Second Chance (6 page)

They all studied together for their A levels. At the local library, Holly, Olivia, Saffron, Tom, Paul, and sometimes a couple of others, Ian and Pete, would grab a table upstairs, throw their books open and whisper to one another as they worked, all moving downstairs mid-morning, like a wave, to go to the local Italian coffee shop for cappuccinos and Silk Cut King Size.

Over twenty years ago and Holly remembers it as if it were yesterday. She remembers when they first met, when Holly loved Tom and knew that there would never be another Tom, how Tom and Paul had the same jacket in different colours. They had, in fact, bought them together one Sunday morning down at Camden Market, the five of them weaving their way through the crowds on Chalk Farm Road, cool, confident, indestructible.

Tom’s jacket was navy. Paul’s was green. Holly’s heart used to lift when she saw Tom’s jacket. Just a glimpse of navy in those early days would send her
heart soaring, stick a smile on her face that seemed to last for weeks.

Holly remembers how Tom used to smile at her across the desk as they worked in the library. Sometimes she’d be buried in revision and she’d look up and catch Tom’s eye and he’d grin; and even then, even when she was over her crush, knew that Tom probably wasn’t the one for her, no longer spent nights crying in her bed as she listened over and over again to the soundtrack for
Endless Love
, even then she knew that whatever she and Tom had, it was special.

And thought that, maybe, at some point in the future they would find one another again.

Holly spreads the photos out on the floor and starts to move them around, sifting through for the photos from school, photos of Tom, needing to see him again, if only in a photograph.

She pulls one from the pile. It’s Tom and some girl. Holly doesn’t even remember who she was, only that she never liked the girl very much. Holly had been at Tom’s flat when she had seen the photo; it was during one of her phases when she had been in love with Tom, but gently, one of the resigned phases when she didn’t expect anything to happen, had been there so many times before only to have it pass. She had seen the photo and had demanded to have it because Tom looked so handsome, smiling next to the girl she hadn’t liked. He looked almost model-like, and Holly had been so proud of knowing him.

Tom had cracked up laughing when Holly had said
she was taking it. ‘I’m going to cut her out and stick me in instead,’ she had said with an evil glint, and Tom had shaken his head as if he didn’t know what to do with Holly, which he didn’t. She was, in turn, funny, delightful, warm, wise, insufferable, jealous, insecure and impossible. He loved her but didn’t know how he could live with her. He loved her but wasn’t in love with her.

Not today, at least.
She just was.
Holly Mac.
A fact of his life.
Someone who would always be a part of him.
As he would always be a part of her.

Holly gathers all the photos of Tom and stares at them, one by one, thinking back, emerging from her reverie to answer a ringing phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Holly?’ It’s a familiar voice. A voice from a long time ago. It swims back through her consciousness, bringing the past back with it.

There’s a pause as Holly nods, the voice trying to place itself, stopping her from speaking.

‘It’s Saffron.’

‘Oh Saff,’ Holly starts to cry. ‘Tom.’

There are tears on the other end of the line. ‘I know,’ Saffron says, her voice uneven and small. ‘Tom.’

Olivia steps through the door of her basement flat and flicks the light switch on as her three cats and two dogs come running to greet her excitedly. She bends down to cuddle them, folding her lips inwards as the dogs lick her all over her face, then she walks through her flat turning on all the lights and all the table lamps until there is a warm glow throughout.

Grabbing the leads from the Shaker pegs by the front door, she clips them onto the dogs as they whirl around in joyous delight. She allows herself to be dragged up the front steps, turning once at the top to look back at her flat, which now looks warm and welcoming even from the busy street.

Olivia never used to keep all the lights on, but since she and George split up, coming home to a dark flat makes her feel far more alone than is altogether necessary, and her routine now involves whisking the dogs out for a walk and returning to a flat that could almost,
almost
, have a husband lying on the sofa reading the papers.

Except it doesn’t. Not any more.

Not that George was her husband, but since she was with him for seven years he might as well have been, and frankly she wouldn’t have stayed with him all that
time if she hadn’t thought that at some point they would be walking down the aisle.

Olivia was thirty-two when she met George. Fantastically happy with her job as deputy director of the animal shelter, she was oblivious to the dating world unless one of her well-meaning friends set her up on a blind date – she had, much to her chagrin, unwittingly become something of an expert at these. Tom always said most of the dates would fall madly in love with her, but she was not particularly interested in any of them.

She had never wanted children – her babies were her animals, she said, and she was close to Ruby and Oscar, her niece and nephew, as close as she ever wanted to be – so didn’t feel the pressing ticking of the biological clock that so many of her friends seemed to feel around the age of thirty, and was quite happy with everything in her life. Then George turned up one day to find a dog, and her life tipped upside down.

It was his sweetness that did it for her. That, and the fact that he was as lovely with his three-year-old as he was with the animals. Not that she had given him any hint of a clue that she found him lovely – that would have been horribly unprofessional, but she leant in the doorway and watched him play with one of her favourite dogs, Lady, a dog that had been in the shelter for months, that no one would adopt because she was eleven years old, not terribly pretty, and deeply terrified of people.

George had taken his daughter, Jessica, into the meet-and-greet room, and Olivia had brought Lady in,
crouching down with her and soothing her as Lady looked frantically around for a corner in which to hide.

And George hadn’t done what most people in this situation would do. He hadn’t advanced on Lady, crooning in an attempt to make her feel comfortable, overwhelming and crowding her; he had just sat at the other end of the room, Jessica sitting next to him, and he had watched Lady as he talked to Olivia.

The usual questions. About Lady. About the shelter. How could she do it, didn’t she want to take all the animals home? And then a little about her. How she started. Did she know she wanted to work with animals when she was a little girl?

‘See?’ He turned to Jessica. ‘You might grow up and work somewhere that helps to save animals when you’re big.’ The little girl’s round face lit up.

‘We have an open house next Sunday,’ Olivia volunteered. ‘It’s our big annual fund-raiser. We have stalls and games and pony rides. And the kids get to play with some of the animals.’

‘Oh we’d love that,’ George said. ‘Next weekend you’re with Mummy, though, but I’m sure she’d let you come with me. Let’s call her when we get home.’

Ah, Olivia thought, her heart fluttering in a way she’d almost forgotten. Divorced. But he can’t be single, not this kind, lovely, gentle man. Surely he has a girlfriend, someone. And even if he were available, surely he wouldn’t be interested in me. Not looking the way I look at work.

Olivia spent far longer than usual preparing for the open house. Instead of scraping her hair back in a
ponytail and wearing old jeans, a sweatshirt and wellies, she let her hair fall loosely on her shoulders and slicked on lipgloss and a touch of mascara. She wore cords and a shirt, and tiny silver earrings, and told herself that she was making this extra effort only because it was a special event, a fund-raiser, and as the deputy director of the rescue home she had to present a professional face.

Never mind that she had worn her old jeans and sweatshirt for the past four fund-raisers.

‘Oooh,’ said one volunteer after another, after another, and another, when she walked in. ‘Don’t you look
fancy
!’

‘Off for a job interview?’ They laughed.

And finally: ‘Why are you looking so
posh?’

‘Just ignore them,’ said Sophie, her able and lovely assistant. ‘You look gorgeous, Olivia. You ought to dress up more often.’

‘I’m hardly dressed up,’ said Olivia, who by now felt so self-conscious she may as well have been wearing a ball gown.

‘But you look lovely nevertheless.’

‘Well, thank you.’ Olivia headed straight to the loo to check herself in the mirror, feeling overdone; but she wasn’t, she realized – just more done than they had ever seen her.

George and Jessica came for the entire day. He bought twenty-four raffle tickets and won a course of pony rides for Jessica (‘I think you may have to wait until she’s a little older,’ Olivia said with a smile), a giant bag of dog food, and dinner for two at Chez Vincent on the high street.

‘I hope that as the deputy director of the shelter,’ George said, having collected his prizes, ‘you’ll be my guest at Chez Vincent.’

‘Oh… um…’ Olivia flushed. ‘Well, yes. I’d love to.’

‘Good’–the delight in his eyes was clear–‘I’ll phone you tomorrow and we’ll organize it. And thank you for the most wonderful day. Jessie and I have loved every minute,’ and with that he leant over and planted a soft kiss on her cheek.

She floated home.

One dinner became many, then became a relationship of weeks, which became months, then a year.

After a year Olivia’s mother sat her down and asked whether George was planning on marrying her. Olivia’s mother had divorced her father five years before, and Olivia was always surprised that, given this unexpected turn of events, her mother still seemed to think that marriage was the very pinnacle of achievement for a woman.

Olivia’s mother continued to ask, on a regular basis, whether they were planning a wedding soon, inevitably sniffing and on one occasion stating, to end the conversation, ‘Of course he’s never going to do it. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’

‘Mum!’ Olivia reprimanded her sharply. She had heard enough, and Fern eventually backed off, but couldn’t resist asking from time to time if Olivia thought it might be happening.

‘I don’t know when we’re getting married,’ Olivia said. ‘Or even
if
we’re getting married. I imagine we
will at some point, but there’s no hurry. Look at Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, they’ve never got married and their relationship seems great. We’re quite happy as we are.’

Which was true. Olivia had never thought she would need a ring on her finger to be utterly committed to someone, and there was no doubt in her mind that she and George were utterly committed to each other.

They had Jessie every other weekend, which was also easy for Olivia. Although Olivia had never been entirely comfortable with children other than family, Jessie loved animals, which always helped, so they bonded over the animals, and Olivia found a way of being Jessie’s friend.

And Ruby and Oscar adored Jessie. Olivia’s sister, Jen, would drop the kids at Olivia’s almost every weekend they had Jessie, and when she and George went out with all of them, everyone would tell her what gorgeous children they had, and after a while she stopped explaining that none of them were, in fact, hers.

One year became two, then three, and after seven years Olivia knew that she was going to be spending the rest of her life with George, ring or no ring.

Until the night they went out for dinner and George announced that they were setting up an American branch of his advertising firm, and he was one of the people going out to New York to get it going.

‘New York?’ Olivia felt as if the air had been knocked out of her. New York. What could she possibly do in New York? What about the shelter? She couldn’t leave
now, not after she’d worked so hard to build it up, and where would they live? What about her friends? Her flat? But even as she thought that, she was thinking, New York! How exciting! How many people get the opportunity to even go to New York, much less live there!

‘I’m going alone,’ George said gently, taking her hand across the table.

‘What do you mean?’ Olivia didn’t understand. Still doesn’t understand, for that matter. ‘What about Jessica?’

George sighed. ‘I know, this has been the hardest thing. I get her for the entire holidays, every school holiday, and I’m going to try to come back a couple of times a month, so hopefully it won’t be so different. But when I say alone,’ he looked back up to meet her eyes, ‘I mean…’ He sighed. ‘God, this is so hard. I’m not going with you, Olivia. I love you, I’ll always love you, but I think this is a perfect opportunity for us to go our separate ways.’

‘What?’ Olivia froze, feeling as if she were stuck in a bad dream. What had happened to her safe, predictable world? Why was it spinning out of control? ‘What are you talking about?’ she managed. ‘Are you finishing with me?’

‘That’s not how I look at it,’ George said. ‘It’s just that I don’t see where this is going, it feels like we’ve been coasting, and I think this has happened for a reason, that it’s time for us both to move on.’

‘But I don’t want to move on,’ Olivia said, tears already welling in her eyes, hating herself for sounding
like a five-year-old. ‘I want us to be together. I thought we were happy.’

‘We were,’ George said sadly. ‘But I’m not any more.’

Tom was the one who had sat on the phone that night as Olivia sobbed into the receiver.

‘How could he do this to me?’ she kept saying over and over again.

‘I agree,’ Tom said from time to time. ‘Fucker. Do you want me to come over and break his legs?’

‘I just want him back,’ Olivia sobbed, and this time Tom didn’t say anything at all.

Six months on it was supposed to have become easier, but the truth was, it hadn’t much. Tom checked in on her regularly, other friends dragged her out, and although she threw herself into her work, often the last one to leave the shelter, she still came home and lay on the sofa for hours, completely numb.