Second Chances (40 page)

'No,'
she
had
yelled
back.
'You're
damn
right.
I
don't
want
any
of
this.'
What
she'd
meant
was
the
rows,
the
partings,
and
the
exhaustion
of
the
snatched
reunions.
But
Claude
had
simply
shrugged.

'Then,'
he
had
said
furiously.
'There
is
nothing
more
to
say.'
He
had
walked
away.

Enraged
beyond
reason,
she
didn't
try
to
run
after
him.
Instead
she
had
raced
down
into
the
metro,
boarded
the
train
to
Gare
Du
Nord
and
by
midnight
she
was
sitting
in
her
flat
and
until
dawn
broke,
she
had
sat
simply
staring
out
onto
the
street.
Later
the
next
morning,
she
had
rung
the
estate
agent
and
taken
the
gallery
off
the
market.
Not
that
it
mattered.
No-one
had
made
so
much
as
a
stupid
offer
let
alone
a
halfway
decent
one.

Everything
had
dropped
off
her
radar.
Her
weight
plummeted
to
such
a
degree
that
even
Molly,
wrapped
up
in
her
own
grief,
had
noticed
and
gently
asked
her
to
come
home.
Just
for
a
while.

Alice
was
caught
in
a
dreadful
paralysis.
For
three
painful
months,
she
didn't
much
care
where
she
went
or
what
she
wanted.
And
then
after
weeks
of
silence,
Claude
had
turned
up.

Without
warning,
looking
she
noticed
-
and
to
her
shame
that
she
felt
pleased
-
marginally
worse
than
she
did.
There
had
been
no
slow
motion,
floating
reunion.
Instead
they
had
rowed,
each
pointlessly
blaming
the
other
but
finally
exhausted
with
trying
to
analyse
something
that
was
beyond
that,
they
had
gone
out
to
dinner,
and
then
of
course
to
bed.
But
where
was
the
thrill
of
it
all
this
time?
Uncertainty
had
replaced
assurance,
fear
that
it
might
all
unravel
again
had
taken
the
place
of
conviction
that
it
would
succeed.

Alice's
greatest
fear
was
that
she
would
go
back
to
being
what
she
was.
Practical,
shrewd
and
incapable
of
romantic
gestures
that
had,
before
Claude,
and
for
so
long,
made
her
feel
she
was
living
half
a
life.
Claude
had
stopped
the
restless
feeling,
the
lack
of
direction,
the
belief
that
something
was
waiting
to
change
her
life.
He'd
simply,
and
so
easily,
stopped
her
thinking
at
all.
She
had
to
go
forward.
Start
again.
So
with
more
hope
than
confidence,
the
gallery
was
back
on
the
market.

*

Just
after
midday,
Simon
Cavendish,
the
tall
skinny
owner
of
La
Vigne,
the
wine
bar
opposite
Alice's
gallery,
put
his
head
round
the
doorway.
At
first
he
thought
Alice
must
have
slipped
out
and
then
he
saw
her.
Or
rather
her
elbow,
jutting
out
from
behind
the
screen
at
the
far
end
of
the
gallery,
a
tiny
space
that
she
had
made
her
office.
Upstairs
in
the
attic
he
knew
there
was
a
bigger
space,
a
total
tip
of
course,
because
there
had
never
been
enough
money
to
fix
it.
As
he
approached,
she
looked
up
and
pushed
a
chair
with
her
foot
from
its
place
by
the
wall
for
him
to
sit
while
she
finished
a
phone
call.
Clearly,
he
thought
with
an
inward
sigh
sitting
astride
the
chair,
she
hadn't
had
good
news
this
morning.

Ten
minutes
earlier
he'd
seen
the
estate
agent
leave,
the
prospective
buyer
hadn't
even
looked
back.
Simon
watched
her
closely,
one
hand
holding
the
phone,
the
other
dragging
through
her
hair,
exasperated,
fed
up,
despairing
of
the
conversation
she
was
having
with
someone,
Simon
assumed,
at
the
estate
agents
office
-
someone
who
was
also
hearing
a
fairly
brutal
description
of
Alice’s
opinion
of
them.
Finally
she
switched
her
phone
off
and
slumped
back
in
her
chair.

She
baffled
him.
He
didn't
remotely
fancy
her,
or
at
least
not
anymore,
but
he
loved
her
strength.
When
they
first
met
there
had
been
an
instant
connection.
He
struggling
to
keep
his
spirits
up
when
his
fledgling
wine
bar
showed
signs
of
being
famous
only
for
the
brevity
of
it's
existence.
The
prospect
of
returning
to
Bristol
and
a
job
in
his
father's
totally
respectable
but
oh
so
not
what
he
wanted,
accountancy
company
loomed,
when
she
had,
to
his
immense
relief,
taken
the
lease
on
the
derelict
shop
right
across
the
street
and
thus
let
his
little
empire
bathe
in
it's
early
glory
days.
One
where
he
had
been
so
swept
along
by
her
energy
and
nerve,
he
thought
in
many
ways
it
was
better
than
sex.