Second Chance

by Jane Green

  One day Saffron was sitting in the corner, absent-mindedly doodling on the tiny notepad she always brought to the meetings, when she heard a wonderful voice. Rich and warm, she knew it was familiar but couldn’t place it. She had tuned out when he introduced himself, but when she looked up she recognized him instantly. How could you not recognize him, three times voted Hollywood’s sexiest man by People magazine, in one of those fairy-tale marriages with an equally famous film-star wife, one of the biggest earners in the business.

  But an alcoholic? She never knew. He shared that day about humility. About how, when he was drinking, he was an asshole. He was grandiose, pompous, thought he knew the answers to everything. He was a nightmare on film sets, he said, but this programme had changed his life, had given him a second chance.

  He had learnt the gift of humility, had learnt that he was one of God’s children, no better and no worse than anyone else. He had spent years knowing he wasn’t good enough, and so everyone was judged accordingly: are they better than me or worse than me, and if they were better, he would automatically affect grandiosity. Now, he said, he treated everyone with kindness and respect and wasn’t attached to results. If people were unpleasant, he assumed it was because they were having a bad day, no longer automatically jumping to the conclusion that it was all about him.

  Saffron went up to him at the coffee break. He was standing in a corner looking at some leaflets on the literature table, and she could see a number of people ready to pounce, but she got to him first.

  ‘I just want to tell you –’ she said, her heart beating ever so slightly faster because, even though she wasn’t intimidated by celebrity and had, in fact, acted with some of the world’s finest, there was something about him that was different –‘I just want to tell you that I loved your share. I loved everything you said. It is exactly what my experience has been, and I love that you were able to be so honest in these rooms, that despite your fame, you trust this programme enough to do that.’

  He turned and really looked at her then. Intrigued by her English accent, her words, and the force behind them. ‘Thank you.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Pearce.’

  Their friendship took a while. Initially they’d see each other at meetings, smile hello, occasionally have a brief chat during the coffee break. When he won yet another sexiest-man award on one of the entertainment shows, Saffron scribbled him a note taking the piss ever so gently, and she passed it to him during one of the meetings. He unfolded it with a frown, and she watched as he read it, then leant his head back on the sofa as his shoulders shook with laughter. He snorted and looked at her, as if to say: You’re incorrigible, and she shrugged. He loved that she dared to take the piss. Everyone around him was so serious, only ever told him how wonderful he was, and he was intrigued by this English girl.

  Her sharing was always startlingly honest and usually peppered with swear words, which made him smile. He always found himself commenting on something she had shared – whatever she said always seemed to speak directly to him – and he found that on the rare occasions she didn’t turn up at a meeting, he missed her, would wonder where she was.

  He had been married for seven years. Ah the seven-year itch, people would joke, but in truth the itch had started at one. It had become a business arrangement. They didn’t have children, and he would have divorced her years ago, but both their agents said their careers needed them to stay together, at least for now – so much mileage out of being Hollywood’s golden couple.

  For they loved his wife as much as they loved him. She wasn’t, admittedly, in the same league, but she was beautiful and down-to-earth – at least in public – and they put on a great show of appearing to adore one another.

  Both of them had flings on movie sets, but both learnt to be discreet, and the truth was they were friends, they still liked each other, and they accepted that this was the way it had to be for now.

  His agent strongly advised him against getting involved with anyone else. The press would get hold of it instantly, he said, and it would be disastrous, more so for him, who had such an image to protect. The alcoholism had been kept out of the papers, as should affairs of the heart. ‘Fuck who you want and be discreet,’ his agent said. ‘But don’t fall in love.’

  It took about a year for him and Saffron to start having coffee after meetings. And then coffee became an occasional lunch, and soon they were chatting on the phone every day. Saffron had the glow of a woman in love, and P felt as if he were eighteen again – full of hope and excitement about the future.

  He kissed her in her living room. Far too recognizable to take a chance of kissing her in public, he came in one day after dropping her off and, as soon as they walked in, they both knew things were different. Saffron knew that today something would happen.

  She had stopped worrying about him being married, stopped worrying about his desire not to fall in love. All she could think about was him. Not because he was a movie star, not because of the fame or the money, but because she adored him. Because he made her laugh. Because he understood her like no one else in the world and because she understood him.

  Their friendship was unlike any Saffron had ever had. Perhaps because of the intimacy fostered in the safe confines of their meetings, they revealed things to each other that neither had ever told anyone else.

  ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you,’ P whispered just before he kissed her, and Saffron pretended she needed the loo immediately afterwards. She stood with her hands resting on the basin, weeping quietly with tears of joy.

  Their affair progressed, always in private, often with other people around to throw the press off the scent. He even got her a part in his movie to legitimize their being seen together.

  She, in turn, manufactured a romance with her co-star, a lesser but rising star, and they were regularly photographed kissing on beaches while walking their three rescue dogs. The co-star was grateful that his lover – a male model – remained a secret and, of course, Saffron couldn’t be linked to anyone else while so clearly in love with her co-star.

  Saffron learnt to put her life on hold for P. He would phone her whenever he could, but when he was away filming, it was so hard. Saffron tried to bury herself in yoga, in seeing friends, but her friends had fallen away somewhat – it was hard to maintain a friendship with someone who cancelled whenever her lover called – and even her meetings were suffering.

  She found she wasn’t getting quite as much out of them. When P was there, they would sit next to each other and surreptitiously touch – she cross-legged on the sofa, her knee gently touching his thigh as she closed her eyes and felt, she swore to God she actually felt it, the electricity.

  She would tune out for most of the meeting, closing her eyes and thinking about him, opening them only to catch him looking at her, both of them smiling and looking away.

  She wasn’t focusing on the lessons of the programme at all. Her sponsor – the only person who knew – was trying to be firm, trying to point out all the danger that came with her behaviour, how ultimately it was Saffron who would be at risk by not working the principles of the programme; but, in the end, she had sighed, knowing she had to be a loving witness. Knowing there was nothing she could do.

  And it is true that Saffron hadn’t found being around alcohol quite as easy as she used to. For years, while working the programme, she found that alcohol didn’t bother her. She could be at parties where everyone else was drinking copiously, and it would never occur to her to have a drink.

  But lately, walking into her quiet little house at the end of the day, she found herself thinking: Wouldn’t it be nice to have one drink? Just one. Surely one wouldn’t hurt?

  And last week, when she finished her grocery shopping, she found herself passing the liquor store, and she hesitated for longer than was comfortable before pushing her trolley past and trying to think of other things.

  She knew what this was called. She was white-knuckling it. She hadn’t even told her sponsor
she’d had these feelings, convinced, just like the old days, that she could do it on her own.

  Saffron would look around her in restaurants and see people enjoying a glass of wine. That could be me, she would think. I could have a glass of wine. I could be normal. If all those other people can do it, then surely I can too.

  ‘You need to start working the steps,’ her sponsor would say. ‘You haven’t done any step work for ages.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Saffron would groan. ‘It works if you work it.’ But she didn’t seem to have the will to do anything other than turn up to meetings as an excuse to see P.

  And last year has been the happiest of Saffron’s life. She is convinced that P is her soulmate. That they belong together, that it is just his marriage of convenience that is keeping them apart, and that soon they will be able to stop sneaking around, and he will marry her: they will be together for the rest of their lives.

  Chapter Ten

  Sarah groans and rolls over in bed as the tapping on her door continues.

  ‘Sarah, love,’ her mother-in-law’s voice is soft as the door gently pushes open. ‘Paul and his wife, Anna, are here to see you. They’re playing with the kids downstairs, and Paul brought some old photographs of Tom from school that he thought you’d like.’

  Sarah sits up and throws the duvet back. ‘Tell them I’ll be down in a sec,’ she says, as she runs her fingers through her hair and sighs. Why do people keep coming? Why do they keep arriving proffering gifts – food, photographs, stories? Do they think it’s going to make her feel better? Is it going to bring Tom back? All Sarah wants to do is crawl under the covers and sleep for ever, waking up when the pain has disappeared.

  It is easier to hide here in this house. Despite being surrounded by Tom – photographs, mementos, constant reminders – this is Tom’s childhood home, not the home she and Tom created together.

  Those first few days had been unbearable. Numb. Letters had started arriving, bills that needed to be paid, life insurance policies that needed to be dealt with, and Sarah had taken everything and put it where she always put it – on Tom’s desk in his office. She had never dealt with it, could not imagine dealing with it, and couldn’t think about any alternative other than putting the mail where she had always put it.

  She had tried to be normal for the sake of Dustin and Violet. Had even attempted to drive Violet to pre-school one day despite the protestations of an appalled neighbour who had taken on that role. She had strapped Violet in the car, had climbed into the driver’s seat in pyjama bottoms, bare feet and an old sweatshirt of Tom’s, and had pulled out of the driveway.

  An hour later she had found herself on I-9 5. No idea how she got there, what she was doing there, or where she was heading. Violet had been happily sucking her thumb in her car seat, listening to XMKids on the radio, and Sarah had started to shake before pulling to the side of the highway and bursting into tears.

  Paul hovers in the doorway of the living room and watches Anna tickling Violet, whose peals of laughter ring throughout the house.

  ‘I’m guessing it won’t be long before you have children of your own,’ Maggie says, placing a hand on Paul’s arm and smiling up at him.

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ Paul says, and as Anna looks up and catches his eye, he feels a wave of sadness wash over him. Life never turns out to be the way you expect. How could Tom possibly be taken from them at such a young age, and how is it that he and Anna, Anna who would make the most wonderful mother in the world, have not been able to have children?

  This morning they had been back to the hospital for egg collection. Egg collection. Sounds so innocuous. Paul remembers how they had laughed when they first heard the term, imagined themselves as country bumpkins, reaching under fat, happy hens to collect the eggs.

  When Anna came out of sedation, the specialist told her they had released six eggs from the follicles. Better than last time, and they both left feeling a surge of optimism and hope.

  Tomorrow, as always happens, they will receive a phone call to tell them how many of the eggs have been fertilized, or, as happened before, that no eggs have been fertilized, and there are no embryos to potentially carry their hopes and dreams into the future.

  It seems inconceivable that out of six eggs, none should be fertilized, but that has been the case so many times already, and Anna doesn’t think she has the emotional fortitude to go through it again, not to mention the financial ability.

  Anna never minds being the breadwinner, never minds that the money that keeps the joint account afloat is almost exclusively provided by her. Paul puts the money he earns from freelancing into the same account, but it seems to be a drop in the ocean towards their lifestyle.

  Not that it is particularly extravagant – heaven knows Anna could choose to live in a super-smart area of London – but they travel well and often, go to all the best restaurants, and a couple of years ago, just before finally deciding to go forward with IVF, they bought a house in the country.

  Well, not so much a house. More of a barn, and one that needed work; it hadn’t been touched since the early seventies. It is on the top of a hill with views for miles over the Gloucestershire countryside, and even though it was just about habitable, they brought their friend Philip, an architect, to see it; and Phil’s enthusiasm for the project was so infectious they found themselves, shortly afterwards, the proud although slightly apprehensive owners of White Barn Fields.

  Plus the barn was a bargain. At the time, it seemed so cheap they almost felt it would have been rude to say no. So cheap they paid cash for the entire thing, planning on starting the work immediately. Phil designed an incredible house. A modern stainless-steel and glazed-concrete kitchen, huge windows to take in the views, four bedrooms off a steel gallery upstairs: a huge master, a guest suite, and two bedrooms for the children that were undoubtedly on their way.

  A local landscape architect designed a spectacular garden. There would be a cobbled courtyard with huge oversized terracotta pots that would hold olive trees in the summer. Lavender and rosemary would spill out of the raised beds on either side. The handful of old, gnarled apple trees that sat at the bottom of the hill would form the basis for an orchard – twenty fruit trees were going to be added, and a raspberry patch. The landscape architect added, ‘Your kids can spend hours picking their own fruit.’

  It was Anna’s idea of heaven, and Paul, who mostly thought of himself as an urban creature, was happy doing what made Anna happy. Plus even he had to admit that the plans were remarkable, and they would end up with an idyllic getaway. Anna made sure to include a study for Paul – all the way at the top of the barn, up a hidden staircase, the cupola would open into his office, flooding it with light. ‘If you can’t write the great British novel here,’ Phil joked when he showed the plans for the office to a breathless Paul and Anna, ‘I don’t know where you can.’

  Now, over a year later, they can hardly bear to think about it. People assume that Paul and Anna are rolling in it, they assume that Anna makes a fortune; but the truth is that although the company is thriving, Anna only takes out a salary. And what used to be a comfortable salary has been eaten up by buying the barn, followed by back-to-back IVF treatments.

  White Barn Fields is jokingly referred to by everyone they know, themselves included, as the Money Pit. Except it doesn’t feel quite so funny any more, not since finding out they weren’t getting pregnant and they weren’t going to take no for an answer.

  Anna’s stubbornness is something Paul has loved about her from day one. So tough she is referred to by her father as a ball-breaker. Said lovingly, of course. She knows exactly what she wants and how she is going to get it, and nobody ever says no to Anna. She is charming and down-to-earth and persuasive, and she somehow always manages to get her own way.

  She cannot understand why having children hasn’t come to her as easily as everything else in her life. She will tell the various journalists who interview her about Fashionista that she is stunned by its su
ccess, but in truth she is not stunned. It is exactly what she expected to happen. Too many fashion websites had fallen by the wayside because they didn’t keep their stock on site, had to ship it from afar, running the risk of delivery being far later than their instant-gratification-obsessed customers would accept. And then when the clothing did arrive, it was badly packaged in ugly plastic envelopes or badly wrapped in wrapping paper.

  Anna designed shocking-pink boxes, layers of delicate orange tissue paper carefully enfolding the purchases, all tied up with animal-print velvet ribbon. The boxes and the ribbon are a fortune, but worth it. They are always voted best packaging on the Internet, and the boxes are so beautiful her clients regularly write to her to say they can’t throw them away. Many is the time Anna has opened an interiors magazine to see someone’s dressing-room shelves piled with Fashionista boxes in assorted shapes and sizes.

  And shipping is twenty-four hours. No matter where in the world you are, if you order an item on a business day, you will have it the next. Customer service is everything in Anna’s book. It is one of the reasons she loves having an Internet company – she is fed up with going into trendy boutiques and having young, imperious sales assistants ignore her as they chat on the the phone, only perking up when she hands over her credit card and they realize who she is.

  So the fact that fashionista.uk.net is now the third most successful Internet company in the UK is no surprise to Anna whatsoever, although she would never admit that in public. The truth is that Anna has always felt blessed, always felt that her guardian angels were looking after her. Where others see adversity and hardship, Anna has only ever seen a challenge that she will inevitably overcome. She always believes the glass is half full, even when everyone else is convinced it is empty, and because she has always believed her life is charmed, her life has always been charmed.