The Day Of Second Chances (29 page)

As always, she caught the park in snatches: there was some sort of rubberized matting on the ground, presumably to make children bounce when they fell. A tracery of lines and shadow was a climbing frame; a sense of pendulum movement was the swings. She tipped her head up and felt the sunshine on her forehead and cheeks, letting it calm her. Little footfalls and chatter and laughter.

They had made it safely, and they would make it back. She would be careful. But perhaps after this, they should stay in the garden.

She laughed aloud, surprising herself. Who would have thought, at her age, that she would be embarking upon adventures? Or that those adventures would be so small and yet so important?

Someone sat beside her and she heard a conversation between two mothers about their holidays, the renovations that mother one was doing to her house, the car that mother number two was planning to buy. This was closely followed by what both of them were planning to cook for tea tonight and a detailed exploration of what each of their toddlers would and would not eat. Allegedly Liam would not eat any food that was not white, whilst Ella would not touch anything that could not be spread with Nutella, because it rhymed with her name.

If this was the level of discourse that Jo had to tolerate on a daily basis, it was no wonder she was carrying on an affair.

‘Ice cream, Ganny H,' said Iris's voice suddenly close beside her.

‘Can you take me to the ice-cream van?' she asked, and was answered by Iris clasping her hand again and tugging. She stood, and her other hand was seized by Oscar.

She let them lead her, like a child, to the ice-cream van, where she bought three large 99s with Flakes, selecting the coins by feel. Then she let them lead her to another bench. The children sat on either side of her, their legs pressed against hers, their elbows bumping hers as they all ate their cornets together.

She had rarely tasted anything so delicious.

IT WAS STRANGE
, having this weight of stuff to do, all the revision for the exams that would determine the rest of her life, but nothing to do right this very moment, nothing to do but think. Lydia coloured in her revision timetable with the highlighters that Mum had bought for her, took a shower, styled her hair. She rearranged her collection of Avril's cranes that sat perched on the shelf over her desk. She'd lost one or two in the move upstairs, but there were still a lot of them, all different colours and sizes. Their wings trembled as she moved them, delicate and as beautiful.

She felt like she'd betrayed their friendship by kissing Bailey. How crazy was that?

This room was so quiet. You couldn't hear anything that was going on downstairs, nothing at all. All the noise used to annoy her, but now she missed it. She felt cut off from everything.

I just want to be normal
, Avril had said. I
s that so wrong?

Promise to always tell me the truth.

Lydia sighed and reached for her running clothes, but then she thought twice about it and went downstairs to Granny H's room. ‘Come in,' said Granny H to her knock, but when she entered, her grandmother was lying on her bed, fully dressed, her eyes closed.

‘Are you taking a nap?'

Granny H didn't open her eyes. ‘No, merely revisiting some memories.'

‘Where's Mum?'

‘She is outside with her friend Sara and the children.'

‘Oh. I was just taking a break from my revision and I wondered if you wanted to read another letter?'

‘We only have one left.'

‘We can read it later, there's no hurry.' But Lydia wanted to read it now. Avril hadn't answered her texts; she was losing her. She wanted some connection, something to feel that she belonged, that she was necessary in some way. Even if it was reading letters from a man she'd never met, to a grandmother whose life was largely a mystery.

‘They're in the desk.'

Lydia found them in the top drawer. If it had been her, she would have opened them all up at once and read them, but Granny H seemed to want to eke them out. She supposed that if that was all you had of someone you loved, you had to make them last. Like a collection of paper cranes.

She took out the last unopened one and drew a chair close to the bed before she opened it. ‘It's another robin card,' she said. ‘In fact, I think it's the same robin card as he used the year before. Maybe he had a lot left over. Don't you want to look?'

‘I can imagine it. Please read it to me.'

Lydia opened the card. It was dated two years ago, and she wondered again why Paul Honeywell (her grandfather, though it was hard to think of him that way) had stopped writing. Had he died, or had the letters just stopped being forwarded? Or had he got so tired of writing without a reply, so tired of trying and trying, that he'd given up?

She thought of the paper cranes again, and she had to clear her throat before she began reading the letter aloud.

‘Dear Stephen
,

Do you receive these letters, I wonder? Year after year I write them, and I picture you throwing them straight in the bin. I suppose I'm writing them for myself rather than for you, perhaps to assuage my guilt at never knowing you. Even choosing to write them in Christmas cards is selfish, because my family would never notice them in the outflux of post – but you're Jewish by birth and might not even celebrate Christmas. All of these letters might be nothing more than an unpleasant reminder for you of a person you never knew.

‘Forgive me. Even though I may write these letters out of selfishness, I've tried not to be self-indulgent in them. But this has been a difficult year. Wendy died in the spring: cancer. She was a good woman, Stephen; I didn't deserve her, and I tried to be the best husband I could to her, which meant that I was no kind of father to you.

‘In all our years together I was only unfaithful to Wendy once in either thought or deed, and that was during those years when I was with your mother. Every day I was with Honor I wished that I had met her first, before Wendy. In some ways I still wish it, though I was never brave enough to act upon it. I loved your mother more than life. I loved her more than any person except for my children. She was sharp and vibrant, in full colour compared to everyone else, and when I looked at her I saw the other half of myself.'

Lydia's voice stopped in her throat. On the bed, Granny H did not move. Lydia would have thought she had fallen asleep, except there was a fierceness about her, despite the fact that she lay on her back, eyes closed.

‘I was the weak one in that relationship, and I was the weak one in my marriage, too. All of my love seems to be laden with guilt.

‘And now I really am being self-indulgent. I refuse to feel guilty about your existence, Stephen Levinson, or for the fact that I write to you, without any hope of return. You are one of my children, and I love you for that, and I love you for your mother's sake.

‘Your father, Paul Honeywell.'

Granny H drew in a long breath and let it out. Lydia folded the letter. The dark writing seemed too much to look at, too naked on the white of the card. They sat, for some time, in silence, except for the sounds of Mum and Sara and the children in the garden.

‘So,' said Granny H at last. ‘Yes.'

Slowly, she sat up on the bed. Her eyes, now open, stared straight ahead, and seemed to be seeing someone other than Lydia, someone whom she loved and who loved her in return, so much so that they had spent nearly three of Lydia's lifetimes apart thinking of each other.

‘I'm gay.' Lydia blurted it out without knowing she was going to.

Granny H blinked. She turned her head and looked Lydia up and down, in that odd sideways manner she had about her these days.

‘I'm gay,' Lydia said again. ‘I like girls. Not boys.'

‘I know what gay means,' said Granny H, but she said it gently. ‘Have you known for some time, or is this a new discovery?'

‘I've always known, I think. Don't tell Mum.'

Granny H frowned. ‘Why not? You don't think she would be so foolish as to disapprove, do you?'

‘No – not exactly. I mean, not at all. But she'd say … I know what she'd say. She'd tell me that everything is all right and it's all going to be fine. That one day I'll look back on my feelings and wonder why I was so confused and hurt and it will all have just been a blip on my way to future happiness.'

‘I think that is exactly what she would say. And yet it's not what you want to hear?'

‘No. Because I don't want to have felt all of this for nothing. I don't want it to be a blip, part of the happy story that Mum makes up about the world. It's real.'

She sounded hoarse and frantic to her own ears. Granny H held out her hand and Lydia went to her, sat beside her, let her hold both her hands in her papery, dry, soft palms.

‘It is real,' agreed Granny H. ‘And it is not a happy story, not all the time. But there are compensations.'

Granny H held her hands and they both listened to OscanIrie playing outside. A high peal of giggling and the thunk of a ball against the side of the house. It sounded like another world.

‘If his wife has died, you could see him again,' said Lydia.

‘You mean that his wife was my blip?' Honor's voice was dryly humorous. ‘You are more like your mother than you admit.'

She blushed. ‘Sorry. I just …'

‘You want a happy ending. But even though we read the stories, we are realists, you and I.'

SHE COULDN'T BELIEVE
his body. No – she could believe his body, only just; what she couldn't believe was that she was here in bed with him, not for the first time or even the second, side by side on their backs, on the bare sheet with the duvet pushed off onto the floor. They had been so eager that Marcus still had his socks on.

He pulled her over so that her head rested on his chest and she laid her hand on his flat stomach. His heart was still beating hard. She knew even from her brief experience that he would be ready to go again within half an hour. Even sooner, if she pushed the matter.

‘Why are you smiling?' he asked her.

She raised her head. ‘You couldn't see me smiling.'

‘I felt it.' He stroked her hair back from her face. ‘You're laughing at my socks, aren't you?'

‘I was just thinking that the last time I slept with a man in his twenties, I was in my twenties myself.'

‘I'm thirty next month. I think I want to eat cake in the rain. And then you can sleep with a man in his thirties.' He smiled at her, then sobered. ‘Was it Lydia's father?'

Jo nodded. ‘Stephen.'

‘How did he die? You don't have to tell me,' he added quickly.

‘I don't mind. He died saving someone else's life.'

His hand had been idly playing with her hair, but it stilled. ‘That's … amazing.'

‘Stephen was like that.'

‘Lydia knows?'

‘Yes, of course. We're very proud of him, while at the same time missing him like crazy.'

‘And your second husband …?'

‘Was an arsehole. Actually, I don't think I've said that aloud before. He's remarrying in July.'

‘Yikes.'

She smiled at Marcus. She liked the ‘yikes'. She liked that he asked about her husbands. She liked the way his hair curled on his forehead, and the laughter lines in his otherwise unlined face.

She liked him altogether more than was appropriate.

‘And you?' she asked. ‘Why haven't you found a nice girl and settled down yet?'

He shrugged. ‘I was serious about one girl. She wasn't so serious about me.'

‘Where is she now?'

‘Tasmania.'

‘Yikes.'

‘Indeed.' He kissed her on the lips. ‘My love-life history is embarrassingly brief.'

‘Give it time.'

‘I'm learning something new every day.' He kissed her longer, but Jo had to know, so she pulled away.

‘What happened with the girl in Tasmania? If you liked her so much?'

‘She wanted adventure. I wanted to stay at home and teach. I'm too nice for her, she said. Too boring.' He said it lightly, but Jo could see the pain: that he was hearing the girl's voice when he said the words. She knew they were the exact same words that his girlfriend had said when she'd left.

‘I can't imagine you as too boring for anyone,' she said.

‘That's what's miraculous about you, Jo. When I'm with you, I don't feel boring at all.'

‘You're not. You're young and clever and ridiculously sexy.'

‘And I've got a mortgage and a job and I mow the lawn every Sunday.'

‘And carry on an affair with your neighbour.'

He laughed. His face was so sunny when he laughed.

‘My friend Sara and her husband have been going through a bit of a dry spell,' Jo told him. ‘I told her that maybe she should send him some sexy texts. Spice things up a bit.'

‘Did it work?'

‘He came home and demanded to know who she was having an affair with. He thought she'd sent them to him by mistake. But they had good make-up sex, so I suppose it did work.'

‘You've told Sara about us, then?'

‘Er … no.' And because he seemed to be expecting an explanation, she added, ‘Not yet.'

He was watching her. She rolled onto her back to avoid his scrutiny, and caught a glimpse of the bedroom wall. She'd been too preoccupied to notice before, but he'd hung up his photographs of glaciers: six of them, across the wall of his bedroom. They were windows to other worlds. ‘Oh, you hung them up.'

‘It took all morning to get them straight.'

‘They're beautiful.'

‘You're beautiful.' He drew her closer against his naked body, and ran his fingertips lazily across her skin. ‘Tell me something else about you. Not about your husbands, or about your friends – about
you
. What's your secret ambition?'