Second Chance

by Jane Green

  ‘You’re keeping the baby?’ Saffron is the only one who dares to ask.

  ‘I have to.’ Tears well up in Olivia’s eyes. ‘I mean, I don’t know about adoption, or Paul and Anna…’ She turns to look at them as the tears spill out. ‘I’m so sorry, I know you want me to make a decision but I just can’t do that, not yet. The only thing I do know is that I can’t have an abortion. Not now.’

  Paul looks at Anna, then back at Olivia. ‘We understand,’ he says, walking over to Anna and putting his arm around her. ‘It’s your baby and your choice. Just know that we’re here if that’s what you decide.’

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ They are about to turn into the driveway when they see cars lined up and down, parked on the grass, men running around, stepladders everywhere.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Saffron whispers, just as someone turns and shouts, pointing at the car. ‘They’ve found me.’

  ‘Saffron! Saffron!’ Dozens of paparazzi swarm the car, light blubs flashing in the windows as Saffron buries her head.

  ‘What the hell do I do?’ Paul, in his panic, has frozen, not knowing whether to try to reverse out of there, or whether to keep going. Either way, he’s convinced he’ll run at least six people over.

  ‘Let’s just get inside,’ Saffron says. ‘They’re not going anywhere. I guess it was too good to last.’

  ‘Olivia! Are you okay?’ They get inside, slamming the door in the face of what feels like a pack of wolves, and Holly gives Olivia a huge hug as Will explains he’s covered the windows with sheets, that they just about managed to get reception on the mobile phone, and the police are on their way.

  Paul’s face is grim as he directs everybody into the kitchen, then he goes to the front door, opens it wide and waits for the photographers to stop yelling for Saffron, to quieten down enough to hear him speak.

  ‘You are standing on private property,’ he says calmly and clearly. ‘The police are on their way, and I would suggest you all get off my property immediately, or you will be arrested for trespassing.’

  ‘Where is she?’ someone shouts. ‘We just want one shot,’ another says. ‘A quick comment,’ says someone else.

  ‘You have two minutes to get off my property,’ Paul says and, grumbling and swearing, the paparazzi start moving their equipment to the top of the driveway.

  ‘Will it make a difference?’ Olivia asks.

  ‘Not much,’ Saffron says. ‘They’ve all got these super-powerful zoom lenses. The best thing to do is exactly what Will did – cover up the windows.’

  ‘It’s just like a movie,’ Olivia says. ‘Now we’re all prisoners in the house.’

  ‘Saff,’ Holly says quietly, pulling her aside and taking her hand. ‘There’s someone upstairs to see you.’

  ‘What? Who?’ Saffron is immediately suspicious.

  ‘You need to go,’ Holly says. ‘Your room.’

  Saffron walks upstairs, shooting quizzical looks at the others, who shrug, and when she has disappeared Olivia looks at Holly and raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Who?’

  Holly starts to smile. She had been sitting at the kitchen table with Will, both of them sharing their concern for Olivia, when they heard the noise of the first cars arriving. She was stunned when she looked out of the window and saw all the commotion. Stunned but unsurprised. A part of her had been waiting for this. And then she heard a frenzy outside and, as she watched, a black Jaguar with tinted windows pulled up and Pearce Webster climbed out, striding quickly and purposefully towards the front door, ignoring the shrieks and shouts and the frenzy that his arrival inspired.

  ‘Shit,’ she whispered, and Will turned towards her questioningly.

  ‘Mummy!’ Oliver piped up. ‘You just said a bad word.’

  ‘Look!’ She pulled Will over to see. He immediately ran to the front door and opened it, pulling Pearce in and slamming the door in the face of the snappers.

  ‘I’m Will.’ He extended a hand as Holly quivered in the corner. She’d never been in the presence of someone so famous before, and even though she tried to think of him as merely Saffron’s boyfriend, or lover, the fact was she had seen every film he’d ever been in and read almost every piece of gossip ever written about him, and here he was! Two feet in front of her!

  ‘And I’m Pearce. Good to meet you,’ he said, shaking Will’s hand, then he turned towards Holly.

  ‘Hello.’ She blushed like an idiot. ‘I’m Holly. These are my children, Daisy and Oliver.’

  Pearce was so… ordinary. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. He came into the kitchen and sat down as Holly made tea. He asked questions about the house, about them, and then, finally, about Saffron.

  ‘She’s not good,’ Holly said. ‘I mean, she’s great, obviously. She’s Saffron. But she’s drinking.’

  ‘Out-of-control drinking?’

  ‘Shit-faced,’ Holly said, nodding.

  Pearce shook his head, lost in thought. ‘Do you know if she’s called her sponsor?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Holly said. ‘I just know that we all feel lost. None of us knows what to do.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Pearce said. ‘You aren’t supposed to know. That’s why I’m here.’

  Saffron doesn’t say a word. As she walks in Pearce rises from the bed he was sitting on in the darkened room, and she flies into his arms.

  They stand there, hugging each other tightly for a long time, as the photographers’ shouts recede. Nothing else matters except these two people, locked together in this darkened room.

  ‘You’ve got some friends,’ Pearce whispers, kissing her hair, her cheeks, her nose, her mouth. ‘They’re worried about you. They called.’

  ‘You’re here!’ Saffron wipes the tears off her cheeks as she pulls back to look at him. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. Oh God. The press. Everyone will know.’

  Pearce shrugs. ‘They know. They got me on the highway and now they have pictures of me walking into the house. Fuck it.’

  ‘What about Marjie?’

  ‘I just had to be here,’ Pearce says. ‘I couldn’t bear hearing that you were struggling. We’ll figure it out.’

  ‘A day at a time, right?’ She smiles up at him.

  ‘Exactly.’ He pulls her into him, marvelling at how perfectly her head fits under his chin. ‘A day at a time. I have the Big Book downstairs. Would you be willing to have a meeting? Right now? With me?’

  Saffron looks up at him, feeling for the first time in days that she can breathe, that everything will be all right. ‘Yes.’ She exhales loudly. ‘It’s exactly what I need.’

  Chapter Thirty

  The first flakes come quickly, swirling slowly over the Connecticut countryside, twirling around trees, floating softly down to the grass. Softer, fatter, wetter, the snow – flakes fall faster and faster, no longer swirling, now simply settling on the ground, turning the trees and barns white, landing on the tongues of overjoyed children bundled up in snowsuits and sent outside to play in the first snow of the season.

  They are warning drivers to stay inside. Warning that this first snowstorm will be a big one, that unless it is absolutely necessary, people should stay inside.

  However, there is a small contingent of cars that will not be turning back. They are crawling along the highways, slowly and carefully, on their way to the Mayflower Inn for a birthday party. Some are making their way along the Sawmill Parkway from New York. Others are on their way from JFK, having flown in from Los Angeles, London, Gloucestershire.

  They are gathering in Washington, Connecticut, for Saffron’s birthday party. Her fortieth. People she hasn’t seen for years. People she hasn’t seen for months. Some since a gathering in a yet-to-be-renovated barn in deepest, darkest Gloucestershire.

  *

  ‘Holly!’ Saffron squeals as she walks out of the Tap Room, turning into the lobby and seeing her friends. She rushes across, feet flying noiselessly over the carpet, flinging her arms around Holly, then holding her at arm’s length to loo
k at her.

  ‘It’s so good to see you.’ She squeezes her again. ‘I’m so happy you’re all here.’ She turns and hugs the others, stepping back to wipe the tears from her eyes.

  ‘I cannot believe we are here,’ Anna says, looking at the grand staircase behind them, the antique Persian rugs on the floor, the whole air of faded elegance. ‘I mean, I cannot believe you sent us tickets for your birthday.’ She turns back to Saffron. ‘Organized a plane… This place is gorgeous, and I just…’

  ‘She feels guilty.’ Paul grins. ‘She doesn’t think you ought to be paying for everything. I think she wants to pay for the room.’

  ‘Darling girl.’ Saffron links her arm through Anna’s as she walks her through the lobby to a small, cosy living room to one side, with a blazing fire and shelves lined with books. ‘Between Pearce and me, we get paid a fortune, and frankly I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than gather my friends together for my thirty-seventh birthday.’

  ‘Don’t you mean fortieth?’ Anna is confused. ‘I thought you were all in the same year at school.’

  ‘Sssh.’ Saffron holds a finger to her lips. ‘As far as everyone here is concerned, I’m thirty-seven. Hollywood birthdays always have a few years shaved off.’

  ‘Everyone?’ Holly raises an eyebrow. ‘It’s not just us, then?’

  ‘God, no!’ Saffron says. ‘It’s all the people we love. Close friends and family. We’ve flown people in from England, LA, there are even a couple from Australia.’

  ‘I take it things are great with you and Pearce?’ Anna grins. ‘I just keep thinking of that whole fiasco when it first came out and you came to stay in the country. You did not expect, well, this, did you?’

  Saffron laughs. ‘I didn’t expect anything. I was too bloody drunk. But no, I didn’t think he’d leave Marjie and, even if he did, I didn’t expect us to be together.’

  ‘You look so happy.’ Holly looks at her and sighs as Saffron tears up again.

  ‘Okay,’ she leans forward and whispers, ‘we’re not supposed to be saying anything until tonight, but you’re not here for my birthday…’

  Anna squeals and gasps, knowing what she’s going to say.

  ‘… we’re getting married!’

  Shouts of delight and hugs all around, interrupted only by the sound of footsteps approaching and a baby crying.

  ‘That is Tommy!’ Anna leaps up and goes out into the lobby to get him as Olivia appears in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘He desperately needs a nap but he won’t go down.’

  ‘Do you want me to take him for a walk?’ Anna says, rocking the baby up and down on her hip as he starts to gurgle.

  ‘Would you?’ An exhausted and grateful Olivia sinks into the sofa and reaches for a cup of tea from the tray that has just appeared with a silent, smiling waitress. ‘This place feels like Buckingham Palace.’ Her eyes are wide as the waitress disappears.

  ‘I know!’ Saffron smiles. ‘And the whole place is ours for the weekend. Now that you’re here, I’ve got some news,’ and soon the only sound in the room is the excited chatter of a group of old friends who want to know all the details, with nothing left out.

  It is a road Saffron never expected to walk. How long ago was it, those days when she fell apart, hit rock bottom when she had vowed never to hit rock bottom again. Nights of drinking and blacking out, days of vomiting and nausea, Pearce staying with her, holding her hand, promising he’d never leave her.

  Then rehab. Three months. AA meetings all day, therapy, group therapy. Her family and friends coming in and telling her what she was like when she was drunk, the shame of being in that dark, lonely hole again. So lonely that nothing and no one could fill her up.

  She finished rehab and walked out with head held high. A new sponsor, a new resolve. For the past year she has been to a meeting every day, and Pearce has been right by her side.

  He finally stood up to his manager, his agents, and said screw his career. He wasn’t going to pretend any more. He wasn’t going to continue to stay in a marriage that was dead. It was against everything he believed in.

  He moved into his beach house in Malibu, and Saffron joined him a month later. The press drove them crazy. There were times Saffron didn’t think she could do it, didn’t think she could cope with the loss of normality, because there was nothing about her life that was the same.

  She couldn’t run to the corner store for a pint of milk, couldn’t dash out in the evenings to grab a movie and a burger with Pearce. They tried, but even if they managed to escape the press, they’d be sitting in a restaurant trying to pretend that the buzz wasn’t singing in their ears, that they didn’t know that all eyes were upon them, that people’s heads kept swivelling towards them. People constantly coming over with words of praise or words of criticism. It didn’t much matter; there was no such thing as privacy any more.

  The job offers started pouring in. Saffron has worked constantly this past year, and between recovery, Pearce and work, she hasn’t had time for much else. She hasn’t seen her friends since that time in the country, but knew she couldn’t get married and not have them here.

  Married! Saffron, married! Who would have thought? Pearce proposed on the beach one night. It should have been romantic but the dogs had been swimming in the water and had soaked them both, and it was freezing. When Pearce put his arms around her and said he loved her and wanted to marry her, she said, teeth chattering, ‘Fine, can we just go inside?’

  He asked her again inside, and this time she burst into tears, crying so hard she forgot to say yes. The third time he asked, she said yes.

  Pearce is planning to relay the story tonight during his speech.

  It has taken months of planning to keep this secret, to keep the press away. They have taken over the inn for the weekend, have had everyone involved sign confidentiality agreements, have managed, thus far, to keep it private, largely by not telling even their friends and family, by gathering them here under false pretences.

  Pearce comes into the living room to greet everyone, and Holly watches Pearce and Saffron together with a smile on her face, for their joy is infectious, their love for one another is genuine and real. And as she watches, her mind wanders over the ocean to her little Georgian house in Maida Vale.

  She isn’t divorced, and it has not been easy, largely because Marcus has made it as difficult as he possibly can. He is, just as she suspected, unwilling to pay alimony, unwilling to pay a decent amount of child support, unwilling to do anything because, as he puts it, ‘You wanted this divorce, why should I have to pay?’

  The only times when she has felt really low and wondered if she has the ability to do this on her own have been when she has been ill, but thankfully those early days of staying in bed all weekend when the children were at their dad’s, those days when her headaches were so blinding she thought her head was going to split open, have passed.

  Marcus has kept the house. She thought she would mind, but, in fact, she found she just wanted to close the chapter and move on. They went through the inventory of furniture in the house, all of which had been chosen by Holly, and Holly found there was little she wanted.

  Marcus demanded he keep the master bed, and Holly had laughed at the irony. Who would want the marital bed from an unhappy marriage? But then she remembered the bed was a Hastens, a bed made of natural materials from Sweden, a bed that cost more than some people’s annual salaries. Of course he’d want the bloody bed, she thought, if nothing else just to bring up the subject at dinner parties–‘Oh, you only have a Dux? I have a Hastens, it’s glorious.’

  The best thing she ever did, her greatest moment, was spending the afternoon at Dream Beds Superstore and choosing her own mattress, her own bed.

  Of course the worst thing she did, she now realizes, was buy a king size. When she was married, she couldn’t think of having anything smaller than a king, just in case she should wake up in the middle of the night and become aware of Marcus. Now, t
hough, she wishes the bed was smaller, wishes she could cuddle up to Jonathan, finds herself frequently waking up squeezed against him in the middle of the bed, his arm across her chest, her legs across his.

  Jonathan. Ah Jonathan. Just thinking about him, she smiles. I love him, she whispers to herself over and over as she goes about her day, delighting in the joy of loving, of having found someone who not only adores her, but who she, in turn, adores.

  He is her neighbour, three doors up. Such a cliché, she smiles to herself, too good to be true. He came and introduced himself on the day she moved in, returning twenty minutes later with his toolbox to put up shelves, pictures, flat-pack furniture for the kids’ rooms that had been delivered from Ikea.

  She thought he was lovely, but nothing else… perhaps just a smattering of intrigue. He has two children, the same ages as Daisy and Oliver, who are with him every other weekend and one night during the week. They started doing things together at the weekends, just because both were lonely, and the kids liked one another.

  She didn’t think about him other than to think how much she liked seeing him when she did, and soon she would look for his car as she returned home. When she heard his voice on her answerphone, she would smile – there was something about him that made her feel good. Happy.

  It has been five months since they kissed. They had both been in to kiss Daisy and Abigail goodnight – Abigail was having her first sleepover – and as they stood outside the door in the darkened corridor, smiling at each other as they listened to their girls happily chatting away, Jonathan kissed her.

  Five months on, it has been five months of the happiest, healthiest relationship Holly has ever had – a relationship that surpasses anything she might have dreamt of. She is constantly astounded by their kindness to each other, the sense that each of them values the other, and the appreciation they have for one another.

  This, she finally realizes, after all these years, is love.