Second Chances (5 page)

Chapter Six

EXHAUSTED, NINO HELD the phone to his ear, listening to the ring at the other end of the line, willing Allegra to pick up. In the depths of sleep, however, she heard nothing, so he left a voice message for her, hoping she’d check her machine before leaving for work.

An
hour later, when her alarm clock buzzed, Allegra climbed wearily out of bed and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She saw the light on her machine flashing, but couldn’t be bothered to check. It would only be a wrong number, or yet another nasty message from her ex. So, she showered, dressed and got ready to leave. Just as she was heading for the door, her mobile rang.

‘Hi, honey,’ Liz said.

‘Liz? Bloody hell, what are you doing calling me this early? Listen, I’m just leaving the house, can I call you back?’ Allegra said, wedging her phone between her ear and shoulder, unhooking the security chain and undoing the deadbolt on the door.

‘No, stop, you have to listen to me,’ Liz said, her voice sounding strained. ‘Nino… your brother… listen, he’s been trying to call you but there was no answer on either of your phones, he said, so he called me… He needs you to call him right away.’

Allegra
froze. ‘Liz, what is it? You know what it is, don’t you? You have to tell me, tell me now, please.’

‘Oh, Allegra, I’m so sorry… Your father… he died early this morning,’ Liz said. ‘You have to call Nino now, sweetie, and please call me right after that to let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

Already
sobbing, already in shock, Allegra dialled Nino’s number. Their father had died in his sleep just after 5am. His heart had simply stopped, and a sixth sense had woken mum up. She’d reached over, stroking his shoulder, then went to wake Nino, simply saying, ‘Please come and see, I think your father has died.’ Her own tears wouldn’t come until much later, after she’d got through the funeral and cremation in a daze of tight smiles and dealing with the grief of friends and relatives.

Liz
and Rose had already begun making all Allegra’s travel arrangements for her to fly back home to Singapore. She’d called her ex; for once he acted decently and expressed his sorrow, promising to tell their children and look after them while she was away. Allegra didn’t want to bring them with her; she was already falling to pieces as it was and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to help them handle their grief and shock as well.

Walking
through the front door of her parents’ home, her knees buckled as she realised that her father’s body was lying in a casket in the front room. He didn’t look like her dad, but he must be, because there it was, his name engraved on the brass plate attached to the top of the coffin. Nino came over, told her how he’d had to shout at the funeral home because they’d spelled his name ridiculously wrong, and they started laughing, holding each other. Then, they were both crying, shaking, stunned that they could be so affected by a parent’s death at their age.

A
seemingly endless stream of people drifted in and out of the house over the course of the day. They arrived anonymously and left quietly, bringing with them plates of food, discreetly washing dishes and looking after other guests. Even if she’d had a gun put to her head, Allegra couldn’t have recalled who turned up. Everything was a vague blur; she couldn’t seem to make out faces.

‘Excuse me, where is the book?’ An elderly man was peering anxiously at Allegra, who looked up, dazed. Who was this? What book was he talking about? She shrugged her shoulders in helpless confusion when Nino suddenly appeared at her side and guided the visitor who had come to pay his respects to their father to the side-table in the dining room. Allegra saw him write something in the book and discreetly place some money in the small tin box next to it, slowly becoming aware that this was something all the mourners were doing.

‘It’s what they do when someone dies,’ Nino said, squeezing her shoulders gently. ‘They write a message of condolence, and give a little money to the family. Supposedly to pay for the funeral or to look after the children, but as we’re all grown up, that money will go to mum.’

The
thought that these people, most of whom were complete strangers to her, would make such a gesture touched Allegra deeply. She realised that many of them must have known her father from long years ago, worked with him during his army days, probably remembered him with kindness and affection. He had touched all their lives, and she didn’t even know who they were.

Nino,
meanwhile, was trying desperately to bring forward the timing of the funeral itself; in the heat, despite all the air-conditioners in the house set at full-blast, their father’s body was beginning to break down.

That
night, Allegra shut her eyes and tried to fall asleep. Giving up finally, seeing it was close to 4am by the glowing green numbers on the alarm clock, she got up and padded softly downstairs in the dark, figuring she might as well sit out in the backyard under the stars and have a cigarette.

At
the bottom of the steps, a small movement in the sitting room caught her attention. She froze. Her father was standing at the terrace doors with his hands on his hips, smiling at her quizzically. ‘Ally,’ he said softly. He was the only person in the world who had ever called her that; the only person in the world she had ever allowed to call her that. ‘It’ll be okay. Don’t be sad, baby girl.’

Allegra
choked back a gasp of shock, tears flooding her eyes. As she blinked them away, her father disappeared. Her mum, sitting by his coffin, looked up.

‘Mum?’ Allegra’s voice was faltering. Had she seen him, too? ‘Are you… are you okay?’

Her
mother didn’t answer. Allegra saw that she had lifted the lid on the coffin and, taking a tissue from her pocket, was dabbing at dad’s face. ‘It’s so hot,’ her mum said. ‘He’s sweating.’

‘Mum… Mummy, come sit outside with me for a while,’ Allegra said, her shattered heart breaking all over again. ‘Come have a cigarette with me.’

‘No, I can’t leave your father,’ her mother said, quietly. ‘You go ahead. I can’t leave him.’

The
next day, Allegra managed to hold herself together through the church service. It wasn’t until she heard Nino’s voice break as he was reading the eulogy that she began to feel lightheaded and dizzy. At the crematorium, she found a hairgrip in her handbag and clutched it hard, driving the sharp points of the ends into her palm; the pain, she found, helped distract her from what was going on.

A
few words were said over the coffin, then the pallbearers set it down on the platform which would lower it into the furnace below. Allegra felt herself start to sob uncontrollably and as the mechanisms whirred to life and the coffin began to sink into the floor, she turned around, walked unsteadily outside and threw up.

Back
in Hong Kong, Liz drummed a pencil against her desk. The last thing Allegra needed was another body-blow like this. She’d called Liz after the funeral, told her she was fine, and that the party the two of them had spent the last three weeks planning had to go ahead, that she’d be back in time for that. Liz snapped the pencil in two and flung it into the bin. Sometimes, life just blew.

Chapter Seven

THE DREAMS WERE always the same. She was in a house she didn’t know, and there was always one room which harboured an evil presence. She would try to avoid the room, but something would always pull her towards it, she knew that at some point, she would go in there and have to face whatever menace there was waiting for her.

Allegra
never liked to talk about her childhood experiences with the supernatural; now, seeing the vision of her father left her both comforted and unsettled. She’d collapsed into bed after they got home from the crematorium and, unexpectedly, had fallen asleep immediately. That was when the dreams came again.

Having
woken up panicked and sweating, Allegra got out of bed and went to the bathroom. She stared at her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, thinking how much like a panda she looked: pale face, huge dark circles around her eyes. She tried to remember what she looked like when she was younger, and couldn’t. Her memories of herself as a child and a teenager came only from photographs, which she sometimes stared at for long minutes, thinking, “is that really me?”

Allegra
leaned down to spit out the toothpaste, rinsed out her mouth and straightened up. Her heart stopped. Over her shoulder, in the reflection in the mirror, she saw her father again. This time, he looked sad.

She
slowly turned around, but he wasn’t there. When she looked back into the mirror again, there was no sign of him. Her hands trembling, she put her toothbrush down by the sink and went in search of Nino. Mum, she saw, was asleep on the sofa. She hadn’t gone back to her own bed since Dad died, and never would. She would eventually move her things into the spare bedroom, and spend the rest of her life sleeping with a light on.

Allegra
found Nino in the front garden, watering the huge bougainvillea by the gate. Their father had loved bougainvillea; all through her childhood, Allegra remembered, he’d wander around the garden in the evening when he got back from work, picking off caterpillars and snails, trimming back rogue shoots, admiring the flowers of those plants which had cross-pollinated and produced stunning, bi-coloured blooms.

Allegra
had never shared his passion for the species; they had sharp thorns and the petals were dry and papery. She preferred the fast-growing creeper which he had planted above the wall along the driveway. It was thick, lush, springy, and dotted with hundreds upon hundreds of small, bright yellow flowers which looked like daisies. She didn’t even know what they were called.

‘Hey,’ Nino said, glancing over as she sat down on the ancient swing which had somehow survived, more or less intact, for the last 30 years. ‘You okay?’

‘Nino… I know this is going to sound crazy, but have you… have you “seen” Dad? I mean, after he died?’ Lighting a cigarette, Allegra felt stupid to be asking; Nino would think she was psychotic. He looked at her sharply, turned off the water and put down the hosepipe.

‘What are you talking about? Ghosts?’ Nino sounded fed-up.

‘No, not a ghost, more like a… a vision,’ Allegra said, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘I told you it was crazy. But I’ve seen him, Nino, twice.’ Her voice trembled.

Nino
sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, clasping his hands at the back of his neck. He could understand now why sometimes his father had complained about being in a house surrounded by women; they were emotional and irrational most of the time, and prone to seeing things. Now Dad was gone, and it was just him left to deal with it all. He walked over to Allegra and knelt down in front of her, taking her hands.

‘Al, look, we’re all under huge amounts of stress. You’re suffering, we’re all grieving… Our minds play tricks on us sometimes. And I think that’s all it was. But maybe it wasn’t, and if you did see Dad, then he must have come back to try to tell you somehow that you have to be strong, move on. If he came back to see you, it was out of love,’ he said.

‘I just feel so terrible, I never got to say goodbye,’ Allegra sobbed. ‘I was supposed to call him the night before he died; he’d rung before I got home and left a message for me but I was too tired and decided I’d call him the next day. But the next day he was dead, Nino… maybe if I’d called, maybe if I’d had a chance to talk to him, maybe there would have been some tiny little effect on him and he wouldn’t have died.’

‘Oh Al, he died of heart failure. You can’t let yourself feel responsible, okay? We both know he had a heart murmur, that he had two heart attacks in the last five or six years and was taking medication. It was a matter of time,’ Nino said, stroking her hair. ‘We should be happy he died peacefully. There was no signs that he suffered at all when it happened. He really just looked like he was still asleep… Now, stop crying or your eyes are going to swell up even more and you’ll look like an albino Kermit the Frog… okay, Al?’

Allegra
managed a snuffled laugh and wiped away her tears. ‘Then stop calling me “Al”. Or I’ll call you Betty. And I’m sure that’s not what Paul Simon intended when he wrote the song.’

‘Go to bed, you crazy old woman,’ Nino said, getting to his feet, grimacing at the stiffness in his knees. ‘Tomorrow’s another day. Count your blessings. Always look on the bright side. Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag. Chin up.’

‘… And three bags full,’ Allegra said, punching him gently on the arm. ‘I don’t know how you can stand there and call me crazy when you’re clearly half a sandwich short of a picnic. If anyone’s insane in this family, it’s you.’

‘Ah, but that’s just a matter of opinion,’ Nino said. ‘I may be a nutter, but I’m looking at the stars… Oscar Wilde. Sort of.’ He looked sideways at Allegra, and they laughed.

Chapter Eight

ALLEGRA SPENT JUST under a week in Singapore, helping Nino sort out the seemingly unending paperwork that has to be taken care of when someone dies. She wanted to stay on, but couldn’t bear to be away from Bella and Daisy any longer. So she’d flown home feeling wretched; damned if she stayed, damned if she left.

Now,
Allegra felt as if perhaps, just perhaps, she might have gone mad some time ago and simply hadn’t noticed until now. Her life had gone from calm, orderly, rational and almost content to … to a maelstrom of wildly fluctuating emotions and behaviour. From simply accepting and making the best of any situation to not understanding anything or anyone, or what their motives could possibly be. Suspicion, doubt and confusion were her only constants.

She
leaned against the balcony railings, staring out at the ships slowly passing by, not really seeing anything, not really thinking anything; aware of almost nothing except the fact that her right contact lens had slipped out of position again and was making her feel blurred and dizzy. She rolled her eyes upwards, sideways, downwards, pulled the corner of her eye carefully to the side, trying to get the rogue lens back into position.

Finally,
she walked to the bathroom, removed the lens, washed it gently in sterile solution and put it back in her eye, hoping it would now choose to behave, having had all this extra attention and TLC. Blinking, wiping away the single tear that trickled down her cheek, she stared at herself in the mirror. Old. Old and tired.

The
phone rang and she hurried to her study to pick it up. Liz.

‘Could you pick up a couple of extra bottles of wine before you come over later?’ she said. ‘Tam, shut up, will you? It’s like you’ve never seen a bloody pigeon before, you stupid animal.’

Allegra
could hear the dog yapping in the background. Tam was a gorgeous puppy, but daft as a brush and able to reach astonishing decibel levels when he got excited about something, usually pigeons.

‘More wine? I thought we already had a dozen bottles, plus the vodka, plus the whisky, plus the beer… Do we really need more wine? The guys might bring their own drink too, and don’t forget, there’s only going to be ten of us tonight…’

Allegra
tried to keep her voice even. Skipping out to the supermarket to buy still more alcohol just didn’t appeal to her right now. Besides, they already had a cache of booze stocked up at Liz’s place that would put a decent pub to shame.

‘Well, Jack might bring that girlie of his,’ Liz said, defensively. ‘And we don’t want to risk running out.’ Since Jack had done that Buckland conference with Apex, Liz had used him on a regular basis for all her events. He was charming and personable, and knew his stuff. She’d also kept a close eye on him, and noted with some concern that he and Allegra would occasionally glance at each other and smile. There was definite electricity between the two.

But
when he’d accepted the invitation to their party and asked if it would be alright if his girlfriend came, too, Liz had visibly relaxed. If he was involved with someone, then she needn’t worry about Allegra.

‘Liz, two of the guys don’t drink. Plus another two have said they might not even be able to come to the party, depending on timing for their gig later this evening. Andy has to only sniff wine and he’s gone; Clive just drinks beer, really, and Jack prefers to smoke than drink. So that pretty much leaves Brian, you and me with a dozen bottles of wine between us. I think that’s enough, don’t you?’

Liz
sniffed down the line at her. ‘Fine, be like that. But if we run out tonight, don’t come whining to me,’ she said.

‘Hang on a minute, aren’t you the one who always says I’m a lightweight and can’t take my drink? Aren’t you the one that’s always harassing me about not drinking myself insensible and throwing myself at Clive? On those grounds alone, I’d say that running out of booze tonight might be a good thing,’ Allegra said, with as much patience as she could muster.

Liz
sighed, tetchily agreed that Allegra might have a valid point, and hung up, but not before asking her to send text messages to their guests to remind them that kick-off was 6pm.

Tonight
was a big deal for Liz and Allegra, and they didn’t want anyone to be late for what they had planned. Glad to have Liz mollified and equally glad to have something to do, Allegra typed out a text on her mobile phone and sent it en masse to the boys: “Party tonight 6pm don’t be late or Liz will make you sorry”.

There,
that should do it. She checked her watch. She had a couple of hours before she needed to think about getting ready to go over to Liz’s place to help set up for the party. It was still high summer, but there was a brisk breeze blowing in off the Lamma Island Channel and in through her balcony doors. Allegra, glad for the relief from the heat, leaned against the railing, staring out to sea, not really seeing anything.

Was
this the midlife crisis she had always heard about? But at 40, wasn’t she too young for a midlife crisis? But then again, if her life expectancy was 75, then that was about right. How the hell could she know? How could anyone know?

For
some time she was even convinced that she was suffering from early menopause. She remembered the symptoms her mother had displayed some years ago when she went through “the change” (what a lovely, vague, comforting way to describe months of fear and madness, she thought at the time); the paranoia, the seemingly irrational rages, the loss of memory.

One
night, when her dad had not turned up at home for dinner as he had promised, mum had called the bar – this was in the days long before the advent of mobile phones – to check on him. Yes, he was there; yes, he’d be home soon. But hours went past and finally, just before midnight, mum snapped.

He’s
having an affair and I’m going to catch him, she announced, getting into the car. Allegra slid into the passenger seat, more afraid of what harm her mother might do to herself than anything else. They had driven around town for hours, slowly scouring the carparks at “suspect” apartment blocks, her mother slamming on the brakes every time they spotted a pale green Volvo hatchback, snarling, “There! I told you!” Of course, it was never the right car.

Finally,
mum gave up and they drove back home in silence, only to find that Dad had arrived back home minutes after they left and had been panicking since. Boiling over, he unleashed a torrent of relieved anger at mum, who somehow clicked into cool, calm and rational mode, only enraging him further.

Allegra,
no longer able to handle the turmoil, walked into the back garden and sat down heavily on the steps lined with bougainvillea, put her face in her hands and burst into tears. A hand on her shoulder made her jump. Antonio, her brother. Everyone called him Nino, though, because when he was little, that was the closest he could get to pronouncing his own name.

‘Hey,’
he said. ‘At least you don’t have to live with them anymore. I hope you’re crying for me, stuck here with the two of them.’

Allegra
laughed through her tears and wiped her nose on his trouser leg. He smacked her lovingly and pulled her hair. He was three years younger than she was, but somehow seemed a lot cleverer most of the time, especially when it came to emotional traumas like that night’s.

So
now, at 40, eleven years before her mum, had she started menopause already? Short of going to a doctor and sounding even madder than she felt, Allegra just didn’t know. Having gone back into the bathroom in a bid to rouse herself into getting ready, she stared into the mirror, trying to recognise the face that looked back at her. It was strange how your own face could seem so unfamiliar, she thought. Just as your own body becomes unfamiliar.

They
say I should be proud. My body is my physical archive; scars that remember a childhood of scrapes and cuts, hints of muscle definition earned as a teenager (now all but lost beneath the rounded softness that is the fate of my gender and age); if you care to look, you will find a faint spider's web of silvery stretch marks on my belly, my breasts, my knees, my buttocks.

The
skin on my stomach, stretched and strained as babies sucked their fingers in the darkness of my womb, is now loose and crinkled like crepe, folding gently when I bend over, spilling over the top of low-waisted pants; if I suck in my belly, it is still there, not changing.

My
breasts were once swollen heavy with milk, nipples suckled hungry and hard by the babies who distorted my body for so many months; now these same breasts are vestigial, comically unnecessary on a body which I stare at with unseeing eyes in the mirror, thinking "I should be proud" and wondering if maybe I am betraying my sex by hating my self, ashamed of my vanity, wondering if I will ever resign my self to my body.

I
am shy to let anyone see me in any state of undress; my body displeases me and I do not wish anyone else to see what I see when I look upon my body. Sometimes I lie in bed and run my hands from ribcage to hips; the faint boniness suggests with deceptive whispers that I am thin; the sensation of my hands on my skin reminds me of a time when hands other than mine would touch me, when eyes other than mine would see me and think me beautiful.

But
time is cruel. And your physical self eventually betrays you. Especially if you start thinking you’re going through “the change”. Loss of libido was one symptom, Allegra knew that. Some days she felt that if she never had sex again, she honestly wouldn’t mind. Other days, she yearned to be a teenager again, to experience just once more that heady rush of wordless longing and lust for someone; when a boy’s smile could make her blush, when his touch made her catch her breath.

She
sighed and closed her eyes, not wanting to see her own reflection anymore. Not just old and tired, but stupid as well.

Bollocks
to this, she thought, and walked into the bedroom to try to decide what to wear that evening. There was something else bothering her. She wasn’t sure how it had all happened, how she and Jack had come so far so quickly without her even being aware of it. Not that anything had actually happened… it was more about the unexpected emotional connection they seemed to instantly have with each other. Her first sense of it was, bewilderingly enough, when he had bounced up — there was really no other way to describe how he moved sometimes, it reminded her of Tigger — and grabbed her in a bizarre headlock hug as she sat on the fire-escape stairs outside the office one evening, smoking what must have been her hundredth cigarette of the day.

He’d
then plopped down on the step opposite and grinned at her. ‘Wide-mouthed tree-frog,’ she’d thought to herself, glad that her smile of greeting would be able to cover up both the silly analogy and her confusion at the hug.

Maybe
she should have known from the start, but she was never very good at recognising beginnings. It was only later that, sometimes, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Until then, it was all a jumble, bits of sky where the ground should be, upside-down cottages, trees floating half in nothingness because she couldn’t find the right pieces for the trunks.

Jack
had arrived at the bar with Rose, and Allegra had immediately assumed that they had arrived together. As it turned out, it was coincidence. Lucky for her, because, as Liz had excused herself to use the bathroom some time earlier, Allegra had immediately stood up, held her hand out and said, ‘You must be Jack,’ and smiled. She’d have looked stupid if he wasn’t.

There
was some initial fluster as it was established that no, he didn’t know Rose, she didn’t know him, they hadn’t even realised they were both heading for the same table as they entered the bar. Then Allegra had reached for her purse and asked if he’d like a drink. He grinned — wide-mouthed tree-frog — and said, ‘Don’t be daft, I’ll get my own.’

But
in that split second in which their eyes locked, she had felt a weird discomfort; a feeling which hadn’t occurred for so long that it had taken some weeks before she even realised it had happened, or what it meant.

It
was a twinge of fear, pure and simple. Not the kind of fear that you feel about monsters or spiders or being run over by a bus or your parents dying, nothing like that. Fear knowing that you’re about to fall and not quite sure if the landing will be hard or soft. Fear of loss of control, of flailing around trying to find something firm and solid and reassuringly familiar to hold onto, something which you could grab and hopefully pull yourself back from the brink. In an emotional sense. Which can sometimes be worse than in the literal sense.

Allegra
instinctively blocked out the discomfort, the fear; years of practice, self-preservation. But damn him, he just kept coming back with more. It was his lack of fear, maybe, that dizzied her the most, swung her right off balance, prevented her from seeing clearly until it was too late, and she’d fallen.

It
had been so long, she couldn’t remember how long, since a boy was able to just talk to her, smile at her, be genuinely interested, be openly and unashamedly attracted to her, by her… Her poor, battered heart didn’t know how to cope, so it let her head take over, and her head said, ‘Don’t be stupid’.