Second Chance - Jane Green [97]
‘Holly? Are you awake?’
‘Only just. Who is it?’
‘Oh God, sorry. Holly, it’s Paul.’
‘Hey, Paul, how are you?’
‘Well, I’m fine. But the thing is – you’ve seen the papers, right?’
‘About Saffron? I know! Isn’t it awful? Poor darling.
I’ve left her a ton of messages and I’ve had a couple from her, but we haven’t managed to catch up. Have you spoken to her?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. You know we’ve got this place in the country? We offered it to her as a hideout because it’s in the middle of nowhere, and she was coming over to stay. But basically her driver called us this morning from Heathrow, asking for help because she’s… well… she’s completely shit-faced.’
Holly sits bolt upright. ‘What do you mean, shitfaced?’
Paul starts laughing. ‘What do you think I mean? Here, I’ll pass you over. She wants to talk.’
‘Holly Mac? Is that my darling Holly Mac?’
And of course Holly hears instantly that Saffron is drunk. And she knows instantly what this means. She knows all about Saffron’s drinking, her drinking years of old, and she knows about her long-standing sobriety since walking into AA. She isn’t supposed to know but Tom told her, swore her to secrecy, although Paul clearly hasn’t heard about it. Paul thinks Saffron is just drunk. A one-off. An amusing incident.
‘Where are you, Saff?’
‘About to get in a car, darling. Where are you? Why aren’t you here? I want us all to be together again.’
‘Let me talk to Paul a sec, Saff. I’ll talk to you in a minute.’ The phone is passed back. ‘Where are you, Paul?’
‘Driving down to Gloucestershire to deposit her. Except she can’t be on her own. I think we’re going to stay with her just until she sobers up.’
‘Paul,’ Holly whispers, ‘do you know she’s in AA?’
‘What? You’re not serious!’
‘Desperately. This is huge, Paul. She’s fallen off the wagon. This is terrible.’
‘Oh shit,’ he mutters. ‘I had no idea. I thought it was just funny she was… Oh God. Now what do we do? Don’t we have to stage an –’ he drops his voice to a whisper – ‘intervention or something?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Oh God, Holly. Here we are again, getting Saff out of trouble. Listen, I’m completely out of my depth here. Can you come? Please?’
‘Come where? Gloucestershire?’
‘Yes. Bring the kids. Bring Marcus. Whatever. But she needs us all now, Holly. Please come.’
Holly takes a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’ll need to rearrange some stuff but I’ll come. I’ll ring you later and tell you the plan.’
Oh God. Falling off the wagon. Holly gets straight on the Internet to read about interventions, to read what she should do, and as the page uploads, she starts to think about the dream that Paul interrupted.
And she realizes something.
In fourteen years, she has never dreamt about Marcus.
She has dreamt about her children, about her friends, about her parents. She has dreamt about partners who have been nameless or faceless, and more recently her dreams have been populated with Tom, and now Will.
But in fourteen years she has never dreamt about Marcus. He has never once set foot in her subconscious.
She’s not sure what this means, but she’s pretty damn sure it isn’t good.
Chapter Twenty-one
Paul had escaped later that morning to phone Holly and provide her with an update. ‘She fell asleep in the car and now she’s awake and pretty hung-over,’ he said gravely. ‘She said that was it, she’d never drink again.’
‘Do you think she means it?’ Holly asked dubiously.
‘I think so. She seemed pretty low-key and said she had a splitting headache. I think she feels awful about what happened, but God only knows whether she’ll drink again. We didn’t bring any wine with us, so I suppose we’ll just keep an eye on her. What time are you thinking of coming?’
‘After school. The au pair will get the kids, then I’ll pack them up and come down.’
‘Great. Saffron’s put in a request for sushi. Any chance you could stop somewhere and bring some down?’
Holly laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘God, you can take the girl out of LA, but you can’t take LA out of the girl. Sushi,