Second Chance - Jane Green [126]
Saffron Armitage! The film star! For the publicity has served to elevate Saffron’s status enormously in the eyes of the world at large, particularly naive shop girls in the Cotswolds.
‘You’ll never guess what!’ she whispers on the phone to her best friend when they have gone. ‘You’ll never guess who just came into the shop! Saffron Armitage!’
‘You’re joking!’ her friend says. ‘You should call the papers! The Sun is printing a number asking for her whereabouts! Go on! You could make yourself some money.’
The girl laughs. ‘Nah,’ she says. ‘I’m too shy. Anyway, she was nice. I don’t want to mess up her life. Still, a bit bloody exciting. Not too often we get a film star in the shop. I wish I’d asked for her autograph.’
On the other side of town, Holly and Will sit in a tea shop. They are surrounded by elderly women with blue and pink rinses, sipping English breakfast tea out of delicate floral-printed, mismatched china cups, a few chips here and there, which nobody seems to mind, slightly tarnished silver trays on each table, piled high with tea sandwiches, tiny cakes and lopsided scones studded with dried-out raisins.
Will ordered the tea, but neither of them is eating anything, neither of them having the slightest appetite today, too high on each other to do anything other than gaze, kiss, touch.
Even now, tucked away at a table in the corner, they are kissing. Like teenagers, utterly oblivious to the rest of the people in the tea shop, some of whom are openly staring at them with envy, big smiles on their faces, others tutting disapprovingly and trying not to look.
Holly and Will don’t care. Their passion doesn’t have to be hidden any more. This is the first time since last night they have been able to touch each other openly, kiss each other openly, lay heads on shoulders, no holds barred.
‘I can’t believe this has happened to me,’ Holly says, unable to stop smiling. Unable to stop taking Will’s face in her hands and planting soft kisses all over it – on his forehead, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks.
Will is adoring being adored. As the apple of his mother’s eye, he has always adored being adored. But he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little apprehensive about this. Holly isn’t just anyone, she’s Holly. Holly Mac! Almost family, not to mention the fact that she’s married.
He got involved, seriously involved – the flings through work don’t count – with a married woman once before. He had thought she was on the verge of finalizing a divorce but, in fact, she had only recently separated, was still in couples’ counselling, had a husband who thought they were going to be mending the marriage.
Will found himself involved in the divorce. He was named in the petition, had to deal with a woman who wasn’t, as he had thought, fun and clever and independent, but one who coped with the stress of the divorce by crying and screaming and clinging. He wanted to leave, but he felt he was in too deep, didn’t know how to extricate himself.
He swore he’d never go down that road again.
Yet here he is with Holly. Object of his teenage fantasies, a fantasy he never dreamt he’d fulfil.
Although isn’t it true that you should never fulfil your fantasies because the reality rarely measures up? As much as he adores Holly, as much as he has loved this friendship they have built, he is unprepared for this outpouring of affection, unprepared for the way the floodgates of adoration seemed to burst open in Holly last night.
Anyone who has known Holly from when she was young would describe her as passionate. Holly, much like Saffron, would love or she would hate. She, much like Saffron, saw the world in black and white. She was luckier than Saffron in that she didn’t have the addictive gene. Or perhaps she wasn’t luckier. Perhaps that would have helped.