, even though these days they can certainly afford it.

What she has done, these last seven months, is to find herself again. She has taken up Pilates and yoga. Has learnt to cook wonderful meals for herself and Paul and has taken seriously her role as Tommy’s godmother.

For the first time in years, Anna is accepting her life as it is. She read somewhere recently that the key to happiness is not getting what you want but wanting what you get, and she smiled when she read it. She was able to think of all the things she has – all the good in her life and all the people around her whom she loves – and, all of a sudden, she knew that she was whole and complete, and that it is enough.

The whole room is crying. Tears of joy, the joy that comes when you know, you absolutely know, that two people who are supposed to have found each other have found each other and are not about to let the other go.

Pearce stands and clears his throat, so handsome in his dinner jacket, better-looking than even he has a right to be, and he speaks of the reasons he loves Saffron. He speaks of being the best man he can possibly be
when he is with her, of the gifts she has given him, and of the ease and serenity he feels every day when he wakes up and knows she is by his side.