Second Chances (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine

ALLEGRA SWITCHED OFF her tiny MP3 player and wound the earphones around the case. She wondered what Chrissie Hynde had been going through at the time when she wrote Human, and hoped whatever it was, that she had emerged stronger for the experience. And that whoever it was that had made her feel that bad had suffered some ghastly, disfiguring disease.

Tucking
the player back into her bag, Allegra went into the convenience store and bought a copy of the South China Morning Post, briefly glanced at the lead story, then crossed the road to The Centrium to head up to the magazine office. February had been nothing but cold, grey and miserable so far. She hated it when the weather was like this; she was more and more convinced that her moods were severely affected by whether the sun was shining, the sky was blue or whether it was simply filthy out there and no one should be expected to leave the comfort of their beds for any reason, especially her.

Those
dreams she still had about Jack didn’t help. It had been four long, endless months since the day Abi had walked in on them. Allegra hadn’t contacted him; he hadn’t got in touch with her. A great, aching chasm of silence. Allegra had hoped that as the days and weeks passed, the hurt would pass, too. But that wasn’t likely to happen, not when she had a daily reminder every time she looked down at her gently swollen belly.

Liz
had lost it as they huddled in her bathroom; this time it was Allegra staring in shock at the white plastic stick in her shaking hands, that confirmed that yes, she was pregnant with Jack’s baby. She knew it wasn’t Clive’s; in a fit of depression-induced madness he’d gone and had a vasectomy the day after breaking up with Abi. When he’d told Allegra, she stared at him as if he’d gone mad and said, ‘Good God, Clive, women buy shoes, get their hair dyed blonde, eat too much ice-cream. A vasectomy is a little extreme, isn’t it?’

Clive
had simply shrugged and said that he’d got off lucky with Abi, what if she’d got pregnant? Or if some other woman in the future tried to trap him by deliberately getting up the duff herself? And if he ever wanted children, there was always adoption.

‘Jesus
fucking Christ, Allegra, I know you’re Catholic and all, but didn’t you use any protection? The rhythm method at the very least?’ Liz had yelled.

Allegra,
still staring at the pregnancy stick, willing the blue line to disappear, shook her head. ‘No… no, we didn’t… It all happened so fast and… I guess neither of us was thinking clearly at the time.’

‘Well,
you’ve got to talk to Jack now,’ Liz said. ‘You were the one who told me that the father has every right to know, that he has a right to decide what to do…’

Liz’s
voice had trailed away at that point. She knew full well that her getting pregnant to Luke and Allegra getting pregnant to Jack were two entirely, painfully different situations. ‘Oh, honey… I know you’re not going to call him, so I’m not going to say anything more. But sweetie, you won’t have to go through this on your own, okay? Luke and I will adopt you. And the baby. And Bella and Daisy, too.’

‘You really have turned into some kind of nutty earth mother,’ Allegra hiccupped through her tears. ‘You don’t have to adopt us. Just always be around, okay? And swear to me you’ll never tell Jack.’

Liz
had crossed her heart and sworn to die; Clive had also vowed not to utter a word. He had been a wonderful help to Allegra and, not for the first time, she marvelled at how someone she could have loathed so much initially would have turned out to be such a pillar of support and friendship when she most needed it. But Clive had got his big break just after New Year, when he landed a part in a new movie being shot in New Zealand, Thailand and God only knew where else. He’d be gone for months, but promised he’d call at least once a week to talk to her.

And
so, drudgery seemed to be the rule of Allegra’s life at the moment. Liz and Luke had jetted off to New York so that his family could meet Rachel. Things at Apex had been quiet over the Christmas and New Year holidays, so there was nothing happening there. Plus, having discovered that she actually, finally, had no money, Allegra’s freelance sub-editing job no longer seemed like an amusing past-time, an indulgence she gave in to out of goodwill to her old friends at the magazine, free to claim she was unavailable if she just couldn’t be arsed to get out of her pyjamas on a particular day.

‘They
don’t pay me enough for this shit,’ she had thought to herself every day of the last three weeks, nose streaming, eyes watering, feet constantly cold as she waited for the minibus to take her into town and back home again. She was also convinced she was going to die of scrambled-egg-and-bacon overdose, or was at least well on her way to a heart-attack; her daily indulgence, the only thing that cheered her up (and even that was starting to pall) was to stop off at the coffee place and get a 24-hour-breakfast panini, toasted, to go.

She’d
sit at her desk eating it as she read the newspaper, trying to ignore the incessant whining of Amy, the girl who sat opposite her, who seemed to have a constant litany of complaints about everything — her back, her email programme, a headache, not being able to reach someone on the phone, being too cold, being too warm; you name it, she whinged about it — and pretending that this wasn’t really her life.

Allegra
also hated this particular time of year. A long time ago, when career progress and wage increases were an actual reality, she’d started a habit of “taking stock” in the new year, comparing her situation to how it had been 12 months earlier. It had been years since she could take stock and feel pleased that she had made progress in some aspect of her life.

Closing
her eyes briefly, chewing as loudly as she could in an attempt to drown out Amy’s bleating, Allegra thought that for a long while now, the only two things she could genuinely say she was proud-to-bursting of were her kids. Even so, she always had to quell a nagging fear that she was not doing right by them, that somehow, she had let them down, was continuing to let them down by not being a good enough mummy.

Being
Catholic sucked. You could never take pride in anything because it was a sin. Not that she was a staunch Catholic, but having a father who’d been effectively excommunicated by the church for failing to have her baptised as soon as she popped out of the womb had left its scars on her psyche, and she never quite got over the feeling that she was constantly playing “catch-up” — and losing — in the battle to be re-accepted into God’s good graces on behalf of her father.

Allegra
paused for a moment and thought about her mother. She often wondered if mum had ever wanted anything else, anything more, than what life had given her. There had been only one time Allegra could think of where her mum had shown a chink in that steely armour of resolve and acceptance. ‘If I could live my life over again, I would never have children,’ her mum had said, in a tone both angry and apologetic.

She’d
never elaborated on that, and Allegra hadn’t wanted to ask. She wondered if she’d choose not to have kids herself, if she could turn back time, and then decided that no matter how shitty her life might be at the moment, her children were all the joy she had and she’d never give them up for a second.

Suddenly
feeling a terrible sadness, Allegra dropped the rest of her heart-attack breakfast back into the paper bag it had come in and threw it in the bin. There’s no gain to be had travelling down that road, she told herself sternly. Start thinking about mum, your kids, your life… And you’ll never get out of bed again. That was why she never let herself cry. Not properly, anyway. Because she knew if she did, she would never stop. Years of repressed grief, anger and frustration would take over, and she’d be a basket case. She chose to live her life as superficially as she could, never allowing herself to think too much, care too much or, God forbid, love too much.

And
so the day passed as any other, Allegra focusing on whatever task she had at hand, trying to write headlines that made sense and fitted into the allocated heading space, cutting articles to fit (or bumping them up) after she’d edited them into coherence. Every now and then, she allowed herself the luxury of a break, trotting out to the coffee place just down the road to get herself a tall caramel latté, decaf, of course. Every now and then, as she walked back to the office, she wondered what her baby would look like. Would it look like Jack? Would it have his eyes? And she’d have to force herself to stop thinking.

Finally,
it was time to call it a day. She shoved the newspaper back into her bag to bring home to read properly later that night, tidied up her desk, switched her mobile phone from voicemail to accepting calls, shut down her computer, pulled her tatty fleece jacket on and picked up her handbag. She discreetly waved goodbye to the editor and exited via the office side door rather than the main door, where she would be at risk of bumping into the publisher who always managed to crack the same joke about “half-day, eh?” despite the fact that it was close to 6pm when she felt she could rightfully leave, not being paid a decent wage and all that.

It
was Friday, everyone was leaving at the same time, and the building had 33 floors. The lifts were slow and jam-packed, and Allegra tried to curb the mounting irritation she felt at how long it was taking her just to get into a bloody elevator. Finally, she squeezed into one, missed getting out on the Arbuthnot Road exit level because she was trapped behind a large Belgian who hadn’t grasped the concept of “move your arse”, and eventually tumbled out on the Wyndham Street exit level, by dragon-i, with a new empathy for Americans who “went postal”.

It
was, of course, raining. She struggled to get her tiny foldable umbrella open as people pushed past her, and thought she heard her name being called. She half-turned to glance over her shoulder, didn’t see anyone she thought she knew and, having finally wrestled the recalcitrant umbrella into submission (i.e. it was open), took a step forward without looking, hoping to quickly find a bus or a taxi or a rich old man who wanted to give her a gazillion dollars just because he felt like it.

She
walked smack into a wall. Well, a wall with arms. Arms with hands which reached out to steady her as she lifted her umbrella, almost taking out the wall’s eyes at the same time. ‘Sorry sorry sorry,’ she said, hugely flustered, trying to swing the umbrella out of the way without swiping anyone else in the face with it, herself included. She finally located the release button and the umbrella collapsed; she was sure it was smirking.

‘Hello, angel.’

That
voice. No… It couldn’t be. She finally looked at the “wall” which had attacked her, realised it wasn’t a wall but in fact a person, and that person was… Jack. Jack, Jack… Jack. He was smiling at her, but it was a smile different from the one she remembered. This one was… sad, almost unsure. Like he wasn’t certain if she’d be pleased to see him.

‘Jack?’ Not the most original of opening lines, but hey, it was the best she could muster. She suddenly became aware of the fact that she was goggling, and it made her think of goldfish, how she had hated the 22 goldfish her kids had turned up with after an afternoon at the fair with their grandparents, willed all 22 of them to die, for no reason other than that they were wet and stupid. A bit like how she felt right then. She shook herself mentally, just as Jack took hold of her arm and led her aside, out of the tide of office workers all struggling with their own bastard umbrellas.

Allegra
pulled her jacket more tightly around her, trying to cover her belly. She was glad for the first time that it was winter; her layers of clothing would help disguise her condition. The fact that she was having an astonishingly “discreet” pregnancy helped. When she was carrying Bella and Daisy, she’d blown up like a Zeppelin; but as someone had cheerfully pointed out at the time, Allegra should take solace in the fact there were a few buildings which were still a little larger than her. This time, however, she just looked like maybe she’d eaten one slice of pizza too many the night before.

‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said. Allegra, shaking off his hand, not wanting him to touch her, felt as if someone had hit her repeatedly about the head with a big and unnecessarily brutal handbag. What in the name of arse was he doing there? It wasn’t the sort of spot where you accidentally ran into people, given that it wasn’t even on street level. You had to be fairly determined to meet someone to meet them there. And if it wasn’t by chance, how the hell did he know she worked in that building? That she’d be leaving around this time? That she’d even come out of this exit? Why hadn’t he called or sent her a text message — like he used to, once upon a time?

‘I called Liz. And I’ve been waiting for an hour and a half because I wasn’t sure what time you’d be leaving and I didn’t want to miss you. I didn’t call you or text you because I wanted to see you and I was afraid that if you knew I was waiting, you wouldn’t agree to see me,’ Jack said. Wow, so now he was psychic, too.

‘Oh.’ Again, it was the best she could muster. Damn him, damn her traitorous heart, which was racing madly at the sight of him, damn that immediate electrifying rush of lust that overwhelmed her. He looked tired, but still too damn sexy for his own good — or hers.

‘Why did you want to see me? No, wait. You said you called Liz?’