Second Chance - Jane Green [18]
Olivia never used to keep all the lights on, but since she and George split up, coming home to a dark flat makes her feel far more alone than is altogether necessary, and her routine now involves whisking the dogs out for a walk and returning to a flat that could almost, almost, have a husband lying on the sofa reading the papers.
Except it doesn’t. Not any more.
Not that George was her husband, but since she was with him for seven years he might as well have been, and frankly she wouldn’t have stayed with him all that time if she hadn’t thought that at some point they would be walking down the aisle.
Olivia was thirty-two when she met George. Fantastically happy with her job as deputy director of the animal shelter, she was oblivious to the dating world unless one of her well-meaning friends set her up on a blind date – she had, much to her chagrin, unwittingly become something of an expert at these. Tom always said most of the dates would fall madly in love with her, but she was not particularly interested in any of them.
She had never wanted children – her babies were her animals, she said, and she was close to Ruby and Oscar, her niece and nephew, as close as she ever wanted to be – so didn’t feel the pressing ticking of the biological clock that so many of her friends seemed to feel around the age of thirty, and was quite happy with everything in her life. Then George turned up one day to find a dog, and her life tipped upside down.
It was his sweetness that did it for her. That, and the fact that he was as lovely with his three-year-old as he was with the animals. Not that she had given him any hint of a clue that she found him lovely – that would have been horribly unprofessional, but she leant in the doorway and watched him play with one of her favourite dogs, Lady, a dog that had been in the shelter for months, that no one would adopt because she was eleven years old, not terribly pretty, and deeply terrified of people.
George had taken his daughter, Jessica, into the meet-and-greet room, and Olivia had brought Lady in, crouching down with her and soothing her as Lady looked frantically around for a corner in which to hide.
And George hadn’t done what most people in this situation would do. He hadn’t advanced on Lady, crooning in an attempt to make her feel comfortable, overwhelming and crowding her; he had just sat at the other end of the room, Jessica sitting next to him, and he had watched Lady as he talked to Olivia.
The usual questions. About Lady. About the shelter. How could she do it, didn’t she want to take all the animals home? And then a little about her. How she started. Did she know she wanted to work with animals when she was a little girl?
‘See?’ He turned to Jessica. ‘You might grow up and work somewhere that helps to save animals when you’re big.’ The little girl’s round face lit up.
‘We have an open house next Sunday,’ Olivia volunteered. ‘It’s our big annual fund-raiser. We have stalls and games and pony rides. And the kids get to play with some of the animals.’
‘Oh we’d love that,’ George said. ‘Next weekend you’re with Mummy, though, but I’m sure she’d let you come with me. Let’s call her when we get home.’
Ah, Olivia thought, her heart fluttering in a way she’d almost forgotten. Divorced. But he can’t be single, not this kind, lovely, gentle man. Surely he has a girlfriend, someone. And even if he were available, surely he wouldn’t be interested in me. Not looking the way I look at work.
Olivia spent far longer than usual preparing for the open house. Instead of scraping her hair back in a ponytail and wearing old jeans, a sweatshirt and wellies, she let her hair fall loosely on her shoulders and slicked on lipgloss and a touch of mascara. She wore cords and a shirt, and tiny silver earrings, and told