The Summer of Second Chances

by Maddie Please

  ‘I’ve got a phone though.’

  ‘Don’t you bloody dare!’

  ‘Can I come in and help?’ he said, struggling to keep a straight face and failing.

  I waved an airy and paint-splattered hand. ‘No, I’d prefer to stay here for a few days until I died of thirst and embarrassment. Yes, of course you can come in, you idiot!’

  The next few minutes were some of the most undignified of my life. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Bryn kept laughing and my paint-smeared hands kept slipping out of his as he attempted to get me to my feet. He straightened out one of the spare canvas dustsheets so that I could get to the garden without dripping white paint all over the house. And at last I stood, feeling ridiculous, almost crying with shame on the lawn. All I needed was for someone to push a custard pie in my face.

  ‘Do the doors fall off your car too?’ he said, gasping for breath he was laughing so hard.

  ‘Ha ha, very funny,’ I said with the minute amount of dignity I had left.

  ‘I think you’d better strip off your clothes out here,’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather die than do that in front of you,’ I snarled.

  To be fair Bryn looked as though he was trying very hard to stop laughing.

  ‘What’s going on? Why are you doing that?’

  With an exclamation that sounded like the beginnings of a rude word, Bryn spun round.

  ‘Shi…Bonnie! What are you doing here?’

  Oh wonderful.

  Bonnie, alerted by the noise, had come out to see what was going on. She leaned over the fence looking at me in some bewilderment as though I had daubed myself with paint on purpose. Of course she was immaculate in a mint green dress and crisp white cardigan, her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses perched on top of her head.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said airily, ‘slight mishap with a vat of moisturiser.’

  Bonnie looked at me, her face faintly puckered. She was trying to frown but it was hard to tell. I think there might have been some recent Botox involvement that prevented it.

  ‘Is that paint? It’s going to take ages to get that off,’ she said at last.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment, Bonnie. I have a pressure washer?’ Bryn offered with a snort of laughter.

  I closed my eyes. ‘No, thank you, now please could you go away?’

  ‘Bryn, darling, I’ve just brought some lunch,’ Bonnie said. She flapped a hand at him to catch his attention.

  ‘I’ll be right there.’ He sounded a bit terse. He turned to me again. ‘Sure you’ll be OK?’

  ‘I can’t find the words to tell you how not OK I am,’ I said, ‘maybe I’ll try later.’

  ‘I’ll come out after lunch, and if you’re still here—’

  ‘If I’m still here you can shoot me.’

  ‘Take care,’ he said before he went back into his house and closed the kitchen door behind him. As I watched I saw him tactfully close the gingham curtains.

  I waited for a moment and then stripped off my clothes, gathering them up and shoving them into a bin liner and the dustbin before I could even think about local recycling rules. Then I dashed back into the house, locked the doors and went up for a serious scrub in the shower. After that I closed all the curtains and sat in my dressing gown drinking Ian’s wine.

  I calmed down by immersing myself in the soothing balm of afternoon-TV land and watched as a happy Alpha Couple who didn’t ever seem to have arguments over colours or curtains beautified their home on a limitless budget.

  They found the perfect sixteenth-century oak chest in a skip. They inherited a four-poster bed rumoured to have belonged to Queen Anne. A friend gave them an eighteenth-century Venetian mirror as a wedding present. Well it beat towels, I supposed.

  They cooed over horrible feature walls without once falling over, sticking things in their eyes or embarrassing themselves. A tall, blonde presenter with an enormous bosom and perfect teeth accompanied them. She didn’t seem to do much except smile and admire everything they did. When she jiggled up to their front door a year later to see how they were getting on, the Alpha Couple shyly presented their new-born twins. I did a lot of sighing that afternoon, I can tell you.

  I woke on Sunday morning with the headache I deserved.

  I hadn’t really had any alcohol for weeks and a bottle and a half of thirteen per cent Barolo in one evening was perhaps overdoing it a bit. At least I had managed to get to bed and not fallen asleep on the sofa dribbling into the cushions. I had last seen the Alpha Couple home improvers bonding over a faux-ruined folly that a team of jolly builders – who always turned up on time, didn’t churn up the lawn until it resembled Middle Earth after the Orcs had been through, and were never seen drinking tea, smoking or ploughing to the bottom of the biscuit tin like all the builders I had ever known – were constructing at the end of their immaculate gardens.

  I lay very still for a moment making that revolting dry-mouth smacking noise that one doesn’t make when one has company. I knew that the moment I moved, the headache lurking somewhere in the room would make a leap for me. Eventually the need for rehydration won out and I got out of bed, untangled my dressing gown and dragged it on. As expected the headache launched itself off the curtain rail and latched its mean little talons onto my scalp. I staggered downstairs, drank a pint of water and spent the next thirty minutes looking for aspirin and whimpering. I eventually found some in the bottom of a cupboard, covered in a shredded packet of digestive biscuits and mouse droppings. I was perplexed; I loathe digestives and I never buy them. Perhaps the Webster family had left them? But I would surely have seen them and thrown them out? Weird. Where had they come from? And mice? Oh wonderful.

  I sat with a cup of tea on the sofa, not daring to open the curtains. It was nine thirty. By ten thirty I felt a tiny bit better and went to make myself some toast.

  Outside the kitchen the day was painfully bright with cheerful sunlight and I could hear birds shouting loudly in the garden. I made toast and Marmite and more tea and stood looking out of the window. I didn’t bother with a plate, and felt quite daring eating it off the breadboard. Ian would have had a fit at such sloppiness. He had liked things to be precise, meals to be eaten at the table, the right wine poured into the right glasses.

  I remembered what it was like when we were preparing for our last party. As predicted, my part in the proceedings had found me wrapping prunes in bacon, constructing vol-au-vents and messing about with various canapés for two days. I had polished the cutlery, cleaned the bathrooms and hoovered the whole house while he twittered round me with helpful suggestions. Everything was gleaming. The house was immaculate. Ian was happy.

  In the afternoon of New Year’s Eve Ian went down to the cellar and brought up enough alcohol to flatten several rugby teams, let alone the small group of middle-aged guests we had invited. He organised the drinks on the kitchen worktop, red wine on the left, white and champagne in the wine fridge, spirits and mixers on the right. Then he began to arrange the wine glasses into neat battalions; shortest at the front, tallest at the back. He was humming ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at this point, so I could only presume he was cheerful. In half an hour his work was done. Twelve hours later he was dead.

  In between bites of toast I picked white paint out from under my nails. I wondered if I had managed to shift it from the rest of me, but as the possibility of someone seeing my boobs any time soon was nil, I didn’t worry too much about it.

  I opened the back door, blinking at the brilliance but enjoying the freshness of the air. In the distance I could hear church bells. Sunday morning. Of course. Perhaps I should go to church and pray for my headache to go. I looked down. On the doorstep in front of me was a large tub of white paint with a note on top weighed down with a stone. I frowned, was this someone’s idea of a joke?

  Thought you might need this? Hope you’re OK, Bryn.

  Hmm. I didn’t quite know how to take that. Was he being cruel or kind?

  I went upstairs to get dressed and t
hought about continuing with the decorating. Whilst I was debating whether to start on the kitchen or the living room I got back into bed and fell asleep.

  I woke to the sound of someone hammering on my front door and in my shock and confusion fell out of bed. I gave a moment’s thought to the possibility of finding work as an extra with Mr Tumble on CBeebies and then dragged myself to the landing window. Bryn was outside. He looked up at me and grinned. He looked clean and strong and vigorous. His washed-out blue shirt matched his clear eyes. I bet he’d never had a hangover in his life.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he said, ‘I was worried.’

  ‘Oh, no need, I’m fine, just, you know, cleaning. Housework.’ I made some half-hearted dusting motions on the windowsill with a pair of socks I found there. What day was it? What time was it?

  His grin widened as though he knew I was lying.

  ‘I wondered if you’d like some coffee?’ he said. ‘Bonnie’s gone at last. I’m at a bit of a loose end.’

  ‘Yes, OK, why not. I’m due for a break. I’ll be down in a minute,’ I said, checking my non-existent watch and trying to sound careless. The last thing I remembered was the church bells. Had Bonnie gone to church? Or was that yesterday?

  ‘Come round to mine,’ he said and loped off across the garden to his front door.

  When I caught sight of myself in the mirror I knew why he had been grinning. I was grey faced, my hair sticking up as though I’d stuck my finger in a light socket and there was still paint on my neck.

  I didn’t look like something the cat had dragged in. I looked like something the cat had caught, knocked about a bit, sneered at and left on the doorstep. Oh well too late now. I hauled on some clothes, tried to quell my over-enthusiastic hair and went downstairs.

  Bryn, dressed in shorts and the aforementioned soft blue shirt, was sitting in his garden looking like something off a book cover. I let my mind wander.

  Handsome hunk finds true love with short, destitute but well-meaning klutz.

  Hmm, he would have to get rid of his tall, beautiful girlfriend first.

  He had set out a tray of real coffee, a cafetière no less, under a pergola covered with unfurling greenery. He stood up as I approached and pulled out a chair for me. He had even put blue and white striped cushions out. I felt as though I had stumbled into a Boden photo shoot.

  Handsome, single, housetrained, polite but lonely hunk…

  ‘Help yourself. I’ve got some chocolate chip cookies if you fancy one? You look tired,’ he said, ‘bad night?’

  Handsome, single, housetrained, extremely tactful but desperately lonely millionaire…

  ‘Oh, I’m OK,’ I helped myself to a cookie and nibbled round the edges. ‘I’ve been busy with stuff all morning. Laundry, dusting, you know that sort of thing. I suppose I should be thinking about lunch soon, not sitting here eating cookies.’

  Bryn looked at his watch. ‘It’s quarter to four.’

  I gave a slow blink. ‘It can’t be. Is it?’

  ‘It can and it is. All that housework obviously made the hours fly.’

  I looked away hoping to find something in the garden to admire and talk about to cover my confusion. And boy, there was a lot. I know practically nothing about gardening but I could tell Bryn was an expert. I had lived next door to him for quite a while now and knew almost nothing about him except vaguely thinking he might have been a footballer.

  ‘Your garden is wonderful,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, it’s my one passion.’

  Wow, a man who made real coffee, bought decent biscuits and wasn’t fanatical about real ale, football or trains.

  I drank my coffee and ate two more cookies while he told me how he had planned his garden.

  ‘I need to mow the grass,’ I said, ‘but the mower’s a bit weird. I don’t know if it’s me or it.’

  ‘I’ll mow it for you if you like,’ Bryn said.

  ‘No, I don’t mind doing it, I just can’t seem to get the blasted thing to cut properly.’

  ‘I’ll take a look at it. I expect the blades are a bit misaligned.’

  ‘Thanks, if you don’t mind?’

  The afternoon was still warm enough to be outside and a couple of early bees were buzzing in the borders behind me. I closed my eyes against the sun and quickly opened them. If I did that I was in real danger of falling asleep.

  ‘Sorry, am I boring you?’

  ‘No, not at all, I’m just a bit tired.’

  ‘All that housework?’

  I pulled a face. ‘Bit of a hangover, if I’m honest.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Am I that obvious?’

  He grinned and topped up my coffee. ‘Let’s just say I recognise the signs.’

  ‘I was so embarrassed about yesterday. You must think I’m a right idiot.’

  ‘I left the paint for you in case you didn’t have enough. I hope you didn’t mind?’

  I sneaked a look at him; he was fighting back a grin.

  ‘And I don’t think you are a right idiot. It was rather endearing. But it was also very funny.’

  I sighed. ‘I suppose so. But no one else would have done something so stupid.’

  ‘Only someone as athletic as you,’ he said, ‘anyone else would have really hurt themselves.’

  I gulped my coffee and help my breath for a moment to stop myself choking. No one, not a friend, teacher, relative or passing acquaintance had ever in my life called me athletic.

  All of a sudden tipping paint all over myself sounded rather clever after all. What had he called it? Endearing.

  CHAPTER 6

  Hyacinth – jealousy

  We sat in the garden for a while. We drank Bryn’s excellent coffee, talked about gardening and ate cookies. It was very restful and soothing. Perhaps I should have made more of an effort to be entertaining. But I didn’t have the energy. And really there didn’t seem to be the need. Just as I finished the last cookie and the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon, Bonnie made another appearance.

  We both sat up a bit straighter when we heard her sporty little car purring into the drive and then we listened in silence to the slam of a car door and the brisk crunch of her footsteps on the gravel path. Was it my imagination, or did Bryn seem just a little less relaxed?

  ‘Oh!’ Bonnie didn’t sound terribly pleased to find me in the garden with her boyfriend but she managed to hide it quite successfully. ‘How lovely to see you again. It’s Caroline, isn’t it?’

  She swung her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses from one hand. She looked sensational, wearing a yellow fifties-style dress with a gold belt that showed off her tiny waist and the type of shrug that normally only looks good on a six year old. She had also managed to do that chic thing with a silk headscarf that Audrey used to do when she was whizzing round the Côte d’Azur with Gregory Peck in an open top car. When I tried doing it I looked as though I was selling pegs.

  ‘Charlotte,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, Charlotte. I hope Bryn has been looking after you?’ She went to stand behind his chair and rested her slim hands on his shoulders. Short of attaching a label around his neck she could not have been more obvious. I saw sparks of annoyance in her eyes and I stood up.

  ‘I’d better be off,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, must you?’ Bonnie pouted prettily and, still watching me, unwound the silk headscarf from around her throat and shook out her Titian ringlets. Her rather spectacular earrings jangled and sparkled in the sunlight. They were probably cut from the Koh-i-Noor diamond and presented to her by the Sultan of Brunei.

  She saw me looking at them and preened happily, sweeping her hair back behind her ears.

  ‘Oh don’t go, I was going to open some Prosecco to celebrate.’

  Celebrate? What? A massive lottery win? Their engagement? Her Prize for the Perkiest Tits in England?

  ‘Gosh, I’ve got such a lot to do. Laundry, stuff, you know.’

  I took a couple of steps away and fell into a flowerbed, cr
ushing what I later discovered was a Regal pelargonium. Bonnie hid a smile with one hand, while Bryn pulled me to my feet. His fingers were warm and strong on mine.

  I reminded myself, and not for the first time, that a) Ian had only recently died and b) Bryn was taken. I hurried back to my garden, hoping that the bright laughter I heard a few seconds later was not directed at me.

  Inside I did some desultory tidying, wiping toast crumbs and Marmite off the worktop. Did I want to start painting? Did I want to read? Did I want to write something? No, not really. None of the above.

  It was Sunday evening and suddenly I was reminded of the Sundays of my childhood when nothing good ever happened except finishing maths homework. I sorted a bit of laundry and folded some clean tea towels. Then I ate a packet of cheese and onion crisps and a bar of chocolate. It struck me that I was existing on a diet of ‘not much’ mixed with ‘rubbish’. I flopped down on the sofa and turned on the TV.

  Enormous Bosom Presenter was back and this time she was steering another pair of home improvers around a dilapidated Cotswold mansion near Burford and flashing her teeth. They had an excited discussion about the cheapness of the house for the area. Only one point two million. Bargain! The home improvers looked a little worried as they only had a budget of one point five million and the house needed a new roof. In the blink of an eye Enormous Bosom Presenter had negotiated a massive reduction of the price and the programme ended happily. By then I was slumped into the uncomfortable curves of the sofa shouting abuse at the screen and eating a Crunchie. Nice.

  How did a young couple afford an incredibly expensive house like that, I wondered? When the world of mortgages and house purchase was becoming more and more difficult for people. I didn’t imagine I would ever be in a position to afford to buy a house. I expected to be renting forever. Serve me right for feeling so superior to my university chums.

  I imagined myself in years to come living in ghastly places with mould growing on the window frames and neighbours upstairs having noisy fights. Everything about my recent life had seemed so sheltered and my relationship with Ian so secure. We had been a team, surely? I remembered how we had worked our way around the room at our party, networking, keeping Ian’s dull workforce happy, wine glasses topped up.