Second Chance Read Free Page B

might end in tragedy. For instance, I’ve always steered clear of the known heartbreakers, the dangerously attractive men who make you feel sorry for every woman they’ve ever had dealings with. I’ve known several of those, but so far I’ve managed to remain relatively unscathed.
    I was introduced to Paul at a party almost exactly ten years ago at a time when he was struggling to get over a divorce. I didn’t know why he was looking so dejected and said something completely banal, ‘Cheer up, it may never happen,’ at which he turned to me and said, ‘Darling, it already has.’
    We found a quiet corner and he told me about the beautiful woman he’d married and cherished, about their twin daughters and about the man who’d stolen her away. It certainly wasn’t the usual party chit-chat, perhaps I’d got tired of that, because I found myself strangely moved by what was, after all, a fairly commonplace story. But what made me tell him, on that first meeting, about my childhood, my father’s desertion and my mother’s breakdown? I’d never mentioned it to anyone before. And I went into the minutest details too, dismayed that I remembered so much that I’d been trying for many years to forget. I was dressed in a tight strapless black dress, I remember, I’d had my hair highlighted with something called Titian Glow, I had scarlet lips and gold eyeshadow and I sat in the roof garden of that Kensington penthouse and sobbed.
    When I’d finished patting my eyes and blowing my nose, I caught him giving me a long, cool appraisal. ‘Ah, Kate Rivers,’ he seemed to be thinking, ‘doing her probably fairly regular party piece.’ I picked up my evening bag and fled.
    When I rang my hosts the next morning to say thank you, great party and sorry I had to rush off, I was told that Paul Farringdon had stayed on searching for me when everyone else had left, that to get rid of him, they’d had to give him my telephone number and hoped I didn’t mind.
    For a few days I waited to hear from him and had to admit to feeling disappointed, even aggrieved, when he didn’t ring.
    A month or so later I happened to run into him at a local estate agent’s. We both seemed embarrassed, but all the same decided to have lunch together, during which we didn’t refer to the party or my sudden disappearance, but talked of property prices, the merits of various districts and the horrors of negative equity. We were both looking for a flat, he because he had had to move out of the marital home which was his wife’s, and I because the lease on my present flat was running out.
    We looked through lists together. We seemed to have the same priorities; a fairly quiet road with no pub or takeaway within fifty yards and no more than ten minutes walk from the tube or a good bus route.
    It was early June, I remember, and sunny. We ate pasta and tomato salad and drank a very rough Chianti. I liked the thorough way he mopped up his salad dressing; I find something reassuring about a man who’s fond of bread.
    â€˜What happened to your mother?’ he asked when he’d finished eating. ‘Did she recover?’ He’d remembered our conversation. He looked over at me as though really anxious to know.
    â€˜She did recover. Eventually. More or less.’
    â€˜Is she still alive?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    He leaned back in his chair and looked at me for a moment. And I felt that something had been decided. This man was interested in me and I in him. The sun was suddenly white and dazzling and I put on a pair of rather glamorous sunglasses and waited for him to make the next move.
    He invited himself to the theatre in Greenwich where I was playing that night. I wished he was seeing me in a leading role, or at least one I was proud of, rather than in a small part in a fairly worthless play which I’d taken because it slotted in rather nicely