Second Chance (7 page)

Bed offered no respite. She would wake up in the middle of the night and replay their relationship, wonder how it went wrong, think about the reasons why she wasn’t good enough for him to stay.

‘Oh Christ,’ Tom would say, his voice tinny on the line, as he sat at his desk at work in Boston. ‘It’s not you, don’t ever think it’s you. He’s obviously got some issues he needs to work out but, Olivia, don’t ever think it’s because you weren’t good enough for him.’

She had even been on a couple of dates. Not willingly, it has to be said. She had hoped they would be a welcome distraction, but it was awful to have to be
sitting across a table from a stranger, sharing your stories again, wondering how quickly you could possibly leave and crawl into bed. Olivia thought those days were over, thought she would never have to endure that particular hell again.

And then George phoned one night with some news. He sounded happy, as high as a kite, and Olivia expected those words she had been waiting for, for months: ‘I’ve made a mistake. I miss you. I love you and I’m coming home.’

But instead George told her he was getting married. Oblivious to the pain that would cause, he went on to tell her that Cindy was someone Olivia would love, that he hoped Olivia would come to the wedding, and that he knew that Olivia would also find a love like this one.

‘Cindy!’ she spat to Tom later that night on the phone. ‘How could he? How could he do this? And why is he getting married? Why didn’t he want to marry
me
? What’s wrong with me?’

Tom listened, and then, a couple of weeks later, phoned and said he thought the best thing for Olivia to do would be to have a fling, someone fun to take her mind off George, and he had just the person in mind.

‘Oh God, Tom,’ she groaned. ‘Not you too.’

‘Look, I’m not trying to fix you up with the love of your life, but what harm could it do to go out and have some fun, at least recognize that George isn’t the only man in the world, that there are plenty of great men out there who would be thrilled to be with someone like you. There’s a guy in the office – Fred – who’s
really great, and he mentioned he’s got a trip to London in the New Year, so I said I had a friend he should get together with who could show him around. He lives here, so I’m not thinking anything permanent, but you’d like him, and it could be a fun few days.’

‘Fred? Doesn’t exactly conjure images of gorgeousness,’ Olivia said.

Tom snorted. ‘Yes, because George is such a sexy name.’

‘What about George Clooney?’

Tom sighed. ‘Okay, point taken. But you of all people know you can’t judge a man by his cover. Or his name.’

‘So tell me about him,’ Olivia said reluctantly.

‘He’s thirty-three, single, freakishly fit – he does these Ironman competitions that are all the rage in our office and are completely mad and horribly addictive.’

Olivia burst into laughter. ‘I suppose your idea of exercise is still ambling around a cricket field?’

‘Yes, well. Quite. It was before I worked here. Have a look at his picture. It’s on our website.’ And so Olivia looked while talking to Tom, and Fred was rather dishy, and even though she wasn’t looking for anything at all, far too soon after George, maybe Tom was right, maybe a revenge fuck was just the thing she needed.

‘Go on, then,’ Olivia said. ‘You can give him my email address.’

Fred emailed her the next day, and the two of them embarked on a fun, and rather more flirtatious than she had expected, email exchange.

He sounded boyish and relaxed, and although she had always thought George was the perfect man for
her, at forty-seven he was definitely set in his ways, and there was something about Fred’s thirty-three years, his youth, that filled her with delicious anticipation.

‘I wish I was coming over sooner,’ Fred wrote. ‘It seems so long to wait to meet you, until January. I was thinking maybe I could orchestrate a London meeting in November… what do you think?’

‘I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ Olivia wrote back. ‘I’d love to finally put a face to your name.’

Olivia walks back into her flat, unclips the dogs, and feeds the animals before starting to think about feeding herself. She has become a creature of habit these last six months where food is concerned. When George was living here she would cook, would plan elaborate meals, or at least hit M&S food hall for something every night.

Now she can barely think about food. She keeps a stock of sliced turkey breast in the fridge, and usually eats it with half a bag of carrots and a couple of spoons of hummus.

When she remembers, she has Lean Cuisines on hand too. Not because she particularly likes them but because they are easy, because she presumes she is getting the nutrition she requires, and because she can throw them in the microwave and blast them without putting any thought or effort into it.

As a consequence, she has lost a stunning amount of weight. Not through choice, she is quick to tell everyone who asks her what miracle diet she has been on, but through stress and unhappiness. Her clothes are now
hanging off her, and she knows she will have to buy new ones soon, but the thought of shopping for clothes has always filled her with horror.

Still. There are times when she feels like eating, and tonight is one of them. Sod’s law, when she opens the fridge door, she is confronted with a nearly clear expanse of white: the wax rind of a slice of cheese that should have been thrown away when the cheese was finished, a clear plastic bag of greenish-black slime in the bottom drawer that she seems to remember may once have been mixed lettuce leaves, and half a pint of rancid milk.

The cupboard doesn’t offer much more. A couple of Ritz crackers rattling around in the box, a full box of cornflakes, which doesn’t hold much appeal without milk, and some tea bags.

There is only one thing to do on nights like this. She grabs her keys, heads out of the door, and drives up the road to Maida Vale. To her sister’s house and, more specifically, her sister’s fridge, which is always stuffed with delicious leftovers.

‘Jen!’ she calls out, throwing her coat on the chair in the hallway – something their mother has always hated, and something Olivia and Jen both started doing when they were about ten – except now that Jen is married and a mother herself, she hates it almost as much as their mother. ‘Jen?’

Olivia knows she’s home, her car is in the driveway, so she heads through the hall to the kitchen, planning on rifling through the leftovers in the fridge while her
sister makes her a cup of tea, able to do it now that both kids are fast asleep in bed.

As she opens the door of the kitchen, she sees Jen sitting at the kitchen table, and immediately she knows something is wrong. Her sister is just putting down the phone, and she is as white as a sheet.

‘Jen?’ Olivia feels fear grip her chest. ‘Jen? What is it? What’s the matter? Is it Mum?’ There is a touch of hysteria in her voice as it becomes louder.

‘Oh Olivia,’ Jen says, her eyes filled with sadness. ‘That was Elizabeth Gregory, she’s one of my friends from school. She knows… well, her husband knows your friend Tom. I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know how to tell you, but Tom was on that train.’

‘What train? What are you talking about?’

‘He was on the Acela. In America. He didn’t make it.’

‘What do you mean Tom was on the Acela? What are you talking about?’ And then slowly it starts to dawn. ‘Tom? You mean
my
Tom? He’s
dead
?’ And without realizing it, Olivia sinks down to the floor, her body trembling like a leaf.

‘Thank you so much, darling.’ Holly reaches up to give Marcus a kiss on the cheek as he hustles Oliver and Daisy out through the door. ‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.’

‘You just remember this at the weekend when I want a lie-in,’ Marcus says. ‘Any message for your mum?’

‘No, just tell her thank you and I’ll call her tomorrow.’

The kids are going to stay at Holly’s mum’s house for the night, and Marcus is going back to the office to work, leaving Holly to get dinner ready for the people she once felt she knew better than anyone else in the world, people she hasn’t seen for years.

Twenty-one years, to be precise. And tonight this is not only their reunion, it is their private memorial service, their chance to support one another, to remember the Tom they all knew and loved. Continue to love.

Saffron has flown in from New York where she was meeting with a film producer. She had been staying at the Soho Grand, had been right there when the train exploded. She, like many other New Yorkers who were instantly transported back to 9/11, had fled the city, thinking that this was just the first of a series of terrorist attacks. She had jumped in a friend’s car heading out to their house in Bedford, crawling along the West
Side Highway, shaking the entire journey, all of them stunned that New York was a target yet again.

Olivia had been at home, leafing through the
Guardian
as the dogs begged for food at her feet, not reading, mindlessly flicking pages as she tried to comprehend the tragedy, when Holly phoned her.

She had barely thought about Holly for years. She’d spoken to her only once since the summer after they all left school, when Olivia went off to Greece for a year and came back deciding to reinvent herself as a grown-up.

They had bumped into each other a year or so after university, and both of them had laughed at how different they were. Olivia’s hair had been waist-length at the time, and Holly’s curly mouse-brown locks had become a sweep of straightened gloss with mahogany lights.

Olivia would have stayed longer to chat, wanted, if not to become friends again, at least to find out more about Holly, but she had just started seeing Andrew, jealous, insecure Andrew, and he had hovered behind Olivia, nodding disdainfully at Holly when introduced, had created an atmosphere so tense that Olivia had allowed herself to be pulled away from Holly at the earliest opportunity.

And years later here was someone on the phone asking for Olivia, and how odd that the voice sounded just like Holly’s.

‘Holly?’ Olivia found herself saying incredulously.

‘It is you!’ Holly said. ‘I wasn’t sure.’

‘Oh Holly,’ Olivia said, as the tears started. ‘Isn’t it
just awful? Have you spoken to everyone? Have you been in touch with Saffron? And Paul?’

‘I have,’ Holly said, finding her voice suddenly choking up. ‘I’ve spoken to everyone.’

And speak to everyone she has.

All Holly wanted to do, leading up to the memorial service, was talk about Tom. All anyone talked about was this latest attack. She couldn’t get away from it, and talking about Tom was a way for her to keep him alive. Even though strangers weren’t interested in knowing anything other than here was someone who actually had a personal connection to the tragedy, Holly found herself talking and talking and talking.

Perhaps people were interested in the details, perhaps not. Nobody stopped her from talking, though; everyone wanted to share in Holly’s personal tragedy, wanted to be able to go home and say they had met someone today who had lost someone in the Acela attack, as if they too were connected, had a different, deeper understanding of the pain and grief, the fallout from a tragedy such as this.

Marcus has been fantastic. Supportive when she needed it, giving her the space and time to cry when she needed that too. Since Tom’s death, Marcus’s behaviour has reminded Holly of all that is good about him, and during those few moments when her grief subsides, she has been grateful for that. He was, she thought one day as she looked up at him, her pillar of strength, and immediately she knew that that was why she married him.

Everything about Marcus spells strength. From the set of his jaw to his quiet but firm insistence that his way is the right way. The first time Holly saw Marcus she’d known she had never met anyone like him before in her life.

And it helped that he was the diametric opposite of her father. She’d known he was loyal. She’d known he wasn’t the sort of man who would have an affair, wasn’t the sort of man who would leave his wife and daughter, to disappear into the ether leaving just a faint whiff of false promises. He wouldn’t have an affair with one of her friends, as her last boyfriend, Russ, had ended up doing.

She had been at a friend’s house in Sydney, having a cookout, when she met Marcus. Sitting on the grass in frayed denim shorts and a T-shirt, she was as brown as a berry from the travelling, the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose so plentiful, they almost created the tan themselves.

There had been tons of people there. Surfers mostly, and neighbours and friends, everyone arriving cheerfully bearing more food, more beer. Marcus had stood out, even then, with his odd formality. He’d looked like a stuffy English lawyer in his Ralph Lauren polo shirt, tucked into chino shorts belted with a plaited brown belt. Holly had watched him uncomfortably sipping his beer, not bothering to make small talk, and she had felt sorry for him. She had felt sorry for him as the only other English person there, as being a man who so clearly did not fit in.

‘I’m Holly,’ she had said, clambering up and going
over to him, extending a hand. ‘You must be Marcus,’ for she had heard one of the neighbours had a stuffy English lawyer staying with them, and he couldn’t be anyone else.

His face had lit up. ‘You’re English!’ It had been a statement, not a question, and his gratitude at having been rescued had been sweet and endearing, and Holly had found she didn’t mind spending the evening talking to him. And she hadn’t minded when he phoned the next day to ask her for lunch, and she hadn’t minded a couple of nights later when he kissed her as he was saying goodbye and dropping her off at her house.

He wasn’t her normal type, but perhaps, she’d thought then, that wasn’t such a bad thing. And where had her type got her, anyway? A series of destructive, disappointing relationships in which Holly had always seemed to be the one who got hurt. Maybe it was a good thing Marcus wasn’t her type. And it wasn’t as if he were awful. He certainly looked the part. He was tallish, not bad-looking, clearly successful, and he seemed to adore her. Frankly it was bloody nice having a bit of adoration in her life.