Second Chance - Jane Green [143]
Then rehab. Three months. AA meetings all day, therapy, group therapy. Her family and friends coming in and telling her what she was like when she was drunk, the shame of being in that dark, lonely hole again. So lonely that nothing and no one could fill her up.
She finished rehab and walked out with head held high. A new sponsor, a new resolve. For the past year she has been to a meeting every day, and Pearce has been right by her side.
He finally stood up to his manager, his agents, and said screw his career. He wasn’t going to pretend any more. He wasn’t going to continue to stay in a marriage that was dead. It was against everything he believed in.
He moved into his beach house in Malibu, and Saffron joined him a month later. The press drove them crazy. There were times Saffron didn’t think she could do it, didn’t think she could cope with the loss of normality, because there was nothing about her life that was the same.
She couldn’t run to the corner store for a pint of milk, couldn’t dash out in the evenings to grab a movie and a burger with Pearce. They tried, but even if they managed to escape the press, they’d be sitting in a restaurant trying to pretend that the buzz wasn’t singing in their ears, that they didn’t know that all eyes were upon them, that people’s heads kept swivelling towards them. People constantly coming over with words of praise or words of criticism. It didn’t much matter; there was no such thing as privacy any more.
The job offers started pouring in. Saffron has worked constantly this past year, and between recovery, Pearce and work, she hasn’t had time for much else. She hasn’t seen her friends since that time in the country, but knew she couldn’t get married and not have them here.
Married! Saffron, married! Who would have thought? Pearce proposed on the beach one night. It should have been romantic but the dogs had been swimming in the water and had soaked them both, and it was freezing. When Pearce put his arms around her and said he loved her and wanted to marry her, she said, teeth chattering, ‘Fine, can we just go inside?’
He asked her again inside, and this time she burst into tears, crying so hard she forgot to say yes. The third time he asked, she said yes.
Pearce is planning to relay the story tonight during his speech.
It has taken months of planning to keep this secret, to keep the press away. They have taken over the inn for the weekend, have had everyone involved sign confidentiality agreements, have managed, thus far, to keep it private, largely by not telling even their friends and family, by gathering them here under false pretences.
Pearce comes into the living room to greet everyone, and Holly watches Pearce and Saffron together with a smile on her face, for their joy is infectious, their love for one another is genuine and real. And as she watches, her mind wanders over the ocean to her little Georgian house in Maida Vale.
She isn’t divorced, and it has not been easy, largely because Marcus has made it as difficult as he possibly can. He is, just as she suspected, unwilling to pay alimony, unwilling to pay a decent amount of child support, unwilling to do anything because, as he puts it, ‘You wanted this divorce, why should I have to pay?’
The only times when she has felt really low and wondered if she has the ability to do this on her own have been when she has been ill, but thankfully those early days of staying in bed all weekend when the children were at their dad’s, those days when her headaches were so blinding she thought her head was going to split open, have passed.
Marcus has kept the house. She thought she would mind, but, in fact, she found she just wanted to close the chapter and move on. They went through the inventory of furniture in the house, all of which had been chosen by Holly, and Holly found there was little she wanted.
Marcus demanded he keep the master bed, and Holly had laughed at the irony. Who would want the marital bed from an unhappy marriage? But then she remembered the bed