The Book of Second Chances

by Katherine Slee

  “Exactly,” Tyler said, raising his glass in a toast. “Think of how much more you feel when watching a film, a TV program, because of the music. Psycho was originally shown to audiences without the infamous score and they weren’t scared, not even a little bit.”

  Emily gave a small shudder. “I always pull back the shower screen to make sure there’s no one there.”

  “Really?” He raised his eyebrows.

  It had crept up on her, like a birthday surprise. The way he had covered her sorrow with a web of friendship. Little by little, something new growing from something old that before had never been given a chance to breathe.

  “Anyway, music and religion are both about expressing what is too difficult to explain,” Tyler said. “In fact, isn’t that what painting is too? Surely you can relate to that?”

  “You can’t equate Dolly Parton with God.”

  “Yes, I can, Dolly Parton is a genius,” he said, waving his pint at her and sluicing a little over his jeans. “And I dare you to deny that you know all the words to ‘Nine to Five.’”

  She could already hear it in her head and smiled.

  “You have a nice smile.”

  She looked back down at the beer mat on the table, desperate for a change of subject.

  “Did you know that a cockerel’s testicles are influenced by the sun?”

  Tyler nearly dropped his pint. “Come again?”

  “It’s true. They shrink and grow with the seasons.”

  He laughed, shaking his head and making the sound bounce off the low ceiling. “Alcohol clearly loosens your tongue.”

  “Maybe it just stops me from caring so much about what people think.”

  He was looking at her again, in that way she couldn’t quite make sense of. As if she were some kind of anomaly, a person who did not quite tally with the image he had carried around in his head for so long.

  “Do you have any traditions?” he asked.

  “Like Christmas?”

  “More a good luck charm. Or a way of making yourself remember a certain person, a particular day.”

  Emily always said good night to her parents. She would touch her lips to her fingers, then place them on the windowpane in her room every night before she went to sleep. She would gaze out at the heavens, seeking out a star and sending a wish to her parents, wherever they may be. A tiny ladybird kept in a box, in a treasure chest under her bed. Along with a four leaf clover, a bumblebee, and a chain of daisies. From a summer long ago.

  Traditions? No. Memories? More than she wanted.

  “Here.” Tyler reached into the front pocket of his jeans, took out a small paper bag, and slid it along the bar to her.

  “What’s this?” No one ever bought her anything, other than her grandmother, but she didn’t really count.

  “Call it a reminder of this trip.”

  Emily reached inside the paper bag, took out a pair of earrings in the shape of golden stars.

  “Thank you.”

  “I saw them in Paris and thought they would suit you. Bring out the flecks of gold in your eyes.”

  She had no idea how to respond to his kindness.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  Emily felt her throat tighten at his words.

  “There’s more than one reason why I’m here.”

  Emily swirled her drink around the glass, avoided looking at Tyler as he spoke. She heard him take a deep breath, steeling himself for what he was about to say, and she was grateful for his nerves, because it meant that he did care, if only a little.

  “Dad cut me out.”

  “Your mum said she convinced him not to.”

  “Not entirely. At least, not until I can prove to him I’m not a total loser.”

  Emily considered his response, allowing the truth to settle in her mind before replying.

  “So it’s about money.”

  “Yes. No. I mean at first, for sure. But I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you again, and Paris was fun, wasn’t it?”

  She tried to stifle a smile as she found herself to be nowhere near as angry, or disappointed, as she might have been only days before.

  What’s changed? she wondered. Was it really as simple as sharing a moment, creating a memory with someone new?

  “Thank you,” she said, daring a look at him, finding those eyes already on her.

  “For what?”

  “Telling me the truth.”

  He gave a small nod in response, and for a moment she thought he was about to say something more, but then the song on the jukebox changed, the soft, full voice of Patsy Cline spilling into the bar, and Tyler stood, held out his hand in invitation.

  There was an awakening in every part of her body as he moved closer and she felt the charge between them, tried to capture the moment in her mind, like a photograph she could look at in years to come. The rawness of her emotion was intense, yet invisible, but she knew he could see it, just as she could see his. Then a sudden change of his features, as if he remembered the way he should be behaving, and he pulled away.

  The air vibrated with rejection even before he opened his mouth to speak.

  “It’s late,” he said, glancing at his watch by way of explanation. “Do you want to go back to the hotel?”

  “I’m not tired.” Emily shouldered her bag and walked out of the bar, leaving the echoes of “Crazy” and all that nearly was contained within its walls.

  Everything was wrapped up in the night. Couples holding tight to each other as they weaved through the back streets and kissed in doorways. The constant clink of glasses, laughter and music that spilled from all the bars and restaurants she passed, not stopping to imagine how it could have been her. Nor to breathe in the happiness, the normality, enjoyed by so many. Something that seemed to elude her, to leave her be.

  An elderly man was walking his dog, one hand around its leash, the other holding onto a twisted, wooden cane. He stopped at a low stone pillar around which a rope was tied, bent down to ruffle behind the dog’s ears, then nodded his head in greeting to her.

  A pair of strangers, sharing the night air.

  He was no doubt one of those people who always had to work for a living, really work, not just push numbers about on a screen or paint pretty pictures. People who had called this place home for generations, who were here long after the tourists went home, who filled in all the blanks and tidied up after those too entitled, too rich to notice, were gone.

  Emily walked alongside the water, past all the boats with their ostentatious displays of wealth, to where a set of steps led down to the narrow beach, slowly being eaten away by the incoming tide.

  Toes in the ocean, she stood, thinking of how her grandmother had spent every summer in various places along the coast of France. Four months from June through to the end of September, renting an apartment somewhere in the seaside towns. She claimed it was because the air was good for her disposition, but now Emily understood it was also because the sea made her happy, that it was a link back to that first summer, when she found what she needed to write.

  She gave it all up to care for me, Emily thought, and the idea made her feel so incredibly sad and grateful, all at the same time.

  “It smells the same.” Tyler scuffed the sand with his feet, disturbing a tiny crab that scuttled back to the sea. “It wasn’t here we came, though, was it?”

  “No,” Emily shook her head and pointed a finger west along the coast. She could still picture the villa they always rented: enormous and white, with a pool perched at the edge of a cliff, the water so blue it felt like swimming through a filter. The two families had spent their summers exploring the shoreline on speedboats, lazing by the side of the pool, fattening themselves up on fresh seafood and tarte tatin, all prepared by those brought in to cook, all tidied away by maids with frilly aprons who spoke not a word of English.

  Emily watched a fisherman sort his nets and ready his boat for another night on the water.

  “Do you remember th
e year Aunt Cat took us fishing?”

  “We dove for oysters,” Emily said with a smile as she remembered being shaken awake before the dawn had broken, cycling down the hill, stretching her legs out either side, squealing as Tyler let go of his handlebars, all of them singing ABBA at the top of their lungs. Feeling so free, so alive, and knowing it was a day she would never, ever forget.

  “It was a boat barely big enough for two,” Tyler replied. “But she rowed the three of us out of the harbor, all the way round to a small cove, where a heap of other boats were, all of them empty.”

  “Then told us to grab a mask before being the first to jump off the side.”

  He was looking at her with amusement, then shook away whatever he was about to say, picked up a stone and examined it quickly before tossing it into the sea, where it skipped and hopped, once, twice more.

  “My mother was so angry with her.”

  “Why?”

  “The smell lingered for days, no matter how hard she scrubbed at my fingers and toes. She even threw my shoes in the bin.”

  Emily wondered at what point someone changes. If you’re surrounded by money, at what point do you begin to care for it so? Tyler’s mother was someone who wore her wealth with pride. She went to great lengths to project just the right image to anyone who bothered to look. How much of that affected Tyler and the choices he made? How much of anyone’s life was determined by the family they were born into?

  But it never changed the way her grandmother chose to live, even when all the zeroes began to appear on the bank statements and the royalty checks tumbled through the letter box. They could have bought half the village and still had money to spare, or moved back here, to where her grandmother wrote her first ever book, and lived an altogether different kind of life.

  She had done it for her, for Emily, thinking she was better off, staying in Norfolk.

  Emily brushed sand from her feet as she stepped back onto the quay, then looked to the rows of silent boats moored in the harbor, heard the quiet ting of a dozen bells as their hulls were rocked by the approaching tide.

  It was so easy for something to become a habit, if you didn’t question your life or surroundings. How simple it could be to wake up one day and realize you’d been existing in a halted state, that you allowed it to happen by hiding from the change which allowed experience, to actually live.

  “That was my favorite day. The best day from all the summers put together.” Tyler was next to her now; she could feel the heat from his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt and she turned to look at him, saw his attention caught by someone farther along the quayside, waving in their direction. “Emily, I…” He began to speak, took a step away, ran one hand through hair speckled with salt. “I meant to tell you about her.”

  Emily watched a young woman approach. She was wearing a lilac cotton dress that showed off long, tanned limbs, with blond hair that seemed to shimmer in the evening light. Her eyes were blue, her teeth were white. She was perfect, and she was wrapping herself around Tyler, kissing him long and slow.

  14

  FLAMINGO

  Phoenicopterus

  Emily stood, staring up at a set of iron gates, beyond which she could just about see the roof of a vast mansion. A house which the gallery manageress had informed her belonged to Antoine Marchand and that he would be at home and was expecting her. Emily had declined her offer of a lift, nor did she want her to ring ahead, to let Monsieur know she was on her way.

  Instead, Emily had decided to walk, out from the center of the town, along the edge of the park, with trees on one side, houses hidden by high walls on the other. It gave her time to think about what best to do next. It gave her time to realize, to accept, that Tyler wasn’t here for her after all.

  It turned out his girlfriend worked in Cannes, in the bar of some fancy-pants hotel. She had simply hopped in a taxi after her shift to come and meet them. Emily wished it wasn’t the same one her grandmother had worked in, didn’t want there to be a connection between her and Tyler’s girlfriend.

  All the excitement she had felt about being here, with him, had fizzled away as she lay on another unfamiliar bed, listening to the sound of the sea and trying not to cry as she thought about how far away from home she was, from everything she had ever known.

  The sight of him with someone else was enough to make Emily’s stomach turn. The soft hand that reached out to say hello, to introduce herself as Phoebe and she was ever so pleased to meet her, Tyler had told her so much about how they used to be friends, had practically grown up together.

  That was why Emily hadn’t bothered to leave a note this morning, to tell him where she was going. Not that he and Phoebe had emerged from their room, even long after breakfast had been tidied away, and she had sat at the table, alone, smiling politely at the waiter when he asked again if anyone would be joining her.

  Emily scuffed at a patch of earth in a flowerbed by the gates, watching as an ant scuttled out of sight. She wished she could tunnel into the ground below, become a mole, blind to all she could see, all she had seen.

  She didn’t want to see the way they had leant close to one another on the walk back to the hotel, didn’t want to see Phoebe gaze up at him with such longing in her eyes when he asked the man at reception for the keys to their rooms. Nor did she want to see them step out of the lift and turn down the corridor, a last-minute call of good night tossed over their shoulders out of habitual politeness.

  Rubbing her fingertips over the nameplate next to the bell that would call forth the person she had been sent to find, Emily screwed her eyes shut, tried to block out the picture of Tyler’s face.

  She hated that she could remember, in intricate detail, the first time he had kissed her. A summer’s night, a stolen moment behind the seats of an outdoor theater. When Shakespeare’s words called out to them, and he bent his mouth to hers. They were on the cusp of adulthood, hormones and dappled evening light playing tricks with their hearts. A smile on her lips on the walk home, bumping hips as they went. A hushed good night, then back to her bed where she lay awake, wishing upon wish she could go back and do it all again.

  The very next day, when all of life stretched ahead of her, every ounce of happiness from that night was crushed beneath the wheels of a speeding truck.

  Do I go in? she thought, looking again at the name on the bell. If she did, nothing would be the same, and everything was already so changed, so altered, from what she was used to, that she wasn’t sure she could handle any more surprises, or disappointments. She was sure Antoine wasn’t her grandfather, and yet a small part of her hoped that he might be, that she was here to find some leftover piece of her family, some smattering of normality, whatever it might be.

  The idea to turn around and go home was tempting. But if she went home she would spend the rest of her life wondering what if? Sometimes she loved that nothing ever changed, but sometimes the idea of every single tomorrow being the same became unbearable.

  Even if she somehow managed to cobble together a life for herself—Charlie would help her, surely?—Emily knew she would never be able to stop wondering what it was her grandmother had sent her to find, and if Antoine was the key to it all.

  If only she could talk to her grandmother, have her tell her what to do.

  The sound of a small motorbike came climbing up the hill toward her. A soft phut-phut of exhaust as the engine began to slow.

  “Ça va?”

  Emily opened her eyes to see someone step off a white Lambretta. She waited as he removed the sunglasses from his face, hand frozen in the air for a few seconds before he smiled to reveal a gap between his two front teeth.

  “Emily!” he cried, pulling her close with tears in his eyes and whispering her name over and over.

  In any normal circumstances, being hugged by a stranger would make Emily rigid, uncomfortable, but there was something about this man which instead made her wrap her arms around him and hug him back. It was like something out of a c
orny love story, only he was old and gay and she was young(ish) and anything but beautiful.

  “Let me look at you. Oh my,” Antoine said as he stepped back, one hand to his mouth, the other holding onto his bike. “Oh my,” he said again, tapping a code into the keypad on the wall, and the gates slowly hummed to life, opening wide to reveal what lay beyond. “Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, stepping aside to let Emily through.

  Humble wasn’t exactly the word Emily would have used to describe Antoine’s home. Opulent, gigantic, a little bit ostentatious even, but it was fabulous. Palm trees lined the flagstone driveway, and the walls of the house were palest pink with terra-cotta tiles on the roof and olive green shutters on the windows.

  The front door was opened by a woman dressed in a pale gray maid’s outfit, who took Antoine’s helmet and keys, then promptly disappeared. Inside, there was a crystal chandelier hanging from the double-height reception hall, with a staircase that wrapped around both sides, and in the middle was a view straight out to manicured gardens, an infinity pool, and the ocean beyond.

  There was also a painting of Catriona Robinson, hanging on the wall right next to where Emily stood.

  Emily became quiet and still, aware of the man next to her, watching her with a mixture of intrigue and excitement. She could tell by the way he kept stepping toward her, opening his mouth as if to say something, then thinking better of it and moving away again.

  It stayed this way for several minutes, but Emily couldn’t break the silence. She couldn’t bring herself to look away from the portrait of her grandmother seated on a padded window seat, reading a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Her hair was tied at the back of her neck, a few wayward curls finding their way loose as always. Her lips were parted gently, as if she were reading some of Wilde’s words to herself, and her face was at peace, content. It was a look Emily recognized, even on a face that had sagged and folded with age.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “She looks just like you.”

  Emily’s hand strayed to her scar, covering it with her palm, and she shook her head in response.