Authors: Faye Bird

My Second Life (23 page)

Mum xxxx

I held the letter in my hands. The paper was soft. I didn't want to let it go. I lay down on my back to look up at the sky. It felt so good to lie down. To feel the earth beneath me. I let myself stare into the blue. The sky was clear and crisp. It was beautiful. Beautiful like Emma was beautiful. Beautiful Emma. Good, kind, Emma.

I let myself blink.

I had a chance. I had a chance to be beautiful too. And now, I would take it. I would grasp it with both hands and I would never let it go. Because I wanted to live now. I knew, in that moment, that I wanted to live. I wanted to live until I was old. I wanted to live until my skin wrinkled and my eyes went cloudy and my hands curled up like claws. I just wanted to live. And I wanted to see what Spain looked like, and work out why my name had only one “n” in it, and I wanted to get more Converse before I wentÂ â¦ and died againÂ â¦ I wanted to live boisterously, wildly, loudlyÂ â¦ I wanted to make new memories and lock the old ones up in a place that they would never be found, a place where no one would discover them. A place that Rachel knew nothing aboutÂ â¦ because she didn't have to know. She didn't have to know about any of itÂ â¦ All I had to do was stay hereÂ â¦ stay consciousÂ â¦ And let her find meÂ â¦

Please, I wished, let Rachel find meÂ â¦ let her find meÂ â¦ let my mother find meÂ â¦

R
ACHEL FOUND ME.

When she did I reached out to her and held on to her like I'd never held on to her before.

“What happened?” she said, crying. “What happened to you?” And I didn't reply. I just let her hold me and hug me and stroke my hair, and she didn't let me go and I liked it because I didn't want her to let me go. Not now. Not ever.

She helped me up onto my feet and we started to walk. I felt so weak. It took all the energy I had to put one foot in front of the other and make it over to the car.

“We'll go home,” Rachel said. “We'll get you home, and then we'll talk,” she said, and she leaned over and stroked my face before she started the car, and I let her.

I'd tell Rachel something. But not the truth. Not the whole story. I'd find another way.

As we left The Avenue I looked over to the houses on the street. This place had been part of my life
â
before
â
my first life.

It didn't need to be part of my life now.

I laid my head down against the seat belt and I closed my eyes and I slept.

I wasn't far from home, but still, I slept all the way.

J
AMIE FORGAVE ME FOR
being weird, for walking away. He came to the house that night with a present.

“What's this for?” I said, smiling.

“Your birthday,” he said.

“That's not for months!”

“I know. I just couldn't wait,” he said, and he put a box on my lap and opened up the lid to reveal a new pair of Converse. Silver sequins. My size. They were perfect.

“Wow!” I said. “These must have cost you the earth!”

“Yeah, wellÂ â¦ most of my savings,” he said, looking at the floor.

“Thank you,” I said, and I took his hand, and with my other hand I lifted his face to mine. “Really. Thank you.”

He came closer to me. “Please,” he said, “just don't run off like that again. It frightened me, to see you like that.”

I nodded. “I know,” I said. “Me too.”

And we kissed.

And in that kiss I felt like anything and everything was possible. I wasn't scared anymore. And that feeling, that I was somehow darkened by just being alive, it had gone. I was in the present now. There was an immense rush in just being, in each and every moment. If I could have held myself close to Jamie, molded myself into him, I would have done it. But I didn't. Not yet. Instead I spoke.

“I'm glad you came,” I said. “I'm glad that you can forgive me.”

“I'm glad too,” he said, and he smiled and I smiled and we smiled so much we couldn't kiss any longer.

epilogue

F
RANCES HAD A STROKE
. Grillie told me she'd died almost instantly, at home. A massive bleed to the brain that no one could have prevented, that no one could have foreseen. Grillie told me she was shocked, but that she'd decided that we shouldn't be too sad. “She went quickly. She'd lived a long life,” she said. I nodded. I couldn't argue with that. I just hoped that if there was any such thing as justice, Frances would see Catherine again. Perhaps in some other world, some other life. And I hoped that for me, she and I were done, and that we would never ever have to meet again.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

I promised Rachel there would be no more disappearing acts, no ditching school, that nothing like that would happen again. It took me a couple of weeks to prove it, but I did.

I was kinder to her too. I liked her
â
I mean, I'd always liked her
â
but without the comparison to Mum and Dad, there was more room for her, if that makes sense. And she was a cool mum. We did stuff together, we hung out at home, and even when she annoyed me, she never annoyed me like she had done before. Did I love her more? No, I don't think I did. But I loved her better, if that's possible. I didn't resent or begrudge her love for me anymore. I would never take her love for granted again.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

Rachel never knew the truth of what happened that day, at Frances's, and I figured she would never need to. But I think we both felt that something had changed, after that day. That there was some tangible difference in the way we were now. We never talked about it. But Grillie did. She'd come around every second Friday and have dinner with Rachel, Jamie, and me and she'd say, “I don't know whether it's Jamie or your mother or you, but you seem happier, Ana, and I like it! Keep doing what you're doing, girl!” And she'd wink at me.

And I'd look at Jamie, and he'd grin, and Rachel would nod and say, “I know what you mean, Grillie. Long may it last!” And I'd just let them all keep thinking whatever they were thinking, believe whatever they were believing, and be glad that I was alive and that I was me.

“Don't forget that you're young
â
blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what
have
you had?”

â
The Ambassadors
, Henry James

acknowledgments

I
'D LIKE TO SAY
a huge and heartfelt thank you to the following people:

To Robert Bird for giving me the time and the support that allowed me to write this book; without you it would never have happened. To my mum, Lyn Dougherty, for giving me my love of reading from such an early age, and for her unfailing encouragement as soon as I started to write. To the Faberites for being the best writing group a girl could ever have; we got so lucky the day we signed up for that Faber Academy course. And in particular to Michelle Wood, Emma Higham, and Caroline Gerard, who read not just chunks but whole drafts along the way. To Anthony McGowan for teaching that course
â
a crucial part of all our luck
â
and for making me brave enough to give the writing a go. To Hilary Delamere at The Agency (London) Limited, whose passion and belief in the book, right from the start, has been quite frankly amazing. I am so glad that we're doing this together. I honestly couldn't have wished for it to be any other way. And finally to the team at Usborne Publishing for taking
My Second Life
on board and guiding it so beautifully through to publication. Particular thanks must go to Anne Finnis, whose considered and insightful notes enabled this book to become so much better than I ever hoped it might be.

a note from the author

T
HE INSPIRATION FOR THIS
book came from a brief conversation with my son when he was nine. He was talking to me while he lay in the bath about something that had gone wrong for him that day at school, and he said “I wish you could rewind life.” And there was something in that wish and the answer that I gave him
â
“Yes, I know, that would be great, wouldn't it? But you just can't do that”
â
that struck me as the beginning of something.

So I sort of let my thoughts stew for a while and an idea came to me. What if you were a fifteen-year-old girl and you knew that you'd lived before? But not only that, you knew that you'd done something terrible in your first life, and you had to find out what you had done to make sense of your second life, your life now.

The idea that you could live more than once has always fascinated me, and I think you can come across people in life who simply appear to have been born wise. They just seem to have a knowledge, an understanding, an acceptance of life that makes them this way. And sometimes you can meet a child who has this kind of wisdom, and it seems to me a mystery as to where it has come from
â
because they haven't lived enough life yet for it to have come from experience. And I like to wonder: can a child, a person, come into this world with the layers of another life embedded deep within them? Is somehow the fabric of who they are in this life woven with the essence of who they were in a life before?

So the idea of having lived before isn't about simply saying “I was an Arabian prince” or “I was a Victorian pauper”; it's not just about what you did or who you were
â
rich, poor, good, bad. It's about the experiences and emotions, maybe even the integrity, that having lived before might bring to living a second life in the here and now. And that's what I wanted to explore in writing this book.

About the Author

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