Second Chance - Jane Green [7]
Marcus wouldn’t see this. Why would he, when Holly, like most women, is a consummate chameleon? During the day, when Marcus isn’t around, she can be herself, can have girlfriends and their children round for lunch, throwing together salad, pitta bread and dips to eat around the kitchen counter as the kids make a mess of fish fingers and ketchup around the kitchen table.
She can break open bottles of wine and put Shakira on the stereo, she and Frauke shaking their hips while Daisy, attempting to imitate them, shocks Holly at how a four-year-old can appear to be so mature, so womanly, o – good lord, she can’t believe she thinks this – sexy.
But she can have fun, can throw on ratty old cargos and trainers, hoodies and no make-up, and not worry about impressing anyone.
And when Marcus comes home, she can slip into what he likes. If they’re staying in she’ll swiftly change into crisp, dark jeans and a cashmere sweater, small diamond studs in her ears, or, if going out to supper, smart woollen trousers, high-heeled boots, a velvet jacket.
The music goes off, the cushions are plumped to perfection. Holly finds herself running through the house every night before Marcus comes home, checking that all is exactly the way he likes it. The children are not allowed to build forts out of the sofa cushions in the living room, and Frauke is in charge of making sure Marcus doesn’t know that almost every afternoon every cushion in the house is piled up in the centre of the room.
The children are also not allowed to run ‘naked like savages’ through the garden, and on the rare summer afternoons when Marcus announces he’s coming home early, she and Frauke beg, cajole and plead with the kids to put their swimsuits back on before Daddy comes home.
Her own father had stopped showing interest in Holly soon after the divorce. She remembers very clearly being fourteen years old, her father taking her to the soda fountain at Fortnum & Mason for tea and, over a huge chocolate sundae, telling her that he loved her, would always be there for her, and that no matter what happened he was going to see her every week and every other weekend.
He didn’t say that the reason for the divorce was his persistent infidelity. Holly only found that out later.
For a while, he kept his word about seeing Holly. For six months. And then he met Celia Benson, and suddenly he was jetting off to Paris, or Florence, or St Tropez with Celia, and soon he had a new family, and Holly was largely ignored.
Her father, she realized as an adult, was weak. Celia Benson didn’t want the child from his first marriage being around, and he acquiesced, allowed himself to give her up. To this day Holly blames Celia.
Is Holly happy? Happiness is not something Holly thinks about very often. She certainly has everything a woman could want in order to be happy, so how could she be anything but? The fact that they sleep in a king-sized bed, both on the far edges, a huge expanse of space in the middle, Holly furious if a leg or an arm should wander over to her side, doesn’t mean she’s unhappy, surely? The fact that they rarely have sex any more, and when they do it’s perfunctory, doesn’t mean she’s unhappy, surely? The fact that Holly finds herself withdrawing more and more from life, having already given up several friends Marcus deemed ‘unsuitable’, doesn’t mean she’s unhappy.
Surely?
Distractions do a wonderful job of keeping her mind off the fact that her life is not quite what she expected it to be. There are her children, for starters. Her house. And, of course, work. A freelance illustrator for a greeting-card company, Holly can lock herself away in her studio at the top of the house and lose herself for hours in a delicate watercolour of a little girl and a puppy,