The Year of Taking Chances

by Lucy Diamond

  Children-passing? She wrinkled her nose. He made them sound as if they were an inconvenience to be managed. If she had his baby, would he speak about it in such careless terms? He’d better bloody not. ‘Er, yeah, good,’ she replied after a moment. ‘Quiet, really. My parents and one of my sisters, and her husband. Five go mad in Essex, you know.’

  He laughed. He had a nice laugh, Max – a proper, genuine one. You heard a whole orchestra of fake versions in PR. ‘Excellent.’ He paused. ‘Listen, I’ve been trying to get hold of you all week,’ he said. ‘Are we all right?’

  We. He thought there was a ‘we’. Well, there was, but it included an extra person these days. ‘Um . . . ’ she said, not sure how to respond. ‘Yes, sorry – I saw you’d tried ringing. I was away for New Year, didn’t have much of a signal.’

  That was all true at least.

  ‘Okay.’ He sounded hesitant now. ‘So . . . do you want to do something soon? Did you get that kite-surfing link I sent? I thought it might be a laugh.’

  She bit her lip. Oh Max. It would have been a laugh a fortnight ago. They would have had a blast. If it wasn’t for those two wretched blue lines, she’d be floating up like a bunch of shiny helium balloons right now, delighted that he wanted to ‘make a weekend of it’, already googling gorgeous boutique places to stay. ‘I . . . ’ she said awkwardly. Help. ‘I’m pretty busy actually,’ she blurted out. ‘I’ve just been given this new account, you see, so my diary’s hideous for the next few weeks.’

  Also true. Her diary was crazy! Although she did actually have two free weekends this month, either of which she’d have happily spent with him, sleek in wetsuits, laughing and shrieking on a kite-surf in the North Sea. But how could she? How could she carry on without telling him? This way was for the best, really. It was.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and the laughter fell away from his voice. Now he sounded more clipped, as if he was speaking to a colleague he didn’t know very well. ‘I see.’

  You don’t, she thought miserably. You have no idea. She fiddled with two linked paper clips, twisting the wires round and round, trying and failing to think of something to say.

  ‘Well, in that case, I’ll leave the ball in your court,’ he said, brisk and businesslike after a short silence. ‘You’ve got my number, so . . . Yeah.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, dying a little inside. One sharp end of a paper clip scraped her skin and she winced. Sorry, she felt like blurting out. Sorry! If you knew, Max, you’d understand why I’m doing this, You’d agree that I was doing the right thing!

  ‘See you then, Saffron,’ he said.

  ‘See you then, Max,’ she echoed, replacing the phone. Well, that hadn’t gone very well. She wished she could rewind the last few minutes, let him down more gently. Actually, scrub that: she’d rewind even further, given half a chance, right back to the start of December. Then she’d make sure the condoms were to hand every single time, before it was too late. Before this situation ever had the chance to unfold.

  But it had unfolded, of course, and she’d clumsily made a mess of that last conversation. And now he’d be across town, staring at his phone and wondering how he could have got it so wrong about Saffron Flint. What’s up with her? he’d be thinking, perplexed. I thought I was onto something. I thought we liked each other!

  She imagined one of his colleagues glancing across the office and noticing Max’s handsome features creased with a frown. You okay there, Max?

  Women, Max would say, shaking his head, still confused. Maybe he’d start to feel exasperated, rolling his eyes in a long-suffering manner. Women!

  He was better off without her. He was. And now here came Charlotte, and she needed to stop fiddling with paper clips and look busy.

  ‘Saffron? Time for a quick word? I’ve been going through the accounts, and I’ve got another one that’s right up your street . . . ’

  Chapter Seven

  January was a great time for new starts, Gemma always thought. You could draw a veil over the excesses of Christmas and start with a nice clean slate and a lovely long list of good intentions. Oh, she would be a saint this year, she really would. She’d be kind and patient, her house would be transformed, she’d do tons of voluntary work and be everyone’s best friend, not to mention the most devoted and wondrous wife, mother and daughter that ever lived.

  She hadn’t got very far with her plans for a new job yet, though. It had been so long since she’d worked anywhere, other than her own kitchen and ironing board, that she couldn’t help feeling apprehensive at the prospect. After an extended maternity leave with Will, she’d gone back to work at Pop, the fashion label, but it hadn’t been easy. Returning as a part-timer, she found herself falling down the hierarchy and shunted sideways, away from the really funky front-page-of-the-catalogue end of the brand, into the less-glamorous ranges: swimwear for a while, and then knitwear, neither of which she felt particularly passionate about. Plus Will took a while to settle into nursery, and then came down with bronchiolitis the first winter and was quite poorly; and then, whenever she did actually make it into the office, she’d often find herself unable to think of anything but his sad little You’re-leaving-me? face as she’d said goodbye.

  Even though she loved working with clothes, she could never quite lose the breathless pain of being away from her child, the tension she felt whenever the train juddered to a halt halfway home and she started to panic that she’d be late to pick him up. Mercifully Spencer had realized just how anxious the juggling act was making her and stepped in, telling her he was happy for her to stay at home and look after the children if that was what she wanted. Her boss was understanding and said she’d keep Gemma on file as a freelance, but the work had dried up pretty quickly. So that was that.

  Gemma hadn’t really minded back then, especially as her daughter Darcey came along soon afterwards and she threw all her energies into making both children happy. But now that Darcey was nine and Will thirteen, motherhood no longer had the same manic urgency of the early years. The children showered and dressed themselves, they could make their own breakfast, they could work half the household gadgets a million times better than she could . . . they needed her less, basically. And she was starting to feel – well, not redundant exactly, she thought, tossing some Playmobil people and a naked, pouting Barbie into a cardboard box, but maybe a little bit worthless. And just the tiniest bit bored, if that didn’t make her sound too ungrateful. She’s just a mum, she heard Darcey say again in that dismissive voice and felt herself cringe.

  It was all right for Spencer, with his job on the building site. He had a whole other world outside the home – a world of bacon sarnies and banter, nipping to the bookies in his lunch hour and to the pub on his way home. He’d come back covered in plaster dust and a muck sweat, glowing with the satisfaction of a hard day’s work. Meanwhile, what had she done? Ambled round the supermarket and sorted piles of laundry, maybe had a coffee with some of the other mums. It didn’t feel enough any more.

  Her mobile rang just then. She was in the playroom, cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by half-clothed Sylvanian Family creatures who appeared to be having some kind of woodland orgy (maybe that was just her dirty mind), the dressing-up box from which a single Buzz Lightyear leg dangled (Will hadn’t worn that costume since he was four years old!), board games and jigsaws, unfinished craft projects and half-built Lego spaceships. Ripe for an overhaul, she thought distractedly, reaching to answer her phone. She should have ditched half of it when they moved, but now was her chance. She could turn this room into a proper teenage den, with beanbags and maybe a little TV . . .

  ‘Hello?’ she said, imagining a pinball machine in one corner, a dartboard perhaps. No, not a dartboard. Too dangerous. Could they squeeze a pool table in here? Spencer would love that.

  ‘Gem? It’s Harry. Listen, there’s been an accident. Are you sitting down?’

  The virtual pool table vanished into the ether. ‘An accident? What’s happened?’

 
There was a sob in Harry’s voice. A sob? ‘It’s Spencer. He . . . Someone fucked up with the scaffolding, Gem. He’s fallen. It’s pretty bad.’

  All of a sudden it was hard to breathe. Her body froze rigid with the horror; her mind raced with terrible images of her husband plummeting through the sky. ‘Is he dead?’ she croaked.

  ‘No, but he’s unconscious. They’ve airlifted him to Addenbrooke’s. I’m going to head over there now, shall I pick you up?’

  Stupid thoughts pinballed into her head. She hadn’t hugged him that morning. He liked to be up and out early, Spencer, and she’d still been in bed when he’d left. What if she never hugged him again?

  ‘Gem? Shall I pick you up?’

  She swallowed. Get a grip, Gemma. This was happening – her worst nightmare – and she had to deal with it. ‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Yes, please.’

  The hospital was about an hour’s drive usually, but it felt as if entire dreadful days passed before they reached the car park in torrential rain. Harry tried to make conversation – something about seeing Caitlin, the girl from the party – but Gemma couldn’t concentrate. Apparently the scaffolding had collapsed on the first storey of the building they were working on, and Spencer had plunged to the concrete below, landing in a crumpled heap, out cold.

  Gemma felt sick at the thought of him lying on the ground, unmoving and unresponsive, his beautiful face empty of any expression. He was the most unashamedly alive person she’d ever met. Once, a few months after they’d started seeing each other, they’d been walking into a rosemary-scented pub garden one warm Sunday afternoon when he suddenly smiled at her, eyes brilliant, then put his arms in the air and shouted, ‘God, I love this woman!’ People had turned and smiled at his exuberance. Someone had even cheered.

  Please let him have come round by now, she thought as they hurried to the Accident and Emergency centre. Please let us get there, and for him to be sitting up in bed with a cup of tea, joking with the doctors.

  He wasn’t sitting up in bed, though. He hadn’t even come round. He was lying flat, strapped into a neck-and-back brace so that he couldn’t move, having just returned from a CT scan. He had broken his ankle quite badly and fractured three vertebrae, the softly spoken Indian doctor told them. They weren’t yet certain how his spinal cord would be affected.

  Gemma burst into tears of shocked disbelief. She’d watched enough hospital-based TV shows to know that spinal injuries could be devastating. ‘You mean he might not walk again?’ she asked, choking on the words. Oh my goodness. Spencer in a wheelchair, his legs useless? Football-mad Spencer never running or kicking a ball for the rest of his life?

  ‘We can’t rule anything out yet, I’m afraid,’ the doctor said gently. She put a hand on Gemma’s arm, and Gemma stared at her polished red nails in a daze. ‘We’re going to do an MRI scan, which should give us a clearer indication of any damage. The good news is that we can’t see any bleeding on the brain, although we won’t be able to make a full assessment of his head injury until Mr Bailey comes round.’

  Head injury. Bleeding on the brain. That terrifying-looking brace clamping him in position. The possibility of him being paralysed, an invalid for the rest of his life. Gemma’s head swam with one terrible thought after another. He’d never walk Darcey up the aisle, if she got married. He wouldn’t be able to work. He’d no longer be able to throw himself into swimming pools on holiday, drenching them all deliberately with one of his ‘bombs’. He’d never dance with her again . . .

  She passed a hand through her hair, trying to breathe naturally. ‘I need to sort someone out to pick up the kids,’ she said, imagining the scared looks on their faces when they saw their strong, capable daddy broken like this. Dear God, she couldn’t bear it. ‘I need to . . . ’ She swayed on her feet, suddenly dizzy, and Harry clutched her just in time.

  ‘You okay? Are you feeling faint? Sit down, Gem,’ he ordered, guiding her to a plastic chair. ‘Do you want a tea or something?’

  A cup of tea. Like that would make any difference. What she wanted was for Spencer to open his eyes and grin at her, to sit up and stretch his arms over his head as if he’d just woken from a nap. ‘I’m fine,’ she said weakly, reaching out to take Spencer’s hand. His fingers felt warm in hers; if she shut her eyes, she could imagine everything was perfectly normal. Almost.

  ‘We’ll let you know more, once we’ve done the MRI,’ the doctor said kindly. ‘Ah, here’s our porter now. Thanks, Mick.’

  And away they wheeled him, leaving Gemma and Harry alone and staring at one another. ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said, burying her face in her hands. ‘I’m really frightened. I’m so, so frightened. I just want him back.’

  ‘I know,’ Harry said wretchedly, staring after the porter in a daze. ‘Me too.’

  Cometh the hour, cometh the mums. After one single tearful call to her friend Eliza, Gemma had countless texts from other mothers from the school, offering help, sleepovers, dinners, sympathy and wine. OMG, just heard, hon. Is he going to be ok? they wrote. What’s the latest?

  Gemma didn’t know how to reply. The words were too huge to condense into a mere text. Oh, possibly paralysed, head injury, you know . . . No. She stuffed her phone back in her handbag, feeling a wild sort of hysteria building. She hated herself for not hugging him that morning. She hadn’t even said goodbye! She’d been wearing her tartan flannel pyjamas, the ones Spencer always groaned at and called the Passion Killers, and she’d rolled over in bed and put the pillow over her head to muffle the sound of his singing. What kind of wife did that? Why hadn’t she got out of bed too and kissed him goodbye before he left?

  It wasn’t until later that afternoon when the rain ceased for the first time all day that Spencer finally blinked, then opened his eyes. Thank God. ‘What . . . the . . . fuck . . . ?’ he croaked, bewildered.

  Trapped in the back-and-neck brace, his head was fixed so that he was staring up at the ceiling, and Gemma leapt to her feet, leaning over him. ‘You’re in hospital, sweetheart,’ she said, her voice cracking on the words. ‘You had a fall at work.’

  His eyelids fluttered again, those sooty lashes sweeping his pale skin. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Hello, mate.’ Harry stood up, too. ‘We were doing the Melvilles’ development, remember? The scaffolding gave way and you fell.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he groaned. ‘My head’s killing me.’

  ‘I’ll get the doctor,’ Harry said, vanishing.

  Spencer was still staring at Gemma as if he had never seen her before in his life. She felt a lurch of panic. ‘It’s me, Gemma. Can you remember who I am?’

  He shut his eyes. ‘Gemma,’ he repeated, slurring the syllables. ‘Gemma?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me, Gemma. Your wife,’ she said desperately, but he was already gone, slipping back into oblivion. ‘I’m your wife, Spencer, do you remember?’

  Chapter Eight

  Maybe Caitlin had been kidding herself, but after the road trip with Harry she’d half-expected him to get in touch. Had it been a figment of her imagination that he’d flirted with her? All those questions he’d asked, the growing feeling of intimacy as they swapped confessions in the One-Direction-stickered cab of his van, the way he’d even (jokingly) offered to kill Flynn, as if he was allying himself with Team Caitlin . . . When they said goodbye and she thanked him for all his help, there was a momentary hesitation when she was convinced, for a split-second, that he was about to ask her out for a drink, or even sweep her up in his arms. Instead he just leaned in, gave her a peck on the cheek and said he’d see her around. She’d drifted back inside, her fingers rising to touch her skin where it had been grazed by his lips, wishing she’d had the nerve to grab hold of him and put her mouth to his for a proper kiss.

  Perhaps she’d been plain wrong about any chemistry, deluding herself that she had felt the vibes. For all she knew, Harry was like that with everyone; one of those charming, easy-going types who slipped through the world with ease, a Pied Piper of women, attracting
jostling, flattered hordes in his wake. All those proposals and almost-marriages, remember – a woman in every port, by the sound of it.

  She’d probably had a lucky escape, all things considered. He might even already be back with the woman who’d trampled his Stetson all the way to hat-heaven. Anyway, she reminded herself, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, it wasn’t as if she was in remotely the right place to start a new relationship. Hello? Rebound klaxon!

  Whatever. It was all academic, seeing as she hadn’t heard a thing from him since that day, let alone glimpsed him around the village. The only evidence that they’d been to Cambridge at all was the pile of boxes she’d dumped upstairs, yet to be unpacked, and the bill Flynn had sent her to cover the cost of cleaning his precious canvas, along with a furious note, ranting about her immature act of vandalism:

  You stupid bitch, you are MENTAL. Seriously, you have major problems. Do you think anyone else is going to want you? You’re not even attractive. You’re a fucking JOKE.

  She wished she hadn’t read it now, but the words were burned into her subconscious. If he thought for a minute he was getting any money off her, though, he was lost in Dreamland. Let’s hope he stayed there.

  She put her head under the duvet and sniffed, wrinkling her nose. Getting a bit whiffy, Cait. Personal hygiene had fallen by the wayside since she’d been back in Larkmead. There was a definite monobrow taking shape between her eyebrows, not to mention the shadowy line above her top lip. A crop of small red spots had appeared around her mouth, she had a coldsore blistering on her lower lip and there was a greasy sheen on her forehead. Her hair had completely grown out of its bob and was bushy and kicking out around the ends, while her fringe was wonky where she’d tried to cut it with some nail scissors two weeks ago. As for her legs, they positively bristled with new growth. Spring has come to the forest! Well, to her hairy calves anyway.