A Year of Second Chances

by kendra Smith

  I grin back at him. ‘No problem.’

  Daniel’s been picking me up and dropping me off to do errands for the past three weeks now, and it’s amazing what intimacy a tiny cocoon like the inside of the car brings. I’d like to think he likes my company as much as I’ve discovered I enjoy his. It’s also lovely, I have to admit, not to have to catch the bus in the freezing cold, the wind, or the drizzle. Suzie was right. It’s a different world in here: a bubble of safety, quiet and warmth; we chat non-stop. Sometimes it’s idle chit-chat; other times I tell him edited bits about my life.

  I find I can open up to him. There’s no Paul, no red bills, no cleaning. I can relax while I’m in here, be myself – well, almost. We seem to share the same sense of humour, music (Hampshire FM) and a hatred for pickles (an emergency stop at Burger King on my insistence). He’s just simply fun to be with. He doesn’t care that I’m a cleaner, he doesn’t mind if I spill tomato sauce on his seat; somehow this gentle giant has seen so much of life elsewhere that he brings with him a calmness and certainty that everything will be OK. I wish it was.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Home please. I’m shattered. Rosemount Gym just cancelled my next job. It was cleaning out the ladies’ changing rooms. Actually, not such a bad gig, last time,’ I yawn, then quickly cover my mouth, ‘I found a tenner in one of the cubicles and my boss told me to keep it, said it would be impossible for anyone to prove whose it was!’ Just as I say it, I start to flush. ‘Oh, sorry, that must’ve sounded—’

  ‘No, not at all. Finders keepers and all that!’ He turns and smiles. I stare at the gnarly traffic ahead, with plumes of smoke like ghostly snakes intertwining from cars’ exhaust pipes and realise what it is with him. It’s a gift – he always manages to say the right thing, at the right time. He makes me feel completely at ease. Someone once said that it’s a mark of your friendship if you can sit in silence. We can. And it’s certainly not tense. I might, I admit, sneak a look or two at him in the silences in the dark, but I don’t feel I have to chatter to him about nothing; there’s just no need.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous, let’s see how we do today, shall we?’ He leans over and turns up the radio as my heart thumps a little. Gorgeous. Stop it, Charlie, he probably calls his eighty-year-old passengers that. A little jingle that heralds the quiz is about to start. This has become a habit. We do the radio quiz on the local radio station when we’re in the car together. Today’s topic is TV soaps. We’re getting quite good.

  ‘This’ll be easy!’

  ‘Watch a lot of soaps?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’ I turn to look at him. ‘Kind of my guilty pleasure, really. That and custard creams!’

  Daniel laughs. ‘Me too – about the soaps, got hooked on quite a few after my wife—’ He stops. ‘Can’t stand custard creams, though!’ He looks sideways at me and changes gear.

  As the presenter grills the contestant about characters from EastEnders, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks and several others we both shout out the answers. I make a note with a pen on an old napkin.

  ‘Hey! We got eight out of ten!’

  ‘We make a great team.’ He smiles broadly. I can just make out the crinkles at the sides of his eyes. I feel myself redden again and not for the first time wish I didn’t blush quite so easily, but I’m glad of the darkness.

  ‘You should have seen me with my last client, not such a great team!’

  ‘Oh really? What do you mean?’ Was it another woman? I feel a sudden rush of something and get quite a jolt when I realise it might be jealousy.

  ‘Well, I was there to help her get to her bingo session, but instead when I arrived – she’s called Mrs Norris; she’s seventy-nine – she was in quite a state. Said she couldn’t possibly go to bingo and leave Trevor.’

  ‘Trevor?’

  ‘I thought it was her late husband. He apparently died three years go. I thought she’d lost the plot. Turns out it was her cat.’

  I laugh. ‘Why couldn’t she leave him? She must have done it before.’

  ‘She had. Only this time the silly moggie was stuck in her fireplace – he’d got his paw stuck in the grate. I had to take her and him, with the grate attached, in the car to the vet.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were hours at the vet – they had to give the cat a local anaesthetic so they could remove his paw from the grate, which they did. The cat and Mrs Norris were in quite a pickle, so I drove her home and made her a cup of tea; I knocked on her neighbour’s door so she had some company when I left. That’s why I was really late getting to you, sorry.’ He glances across at me.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘How’s Tyler? I saw him at the window last time when I picked you up. Keeping an eye on you?’

  ‘Yeah, probably.’ I smile. ‘He’s fine. Well, he’s seventeen – that should say it all – spends most of his time plugged into his phone or in the shower, trying to get rid of the stink from the chippy – he hates his job there – but it’s not easy being a single parent, so I’m really grateful for his job, paying me what he can,’ I add.

  ‘What about his dad?’ he asks hesitantly as he glances at a motorbike roaring past us.

  I come out with my usual line. ‘Not on the scene.’ I look out of the window to avoid any further conversation about it.

  ‘Right. Must be hard.’

  I really don’t want to get into it. ‘Actually, I might need your advice.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You know, now and then – boys.’ I shrug, turning to look at him. Why have I said that? ‘I sometimes don’t know what to say to Tyler.’

  ‘Sure – of course I’ll help if I can. If I can help sixteen-year-olds in South America who have no dad, no mum then I am sure I can help Tyler. But I bet you’ve done a great job.’

  ‘Single parenting does have its challenges. How did you get into that work in Argentina? I never asked.’

  ‘I wanted to give something back.’ He shrugs. ‘I’d been through a lot—’ He abruptly stops. ‘I’d, um, spent a few years working in the City. That was more my dad’s dream – anyway I’d had enough and—’ He stops and I look at him. The atmosphere has changed. He shakes his head and carries on. ‘I went with a UK company that offers volunteers from business. I could help with the financial side of things, helped the kids to get proper training, so they had a better, more skilled workforce; I did that for several years, then the money ran out so I ended up working for a local company.’ He looks in his mirror and changes lanes. There’s a sheen on the road from the rain earlier, like petrol that has left multi-coloured streaks on the tarmac, glistening in our headlights.

  ‘Some of the kids were amazing. You only had to tell them something once – and they got it. I also indulged my other passion.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Photography,’ he says, turning into my road. ‘Amateur only.’

  ‘Oh, Tyler’s into photography; in fact that’s one of the reasons—’ I stop before I say anything incriminating.

  ‘Reasons?’ He has turned the engine off and has shifted in his seat to face me. I haven’t thought about tomorrow during the whole car journey, but now I’m home I can feel a knot in my stomach.

  ‘Oh, reasons I wanted him to do well in college – which he didn’t,’ I lie. ‘But there’s a course, a photography course he might go on…’ I stop suddenly as Daniel accidentally touches my knee when he turns the radio off – and I feel a shiver go right up my spine.

  ‘Well, if you need any help with the photography let me know.’

  ‘Sure, I will. I’d better go in.’ The mood has changed, sitting in the dark with Daniel is oddly erotic and I feel there’s an energy between us that I can’t explain. I can’t process it all now, so I reluctantly reach for the door handle.

  Just as I get out, Daniel says, ‘Have a good day tomorrow.’

  I keep the door open a little and stop in my tracks. ‘I’ll try. Bye.’

  He has no idea.

  26

>   Suzie

  Suzie checked her hair in the lift mirror as she felt the surge of the elevator rise upwards, leaving her stomach behind. Phew. She smoothed down her sleek, dark locks and stared at her reflection, at the diamonds sparkling in her ears. She absent-mindedly touched them. Rex had given her these earrings. She wondered what they’d cost. Had he been involved in the Libor scandal? Was he guilty? Surely she could trust him.

  She’d had to run for the train at Waterloo – the blessed thing was always making her late with closures to platforms. She did – on the outside – look like a proper publishing executive. Cherry red wool dress, smart black jacket, Miu Miu heels and a decent covering of her favourite YSL blusher. Yes, she thought, I’m in control.

  No, no you’re not, her inner critic cautioned, you’re a mess since hearing about the Libor thing, worrying about Charlie – keeping it all a secret from Rex – hoping that it will work out, and you know it.

  She was determined to put her personal life away for today; she needed to hold on to her job. What if Rex lost his job for good? She had a very big meeting at work about, God help her, babies.

  She pulled her shoulders back. You can do this.

  She stared at the woman in the mirror. Who am I? The woman who stared back looked desperate to her. She tried to smile. That also seemed wrong. She ran her hands over her cheeks and peered at her mascara, checked it hadn’t run. The lift pinged to let her know it had stopped at Level 5. She stepped out and hurried to the meeting room.

  ‘Suzie,’ Annie, her boss, got up quickly and smiled warmly at her, touched her elbow and gestured to the empty chair beside her.

  ‘Hi, everyone.’ She beamed as the whole table looked up at her expectantly. She really hoped that the three hours of Internet research late into the night for this project didn’t show. She had shovelled a ton of Touche Eclat under her eyes and applied her trademark bright red pout. Now all she had to do was confidently win the pitch.

  She straightened her back and opened her folder. She was keen to show them and Annie the campaign she had been working so hard on, the one for this photography client. It had been her idea, after all: they were going to run a competition to see if anyone could think of a great tag line for the arrival of the latest royal baby – whoever won the competition would receive a new camera, a makeover and photo shoot alongside pictures of the new baby with the hashtag #Capturinglife. She’d been working on the Meghan baby account for a while and had found herself fascinated, perhaps too fascinated, about how this woman could waltz into public life, be so glamorous and then, voila, get pregnant, just like that. How did these women do it?

  Nevertheless, she was pretty excited about the reveal – she’d been working alongside her senior account manager on it for months. They’d put the competition teasers on Facebook, Twitter and it had generated them several more leads. She couldn’t believe, however, some of the emotions that had surfaced by working on the account – like scissors were chopping at her heart, snip, snip, snip – here’s everything you seem incapable of having. She momentarily closed her eyes.

  James, the client, turned and spoke to her. ‘So, Suzie, let’s see what you’ve got, then.’

  Sitting up straight and flashing James a bright smile, she opened her file, put it on the table and looked up at the smiling faces. This’ll show them.

  Annie’s face seemed a bit contorted. Suzie looked at the open folder again. Oh, Dear Mother of God. Wrong folder.

  There, instead of a colour photograph of how the campaign would look on Facebook and Instagram, was a full-colour diagram from the IVF clinic, complete with annotated notes, of a penis – arrows pointed to where sperm came from and in bold letters was the word ‘semen’.

  Suzie closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Maybe this was the wrong project, after all.

  27

  Charlie

  ‘Please relax.’ The doctor smiles at me, syringe in one hand. The other he places on my arm. Relax? He has no idea. I’m on a very thin bed in an IVF clinic with my legs apart because I’m so broke. It’s not – in any way – a ‘relaxing’ situation.

  ‘The thawing of the embryo went very well, so you and Suzie have a very good chance.’ He smiles. I can’t make out his accent: Eastern European? How many of these does he do a day? How many women does he treat? How many women, on the verge of giving up? How much hope comes into this room, how much tension?

  There’s a TV monitor above my bed, to my right. If I wanted to, the doctor said, I could watch the embryo’s journey on the screen. The image is unclear, but I can just make out the egg being placed in my womb. It’s all blue, black and fuzzy. A seed is being planted. I’m responsible for this seed – I know what that feels like. As the doctor gets on with his work, I close my eyes and consider how I’ve got into all this.

  I want to make Suzie and Rex happy, to give them a baby after all the events they’d been through… and then there’s the money… and yet – there are so many confusing thoughts in my head right now. What about Daniel? Why am I thinking about Daniel? But I know why. I’ve seen him several times a week for the last six weeks and there’s an easy camaraderie between us. Sometimes I think there’s something more…

  Wouldn’t he run a mile? I look at the TV screen again, close my eyes and remember yesterday when I’d been in the car with him. He’d been telling me all about South America. Helping all those children – he’d given up everything and taken himself off to another part of the world to do good there. And how would he feel if he knew I was having a baby for cash? That that baby was going to be taken from my very womb, removed from its birth mother, and given to someone else to care for? And I was going to stand by and watch that happen. What will he think of me? And how on earth am I going to tell him?

  It will be obvious soon. It’s not something you easily drop into the conversation when you’re listening to Hampshire Radio’s quiz show and are both shouting out the answers.

  Who in the car is having a baby for money?

  Me!

  But what about my life? The money does matter. It will make such a difference, I remind myself, and that’s why I’m doing it; for me and Tyler. I clench my fists.

  I want this time to be different. With Tyler, I… But what if I get attached to the baby? A cold shiver runs through me as I flick open my eyes again and try to focus on the TV screen. It’s still blue and black with grey fuzzy bits on the left-hand side.

  ‘All right, Ms Moore?’ There’s a nurse next to the bed and she touches my shoulder. I nod.

  What if this stirs up memories, what if those pulls of motherhood get too strong? What if I start to bond with the baby? Will it be a boy or girl – who chooses the name? I haven’t asked Suzie any of this. Will I have a say? Probably not.

  No, this time I will block out my emotions. I turn my head away from the screen so I can’t see it. I don’t want to see it. I can’t let myself get involved. This time needs to be different… I grip the crisp white sheet in my left hand.

  ‘All done, Ms Moore.’ The doctor snaps off his gloves with a thwack and brings me back to reality – to the fact that he’s put all of Suzie and Rex’s hopes and dreams into my womb.

  I realise I’m still clenching the sheet as the doctor turns to wash his hands.

  28

  Dawn

  ‘Howdy, honey – you new?’ Revving up the music was Ted, the new American teacher the gym had hired last month. He flashed a very white-toothed smile at Dawn who quickly blushed, stared at his enormous biceps bulging from his tight T-shirt. Golly, she didn’t want her arms – or legs, come to think of it, as she caught sight of thick-set, muscly thighs – to look like that.

  She could do this, yes she could. Point six had told her that she needed to try something new. Well, the sex in the shower suggestion had gone down like a loaded shopping trolley in a lake, but this was going to be much easier to do. A new class, something different. The website had talked about flower arranging – too boring, horse riding (absolutely terr
ifying) or learning to cook Vietnamese food (much too fiddly – she’d looked it up, lots of finely chopped vegetables). But this appealed, a totally different workout from her usual Saturday shuffle with Suzie at Zumba; this time she was going to try spinning – a ‘new class at the gym’. Hard core, Felix had said at breakfast that morning. That had made her smile.

  She’d bought some of those cycling shorts, but the padding made her feel like she was wearing a nappy, far too much frisson there, but the wrong sort. And from the sounds of it, you could tone your arms as well, hanging off the bike or something. Actually, she’d rather not think about that.

  ‘Yes, yes, I am new,’ she replied to Ted, yanking her shorts down. Really, they were quite tight.

  ‘Don’t look so frightened!’ He beamed. ‘Here, sweetie-pie, take a bike here, not too far from me. You’ll need to listen and watch!’

  ‘Right, OK.’ Dawn smiled nervously, hauling herself on the bike.

  ‘Let’s get your cute ass going!’ Ted was by her side fixing the settings.

  Dawn didn’t know where to look. She looked at the floor as that seemed safest, then slowly lifted her head again to find that Ted was offering his assistance to another member at the back.

  Everyone started to file in – the Yummy Mummies toned and tanned, and surely some who’d had a bit of help beyond chicken fillets in their bras?

  ‘Right-o, class! I’m Ted, and we’re gonna kick some butt! Who wants to burn nine hundred calories?’

  There was a loud yelling and whooping from behind her. Dawn turned around and saw all the women and men cheering. Oh heavens.

  ‘First, you need to set your bike, make sure your seat is in the right position, and let’s go.’ With that, Dawn nearly fell off her bike as some incredibly loud music started up. Maybe this isn’t for me after all.