The Book of Second Chances

by Katherine Slee

  Antoine has told me I can stay for as long as I want, or at least until I finish my book. He isn’t charging me a penny in rent and sleeps on the sofa, while I get the (rather lumpy) bed. All I have to give in return is my agreement to go along with the lie he has told—that we are, in fact, engaged to be married. He says we can have a massive row whenever I feel the time has come for me to leave. That he will accept full responsibility for cheating on me with a woman called Sophia. He is obsessed with Sophia Loren, and often steals my block of mascara to paint flicks on his upper lids, then marches up and down the full length of the apartment (which takes twenty steps at most), muttering indecipherable Italian, which I suspect is nothing more than swear words and nonsense.

  I’m not used to such a way of life. With no responsibility, no demands on my time. Free to come and go as I please. To fill my days with long, lazy walks along the seafront. Staring at the mixture of boats—some old, some new, some battered and worn, others pristine and clinical.

  Only I’m not very good at doing nothing. Clearly I won’t end up a trophy wife, sipping champagne on one of those yachts with a sugar daddy for a husband (Antoine, on the other hand, would slot into that lifestyle without so much as a moment’s hesitation). So I’ve found myself a job, waitressing in the bar of one of the overpriced hotels along the coast. All I have to do is clear away empty glasses, smile at all the wealthy Americans and Englishmen who are holidaying here before heading back to the banks of New York and London. Of course, the work will dry up now the summer is fading fast, but Antoine assures me it won’t be a problem as there’s always someone here with money to spend.

  Part of me is afraid to ask how he knows this. Part of me is afraid to ask about where he goes the nights he doesn’t come home. Because I love him, but in a completely innocent way. Like siblings who bicker and fight but then laugh so much it makes my belly hurt.

  He has been drawing me. I caught him the other day, watching me as I slept. He told me he’s fascinated with the way our faces change when we’re no longer trying to hide. When we are back to being our true selves, not constrained by the social niceties we project every second of every day.

  He is putting together an exhibition and I fear I’m going to be at the center of it all, but he won’t let me in the studio (it’s nothing more than a lean-to out back, which reminds me of my dad’s old shed at the bottom of the garden). Says he cannot show anyone until it is ready. In the meantime, he’s been charming all the local galleries, trying to find someone to take a chance on the complete unknown.

  He did let me in the studio once, when he was working on a commission for some grande dame who took a shine to him in Paris, asked him to send her something fabulous, as long as it wasn’t a nude. He painted a group of men playing boules in the small park just behind the harbor. All flat caps, linen shirts and braces, with rolled-up cigarettes between their teeth and a lifetime of memories, of the horrors they’d witnessed during the war. Said it was his way of putting the truth on her wall, even if she was too rich and privileged to ever truly understand what that was.

  I sat and watched him paint, which is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The way he allows it to consume him, to become a part of him. Trusting that the picture, the idea, he holds in his mind, will be freed by the stroke of brush on canvas.

  It was his idea for me to type with my eyes shut. To push away all the doubts, to allow the muse to flourish. So every night after my shift at the hotel, I have been coming back here to type, with a bottle of red wine, some cheese, and a baguette to keep me going. Only there was something about tonight. About the fullness of the moon, surrounded by stars reflected back tenfold into the sea, that made my mind too distracted, too sad, to write.

  Part of me knows I came here to try and spite Noah. Because he’s jealous of Antoine, and I let it happen, encouraged it even. He so rarely showed me how he felt, let alone said it. All those nights wrapped up in each other’s arms. Sharing our bodies, sharing our desires. You’d think that would be how to get close to someone. But more fool me, because every time, every single time, I would wake to find him gone. Discover him the next evening flirting with someone new.

  Gigi never liked him. She’s arriving next week and has already written to say she wants me to go with her, back to Italy. She’s met someone, a chef who has made her fall in love with food all over again. Claims she’s worried about getting fat and him no longer fancying her, but that’s such a ridiculous idea and so I told her that if he can’t see beyond all her curves and lips, to the incredible person she is, then he doesn’t deserve for her to love him.

  I don’t know if I will go with her. I don’t know if I left Paris simply because it reminds me of Noah, or if I have changed enough to be ready to venture somewhere new. I feel so different to the shy girl who stepped off the train in London. The one with eyes like saucers as I looked all around, so naïve, so trusting.

  But part of me wants to stay here. To hide my loneliness away in the hilltops with my fake fiancé, books, and French wine.

  Last night, Antoine cooked me paella, insisting that I would love it, even the strips of squid (they were delicious, and even better when dipped in garlic mayonnaise). He was telling me about how jellyfish change color according to whatever it is they have eaten—his brain is like an enormous vault of information, even he can’t remember where he’s learnt it all.

  I asked him if there were jellyfish in the paella and he swatted at my hand, told me no, he’d been talking to someone who wants to sponsor his work, his passion, who also knew a lot about the creatures of the sea. Of course I wanted to know who this mysterious benefactor was, and what he wanted in return, but Antoine offered up no more than a sly smile, which told me everything and more.

  He needs to be careful. I need to be careful for him. Because the world is changing, but not fast enough, and there are people who I fear would not be so accepting of his ways, even here. Perhaps Gigi and I could stay a while longer, keep him safe from prying eyes and minds. For although he is beautiful, and although he may be quite possibly the smartest person I will ever meet, I know all too well that love can make you do stupid, reckless things.

  CMR

  13

  COCKEREL

  Gallus gallus domesticus

  “Shit,” Tyler said, looking at his watch, pacing back and forth, staring once again at the “Closed” sign on the gallery door.

  “It’s Sunday,” Emily whispered. She couldn’t believe they had been so stupid not to check whether a museum would be open on a Sunday.

  “He might not even be here,” Tyler said, facing her, hands on hips and a look in his eyes she couldn’t translate.

  “You Googled him.” She pushed at his chest, kicked at her suitcase, was tempted to pick up his guitar and smash it against the wall of the museum, again and again until it splintered beyond repair.

  Seven hours, she thought to herself. Seven hours on a train and then another two on a sweltering bus, trapped by the stench of men who seemed to forget what water and soap were for. She should have stayed in Paris.

  She could have visited the Louvre, discovered some more of where it was her grandmother spent her first summer away from home. Or gone back to the art shop, bought some supplies, then sat in the Jardin des Tuileries and drawn all that she could see. Why couldn’t she have stayed a few days more, walked all the way up to Sacre Coeur, wandered around Montmartre where so many artists before her once lived?

  Because there was an invisible egg timer in the back of her mind, slowly pouring out grains of sand, each one representing another moment that she would no longer have to get to the end of her so-called adventure.

  The idea of it all, that she could even contemplate staying in Paris, terrified her. But there was a small part of her, a voice that had been ignored for oh-so-long, the one that had been trying to get her to pay attention to herself, to her secrets and dreams, which was shouting a little louder, asking Emily to remember what it felt like to experience
something new.

  “You’re right.” Tyler sighed as he leant against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Emily had forgotten about this side of him, the side which looked for penitence even when it wasn’t due. The boy who was so adept at making people feel sorry for him, despite all the advantages he possessed.

  It’s Sunday, she thought again. A day of rest. One for roast beef with all the trimmings, the smell of which would hit them as they opened the back door on their return from church with the bells still ringing clear and true. A day for long walks along the beach, sharp winds in winter to blow all the cobwebs away, as her grandmother used to say, then back to sit and tackle the crossword with a mug of tea and a pile of homemade cookies.

  Except they didn’t taste the same without her. Nothing tasted, or sounded, or felt the same since she had died. Even before that, when she was given her final diagnosis, decided to forgo further treatment, chose instead to go graciously, whatever the hell that meant.

  What were her Sundays now, other than a mess of thoughts she had no idea what to do with? And where did all the days go? How did it come to the end of another week without her even noticing?

  “Wait here,” Tyler said, and she watched with a tilt of her head as he picked up their suitcases. “I’ll drop the bags at the hotel, then we can go and grab something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Emily heard her muttered response, berating herself for acting like a petulant child. But he was the one who had insisted on leaving when they did. Tyler had been the one to book a train ticket without even asking if it was okay with her. He was the one in such a hurry to leave Paris and now they were here, in another town where her grandmother had once lived, long before Emily was born.

  Retracing her steps, Emily followed the narrow street out toward a harbor lined with designer stores and overpriced restaurants. Beyond the super yachts, she could just make out the Maures mountains, thought how much quieter life would be over there.

  What made you stay? she wondered as she walked along the quayside, looked up to watch the clouds roll by. She saw a handful of birds that dipped and turned through the blue and followed them as they flew up and over the harbor wall. In the distance she could see a round stone structure, on top of which was an unflagged ship’s mast.

  Two rusted anchors were laid together on the rocks that separated land from sea. The horizon was lined with boats, and overhead a plane was leaving a line of white as it headed north. Climbing across the rocks, she sat, took off her shoes, and stared out at nothing at all.

  Why am I here? she asked all over again as she tried to figure out what it was her grandmother wanted her to see, to understand, about that specific part of her life. Why had she sent her pages from a diary that Emily had no idea even existed, instead of simply telling her everything in person, before she died?

  She imagined the ghost of a life once lived, somewhere within this place. A young woman with a bruised heart, seeking shelter with a man who loved her in the safest possible way.

  It was about him. The thought came to her, pure and simple. The first book her grandmother ever published was about the love between a man and a woman that never quite was.

  “Everyone deserves to be loved at least once in each lifetime,” she whispered the first line of the novel, then skimmed through the story in her mind. It was centered around the broken promises of a man who needed to hide his real identity from a society not yet ready to hear the truth. Promises he made to a woman so in need of love, who deserved more than what he offered her. A woman who finally learnt how to let go of the things she could not control.

  “Antoine was your muse.” She shook her head at the idea, smiled as she imagined her grandmother living in this place, writing down a story so closely tied to her reality.

  It’s what her grandmother had always done: linking real life to the stories, showing Emily that there was always a way to imagine something more.

  “There you are.” Tyler stood, holding onto one of the anchors, a little out of breath. “I’d forgotten you have a habit of disappearing.”

  “No, I don’t,” Emily replied as she got to her feet, slipped back on her shoes, and hopped across the rocks.

  “Oh, really?” Tyler dropped one arm around her shoulder, bumped his hip against her own. “What about that time in the Natural History Museum?”

  She shrugged herself free from him, went over to peruse the menu from one of the indistinguishable restaurants lining the harbor. Emily barely registered the letters and words on the page as she tried to swallow away the disappointment she could not be rid of.

  “How about a drink?” Tyler nodded in the direction of a bar, above which hung a bright green shamrock.

  The covered space outside was simple, with a stone floor, a handful of tables, and a beer keg in one corner, around which two men stood, nursing their pints of stout. Inside was more cave than room, with low ceilings covered in shingle, from which hung a line of plastic flags. A wooden bar ran the full length of one wall, on top of which was a machine made from copper pipes fashioned together into some sort of pump.

  Emily’s eye landed on an old-fashioned jukebox, the kind with vinyl records and strips of rainbow light. The whole space smelled of stale beer, sun cream, and a thin layer of fish, accompanied by the low, nasal voice of Liam Gallagher singing about cigarettes and alcohol.

  “Whiskey?” Tyler asked as Emily climbed atop one of the stools against the other wall, and she nodded her reply, trying not to think of what the vicar would say if he knew where she was right this minute.

  A tower of beer mats stacked one on top of the other, resting on the edge of the bar. Tyler smacked the back of his fingers against the underside, sent them spilling into the air and then all over the floor.

  Emily spun one between her fingers, saw a flash of red cockerel with each turn, making her think of the packets of cereal in the cupboards back home.

  The cockerel is the only bird in the Chinese zodiac calendar, seen as both confident and intelligent. She considered whether or not to tell Tyler the random snippet of information as well as trying to remember how it was she knew it in the first place.

  Just like Antoine. A man who was a walking, talking encyclopedia, according to her grandmother, which made her wonder if she had inherited her artistry, her obsessive nature from him?

  Except she couldn’t quite believe that Antoine and her grandmother had produced a love child as well as a phony engagement. That would have been extreme, even for her.

  Tossing the beer mat into a woven basket with a solitary chip stuck to its side, she picked up her empty glass and added it to the collection they had been accumulating over the past couple of hours.

  “So who is this Antoine guy?” Tyler asked as he signaled to the barman for another round of drinks. “Were he and Aunt Cat really engaged?”

  “You read her diary.”

  “I did.”

  “Show me yours,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “My what?”

  “Notebook. You saw mine, read hers, it’s only fair I see yours.”

  For a second she thought he wasn’t going to comply, would perhaps claim he left it back at the hotel, but she knew it was in the inside pocket of his jacket even before he reached to where it hung over a neighboring stool and handed it over.

  Opening it to a random page, she frowned as she read, trying to make out some of the words.

  “Your handwriting is awful.”

  “You sound like my primary school teacher.”

  Emily stifled a giggle. “It’s like a drunken spider making its way across each line.”

  “If you’re going to be mean,” he said, reaching across for the book, but she batted his hand away.

  He had written a song about the falling leaves of autumn, likened them to the people of your life, the ones you have to let go. There was another about the cruel hand of fate, that pulls you away from what your heart desires most of all. Not exactly Proust, but the sen
timent was clear. Emily could see more, sense what was hidden in between all the letters and words Tyler wasn’t quite brave enough to say.

  She could see the blame he threw at his parents’ feet, for forcing him to be a certain kind of man, to live a certain kind of life. But he always had a choice. He could have said no.

  Did she have a choice? Or was she complicit in allowing her grandmother to make all of her choices for her?

  “What do you think?” He sat there, waiting for a reaction, a small comment to spur him on—just as she had whenever she first showed her grandmother her art.

  She closed the notebook, tapped one finger on the plain black cover and imagined what she would paint on it to reveal the person hidden within. A mountainscape, perhaps, through which a river runs, with a waterfall made from crystal droplets of sound, each one representing a part of his soul, a part of the pain he thought he had felt.

  “Isn’t country music just like church music?”

  “I’m offended,” he said, with hand on heart but a smile on his face.

  “It is. They both blame someone else for all of life’s problems.”

  The waiter came over, put down two more glasses, and gathered away the empties.

  Tyler took several slow sips, then licked his lips and leant toward her.

  “That’s a bit deep for a Sunday night, don’t you think?”

  Emily fished out a cube of ice, sucked away the whiskey, then crunched the rest between her back teeth, felt the absence of sensation on one side of her face, where the nerves had never quite healed. She pictured a well, at the bottom of which sat a boy, trapped by his past, by his mistakes, waiting for someone to throw down a rope and set him free.

  “I’m not saying there’s no power in music.”