The Summer of Second Chances: The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy. Maddie Please
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It was quite incredible really, when I considered what a long time things took to do as a rule. Meeting Ian and moving in, supporting him as he built up his business, entertaining people who drove me nearly mad with boredom, getting contracts, the crazy nit-picking of flaky homeowners. These things took months, sometimes years. To lose it all took no time at all.
I lost my partner, my home, a lot of my friends and my peace of mind – not necessarily in that order – and yet, only a few days had passed.
We had shared the usual formulaic Christmas with Susan picking at her food as though I was trying to poison her. And then Ian had started on about the bloody New Year’s Eve party we were having.
He’d rolled his eyes at his mother who was sitting opposite me.
‘I had to persuade her, you know, Mum. Lottie hates New Year’s Eve,’ he said. Quietly, as though I was simple and couldn’t hear him.
‘I don’t!’ I said. ‘That’s so not true.’
I would have said it more emphatically with words like bollocks or crap attached, but Susan has been known to leave the room when I swear so I didn’t. It was Christmas after all.
‘She says it’s just one more day,’ Ian continued. He sent me a mischievous grin to show he was teasing me. I pulled a face at him and tried to kick him under the table.
Susan put down her knife and fork and peered over her glasses at me.
‘You’re very young, Charlotte. Perhaps you think there will always be one more day.’
Oh God, I knew what was coming.
Susan sighed and shook her head.
Yes, here it was.
‘I would give anything to have one more hour with Trevor. One more day.’ She bit her lip, shook her head and struggled on bravely. ‘If I had known he would be taken from me so soon.’
And after the party, wallop! One bloody shock after another, everything getting worse and worse until I came to dread waking up each day because I knew something else horrible was bound to happen.
And then the day came when I packed my clothes, my jewellery box, my grandmother’s clock and as many of my belongings as I could fit into my car – the only thing I now owned – and handed back the keys to the house to an anxious solicitor who looked like Rodney Trotter’s younger brother doing work experience. I could almost imagine Susan’s glee as she closed one claw-like hand over them with an evil cackle. I’d always known she had never really liked me, but now she could make her feelings more than clear. She blamed me for what happened, and this was the perfect revenge.
Snowdrops – a friend in adversity, consolation, hope
I reached Holly Cottage – my sanctuary – just before the late January sunshine faded into the grey-green hills of Devon. I had lost just about everything familiar to me; my partner, most of my friends, my job, the home I had loved. I pulled into the gravelled drive, turned off the car engine and opened the window. The silence was deafening. I took my seatbelt off and listened for a while; I realised it was the first peace I had encountered for a very long time. Hardly anyone knew where I was, that was the marvellous thing. And that was the way I wanted to keep it.
The road, if you could call it that, meandered up past the house and then tapered off as though it had lost interest into an unmetalled track with grass growing down the middle. Holly Cottage looked as though it had been dumped on the grass verge on the brow of the hill with views over the rolling countryside. It was like a child’s drawing of a house; stone walls, a slate roof, three upstairs windows and two downstairs, either side of a black front door. I had only travelled about forty miles, perhaps it was just my state of mind, but as I got out of my car, the air seemed livelier, different. I took a deep lungful of freedom and felt a bit shaky.
This was it, then, all pretence was gone. For the last few years I had lived in happy ignorance in Ian’s five-bedroom house surrounded by a half-acre of garden. I’d been anticipating a summer holiday in the Dordogne in a customer’s gîte. I hadn’t even known, much less cared, who my electricity supplier was. In hindsight, I had been beyond naïve; I’d thought nothing would ever change. Now I was going to live in a borrowed two-bedroom cottage with nothing much to recommend it but the view. How the hell did this happen?
But of course, if I was honest, I knew exactly how I’d ended up here. I’d trusted Ian, trusted him completely. And then everything had come crashing down. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of Jess I don’t know what on earth I would have done. I parked in front of the black door and remembered the conversation that had changed my life.
Jess had pouted for a moment, running a hand through her blonde hair.
‘Of course, Holly Cottage!’
‘Oh, I don’t think…’ Greg said, his brow furrowed in thought.
‘Please, don’t, I’m not a charity case just yet, you’ve been so great these last few days. A lot of my friends…’
I didn’t finish the sentence. I stood up and wandered around their conservatory, clearing my throat, pretending to look at their garden. Really I was trying to control my easy tears. A lot of my so-called friends had silently disappeared from the scene, as though Ian’s sudden death and my destitution might be infectious. To be honest, I didn’t want to talk to anyone any more, I couldn’t bear explaining everything over and over again. So I had got used to ignoring my mobile. I didn’t log on to my laptop to look at my emails.
Jess turned in her chair, the wicker creaking.
‘Lottie, you’d be doing us a favour, honestly you would.’
Her enthusiasm grew the more she considered it.
‘It’s only a little place. I bought it just before I married Greg. I used to work in a club in London. Greg calls them my wild years but they weren’t really. I lived on Uncle Ben’s Rice in a ghastly place in Peckham. I saved all my tips for two years. Very generous some of them were.’ Jess widened her blue eyes at me. ‘Oh nothing dodgy, so don’t worry.’
I looked at Jess with astonishment and new respect. She might look like a complete airhead but obviously she wasn’t. I was the nitwit here, with no financial sense at all, no career, finding myself at thirty-four broke and without prospects.
‘It’s all furnished; you wouldn’t need to take anything. Just your clothes and your bits and pieces. We could help you with that, couldn’t we, Gregsy? The van, you know.’
Her husband grunted and shifted in his chair, evidently not thrilled with the way things were turning out. Jess didn’t seem to notice; either that or she was ignoring him.
‘It has been rented out for three years but the tenants have just gone, owing money of course.’ She gulped as she realised the tactlessness of her words. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to say it like that. I’m not sure if I want to rent it out again or sell it. But either way it needs an upgrade. It’s right out in the country, the other side of Exeter, but less than an hour away.