Second Chance - Jane Green [87]
There is a silence as Holly looks away, and Maggie drops her hand with a sigh.
‘What if you’re wrong?’ Holly says with all the truculence of a sixteen-year-old. ‘What if Will and I are supposed to be together?’
‘Oh darling.’ Maggie’s voice is now sad. ‘Do you really think that?’
‘No!’ Holly is insistent. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t even know why I said it. I just… I don’t know. I don’t seem to know anything any more other than I feel hot and bothered and as if there are big changes afoot and I just don’t know what to do about anything. Anyway,’ she peers at Maggie sullenly, ‘I thought you said you wouldn’t judge me.’
Maggie grins. ‘I would never judge you, sweet Holly. But as Will’s mother I’m afraid I have to judge him. It’s my job.’
‘So I shouldn’t leave Marcus and run away to the Bahamas or wherever the hell Will is going next winter?’ Holly is attempting humour.
‘I’d say by all means leave Marcus if that is the right thing for you to do, but do it for the right reasons. Not because of Will, or anyone else for that matter. Don’t do it to fall into another’s arms; do it, if indeed you end up doing it, because you are absolutely certain that you are not happy, that you will never be happy if you stay in this situation. That, to me, seems the only justifiable reason.’
‘So when you were ready to leave Peter, how did you know you could be happy again?’
Maggie shrugs. ‘I think because I’d been so happy before. This felt like a temporary blip. I still loved him, I just needed to make myself fall in love with him again.’
There is a long silence as the waiter brings them cappuccinos. Holly raises hers to her lips and sips thoughtfully.
‘What if…’ she begins, setting the cup down quietly on the table. ‘What if you were never in love in the first place?’
Have I ever loved you? Holly wonders later that evening as they sit in the Automat, having dinner with a couple from Daisy’s school, a mother who has clearly been going out of her way to befriend Holly the last couple of months, who has invited Daisy to play with her daughter on a weekly basis, and who has now suggested they get together with husbands.
Holly sits and talks to the mother – Jo – about Mrs Phillips, the form teacher. They talk about nannies and about other mothers in the class. About where they might consider sending the girls for junior school. Marcus and Edward talk about work – Edward is a barrister – and when their main courses are served, the four of them finally talk in a group. Jo keeps them amused with funny stories about how she and Edward met, and Marcus offers his own version of events of when he and Holly first got together.
She watches him talk, is aware that when she tries to interject to correct him or add something of her own, he subtly puts her down or ridicules her or waves her comments aside as if they are completely irrelevant. And eventually she finds herself doing what she always does – withdrawing.
So instead of engaging in the conversation this evening, she watches Marcus and wonders whether she ever loved him.
What is love anyway? she finds herself thinking. Maggie talked today of loving Peter, of being in love with him, of losing it temporarily and then being able to fall in love again. But how are you supposed to fall in love again when you have never had anything there to begin with?
Holly knows she wasn’t in love with Marcus, not even in the beginning, but she thought she would grow to love him and that would be enough. She knew she didn’t have passion, didn’t have the excitement, but thought those things spelled pain and discomfort, and life seemed safer without.
But her life is so safe now as to be deeply dull. And there is nothing about Marcus that she loves, little