Second Chance - Jane Green [46]
‘Actually we were just saying how much we like your wife.’ Holly grins. ‘How did you end up snagging a gem like her?’
‘God only knows. I ask myself the same question pretty much every day. I think most people see her and think she’s going to be cold and condescending – that whole Swedish icy-blonde thing – plus, of course, she always feels this enormous pressure to dress the part because people expect it of her, but she’s not at all who you expect.’
‘How did you meet?’ Caroline asks.
‘You won’t believe it, but I interviewed her for The Sunday Times.’
‘No!’ both Olivia and Holly speak at the same time.
‘Yes!’ Paul imitates them as they laugh. ‘I interviewed her and instantly knew I had found someone special. I kept calling her on the pretext of having forgotten questions, and then, of course, I had to meet her for coffees to fact-check, and in the end she said she’d really just prefer it if I came clean and took her out for dinner.’
‘I hope you took her somewhere fabulously smart and trendy.’
‘Actually no.’ Paul grins. ‘I took her to Nando’s.’
‘What!’ Caroline is horrified. ‘You took her to a fast-food chicken place? Please tell me you’re joking.’ Paul shakes his head. ‘Whatever for?’
‘Because I wanted to see if she was really as down-to-earth as she seemed. It was great. She picked up that chicken with her fingers straight away and ate as if she hadn’t eaten in months. If I remember, she went back for thirds of the frozen yoghurt.’
‘I knew there was a reason I liked her!’ Holly laughs.
Marcus raises his glass. ‘Here’s to Anna. Holly would have been livid if I’d taken her somewhere like that on our first date.’ The others laugh, and Holly grits her teeth at the lie – she wouldn’t have cared; it was Marcus who cared about things like that.
‘Where is she anyway?’ Paul frowns.
‘Reading stories to Daisy, who realizes she’s on to a good thing. First it was The Tiger Who Came to Tea, then a couple of Charlie and Lola books, and now she’s got her reading Cinderella, which goes on for ever. Not stupid, my daughter.’
‘Clearly,’ Paul says, smiling, but there is sadness in his eyes. ‘She adores children. She’d stay up there all evening if she could.’
‘I’ll go and get her in a minute,’ Holly says.
‘No, don’t. She’s having a wonderful time,’ Paul says, and sure enough, when Anna walks back in the kitchen, half an hour later, her eyes are shining and she is beaming from ear to ear.
*
The meal is a huge success, and by the time the tarte Tatin is brought to the table with vanilla ice cream, talk has turned to Tom.
‘I can’t imagine losing a son,’ Caroline says, shivering with horror. ‘There just can’t be anything worse than losing a child.’
‘What about losing your partner?’ Paul says. ‘Obviously I can’t speak about losing children, not yet, but I can’t think of anything worse than losing Anna.’
Holly sits back in contemplation as the table continues to talk about the traumas of losing people you love. There is no question that there would be nothing more tragic, traumatizing and terrible for Holly than losing one of her children. But Marcus? How would she feel if she lost Marcus?
When the London bombings occurred, one of them was close to Marcus’s office. Holly couldn’t get hold of him all afternoon, and she didn’t hear anything. She went through the motions of a wife in distress, but in truth there was only one emotion that she knew to be authentic if he had been one of the casualties.
Relief.
The talk turns to Sarah: how she has reacted so differently to the way they would have expected, how she will cope. And for a moment they all lapse into silence as they think about losing the person they love most in the world.
And Holly starts to cry. Not because she’s thinking about Marcus.
Because she’s thinking about Tom.
Chapter Nine
Saffron wheels her bag through LAX and waves hello to Samuel, P’s driver. He’s standing where he always stands, as reliable and discreet as ever, and Saffron has long got over the discomfort of Samuel knowing that she is the mistress. She is quite sure