The Day Of Second Chances (7 page)

‘Whoa, who is
that
?'

Sara had come up behind her and was staring out of the window, close enough to brush against Jo. Jo's cheeks heated. ‘Don't – he'll see us.'

‘But who is it?'

‘He must be one of the people in the new houses.'

Sara sighed. ‘Do you remember what it was like, sleeping with a bloke in his twenties? Bob could do it all night.'

The wistful, lustful expression on Sara's face made Jo laugh, despite her embarrassment. ‘Stephen used to—'

She stopped herself. She turned back to the biscuit tin and loaded up the plate again, with the last of her homemade shortbread. Dusted with sugar, cut into squares, crumbling at the edges. This was reality, this was now. Too many calories in the kitchen with the children playing nearby. It was a good life. It should be enough.

‘Anyway,' she said, ‘I think that Honor should move in here with us for a little while.'

I DON'T HAVE
to write about the first time I met Avril. I'll never forget it. But it makes me feel good to think about it. It's hard to believe it was only a bit more than five years ago.

Mum married Richard in August and I was the only bridesmaid. I probably should have put up more of a fuss, but I couldn't really believe it was happening. Mum made it into this whole bonding opportunity for us: trying on dresses, choosing music and flowers. We went for coffee a lot, and we spent a lot of time talking about Dad – not in a heavy way, just in a nice way, remembering him. We talked about the things we'd done together as a family, just the three of us. We looked at pictures of when I was a baby, and our holidays on the beach in Lowestoft. She reminded me of how he used to read me a story every single night, and how he named my favourite teddy bear Galileo. I think she wanted to reassure me that she wouldn't forget about him, even though she was getting remarried.

Looking back at it, she was trying to reassure me, too, that I was still important to her. She let me choose almost all the music for the ceremony, and she let me choose her dress. Which in retrospect, looking back at the photos, was a mistake, because at eleven, I had this thing for big fluffy princess skirts and lots and lots of sequins. I'd never been to a wedding before and it was all pretty exciting for me. I got to invite all my friends to the reception and we all drank litres of Coke and stayed up ridiculously late. Then I went on honeymoon with them to Thailand, which was brilliant in a way, but in another way it was awful, because Richard wasn't happy that I had come along. He tried to hide it, and he bought me lots of things to make up for it, but I got the impression that all of this had been Mum's idea, and he'd have rather been alone with her. Every morning I got up early and I saw how many lengths of the pool I could swim before they emerged from their room. I tried not to think about what they were doing in there, but I knew anyway.

One night in one of those fancy outdoor restaurants by the sea, where there were all these candles and fairy lights and impossibly beautiful people serving you your dinner, I tried to bring up one of the memories we'd talked about. ‘Remember how Dad always wanted to build the highest tower made out of sand? All those different techniques he'd try to stop it from crumbling?'

I expected my mother to laugh, like she usually did, and counter with the story of the one time he'd used the beach umbrella and it had opened up and flown away, but she didn't. She glanced at Richard, whose mouth had narrowed, and who was reaching for his wine. ‘Isn't it a beautiful sunset?' she'd said instead. ‘What is it, do you think, that makes them so much more colourful here than in England? It's the same sun, isn't it?'

It's exactly the sort of inane thing Mum says when she wants everyone to be happy. And I got the message loud and clear. Of course a man on honeymoon wouldn't want to talk about his wife's first husband. Of course not. But the real message I got was that everything had changed now, and everything that had been, was over. And within a week of us returning from Thailand we'd moved out of our own house in the centre of Brickham near my primary school, to this new house, and then Mum was pregnant with Oscar, and everything had changed.

On top of starting secondary school, I was totally new in town as well. My new summer uniform was too big and it was scratchy, and I was scared. The summer was over and I had to stop pretending I was special and start to think about coping with how I was different.

I already knew I was different; I'd known for a long time, as long as I can remember, maybe even before Dad died. But I never really figured it out properly, never really thought it through, until that autumn, when everything was new.

Sometimes I used to pretend that I had a superpower that nobody had noticed yet except for me. For example, that I had eyes that saw too much, that could see beyond the visible spectrum, beyond ultraviolet and infrared. I used tell myself that I had to wear sunglasses in order to fit in with normal human beings.

But that wasn't it. The sunglasses were just pretend. I didn't have superpowers; I don't. I have to hide in a much more obvious way than wearing sunglasses. At age eleven, about to start secondary school, I was learning about it.

Mum walked me to school on my first day. She wore a blue dress that was nearly the same colour as my new scratchy school uniform, and though that was naff beyond words, I was sort of grateful for it. I suppose it was meant to be a sign of solidarity. After a few weeks of feeling increasingly like I was in the way in Richard's house, I felt that I needed all the help I could get.

‘I'm so proud of you,' said Mum. She is always saying things like that. She is proud of every little thing that I do, which is nice and I know it's meant to build self-esteem, but when you get to a certain age, you begin to realize that tying your own shoe-laces or starting secondary school or even getting top marks in your year isn't really such a big thing to be proud of. We were getting near the school gates now, and I was looking for someone I knew, anyone, maybe someone who'd miraculously also moved here from my old primary school. I wanted someone to shield me. If I walked into the playground by myself, I would be too open, too visible.

But all of the kids walking in were strangers. I couldn't even see anyone else new, like me, with their parents. They all looked hopelessly grown up, tall and confident, knowing exactly where they were going.

‘I've got this for you,' Mum said. She'd stopped, so I stopped too to see what she was talking about. She took something out of the pocket of her dress. It was a man's wristwatch: gold, with a brown leather strap.

I knew this watch. Mum kept it in her jewellery box, right at the back. I got it out and looked at it sometimes. It was engraved on the back:
From J to S, with love forever.
It was the watch my mother had bought my father for their wedding. She had saved up her earnings at the café for nearly a year to afford it.

The gold plating was a little scratched, but the glass was uncracked.

‘I can't wear it,' I told her. ‘It's not part of the uniform.'

‘Put it in your pocket. No one will know.'

I slipped it into my own pocket, feeling the weight of it. ‘Thank you.'

‘Daddy would be proud of you, too,' Mum said. ‘So proud to see his little girl grown up.'

And that was not what I needed to hear, not right now, not with my dead father's watch in my pocket, and a whole ocean of children I didn't know waiting to look at me. I bit the inside of my lip hard enough to hurt, so that I wouldn't cry. I turned away from Mum and her soft green eyes, and it was that exact minute that I saw a girl walking towards us. She had a summer uniform on too, but it looked less stiff than mine, as if she'd been wearing it for longer. Her dark hair was brushed back into a neat ponytail, she had brown eyes and a small mole by the side of her mouth, and she had a blue
X-Men
backpack slung over one shoulder.

She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

She was a total stranger, but she walked right up to me and Mum and she said, with a smile, ‘Hi, my name is Avril. I'm new and I don't have anyone to walk in with and I wondered if you would walk in with me?'

I couldn't help but stare. This beautiful girl, with her
X-Men
backpack and her easy, confident walk, dared to go right up to a stranger and ask something like that. I never would have dared that in a million years. What kind of girl was this? Was she even safe? Why would she choose me, of all people?

‘Oh, that's so kind, Avril,' said Mum in her gentle voice. ‘Lydia doesn't know anyone either.'

I elbowed Mum, who was making me look bad in front of this girl. But the girl just smiled at Mum, and then she smiled at me. ‘That would be really great,' she said.

There was a little waver in Avril's voice as she spoke. A little tiny waver, that maybe she was hoping no one else would even notice.

I noticed it.

‘OK,' I said.

Mum went to hug me, and I stepped back a little, wanting a hug maybe but also knowing it wasn't really cool, and Mum took the hint (for a miracle) and put her hands back into her pockets. ‘Have a wonderful day, Lyddie. Tell me all about it afterwards.'

‘All right,' I said, and the beautiful girl Avril and I walked through the school gates together. We walked, not saying anything, shoulder to shoulder, and all I could think was
, I am walking next to the most beautiful girl in the school.

When we got into the middle of the playground, I risked a glance backwards, but Mum was gone. She would be walking quickly back home, and she would have that smile on her face that she got when she was trying not to cry. I was glad I didn't have to see it.

‘Do you like
X-Men
?' asked Avril. ‘It's my favourite film.'

‘I like it, too.'

‘What would be your mutant power?'

‘I'd be able to see everything.'

‘I'd be invisible. But if you could see everything, you would be able to see me!'

I could look at you for ever,
I thought. My heart pounding, I said, ‘We'd have to work together.'

‘Thank you,' said Avril. ‘I was a little bit scared back there, but as soon as I saw you and your mum I knew you would help me.'

‘There's no need to be scared,' I said, and at that moment, I knew I was saying the truth. ‘It's all going to be fine. You can hold this for a little while, if you want.' I took out Daddy's watch and put it into her hand. ‘It's a magic watch. It can make you feel brave, because my Daddy was brave, and it was his.'

She took it, and turned it over in her hands, and she nodded. ‘I feel better already,' she said.

And that was the beginning of everything.

‘NO,' SAID HONOR
. ‘That is not a good idea.'

She felt rather than saw the hurt on Jo's face, and heard the recoil of her body. It was literally as if she'd been slapped.

Jo never could hide anything. From the first time Stephen had brought her home, his new and beautiful girlfriend, Jo's face had been open and childlike, every emotion written on it plain to see. The emotion had been worse, more exposing, than her cheap dress and bad shoes, the books she hadn't read. Everything about her screamed,
Will you be my mother, too, my new mother, to replace the one I've lost?

Honor had winced in embarrassment for her.

‘But it's the best thing,' Jo insisted. ‘You wouldn't have to worry about meals, or company, or getting around. There won't be any stairs for you at all, not like at home.'

‘The key word,' said Honor, ‘being home. I have no desire to leave my home, where I have lived nearly all of my life. The home my father bought and furnished.'

‘Mrs Levinson, you've had a serious accident.' Honor didn't know the consultant, and she didn't remember his name. He was a strip of a thing with a high-pitched voice.

‘Don't talk down to me. I know what you're trying to say: I'm old. And yes, I am old, but that's not the problem. The problem is that I fell down the stairs. Anyone could fall down the stairs, no matter what their age. I don't plan to do it again.'

‘Nobody's saying you're old,' said Jo. ‘In fact, I think you're in amazing shape, Honor. You rode your bicycle every day, didn't you, up until you fell?'

Honor pressed her lips together. This was the worst of it, worse than the pain: the condescension. From everyone, not only from Jo, but from Jo it was worse. Jo, who no longer wore cheap clothes or bad shoes but who otherwise hadn't changed at all. A beautiful blur of bouncing auburn hair, flowery dress, cheery voice. She wore rose-scented perfume and a necklace made out of string threaded through pieces of dried pasta, which clicked together as she moved and advertised
I am a mother of small children.

‘What we're saying,' Jo continued, ‘is that you should be somewhere that you can be looked after, while you recover.'

‘Nonsense. I'll hire a nurse.'

‘You should be with people who care about you.'

‘And that is you, is it?'

‘Well … yes. Of course.' But the slight hesitation gave her away.

‘You don't like me,' Honor said. ‘We have never liked each other, and Stephen's death has set us free from each other. You don't want me in your home; you don't like visiting me. You're offering out of guilt.'

‘I'm offering because you're Stephen's mother, and Lydia's grandmother, and you need help, and I'm happy to give it. And of
course
I like you in my home, Honor. You are always welcome there.'