Second Chance - Jane Green [85]
‘But you love cooking… you always seemed so happy when I was over. I never saw any dissatisfaction.’
‘I do love cooking, but I had joined a life-drawing class at the local art school, and all my friends were young and hip. Even the ones who were the same age as I was had carved out very different lives for themselves, lives that didn’t involve boisterous teenagers and entertaining the husband’s boss at home. I didn’t want to be me, I wanted to be them. I wanted to walk in someone else’s shoes.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I was going to leave, not because I didn’t love Peter any more, but because I needed some space to figure out what I wanted.’ Maggie sighs as she remembers. ‘Good lord, Holly, I haven’t thought about this for years. Hard even now to remember how much pain I put Peter through.’
‘How did he react?’ As she speaks, Holly is thinking about Marcus. How would he react? Would he care? Did he even love her any more? Did he ever?
‘He put his foot down and said no. Absolutely not. He wasn’t having it. He said it simply wasn’t acceptable. He said he wouldn’t tolerate the damage it would do to Tom, Will and him, and that everyone had whims from time to time, and if I thought he didn’t sometimes think about going off and spending night after night at the Playboy club chasing after blonde models, I’d better think again. He said that marriage was for life and that this was what commitment meant. It meant riding the ups and downs, recognizing that marriage wasn’t always champagne and roses. Nor was it always dull or awful. That everything passes and that love, real love, means weathering the storms and emerging stronger as a result.’
Holly’s eyes are wide as she takes it all in. ‘So you stayed.’
‘Of course I stayed.’ Maggie smiles. ‘Reluctantly at first, but honestly that bit about him seducing models gave me a bit of a start. It was one thing for me to fantasize about being single, but quite another to think of Peter going off with some blonde totty. Also,’ she leans forward with a conspiratorial smile, ‘I actually completely fancied him when he got all stern.’
Holly breaks into peals of laughter.
‘It’s true.’
‘And you’ve never regretted it?’ The laughter disappears as Holly grows pensive.
‘No, my darling. I never have. We’ve been married over forty years, and it is just exactly as he said.’ She pauses for a while then smiles gently at Holly. ‘So that, Holly my darling, is my story and my story alone. If my experience can help you in any way, so be it, but whatever the journey that awaits you, it will be yours and no one can tell you what to do.’
Holly sighs as she looks at the table. ‘That doesn’t help, Maggie.’
‘I know, darling. It’s not supposed to. Your answers will come, just trust that time and experience will tell you what you need to do.’
‘You really are my other mother, aren’t you?’ Holly smiles.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning my real mother would sit here and tell me exactly what I was doing wrong and what I have to do to fix it.’
‘It’s not my job to judge you, Holly.’
‘Now you sound like Tom.’
‘That’s what Will always says.’
At the mention of his name, Holly feels herself flush ever so slightly. She has wanted to speak his name with Maggie, find out… what? Something. Anything. Does Maggie know anything? Has he spoken about Holly to Maggie? Would Maggie feel differently about Holly’s impending journey and the outcome if she knew that Will, her own beloved son Will, was the catalyst for this storm of emotions and feelings?
Maggie watches Holly colour, and she is not sure what to say, whether to say anything at all. For just as Tom was the caretaker, her reliable, wonderful, consistent son, Will has always been her ne’er-do-well, her irresponsible, frustrating, but oh-so-beloved baby of the family.
As a mother you are not supposed to have favourites. If anyone ever asked Maggie – before this, of course, before Tom –