Second Chance - Jane Green [44]
‘My other old school friends?’ she reminds him.
‘If you haven’t seen them for twenty years, how come you suddenly want to leap back into being best friends with all these people?’
‘I don’t,’ Holly says defensively. ‘But if Caroline’s a fashion journalist, Anna runs fashionista.uk.net, so they’ll probably have tons in common. I haven’t even met her yet – she was on a business trip so couldn’t make Tom’s memorial service – and I’d love to know what she’s like. Paul’s so easy, he gets on with everyone. They may not be able to come, but I’d love to ask them.’
‘Great idea!’ Marcus says, having read a profile of Anna just last week, and deciding on the spot that she is just the sort of person he ought to be mixing with, and Holly picks up the phone to call Paul.
By six o’clock the children are bathed, fed, and mesmerized by The Incredibles on the DVD player in Holly and Marcus’s bedroom. The braised lamb shank is bubbling merrily in the Le Creuset in the oven, and the tarte Tatin is cooling off next to the stove. The table in the kitchen has been set with pretty Provencal-style blue and yellow linens, and Holly has checked her email only eight times since waking up this morning.
On the eighth time of checking and finding nothing but dozens of junk emails offering to make her a fortune by investing in a Nigerian banking scam, provide her with Cialis, or enlarge her penis (this last she was tempted to forward to Marcus with a note, I believe this was meant for you, except she didn’t think he’d find it funny – but she used to forward them to Tom from time to time and he’d find similarly ridiculous emails on breast enlargement and natural Botox alternatives to send back to her), Holly puts her computer on standby.
I am being ridiculous, she tells herself. Of course Will isn’t going to send me an email. This isn’t dating, for heaven’s sake. I am a married mother of two, and just because he confessed he had a crush on me over twenty years ago, it means nothing today.
God, look at me, for starters. I have boobs that practically swing around my ankles when I walk, my stomach is covered in stretch marks, and if it weren’t for my trusty tweezers I’d probably have a handlebar moustache. Of course he doesn’t fancy me. He wasn’t flirting, I was just reading too much into it, and isn’t it just like me to think I have to fancy someone just because they fancy me?
Not that he does fancy me, which is perfectly clear, because if he did he would have responded to my last email by now. I will not check this email any more. Will is lovely, but he’s Tom’s brother, which is probably what this whole thing is about. Less about Will than about having a connection to Tom. This isn’t a real feeling and I know, I absolutely know, that this will pass.
These thoughts fly around Holly’s head and, with a sigh of relief – now she understands – she turns her computer off firmly and walks downstairs to get ready for supper.
‘She’s gorgeous!’ Holly whispers to Olivia as they emerge from the basement – or, as Marcus would call it, the wine cellar – with another couple of bottles. ‘I feel so dowdy next to her.’
Holly colours immediately as they walk into Caroline, standing at the top of the stairs just outside the kitchen, but Caroline leans forward with a conspiratorial whisper. ‘She definitely has the whole winter look going on perfectly. Did you see her Chloé bag? That thing’s impossible to get – waiting lists for months, unless you run Fashionista.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Holly tries to get her foot out of her mouth. ‘You’ve never even met me before and here I am, gossiping.’
‘Don’t worry about it in the slightest,’ Caroline says, and Holly and Olivia relax. ‘Fashion’s all about gossip – what a boring world it would be without it.’
‘Well, then… I know