The Summer of Second Chances

by Maddie Please

  I went to look in the cupboard for chocolate and came back with my ‘secret’ hiding place box held out in front of me accusingly.

  ‘You’ve eaten all my secret KitKats,’ I said.

  ‘Well, they weren’t very secret then, were they? You liked the short dress you wore when I married Paul, didn’t you?’

  ‘Dark blue with a white belt. All his friends kept mistaking me for a waitress and ordering drinks,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think it was because of your dress, I think it was just the way it was. Do you know, the bar bill was the most expensive thing about that wedding. By a very long way. I remember Paul crawling under a table with a bottle of scotch as the music for our first dance started. I should have made a run for it then.’

  I shook my head at my sister. ‘Well why didn’t you? Why on earth did you marry them? That’s what I can’t understand. Ian asked me to marry him when we first got together. He asked me four times. It became a bit of a joke really. I couldn’t see the point. Especially with your example to follow.’

  ‘Why didn’t you marry Ian? He was –’ she tried to find the right word ‘– he was very – he was very…’

  I prodded the table with one finger. ‘He was very predictable.’

  ‘Oooh that’s a long word.’

  ‘I didn’t know all about the debts and the gambling. I just knew it didn’t feel quite right. And I shouldn’t say it but I don’t think he was very good in bed.’

  Jenny frowned, puzzled.

  ‘Well was he or wasn’t he?’

  I tried to explain. ‘I only ever went to bed with him, so how would I know?’

  ‘Bloody hell. Really?’ Jenny said.

  We’d finished off the white by now and I tottered to the windowsill to get the other bottle of red.

  ‘Well just ’cos you put it about – how many men have you—’

  ‘More than you, obviously!’

  ‘I’d like to go to bed with Bryn. Oh!’ I clapped a hand over my mouth, horrified. ‘Did I really say that?’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ Jenny asked, fishing a bit of sediment out from between her teeth.

  ‘He might not want to. He might not fancy me.’

  Jenny laughed and gently banged her forehead on the table. ‘There is no such thing as a man who wouldn’t fancy you, Lottie. You’re lovely. Oh, hang on a minute. Perhaps banging my head on the table was a bad idea.’ She reeled slightly and held on to the chair until things settled back into focus.

  ‘So go on, why did you marry them?’ I said.

  ‘Because Dad said no one would ever ask me. And they did,’ Jenny said at last.

  ‘How absolutely stupid. At least Ian could get me white goods at cost price. And I had two new kitchens in five years. And they were top of the range. And they had Corian worktops.’

  I waited for her to be impressed.

  ‘Whoop de doo,’ she said. ‘So why didn’t you marry Ian? Remind me.’

  I rested my chin on my hand and thought about it.

  ‘He wasn’t the one,’ I said at last, and hiccupped. In vino veritas. ‘I always knew he wasn’t the one. And I wasn’t prepared to risk it. You know, I’ve realised something really incredibly important.’

  Jenny sat up a bit straighter and looked interested. ‘What? The American Electoral system is a fucking joke?’

  ‘No, you twit. I know you shouldn’t speak ill but I’ve realised our parents were the most incompatible pair to ever walk into a registry office. They had a miserable life together, scoring points and squabbling for thirty something years. Arguing about every meal, every twatting holiday. They even used to argue about what was on the conveyor belt on the Generation Game. Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes, and?’

  I stabbed my finger onto the tabletop to emphasise the point.

  ‘I never wanted to get married if it was going to be like that. And you got married to prove it didn’t have to be like that. I was scared of getting married and you couldn’t stop yourself. See?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Jenny said.

  It felt as though I had discovered the secrets of the universe.

  ‘Weird. They fuck you up, your parents, don’t they?’

  CHAPTER 11

  Cherry blossom – kindness

  Two days later I was back in the canyon-like aisles of Ram Builders looking for Trudy. Even at 9.30 a.m. on a Wednesday morning it was quite busy.

  Customers seemed to fall into two camps. The ditherers wandered around with vacant expressions, picking up leaflets on kitchen design or handfuls of paint colours. The others knew exactly what they needed and had written lists and had a determined glint in their eyes. I found Trudy skulking at the back of the shop in the paint aisles, trying to get away from a couple of ditherers. I stood at a reasonable distance to make sure she could see me, and waited.

  Mr and Mrs Ditherer wanted some paint to make their hallway lighter, but wanted it to be a colour somewhere between Plum and Damson. They were about to find out they had picked the wrong girl to help them.

  ‘I don’t know. I just stack shelves,’ Trudy said, lower lip stuck out.

  ‘But is there a light-reflecting paint that’s quite dark?’ Mr Ditherer hadn’t assessed the situation very well; he wasn’t about to give up.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Trudy flicked me a sour look. ‘How can purple be a light-reflecting paint? You’d better ask—’

  ‘Oh not purple! Maybe not quite Damson, more a—’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘and I don’t fricking—’

  ‘Light plum? Is there such a thing?’ Mrs Ditherer flicked through her colour chart.

  Trudy dropped her head back and rolled her eyes. ‘Bloody Norah!’

  ‘That’s a strange name for a paint. Oh.’ Mr Ditherer realised his helper wasn’t going to help. ‘Well with your attitude, young lady…’

  Hands limp by her sides, mouth hanging open, Trudy listened to him voicing his disappointment and threatening to write to Mr Ram, whom he claimed was a neighbour and personal friend.

  ‘You’ll have a bloody job,’ she fired back with a spray of spittle. ‘He lived in Beverly Hills and he’s been dead for twelve years.’

  ‘I’ve been coming to this place since it opened and this is the first time I’ve been treated like this!’

  Trudy pulled off her orange baseball cap and flung it at him. ‘Well count yourself lucky you got away with it this long, you bloody nitwit!’

  Mrs Ditherer tugged at his sleeve. ‘Come on, Arthur, she’s drunk or worse. We’ll go to Homebase.’

  They scurried off and Trudy turned her Medusa stare onto me, full beam. I returned the knowing-but-inscrutable look I had practised with my sister. Chin up, mouth turned down. I hoped I didn’t look too much like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t “what” me. You know why I’m here.’ I pulled my mobile out of my pocket and waggled it at her.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’ Trudy picked her baseball cap off the floor with an ungainly side swipe and jammed it back over her eyes.

  ‘Have you got the stuff?’

  She flicked a glance at the CCTV cameras. ‘I might have.’

  ‘Hand it over then.’

  She stood dumbly, looking at me, and unexpectedly Ken slithered out from behind a rack of masking tape. He was as grubby and as beige as ever, but to give him his due he came and stood protectively in front of Trudy and stared at me.

  ‘Trudy told me what you did,’ he said, ‘trying to blackmail her.’

  I resisted the urge to swipe his filthy spectacles off his nose and clean them.

  ‘What! I just came to get some of Ian’s personal possessions back so that I could return them to his mother.’

  ‘My fiancée, Trudy, has suffered enough over all this,’ he said, ‘not only did she lose her career prospects but she’s had to put up with months of sexual harassment from her former employer. Months. She could have put a claim in. It
was only her loyalty to the company that stopped her.’

  I laughed at that. What on earth had Trudy been telling him?

  Ken ignored me and ploughed on.

  ‘And then your precious Ian gave her this stuff to look after. Even though she didn’t want to. And when she tries to give it back to his mother, the old cow accuses her of asking for money. Which she never.’

  ‘Fine, Ken, whatever you say.’

  ‘It’s Mr Bogle to you,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Well, Mr Bogle, I just want to collect the stuff and then this whole miserable business will be over,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t want to hear no more about it,’ he said.

  ‘Nor do I.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good.’

  We stood and huffed at each other for a few minutes, Trudy looking up at Ken with an impenetrable expression. Perhaps she was congratulating herself on how easy it had been to fool him. Maybe she was planning a reward for him, a night of ecstasy involving some Ram special offer jubilee clips and a can of WD40.

  The tannoy system crackled and a message boomed out over the store. Not the usual bored woman wanting someone from cleaning to go to aisle 4, but this time a man’s voice, annoyed, urgent.

  ‘Will Trudy Stroud come to the manager’s office immediately. Trudy Stroud to the manager’s office immediately.’

  Trudy rolled her eyes at Ken and swore under her breath. A few seconds later I saw Mr Ditherer coming back down the aisle towards us. I think perhaps he had reflected on Trudy’s sales methodology and complained about it. He stood breathing heavily a few paces away. Angry as he was, his innate good manners prevented him from interrupting a conversation.

  ‘Hand the stuff over in ten minutes or I’ll break your legs,’ I said to her through stiff lips.

  ‘No more talk like that, please,’ Ken said, straightening the greasy cuffs of his anorak.

  Trudy stood mute, looking at me, hating me. She had tried to be something. A seductress, an irresistible lover, a blackmailer, and had failed at all three. Suddenly, much to my surprise, I felt sorry for her. I looked at Ken. He might be a bit down at heel and lacking in charisma but he loved her enough to propose and put that unremarkable garnet ring on her finger. I hoped he would stick by her, help her find some level of satisfaction in her life.

  At last Trudy spoke. ‘You’ll get the stuff but I’d better not get a visit from the police neither. Or I’ll be phoning up my contact at the Echo. I’ve got private pictures and I’ve still got the handcuffs and the feather duster he wanted to use on me too.’

  I flicked a glance to see how Ken was taking this information. He curled his lip at me.

  ‘Disgusting,’ he said. ‘He was a filthy pervert. My fiancée has suffered a great deal at his hands. Done things no decent woman—’

  ‘That’s enough, Ken, we don’t want to go into all that again,’ Trudy said. ‘Right, I’ll go and get it and then you can leave me alone.’

  Mr Ditherer turned smartly on his heel, bumping into his wife who was scurrying after him.

  ‘You were right, Connie. This place is a drugs den. I’m going to the papers.’

  I left Ram Builders some time later with an Aldi carrier bag filled with the flotsam and jetsam of Ian’s affair. As I hurried to the front doors, I saw Trudy being escorted to the manager’s office by an enormous security guard. The sort you usually see outside nightclubs wearing dark glasses at midnight, not in a warehouse full of bickering couples where the most intoxicating item was a bottle of white spirit covered in warning stickers. A few paces behind her was dogged Ken.

  I drove away, not convinced that Trudy wouldn’t come after me with a mole wrench. After a few minutes, when I was sure I was not being followed, I pulled in to a petrol station and examined my haul.

  Ian’s birth certificate, passport, a photograph album of his babyhood, a Fair Isle sweater hand knitted by his mother for Christmas some years ago, an engraved silver cigarette box that had belonged to his father and a very basic mobile phone with a charging cord wrapped round it made up the contents of the bag. I took out the mobile; Trudy had smashed the screen and removed the battery. I wound down my window and dumped it in the litterbin. There was no need for Susan to see that; it would only make things worse. I would just pass on the things she knew about and would be pleased to get back. Still slightly pumped up with adrenaline, I abandoned my plan to go back to Holly Cottage and resume decorating. Instead I turned the car round and set off for Susan’s house. As I pulled up my mobile pinged with a message. I opened it and read it. I didn’t think it was good news.

  Have been trying to contact you. Can you give me a ring? Speak soon. Jess. X.

  ‘You again,’ Susan said.

  She was thinner than I had ever seen her, her skin grey with tiredness. The scent of her home floated out into the still air. Air freshener, Pledge polish, fabric softener.

  She hesitated for a moment, looking at me with her usual expression of suspicion and distaste, and then she saw what I was carrying. She looked up at me her eyes sparking with hope.

  ‘Is that…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gave a little gasp and stepped back from the doorway in order to let me in. I wiped my shoes on the mat and handed over my swag. It was strange that something so important should look so insignificant. The writing on the plastic bag was flaking off, the handles stretched and distorted.

  Susan left me standing in the hall, not sure what to do next. She went into the sitting room. I closed the front door behind me and took a few steps towards her.

  I could see her pulling things out, smoothing her fingers over the photo album, opening and closing the silver box, clenching her hands in the sweater, pulling it up to her face. Inhaling. Perhaps catching the last trace of Ian’s aftershave deep in the wool.

  I felt the unexpected sting of tears behind my eyes. I had never liked Susan but I could empathise with her need for this last connection with her only son. I felt ashamed of all the unkind thoughts I had harboured against her. The times when I had made excuses to avoid coming here. I realised that I had little to be proud of. I had not raised a child. I hadn’t really made Ian happy. I had been selfish. I had been careless.

  I remembered her at that last Boxing Day dinner, mellowed by her sherry aperitif, two glasses of wine and a tot of Baileys. She had watched Ian across the table with a level of adoration I would never feel for him.

  She had nodded as he explained how he needed to reorganise things at work. Smiled with approval as he outlined our plans to go to France for our summer holidays. We’d been offered the use of a customer’s gîte near Dordogne; it sounded fabulous. I had been looking forward to it. She frowned when Ian added sugar to his coffee and flicked me an accusing glance.

  Ian had opened his new bottle of Highland Park, filled a generous glassful and took an appreciative sniff.

  ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’ he said vaguely to both of us.

  ‘God no,’ I said, reaching for the wine.

  ‘Oh no, whisky is a man’s drink,’ Susan said, ducking her chin back into her neck as though he had offered her meth. ‘You’re just like Daddy; he loved a good whisky after dinner. Only one. He was very moderate.’

  ‘Like father like son, eh?’ Ian said, leaning back in his chair.

  At last Susan turned, dry eyed, to look at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘this is the last thing I wanted out of life.’

  ‘I’m glad I could do it,’ I said. I took another step forward. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  She nodded and looked down at the sweater. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’

  She didn’t answer for a moment, but then she nodded.

  I went into the kitchen and flicked on the kettle. Everything was spotless and shining. The worktops cleared and cleaned, the tea bags still in the tin decorated with kittens, the sugar in the painted china bowl that Ian had bought her o
n a school trip when he was eleven; A Present From Lands End.

  I made tea and took it in to her. She was sitting where I had left her, the sweater still in her lap, her hands folded on top of it. She had wound a rubber band round her finger to keep her wedding ring on now that she had lost weight.

  I placed the tea on the table in front of her, and then, noticing her sharp-eyed stare, I put a coaster under the saucer.

  ‘I think you should see the doctor,’ I said, ‘you look so poorly.’

  She gave a dismissive sweep of one hand.

  ‘Perhaps a tonic?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. What does it matter?’

  ‘It matters to me. I’d make you an appointment and come and get you, if that would help.’

  She pressed her hands down into the sweater. ‘Suit yourself.’

  I got up. ‘I’ll let you know when.’

  ‘You can see yourself out, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I thought of kissing her cheek but couldn’t bring myself to do it. We had been adversaries for too long. A cup of tea and a few civil words weren’t going to make much difference. But it was a start.

  Back at Holly Cottage, Jenny was walking around in the lane where the mobile signal was sometimes stronger. She was prattling into her phone and she waved as I pulled into the drive.

  She ended her phone call with a tinkling laugh and gave a triumphant little skip.

  ‘You’ll never guess who that was,’ she said, her eyes bright with mischief.

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘Go on, guess.’

  ‘Oh, Jenny! For heaven’s sake!’ I was hungry, thirsty and had a banging headache.

  ‘Go on, three guesses.’

  I gave an exaggerated sigh; I wasn’t in the mood for this at all.

  ‘Barack Obama? Johnny Depp? David Attenborough?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Well you said I wouldn’t guess and I haven’t.’

  Jenny tossed her head, nostrils flaring like a triumphant horse winning the Derby.

  ‘It was Trent. From Houston. Well, he’s not actually in Houston, he’s in London. He couldn’t bear it any longer.’