The Book of Second Chances

by Katherine Slee

  “We’re all told that we should be the best at something, or at least extraordinary in some way.” Phoebe fiddled with the cuffs of her shirt and Emily noticed how her nails were bitten down to the pads of her fingers.

  “No one’s the best.”

  “I read somewhere that you can get addicted to pain. Or, rather, the feeling you get when the pain goes away.”

  “I wish I knew what it felt like for the pain to go away.”

  Phoebe offered her a faint smile. “I learnt to forgive myself. To focus on the here and now, instead of always looking to the future.”

  Her words made Emily realize that she had only allowed herself to live in the present because she was afraid of everything else. Too scared to look back, too uncertain to think about what comes next.

  “How’s that working out for you?” Emily asked.

  Phoebe gave a small smile. “Not great, to be honest. I have absolutely no idea what it is I want to do.”

  “Join the club.”

  “What about your drawings, your grandmother’s stories?”

  “They’re her stories, not mine.”

  “When you were younger, what did you want to grow up and be?”

  “An astronaut,” Emily said without stopping to think.

  Phoebe laughed. “Seriously?”

  “Also a ballerina, a showjumper, and a magician.”

  “A magician?”

  “I wanted a pet rabbit.” But her mother had said no, due to the foxes that lived at the bottom of the garden. She told Emily the poor creature would either get eaten or die of a heart attack while the foxes prowled around outside its hutch.

  “I wanted to be a conservationist.” Phoebe opened a packet of mints, offered one to Emily. “To find ways to save all the incredible creatures on this planet, before humans destroy it all.”

  “So be a conservationist,” Emily said, turning the mint around in her mouth. She surprised herself by saying a word that would normally have made her lips clamp shut.

  “Just like that?” Phoebe was looking at Emily with a strange expression, as if she were deciding whether to leap upon the suggestion or swat it away.

  “What’s stopping you?”

  Phoebe paused and bit down on her bottom lip. “After graduating I applied for a job with a wildlife foundation in Rwanda. I would have been working with the local community to help develop tourism that would benefit, rather than threaten, the gorilla population.”

  “What happened?”

  A small smile, a shrug of shoulder, a look behind to see if anyone was coming back.

  “I decided to spend some time in France. It really helps, you know, to be fluent in something other than English.”

  She turned it down for him. Emily was suddenly so angry that Phoebe would turn down her future for someone who was about to move to the other side of the world without giving anyone else a second thought.

  Her grandmother’s face swam into her mind, from when she was young, from the photograph given to her in Paris. A woman who chose to do it all alone, who chose not to marry, not to conform. Someone who had always told Emily that society took far longer to catch up with the views of individuals than was necessary, who told her that she shouldn’t care what other people thought, because at the end of it all there’s no one to answer to for your decisions, other than yourself.

  “Don’t change your life for anyone.”

  Phoebe made a small noise, nodded, then shook her head as she stared up at the ceiling. She looked like she was either about to punch something or scream. It was a look Emily recognized all too well, because it was exactly the same way she felt every single time she thought about what could have been, when she dreamt of the life she could have had, felt she deserved, if it hadn’t been for one split second on a summer’s afternoon.

  It was how she had felt during her recovery, when others were trying to get her to talk, to walk, because what was the point of it all if they were gone? If her parents, and now her grandmother, weren’t there with her, loving her, giving her a family, what was the point? What was the point of anything if you had no one to share it with?

  “Like Mary.” Phoebe sniffed loudly, began to drum her fingers on the table.

  “Who?”

  “Mary,” she said again, peeling back the foil on her packet of mints, then putting two more in her mouth. “From your grandmother’s book.”

  “You’ve read Imagination?” Emily was always surprised when people talked about her grandmother’s earlier work. More often than not, all they ever wanted to do was gush about the brilliance, the genius, of Ophelia.

  “I really liked it,” she said, with a nod. “More than I thought I would.”

  “How so?”

  “The juxtaposition between what Mary thinks is going on in her and Sebastian’s relationship versus the reality that she’s in complete denial about. It’s like there are two voices in her head, the yin and yang of the universe.”

  “Phoebe studied English at Cambridge.” Tyler slid into his seat. “We met when I went back for a reunion dinner last year.”

  “Really?” A moment ago, Emily would have found this news irritating, would simply have seen it as yet more evidence that, for some people, life was a series of fortunate events, whereas for others it was all they could do to scramble to keep up. Now Emily looked at Phoebe with different eyes; understood that no one ever really knows what goes on inside a person’s mind, or their heart, that each and every one of us have demons to battle with at some point along the way.

  “Fat lot of good it did me, though.” Phoebe gestured for Tyler to move, to let her out. “Twenty-three and working as a waitress in a cocktail bar.”

  “You still have time,” Emily said, watching as Phoebe made her way toward the toilets in the next carriage, saw her offer up an apology when she tripped over a bag someone had left in the aisle. It made Emily wish she could go back, start again, offer up more than hostility to someone who was clearly just as lost as she was.

  Tyler unwrapped a toasted panini, the scent of roasted tomatoes and basil closing the gap between them. He took a large bite and waved the sandwich in Emily’s direction. “You of all people don’t get to judge her based on what she looks like.”

  “I wasn’t.” Only she was.

  “You’re still beautiful, no matter what you think.”

  Hand to her scar, Emily dipped her chin. “Stop.”

  Emily had been beautiful, as a child. She knew it because of the way people always commented on her appearance or looked at her a certain way. It’s also what made her so acutely aware of the difference after the accident because of how everyone stared at her and her scar. At the half of her face which didn’t quite fit.

  “I mean it,” he said, taking another bite, then handing the rest to her. “You shouldn’t be so focused on things that no one else cares about.”

  Emily turned the sandwich over, then around, pulled a string of melted mozzarella from its center. “You mean my parents.”

  “No, I mean you. Always thinking you’re only worth something because of her. She was holding you back,” he said, stabbing his finger onto Emily’s sketchbook. “Stagnating you.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You have so much talent. Your drawings are incredible, even you must be able to see that? You don’t need her, or her legacy. You can do this without her.”

  I wanted to be a writer. The thought popped into her mind without warning. Another thought, another memory, but one that wouldn’t quite let her peel back the curtains to see. The same kitchen, this time with snow on the ground and a cake in the oven. The cat was just a kitten and Emily had been teasing it with the end of a ribbon from her mother’s sewing basket.

  “We’re in this together.” Tyler pushed the sketchbook closer to Emily. “No matter how hard you try to push me away.”

  They watched each other as she ate. Bite after bite, neither of them saying a word. When she was done, he took out his headphones and sl
id them across to her.

  “There’s more inside your head than whatever idea she told you about.” Then he sat back, folded his arms over his chest and waited.

  That’s what I’m afraid of.

  Emily looked at the crumpled piece of paper containing a memory she hadn’t wanted to find, then placed the headphones over her ears, switched on the music, and tried to drown out the world.

  If she opened the floodgates, anything and everything could come tumbling out.

  18

  RAVEN

  Corvus corax

  Someone was singing. There was a church, from which a wedding party was spilling onto the street, a cloud of confetti covering the bride and groom. Emily bent down to pick some up. She saw they were rose petals, pink and soft but already beginning to wilt. Her hand began to shake as she watched the happy couple kiss, bodies pressed tight together, the wide smiles of all who had gathered to witness their union.

  She thought of Tyler and Phoebe, of their offer to come with her. How she had turned them down, said she was fine. Now she wasn’t so sure, because she couldn’t shake the feeling that had followed her all the way since Rome. It had been there when they arrived at their hotel, late last night. Emily had collapsed into bed, too exhausted to fight sleep, the after-effects of Valium, whiskey, and a belly full of Italian food finally catching up with her. But the feeling was still there when she woke. It whispered in her ear as she attempted to swallow her morning coffee, tapped her on the shoulder as she asked for a map from the hotel reception, circled the address she needed to get to.

  It had persisted, like a whining child, as she walked the streets, breathing in a new city, all the people that blurred into one. A place full of strangers going about their everyday lives, who knew nothing of her, of why she was there. She had been drawn toward the quiet, to the streets where not so many tourists were ambling about. That’s when she had seen him. A raven. Perched on black railings imprinted with centuries of other people’s fingerprints.

  A graveyard in the middle of a city, protected by birds who always made Emily think of the Tower back in London, where six ravens lived, wings clipped so they couldn’t leave, for fear of the curse proving to be true. She felt like one of those birds, feared that because she was here, something dark and dangerous was about to be released.

  Turning her back on the raven, Emily followed the sound of song, stopping just inside the church doorway. There was a monument built into the wall, of a coffin and a death mask, the sight of which made her step deeper into the gloom. A woman was singing near the altar, the vibrato in her voice reaching all the way up to the cavernous ceiling. It made Emily think of her mother and the arias she would sing while dancing through the house, trailing a mist of Guerlain behind.

  Stop, Emily told herself, wanting to leave but transfixed by the beauty of the song. It was sad and hopeful, all at once, even though she couldn’t understand the words. She sat down on the nearest pew, dropped her head automatically and began to murmur the Lord’s Prayer. As she did so, she thought of how churches carried all the highs and lows of life, the beginning and the end, all under one roof. She also thought about how she hadn’t ever said goodbye to her parents.

  It had been decided she was too weak, too vulnerable, to attend the funeral, that the ordeal would prove too much for her, and she needed her rest. It had been decided, for her, without ever asking what she wanted to do.

  Her parents were buried, side by side, on a hilltop in London. She was taken there, only once, the last time she visited the city, to leave red roses on their graves. Her grandmother had chattered away about the likes of Douglas Adams and Karl Marx also being laid to rest in the same location. She had probably thought that her words, her ordinary, light-hearted, words, could distract Emily from the horror of what she was being forced to do.

  Emily wiped at her eyes as she remembered, looked up to see a statue of an angel, kneeling in prayer. She had run away from her grandmother that day. Just like a child playing hide-and-seek, only she hadn’t wanted to be found, so she curled up behind an angel at rest, wings neatly folded and eyes closed. Her grandmother had searched the graveyard, calling out Emily’s name until finally she stumbled back onto the path, asked if they could please go back to Norfolk.

  It had been so much easier to hide, to bury everything deep, to deny all the sorrow, all the regret, to allow her grandmother to wrap her up in cotton wool and fend off all the demons, anything that might threaten to break her, to make her feel.

  “Stai bene?” A priest hovered at the end of the pew, hands hidden inside the sleeves of his vestments and a look of patience, of kindness, on his lined face. Emily resisted the urge to throw her arms around him, feeling like an idiot for imagining how he might take her into the confessional, cleanse her of all her sins, then give her a cup of tea and a biscuit before sending her on her way.

  “I need to find someone.” Emily handed over the map, noticing that she had torn a hole in one corner.

  The priest smiled back, said something in Italian and beckoned for Emily to follow him to the door. He pointed along the street, then gave back the crumpled map. As he did so, he clasped Emily’s hand between his own, staring deep into her eyes, then at her scar.

  For a moment the world stilled, and the two strangers stood, not saying a word. Emily felt the air around her stir, let go the breath in her lungs and registered the beat of her heart as it began to slow. The priest murmured to her, low vibrations of sound escaping his lips, landing on her skin, embalming her with their intent.

  Then he let her go. One curt nod of his head, before spinning on his leather soles and walking away, the tails of his robe waving goodbye.

  What did he see? It disturbed her, the way he had seemed to look deep inside her soul. The idea that he could understand her pain, had no doubt seen it so often on the faces of his parishioners. Was it because he could accept the will of God in a way that most people never would?

  Emily walked without realizing where she was going, feeling trapped somewhere between then and now, not understanding where she had been or where she was supposed to go; what it was that she was about to find in a restaurant in Verona.

  I wish you were here, she thought as she turned the corner, found herself once again by a river.

  Leaning over the smooth, stone wall, she felt a mellow breeze on her cheek, turned her head to follow the water in its perpetual flow. To her right there was a row of potted eucalyptus plants, the sweet, minty fragrance making her think of winter nights with Vicks rubbed onto her chest; of soft hands and a calming voice that sung her a lullaby while she slept.

  Stop, Emily told herself once more as she watched a woman step from behind the plants with a bright red watering can. She watered each plant in turn, then went over to where a pair of oversized urns stood, flanking the entrance to a restaurant with a brass plaque next to the door.

  “Scusi,” Emily called out, and the woman turned.

  “Si?” she asked, a slight crease between her brows as she looked Emily up and down, saw the map in her hand, the pink around her eyes.

  “I’m here to see Giancarlo,” Emily said. “My name is Emily.” There was a flash of recognition as Emily spoke her name, followed by a torrent of Italian that Emily understood nothing of, along with a broad smile and hands that beckoned her to follow.

  The woman led Emily through the restaurant and up a small flight of stairs. Everywhere there were people busy polishing glasses and straightening starched linen tablecloths. Emily could smell garlic, rosemary, and something else as she turned her head to peer inside an open door, at stainless steel worktops covered with ingredients, heard the scrape of knives being sharpened, felt a slight drop in temperature as she went back outside.

  Giancarlo sat on the balcony at a small, round table in the sunshine, drinking coffee and doing a crossword. He was wearing a checked shirt, jeans, and horn-rimmed spectacles that balanced on the end of his nose as he tackled each question in turn. He looked up as
they approached, a lazy smile on his face that turned quickly into astonishment.

  Emily sat down, allowed him to simply look at her a moment. She didn’t press him for any conversation, any answers, because she saw the way his eyes lingered on the locket around her neck, was certain he knew what photograph was inside.

  “For a second I thought you were her.” His voice was low and melodic, but not the one she had been expecting. Not the one she was trying to remember from long ago.

  “Apart from the hair.” And the scar.

  “I think it’s the dress. She wore one just like it the first time we met. I took her and Gigi dancing on the hills behind Rome. The two of them had all the men wrapped around their fingers.” He smiled as he spoke, and Emily could tell he was thinking of that night, of when two young women thought they had the rest of their lives to be friends. It made Emily sad and happy all at once.

  “I never wear dresses.” She looked down at the red dress she had chosen that morning, but didn’t remember putting it in her suitcase, couldn’t remember the last time she had worn it.

  “You should. Beautiful things shouldn’t only be kept for special occasions.”

  Emily smiled. She thought of how at home her grandmother used bone china, crystal glasses, and silver forks for breakfast—a mismatched collection of things that she had bought, and broken, over the years, along with silk blouses and diamonds, never caring if something got lost, always saying that life was too short to care about possessions.

  Someone came out, placed a pot of coffee on the table, along with a plate of individual millefoglie cakes. Giancarlo picked one up and broke it in two, handed half to Emily, waited for her to bite down, for the hit of salt and caramel to reach her taste buds. She made the necessary noises of appreciation, and he chuckled before eating his own.

  “They were Gigi’s favorites,” he said, pouring a line of dark, steaming coffee into both cups, then holding up cream and sugar in turn. “She told me they’re what made her fall in love with Italy, with me.”