Second Chance

by Jane Green

  ‘He’s been texting me, but it’s obviously not the same as talking to him every day.’

  ‘What is he like?’ Anna ventures curiously, the question all of them have been dying to ask but none of them wanting to bring him up. None of them wanting to appear too uncool, too impressed, too keen.

  So Saffron tells them. She tells them first about most of the actors in Hollywood. She tells them of people who have struggled from humble beginnings, who have then made it big, have not known how to deal with the sudden fame and fortune.

  She tells them of young starlets, featured in every gossip magazine, every week, who get swept up in the Hollywood party life of drink, drugs and sex with a small coterie of wealthy playboys who seem to shuffle the women among them. She talks of how these same starlets are desperate to stay famous, yet none seem to know how to treat people nicely, to be kind, gracious, warm. None of them seem to remember that if you are not nice to people on the way up, these same people will not treat you well on the way down, for there is always a way down.

  She tells them of huge Hollywood names leading secret double lives. Some involving substance abuse; most involving affairs with partners of the same sex, signing secret contracts with naive young actors and actresses to date them, and sometimes marry them, while carrying on the front for years as they sleep their way through the grips and handlers on the sets of their movies.

  She tells them of how lost she felt when she first got there. That she thought she was a good judge of people, knew how people worked, trusted that when someone said something was black, it was black.

  But she learnt that in Los Angeles nothing and no one is quite what they seem. She learnt that she would be called back to audition again and again, promised a part, told she was the perfect fit, that they had wanted her and only her, were thrilled she would be in the movie, only to open Variety a few days later and find Drew Barrymore had the part. No one ever bothered to tell her; they had clearly been lying through their teeth, which came as naturally to them as waking up in the morning.

  She learnt never to get excited about a movie until the contracts arrived at her agent’s office and were signed. She learnt not to trust anyone, not the actress friends she thought she had, who would have dropped her friendship in a second for a part, and not the good-looking producers and directors, who subtly – oh so subtly – offered to make her huge if she would just do something for them.

  She tells them that integrity is something she has found to be in short supply and that when she went to that first AA meeting, it wasn’t just that it stopped her from drinking, saved her life, it was that for the first time in LA she found real people. People who may have been in the same business as she was, but were living honestly, had the humility to know they were no better nor worse than anyone else they met, were able to say what they meant and to do so lovingly and kindly.

  Not everyone, she says. AA meetings are filled with wannabe actors and actresses who have heard that this is the place to get work, the place to make contacts, to see and be seen. But you quickly learn who is real and who is not; and the wannabes, the fake alcoholics, are quietly left alone by the members who need this programme.

  She tells them about Pearce. About how honest he is in the meetings and how brave she thinks he is when everyone knows him, anyone could go to the press.

  ‘But it’s Alcoholics Anonymous,’ Anna says. ‘Who would go to the press?’

  ‘It happens,’ Saffron says. ‘There are breaches all the time.’

  She tells them that one of the traditions is not to gossip, and yet she has lost count of the times she has overheard members gossiping about others, even gossiping about Pearce.

  She tells them that he is a kind man, that he genuinely thinks of others, treats others as he himself wants to be treated. The money he makes – the millions from his movies – he describes as a blessing. He gives a huge proportion away each year to charities he supports, but quietly, often anonymously.

  She describes him as funny. Gentle. Sweet. She says he is the wisest man she has ever known, with a sensitivity and perceptiveness that is almost female, and yet he is also the most male man she has ever known.

  She says that, above all else, she considers him her best friend. That whatever he is doing or wherever he may be in the world, he has always been there for her when she needs him.

  And finally there is his marriage. A business arrangement, Saffron explains. He has too much to lose if he leaves. They have been waiting for the right time.

  ‘Wouldn’t now be the right time?’ Paul ventures.

  ‘One would think so, right?’ Saffron snorts to hide her fear. Because, of course, that is exactly what she thinks and has always thought, what a secret part of her has often fantasized about: if their relationship were to come out in the press, what reason could there possibly be for him to stay?

  ‘Who wants to play Monopoly?’ Anna pulls Daisy’s hat off as they all stomp inside after their nature walk, Oliver swinging a plastic bag half full with feathers, stones and pebbles they found down by the creek.

  ‘So much for you helping me,’ Paul says, coming into the kitchen and smiling as he watches Anna crouch down to help Daisy off with her coat. So lovely to see her with children, so clear that she is one of those women whose maternal instinct is just so entirely natural. What a horrible irony it is that she is not able to have her own children.

  Paul doesn’t realize that it is easier to be the perfect mother with children who are not your own. That children you have temporarily do not push your buttons in the way your own children do. That when those children aren’t actually yours, you are not exhausted or stressed or distracted when you are with them.

  Holly is a good mother, but she rarely does what Anna is doing with the children this afternoon. She rarely gets down on her hands and knees and plays with them. That is Frauke’s job, she tries to tell herself. Surely. She is around for her children all the time, but rarely this past year, struggling with the depths of her unhappiness, has she been truly present.

  Everyone agrees that Holly is a wonderful mother, but Holly carries around a burden of guilt because this past year she has not been the mother she could be nor the mother she once was.

  In withdrawing from life, and from her marriage, she has also, she realizes now, withdrawn from her children at a time when they needed her most. She has realized this since being here. She is already feeling lighter, happier, having nothing to worry about other than the mindless jobs of painting or sanding or tiling, her children delighted to be working away with her, by her side.

  And lucky Daisy and Oliver have Anna today, who is present in every way. Who has decided she has nothing else to do except play with Daisy and Oliver. If Daisy wants to make beds out of twigs she has found, Anna will help her. If Oliver wants to crack open a geode he thinks he has found, she will help him. She will not run up to her computer to check her emails every few minutes. Nor will she shush them while she’s on the phone. She will not stick them in front of the television while she makes supper, to get some peace and quiet, nor will she shout at them to stop fighting.

  Because they don’t fight. They have a grown-up’s undivided attention. Why on earth would they fight?

  Holly and Will, Olivia and Saffron are standing at the edge of the pedestrian section in town, cobbled streets beckoning invitingly. Will needs to find new headphones for his iPod, and Saffron wants to look at the touristy shops on the other side.

  ‘Let’s split up,’ Saffron suggests, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. ‘Holly, why don’t you go with Will, and Olivia can come with me?’

  ‘Great!’ Will says. ‘Let’s meet back here in an hour.’

  Olivia laughs as they walk off. ‘That was very nice of you, but you know they have absolutely no idea that we know.’

  ‘I figure a young couple in lurrve need a little time together.’ Saffron laughs too.

  ‘Do you think they’re in love?’

  ‘They’re d
efinitely in lust. Does that count? Did you see, in the car, she kept touching him when she thought no one was looking. Oh God,’ says Saffron with a sigh. ‘I miss that. I miss Pearce.’

  ‘It sounds like you have something very special.’

  Saffron stops and turns to look at Olivia. ‘Thank you.’ She smiles as she blinks back tears. ‘Thank you for saying that. I think we do.’ Turning back, she links her arm through Olivia’s as they walk. ‘And what about you, Olive? So far you’ve said little about the father. Isn’t there more to the story now? Can’t you make things work?’

  ‘God, I just don’t know. Sometimes I lie in bed and I think that maybe there’s a way. But, Saff, this was a fling, nothing more. I heard from him once, and honestly, even if I thought there was a smidgen of a chance he might be interested, I just can’t see how it could work.’

  ‘I still can’t quite believe you managed to get yourself pregnant. Aren’t you, aren’t we all, old enough to know better?’

  Olivia shakes her head, almost in disbelief at her stupidity. ‘I know. In this day and age I can’t believe it either, but it was about a minute after my period stopped. I know this sounds ridiculous but I didn’t even think it could happen then.’

  ‘Hmmm. I seem to recall human biology never was your best subject.’

  ‘Oh thanks. That was largely due to you looking at me and making me giggle every time they talked about the human reproductive system.’

  ‘That wasn’t me. That was Holly!’ Saffron is indignant.

  ‘It was both of you. I hadn’t thought about that for years. That dragon Mrs Steener, who used to tower over us and bellow…’

  ‘Mrs Steener came to see me in a play I was in after I left university. She was really nice actually. It was the first time I realized that teachers were human beings too.’

  Olivia gives her a sideways look. ‘At St Catherine’s? Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure. I kept in touch with Jane Fellowes for years, although I haven’t actually spoken to her for about a year.’

  ‘Miss Fellowes? The music teacher? That’s completely mad. Why would you do that?’

  ‘I really liked her. She was having a raging affair with Martin Hanover, you know. For years.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Olivia is truly shocked. ‘Miss Fellowes and Mr Hanover? How did we not know that?’

  ‘They had to be enormously discreet. The headmistress would have had both their heads on a platter if she’d known.’

  ‘God. But Mr Hanover! I had a bit of a crush on him myself.’

  ‘I think everyone did. Not that he was exactly crush-worthy, but as the only man in a sea of young females with raging hormones…’

  ‘… beggars can’t be choosers and all that.’ Olivia laughs.

  ‘I know. You do see how these mad affairs happen, with male teachers jumping into bed with dangerous adolescents. All-girl schools are just hotbeds of yearning and lustful fantasies. Anyway, back to the subject in hand…’

  ‘You were the one who digressed.’

  ‘I did.’ Saffron nods. ‘And I apologize. So, no protection even in these dangerous days of STDs and all kinds of nastiness, but tell me more about this Fred. And more to the point, where is Fred?’

  ‘He’s in Boston. Back home. He’s gorgeous, Saffron. Exactly the kind of man I would have fallen in love with when I was younger, but he’s young. Thirty-three, and it really was just a fling. There’s no reason for him to know.’

  ‘You don’t think he has a right to know, given that it is his child?’

  ‘Saffron, I don’t see the point in freaking him out. I’m never going to see him again. Why ruin his life or give him this information when I’m not going to have this child? Why bother giving him the heartache? My child, my body.’ She sighs deeply. ‘My decision.’

  ‘So… you haven’t thought about Paul and Anna’s offer, then?’

  ‘I have. It’s about all I have been thinking about. I just don’t know. One minute, I feel I have to do what’s right for me, however selfish, and I can’t face going through a pregnancy, particularly feeling as awful as this, and for what? Then the next minute, I think about Paul and Anna and how hard they’ve been trying, how desperately they want a baby, and the most wonderful thing in the world would be for me to give them mine. I keep jumping from one to the other. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do.’

  Saffron puts an arm around her shoulders and squeezes for a second. ‘Whatever decision you make it will be the right one for you. It has to be the right one for you. I understand you wanting to make Paul and Anna happy, and I think it’s probably the most selfless, giving thing you can do for a friend, but you would have to be fine with it, have to be fully reconciled, I would think; and, if you’re not, then you know what your decision is.’

  They walk for a while in silence until they reach a gift shop that is obviously doing a brisk trade in catering to American tourists. The window is filled with a miniature village, tiny thatched Cotswold cottages, some of which light up, a couple of which play music.

  Saffron yelps with laughter. ‘Oh joy!’ She stands outside the shop, smiling with delight. ‘Aren’t they the most ghastly things you’ve ever seen? My American friends will love them!’

  Olivia turns to look at her in horror. ‘Because they’re ghastly?’

  ‘Absolutely. No one I know back in Los Angeles has any taste. They assume they can buy it by employing the best decorators, so all their houses look exactly the same, and they’re all mad Anglophiles – they’d go crazy over this shit.’

  They go inside and Saffron quickly sweeps almost a dozen assorted houses onto the counter. The young girl smiling shyly and serving them keeps stealing looks at Saffron. At first she thinks she must be someone she knows, there is something so familiar about her, but she doesn’t know anyone that posh, has never known anyone that posh, and as she watches the two women walk around the shop, she realizes who it is.

  Saffron Armitage! The film star! For the publicity has served to elevate Saffron’s status enormously in the eyes of the world at large, particularly naive shop girls in the Cotswolds.

  ‘You’ll never guess what!’ she whispers on the phone to her best friend when they have gone. ‘You’ll never guess who just came into the shop! Saffron Armitage!’

  ‘You’re joking!’ her friend says. ‘You should call the papers! The Sun is printing a number asking for her whereabouts! Go on! You could make yourself some money.’

  The girl laughs. ‘Nah,’ she says. ‘I’m too shy. Anyway, she was nice. I don’t want to mess up her life. Still, a bit bloody exciting. Not too often we get a film star in the shop. I wish I’d asked for her autograph.’

  On the other side of town, Holly and Will sit in a tea shop. They are surrounded by elderly women with blue and pink rinses, sipping English breakfast tea out of delicate floral-printed, mismatched china cups, a few chips here and there, which nobody seems to mind, slightly tarnished silver trays on each table, piled high with tea sandwiches, tiny cakes and lopsided scones studded with dried-out raisins.

  Will ordered the tea, but neither of them is eating anything, neither of them having the slightest appetite today, too high on each other to do anything other than gaze, kiss, touch.

  Even now, tucked away at a table in the corner, they are kissing. Like teenagers, utterly oblivious to the rest of the people in the tea shop, some of whom are openly staring at them with envy, big smiles on their faces, others tutting disapprovingly and trying not to look.

  Holly and Will don’t care. Their passion doesn’t have to be hidden any more. This is the first time since last night they have been able to touch each other openly, kiss each other openly, lay heads on shoulders, no holds barred.

  ‘I can’t believe this has happened to me,’ Holly says, unable to stop smiling. Unable to stop taking Will’s face in her hands and planting soft kisses all over it – on his forehead, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks.

  Will is ado
ring being adored. As the apple of his mother’s eye, he has always adored being adored. But he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little apprehensive about this. Holly isn’t just anyone, she’s Holly. Holly Mac! Almost family, not to mention the fact that she’s married.

  He got involved, seriously involved – the flings through work don’t count – with a married woman once before. He had thought she was on the verge of finalizing a divorce but, in fact, she had only recently separated, was still in couples’ counselling, had a husband who thought they were going to be mending the marriage.

  Will found himself involved in the divorce. He was named in the petition, had to deal with a woman who wasn’t, as he had thought, fun and clever and independent, but one who coped with the stress of the divorce by crying and screaming and clinging. He wanted to leave, but he felt he was in too deep, didn’t know how to extricate himself.

  He swore he’d never go down that road again.

  Yet here he is with Holly. Object of his teenage fantasies, a fantasy he never dreamt he’d fulfil.

  Although isn’t it true that you should never fulfil your fantasies because the reality rarely measures up? As much as he adores Holly, as much as he has loved this friendship they have built, he is unprepared for this outpouring of affection, unprepared for the way the floodgates of adoration seemed to burst open in Holly last night.

  Anyone who has known Holly from when she was young would describe her as passionate. Holly, much like Saffron, would love or she would hate. She, much like Saffron, saw the world in black and white. She was luckier than Saffron in that she didn’t have the addictive gene. Or perhaps she wasn’t luckier. Perhaps that would have helped.

  In marrying Marcus, Holly tried to change who she was. Passion hadn’t ever served her well, she decided. She wasn’t going to be black and white any more. She was going to live in shades of grey. So much healthier, she thought. Now, she decided, she was thinking like a grown-up. So she suppressed her passion. Neither loved nor hated. Mostly she just existed.

  And now, since last night, she feels as if Will has awoken feelings in her she didn’t know she still had. She trusts him enough to be honest with him about those feelings, never thinking that he might not feel the same way. Never thinking that Maggie didn’t tell her to be careful with Will because Maggie doesn’t love her son, but because Maggie knows that the one thing guaranteed to send Will running for the hills, quite literally for that matter – Thailand, New Zealand, Vietnam – is adoration.