Second Chance - Jane Green [19]
Never mind that she had worn her old jeans and sweatshirt for the past four fund-raisers.
‘Oooh,’ said one volunteer after another, after another, and another, when she walked in. ‘Don’t you look fancy!’
‘Off for a job interview?’ They laughed.
And finally: ‘Why are you looking so posh?’
‘Just ignore them,’ said Sophie, her able and lovely assistant. ‘You look gorgeous, Olivia. You ought to dress up more often.’
‘I’m hardly dressed up,’ said Olivia, who by now felt so self-conscious she may as well have been wearing a ball gown.
‘But you look lovely nevertheless.’
‘Well, thank you.’ Olivia headed straight to the loo to check herself in the mirror, feeling overdone; but she wasn’t, she realized – just more done than they had ever seen her.
George and Jessica came for the entire day. He bought twenty-four raffle tickets and won a course of pony rides for Jessica (‘I think you may have to wait until she’s a little older,’ Olivia said with a smile), a giant bag of dog food, and dinner for two at Chez Vincent on the high street.
‘I hope that as the deputy director of the shelter,’ George said, having collected his prizes, ‘you’ll be my guest at Chez Vincent.’
‘Oh… um…’ Olivia flushed. ‘Well, yes. I’d love to.’
‘Good’–the delight in his eyes was clear–‘I’ll phone you tomorrow and we’ll organize it. And thank you for the most wonderful day. Jessie and I have loved every minute,’ and with that he leant over and planted a soft kiss on her cheek.
She floated home.
One dinner became many, then became a relationship of weeks, which became months, then a year.
After a year Olivia’s mother sat her down and asked whether George was planning on marrying her. Olivia’s mother had divorced her father five years before, and Olivia was always surprised that, given this unexpected turn of events, her mother still seemed to think that marriage was the very pinnacle of achievement for a woman.
Olivia’s mother continued to ask, on a regular basis, whether they were planning a wedding soon, inevitably sniffing and on one occasion stating, to end the conversation, ‘Of course he’s never going to do it. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’
‘Mum!’ Olivia reprimanded her sharply. She had heard enough, and Fern eventually backed off, but couldn’t resist asking from time to time if Olivia thought it might be happening.
‘I don’t know when we’re getting married,’ Olivia said. ‘Or even if we’re getting married. I imagine we will at some point, but there’s no hurry. Look at Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, they’ve never got married and their relationship seems great. We’re quite happy as we are.’
Which was true. Olivia had never thought she would need a ring on her finger to be utterly committed to someone, and there was no doubt in her mind that she and George were utterly committed to each other.
They had Jessie every other weekend, which was also easy for Olivia. Although Olivia had never been entirely comfortable with children other than family, Jessie loved animals, which always helped, so they bonded over the animals, and Olivia found a way of being Jessie’s friend.
And Ruby and Oscar adored Jessie. Olivia’s sister, Jen, would drop the kids at Olivia’s almost every weekend they had Jessie, and when she and George went out with all of them, everyone would tell her what gorgeous children they had, and after a while she stopped explaining that none of them were, in fact, hers.
One year became two, then three, and after seven years Olivia knew that she was going to be spending the rest of her life with George, ring or no ring.
Until the night they went out for dinner and George announced that they were setting up an American branch of his advertising firm, and he was one of the people going out to New York to get it going.
‘New York?’ Olivia felt as if the air had been knocked out of her. New York. What could she possibly do in New York?