Second Chance

by Jane Green

  She is still convinced this is innocent. Convinced that she and Will are just friends. Sure, there is a little harmless flirting, but that is all it is: harmless. Holly is not the sort of woman who would ever have an affair. Of this she is certain.

  Not least because of her father, Holly has never been unfaithful in her life, has always thought of infidelity as the one transgression she would never commit. And even now, when she looks at Will and thinks he is quite possibly the most handsome man she has ever seen in her life, even now she knows she will not have an affair.

  What has crossed her mind, what is crossing her mind more and more frequently these days, is that perhaps she married the wrong man. She never felt this attracted to Marcus, took it for granted that physical attraction was not part of the equation, but this friendship with Will has reawakened feelings, wants, needs she had forgotten she had. Wants and needs she pushed away into a compartment in her mind, telling herself she could live without them, telling herself they didn’t matter.

  They matter.

  It matters that she is not, as she presumed, dead from the waist down. And now that those feelings have been reawakened, she’s not sure if she can ignore them. Not sure she can spend the rest of her life sleeping with a man who makes her feel… nothing.

  And the thought that she can’t seem to push away, the thought that wakes her up in the middle of each night and prevents her from going back to sleep is this: I think I married the wrong man.

  This is why she needs to talk, this is why she’s sitting at her kitchen table, swallowing hard and taking a deep breath.

  ‘I have a friendship,’ she says awkwardly, unable to look Olivia in the eye, but knowing she needs to say something, knowing that Olivia is the right person to be talking to about this.

  ‘Great,’ Olivia says nonchalantly, alerted to something else when Holly finally looks up and meets her eyes. ‘Oh no! You mean, a “friendship”…’

  Holly nods.

  Olivia’s eyes widen. ‘Are you having an affair?’ Her voice drops to a whisper on the last word.

  ‘No!’ Holly says loudly. ‘Sssh. Frauke’s upstairs, I don’t want her to hear any of this. But no, I swear to you, I’m not having an affair. Though I am having a friendship with a man, and I just feel… incredibly confused.’

  ‘Confused because you want to be having an affair?’

  ‘No! Well… maybe. No, I don’t think so, I don’t think that’s what this is about.’

  ‘So what is it about?’

  Holly sighs deeply. ‘Oh God, Olivia, I don’t even know. I just know that my marriage feels… I don’t know. Just nothing. It doesn’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything at all, and when I’m with this man I just feel alive. I feel young and free and as if anything were possible, and this awful thought just keeps coming back to me: What if I married the wrong man?’

  ‘Wow!’ Olivia exhales and sits back in her chair. ‘That’s pretty bloody huge.’

  ‘I know.’ Holly looks at her sadly. ‘It’s awful, and hearing the words out loud makes it more awful because it makes it real. But I had to talk to someone. I had to know what you think.’

  ‘What I think? I have no idea what I think. What do I think about what? Should you have an affair?’

  ‘No,’ Holly shakes her head, ‘I’m not going to have an affair, but the fact is I have this friend and, yes, I’ll admit it, I am attracted to him, but more than that he listens to me. He’s interested in what I have to say, he thinks I’m funny and clever, and he makes me feel important.’

  ‘And Marcus doesn’t?’

  Holly snorts. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well, yes, okay. I see your point.’

  ‘What do you think of Marcus?’ Holly asks suddenly. ‘I mean, I know you hardly know him, but what impression did he make on you? Could you see us together? Do you think he’s the right man for me?’

  ‘No way, Holly.’ Olivia laughs and shakes her head. ‘That’s one road I won’t be going down. The last time this happened, my friend Lauren had left her husband, who was the biggest jerk you’d ever met, and I spent weeks telling her how much better off she was and how awful he was, not to mention how all her friends completely hated him, and the next thing you know she’s back with him and she cut me off entirely, has never spoken a word to me since.’

  ‘So you think he’s a complete jerk?’

  ‘No! I didn’t say that. I’m not saying anything.’

  ‘Yes, well, if you thought he was wonderful and that he and I were made for each other, you’d have no problem saying it, would you? So I think I can read between the lines.’

  ‘All I’ll say is that I don’t quite understand the two of you together. You just seem like very different personalities; but hey, opposites attract and all that, and I’ve certainly come across other couples who are like chalk and cheese, but they’re madly in love and that seems to overcome everything.’

  ‘So you think he’s a pompous arse?’ Holly offers a wry smile, knowing it’s true.

  ‘What about the other one?’ Olivia shakes her head, refusing to comment. ‘Does he have a name? Could he, in fact, be someone I might know?’

  Holly turns bright red.

  ‘I know.’ Olivia sighs. ‘I knew there was something with you and Will. Every time you mention him, which, by the way, you do an awful lot, just in case you hadn’t realized and were doing it with Marcus, but every time you mention him you go all sort of dreamy.’

  ‘So what do you think about it?’

  ‘I think Freud would have a thing or two to say about that. We lost one of our best friends, and you’re obviously feeling unhappy or unfulfilled by other things in your life, so I wonder if it’s a possibility that you might be transferring that, projecting it or whatever the hell it’s called, onto his brother.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t think it’s real? And if it were just that, how come you’re not feeling anything for him?’

  Olivia burst out laughing. ‘Your logic seems a little off-kilter, my love. Will’s not my type in the slightest, but I’m just worried that it’s a crush that has emerged because of losing Tom, or at least is perhaps stronger because of Tom, and I wonder whether it’s actually something that should be causing you to question your marriage.’

  ‘Freud or no Freud, though, what if I’d be much happier with Will, or someone like him? What if I did marry the wrong man?’

  ‘Do you think you’d be happier with someone like him?’

  ‘Well… no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, he’d probably drive me mad. You know him, for heaven’s sake. He’s thirty-five years old and doesn’t have a proper job – he’s a carpenter slash beach bum. He travels abroad for six months, sleeping on beaches, or camping out on friends’ sofas. He’s clever and funny and amazingly sexy, but you couldn’t find a worse proposition for a husband if you tried.’

  ‘So husband-material aside, what makes you think you might be happier with someone like him?’

  Holly is quiet for a while as she thinks. Then eventually she looks up at Olivia, her voice small, almost breaking. ‘I just miss having a friend. I miss having a partner. I feel like Marcus and I are two ships that pass in the night. And more than that, I worry that we are just so completely incompatible and that I’ve spent my married life trying to be this… this wife he wants me to be, but that it isn’t me, it’s not the life I wanted, it’s not how I want to spend the rest of my life.’

  ‘So what do you want? What do you want that’s different from what you have? Because, Holly, from where I’m sitting, what you have is pretty damn amazing.’ Olivia gestures at the house, and Holly sighs.

  ‘I know, I feel like I’m so ungrateful. I have my gorgeous children. And this gorgeous house, and a wardrobe full of beautiful designer clothes, but you know what? I don’t care about all the stuff. I feel like the only time this house comes alive, the only time the children and I can laugh and be free, is when Marcus isn’t here, becau
se when he is here these days all he does is bark at everyone to behave differently, to do something differently, to somehow be other than who we are.

  ‘I feel like I’m trapped in a prison when he’s around. Tiptoeing about, walking on eggshells in case something displeases him. You know, when we were first married I thought I could change him. I thought I could knock some of that ridiculous pomposity out of him, but it’s got worse. And all he cares about is work. All he thinks about is work. Even when I try to have a conversation with him, I can see that he’s not even listening, he’s thinking about some bloody case.’

  ‘Couldn’t you tell him?’ Olivia says gently. ‘Couldn’t you sit down with him and tell him that? Surely he’d understand, surely the two of you could work it out.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Holly shrugs, but what she doesn’t say is that the will just isn’t there for her.

  ‘Would you ever leave him?’ Olivia asks after a while.

  ‘I think I’d be too frightened to,’ Holly says with a sigh. ‘I mean, he’s a divorce lawyer, for God’s sake. I think it would be a nightmare.’

  ‘Well, then, you’ll have to find a way to make it work. Talk to him, Holly. It’s not too late, you just have to communicate.’

  Saffron opens the door and everyone looks up to see who is coming in. She waves at the handful of people she has grown to know and love during the years she has been coming to this room, and pulls a folding chair from a cupboard in the corner, sitting down as quietly as possible at the back.

  She is thirty minutes late but knows it is better to hear thirty minutes of a meeting than not to come at all.

  As she sits down someone hands her a notebook and she scribbles her name and number, the best time to call, and thinks for a second about what to write under the heading ‘feeling’. Irritated, she finally writes, leaning forward to put the book on the table, then pulling her Big Book out of her purse and quickly skimming the step they read earlier: Step Three: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

  No P today. He’s flown to New York for a preproduction meeting of his new movie, and although he wanted her to come, she has a meeting of her own tomorrow – the uber-successful producers of the biggest hit of last year have shortlisted her as the love interest for their new film. If she gets it, it will be the biggest break of her career and will catapult her onto a whole new level. They want to see if she can pull off an authentic Southern accent and, according to her agent, if so, she’s the lady of the hour.

  The last week has been spent working with her voice coach 24/7, paid for by her agent, whom she will reimburse from her next job, hopefully this one.

  P sent flowers and a good-luck card this morning, phoned to tell her he was missing her, then made her laugh by describing quite how much she was missing in his suite at the Carlyle.

  She needed a meeting today, and a meeting in which she wasn’t distracted by P’s presence was always welcome. She found that P tended to be a distraction to everyone, not least the number of bimbette actresses who, she was certain, showed up only to try to get noticed, and who spent their time making eyes at him or cornering him during coffee break.

  ‘Hi, I’m Saffron and I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic.’ Funny how smoothly those words roll from her lips. The first time she ever tried to say them, she couldn’t. She said, ‘Hi, I’m Saffron, and I suppose I’m here because I drink.’ She couldn’t say the word alcoholic, her denial and shame so strong that she was physically unable to make the words leave her mouth.

  And now it’s so easy for her to say those words even though, of late, she has been doubting their veracity.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she continues, ‘but I’m so happy to be here. I missed the reading of the step, obviously, and I skimmed it a bit, but I really need to talk about where I am today.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘You know, for years I’ve had really good, clean sobriety. I swore I’d never go back to the place I came from when I first came into these rooms and, for so long, it’s been so easy for me to be surrounded by alcohol without giving it a second thought.

  ‘And I suppose I’ve grown complacent about it. You always hear in these rooms that this is a simple programme but it isn’t easy, and that it works if you work it, and I suppose that sitting here today I realize how utterly true that is. Because I haven’t been working it lately. I’ve been like that man who says, “Thanks for the ride, God, I can take it from here.”’ The group laughs in recognition, and Saffron pauses for a while before continuing. ‘So I think that recently I’ve been trying to do it by myself, and it’s not working.

  ‘I find myself sitting in meetings fairly regularly, talking about what I’m not doing, no stepwork, barely calling my sponsor, occasionally reading literature when I’m desperate, but I don’t seem to have the will to do anything more. And even though I’m not drinking, recently I’ve found myself watching people in restaurants with, say, a glass of wine, and thinking: “I could do that. Why couldn’t I have just one glass of wine with dinner in a restaurant? I’m sure I could do that.”’ The group laughs again. ‘And even though on some level I know I can’t, on another I think I can, and I have to tell you, I’m completely white-knuckling it.’

  She takes a breath. ‘And then there’s my relationship.’ She doesn’t say his name, remembers her sponsor’s advice from a long time ago: Don’t talk about him in rooms unless it’s in very general terms. Despite the principle of anonymity, everyone loves to talk, loves to gossip, and this is too big a secret for people to keep to themselves. Be careful, she said. Very careful.

  Still. There were people who knew, or thought they knew. No one had proof, but a few had seen the way they looked at each other, a few had noticed the closeness between them even when they were sitting on opposite sides of the room and even when they took great pains to avoid each other during the coffee break and after the meeting.

  ‘I’m struggling with it at the moment. I know that I have to learn acceptance. That it is what it is, and I have to accept that he can’t be with me all the time, but it’s just so bloody hard. And then I’ve got this huge audition tomorrow that I feel a bit sick about, and…’ She heaves a big sigh. ‘You see? This is what happens to me when I don’t work my programme. I just get completely overwhelmed by my life. But I’m here, and I heard what I needed to. I need to pray for the willingness to turn my will and my life over to the care of my higher power. Because ultimately I’m not in control, and everything will work out the way it’s supposed to, and I have to remember that. And I’m making a commitment to the group today to go home and start working on my step one again. I’ve been promising my sponsor for ages that I will do it, and this is my commitment to you. Anyway,’ she glances down at the timer in her hand, ‘time’s up. Thank you, everyone, for sharing, and I’m just so damned grateful I have a place that’s home and I have a place where people listen and understand.’

  Afterwards, a girl Saffron has seen only a couple of times comes up to her. She’s pretty, dressed like every other actress in LA, and something in her eyes gives the impression that she may not be entirely trustworthy.

  ‘Hi, I’m Alex,’ she says, putting her arms around Saffron and giving her a giant hug, which is still something Saffron is not entirely comfortable with, although she thinks perhaps this is her English reserve. She will happily accept hugs from friends, from colleagues in the programme whom she has known well and for years, but to have a stranger hug you so intimately never feels quite genuine to her.

  ‘I just wanted to thank you.’ Alex pulls back, but keeps hold of her hands, looking Saffron in the eye. ‘Everything you said spoke to me. It was like hearing my story, and I got so much out of your share.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Saffron says, willing herself not to judge, to find the part in Alex she could love or, at the very least, like.

  ‘So you have an audition tomorrow? That’s so exciting. What’s it for?’

  Saffron’s heart sinks. Of cou
rse. As if she expected anything different.

  ‘A movie,’ she says.

  ‘I have an audition tomorrow for a movie!’ Alex lies smoothly. ‘I bet it’s the same one. Which one are you auditioning for?’

  As if I’m stupid, Saffron thinks; but she smiles pleasantly. ‘It’s the remake of The Wizard of Oz,’ she says. ‘Spielberg’s producing it and I’m up for Dorothy.’

  ‘Me too! Well, good luck, maybe I’ll see you there,’ Alex says, and practically runs out of the door, clearly about to phone her agent to find a way of getting in on the audition. Saffron smiles to herself as she picks up her bag. Shame there is no remake of The Wizard of Oz. Feeling very unrecovered, she sniggers as she imagines Alex phoning Dreamworks, demanding to be seen.

  At home Saffron finds a message from Paul. Nothing much, he says, just caught a rerun of one of her movies on cable TV and he is thinking about her and wondering how she is. She smiles as she hears his voice and calls him back, leaving a message on his machine; then she dials Holly, and leaves a message on hers.

  She loves LA. Loves the life she has built out here, but meeting up with this huge chunk of her past has made her homesick in a way she didn’t expect. And not homesick for London – God knows she spends enough time there as it is – but homesick for friends. For real friends. Friends who aren’t rivals, aren’t pretending to be friendly to find work, aren’t judging you for how famous you are.

  She is homesick for the people who knew her when it all began. Who loved her when she was a gangly teenager with railway tracks. Who held her hair back on those nights when she had more to drink than even she could handle, spending hours with her as she knelt with her head down the toilet bowl. Those are the friends she misses. Friends like Paul, Olivia and Holly.

  Ringing Olivia, Saffron readies herself to leave another message, when Olivia picks up.

  ‘’lo?’

  ‘Olive Oil? Saffron here.’

  Olivia starts laughing. ‘God, I’d completely forgotten you ever called me Olive Oil. That’s hysterical. Where are you?’

  ‘LA. Bored. Missing England and my old friends. What are you up to?’