Second Chance - Jane Green [77]
She runs up to her studio and clicks on her inbox. Just to see. If he loves me, he’ll have sent me a message, she finds herself thinking, reprimanding herself sharply. Grow up, she thinks, but she can’t help the flutter when she sees the email waiting for her.
In another room, a few miles away, Olivia is also checking her email. Stupid, stupid me, she thinks, battling the hope that there will be an email from Fred. Stupid, stupid me for jumping into bed with him, for allowing myself to feel that this might be something special, that he would have got back home to America and thought that he missed me. That perhaps there was enough here for us both to want to work at it.
But the truth is, Olivia doesn’t really want to work at it. Deep in her heart she knows that Fred was, exactly as Tom had said, just a fling. A lovely, sweet, gorgeous boy, but nowhere near settling down and having a relationship.
Olivia doesn’t want a walk down the aisle, but she is old enough and wise enough to acknowledge that her time for mere flings is over; and if she were to get involved with someone, it would be with a view to a long-term commitment.
For a couple of days there, as she and Fred had the most blissful time, she allowed herself to think, what if… But even then she knew that what ifs were unrealistic. And it wasn’t so much that she wanted Fred, it was more that she wanted him to want her, that even though their goodbye was mutual, her ego wanted him to have got back to America and found that he had fallen madly in love with her.
She even planned the conversation she would have with him. ‘Fred, darling,’ she would say in her best Katharine Hepburn voice, ‘you’re the most delicious boy, but you need to play the field. I know you think you’re in love with me, but it’s really not real. Go and enjoy yourself, get on with your life, and we’ll always have London.’
And yet, every night before she goes to bed, she checks her email to see if he’s written. There were a couple of exchanges when he first got back, a thank you for the most wonderful time in London, for being such a special friend, and wishes of luck and happiness in the future.
She wished him the same and was then astonished when all email correspondence stopped. Was that it? She let the grey start poking its roots back into her hair, sadly relegated her black dress to the back of the wardrobe. It had been, she decided, a lovely holiday, but not one to be repeated. The confusion and uncertainty of a relationship or fling, or whatever it was you called it, was something that Olivia was quite certain she could do without.
So when Sophie told her that a sexy, single man had come in asking about one of the dogs, and she passed his number onto Olivia, telling her she had to call him, Olivia shook her head. ‘Not this time,’ she said. ‘I’m done with men,’ and she handed the phone number back to Sophie.
Chapter Sixteen
To: Holly
From: Will
21/01/06 7:52:32 PM
Subject: No-shows and Apology
Holly, Holly, Holly. Am SO very sorry I wasn’t there today. Had far too much to drink last night it seems and was horribly hung-over this morning. Didn’t wake up until lunchtime and just blanked about going to Mum and Dad’s until Mum phoned after you’d gone. I feel awful about letting you down. Not to mention what a treat it would have been to see you twice in two days and meet your kids. (Mum says they’re fantastic, by the way.) Please, please say you’ll forgive me… would like to buy you lunch this week to apologize properly. On another note, fantastic night last night (what I can remember). Do remember you looking rather sexy (am I allowed to say that now that we’re becoming friends?), good music, good people. Hoping you’re not furious with me, Will x
Holly reads the email five