Second Chance - Jane Green [81]
‘I know, I feel like I’m so ungrateful. I have my gorgeous children. And this gorgeous house, and a wardrobe full of beautiful designer clothes, but you know what? I don’t care about all the stuff. I feel like the only time this house comes alive, the only time the children and I can laugh and be free, is when Marcus isn’t here, because when he is here these days all he does is bark at everyone to behave differently, to do something differently, to somehow be other than who we are.
‘I feel like I’m trapped in a prison when he’s around. Tiptoeing about, walking on eggshells in case something displeases him. You know, when we were first married I thought I could change him. I thought I could knock some of that ridiculous pomposity out of him, but it’s got worse. And all he cares about is work. All he thinks about is work. Even when I try to have a conversation with him, I can see that he’s not even listening, he’s thinking about some bloody case.’
‘Couldn’t you tell him?’ Olivia says gently. ‘Couldn’t you sit down with him and tell him that? Surely he’d understand, surely the two of you could work it out.’
‘Maybe.’ Holly shrugs, but what she doesn’t say is that the will just isn’t there for her.
‘Would you ever leave him?’ Olivia asks after a while.
‘I think I’d be too frightened to,’ Holly says with a sigh. ‘I mean, he’s a divorce lawyer, for God’s sake. I think it would be a nightmare.’
‘Well, then, you’ll have to find a way to make it work. Talk to him, Holly. It’s not too late, you just have to communicate.’
Saffron opens the door and everyone looks up to see who is coming in. She waves at the handful of people she has grown to know and love during the years she has been coming to this room, and pulls a folding chair from a cupboard in the corner, sitting down as quietly as possible at the back.
She is thirty minutes late but knows it is better to hear thirty minutes of a meeting than not to come at all.
As she sits down someone hands her a notebook and she scribbles her name and number, the best time to call, and thinks for a second about what to write under the heading ‘feeling’. Irritated, she finally writes, leaning forward to put the book on the table, then pulling her Big Book out of her purse and quickly skimming the step they read earlier: Step Three: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
No P today. He’s flown to New York for a preproduction meeting of his new movie, and although he wanted her to come, she has a meeting of her own tomorrow – the uber-successful producers of the biggest hit of last year have shortlisted her as the love interest for their new film. If she gets it, it will be the biggest break of her career and will catapult her onto a whole new level. They want to see if she can pull off an authentic Southern accent and, according to her agent, if so, she’s the lady of the hour.
The last week has been spent working with her voice coach 24/7, paid for by her agent, whom she will reimburse from her next job, hopefully this one.
P sent flowers and a good-luck card this morning, phoned to tell her he was missing her, then made her laugh by describing quite how much she was missing in his suite at the Carlyle.
She needed a meeting today, and a meeting in which she wasn’t distracted by P’s presence was always welcome. She found that P tended to be a distraction to everyone, not least the number of bimbette actresses who, she was certain, showed up only to try to get noticed, and who spent their time making eyes at him or cornering him during coffee break.
‘Hi, I’m Saffron and I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic.’ Funny how smoothly those words roll from her lips. The first time she ever tried to say them, she couldn’t. She said, ‘Hi, I’m Saffron, and I suppose I’m here because I drink.’ She couldn’t say the word alcoholic, her denial and shame so strong that she was physically unable to make the words leave her mouth.
And now it’s so easy for her to say those words even though,