Second Chance by Sian James Page A

soon as I’d begun. What was there to say about my mother? Lewis Owen was looking at me intently so I struggled on. ‘She wasn’t anything of a “character”, not really, just an ordinary woman who’d had a lot of trouble in her life, poverty and so on. Like most women, I suppose – most women around here, anyway. She had a nervous breakdown when I was small and I used to look after her, rather devotedly, I think... But I’ve neglected her in the last years. Of course, you probably won’t want to mention that in your address.’
    â€˜Probably not.’
    â€˜I don’t know which her favourite hymns were, but I like the very sad ones; “Hyder” and so on. And “Mor hyfryd yw y rhai drwy ffydd” to finish off.’
    â€˜A real old dirge, that one.’
    â€˜I suppose you like the happy, clappy things that put bums on seats.’
    â€˜Miss Rivers, don’t take it out on me. Everyone feels guilty at the death of someone close to them. No one ever feels they’ve done as much as they should. Except the hypocrites. And I suppose you remember that Jesus Christ forgave the sinners, but chastised the hypocrites.’
    I finished my tea and stumbled to my feet. ‘Thank you, Mr Owen. I’ll see you on Friday.’
    I felt my mother was in good hands.
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5
    At one time, Paul and I intended to get married. I don’t remember much about our plans for the wedding except that it was to be very low-key; Brixton Register Office and a few friends back to lunch at our new house afterwards. I went as far as buying a very dashing suit, the colour ‘winter white’, the fashionable shade that year, and though it was no different from ‘white’ or even ‘summer white’, it sounded appropriate for January We were going to fly to Scotland for our honeymoon; Paul had promised deep snow, log fires, rugs, grand opera on video and huge meals.
    I shouldn’t let myself think of those thwarted plans on such a desolate day as today.
    Inviting Annabel and Selena was, of course, Paul’s idea. He thought it would be a last treat for them before they went back to school after the Christmas holiday: champagne and new people to impress. They accepted the invitation, a long letter with lots of kisses and exclamation marks, but a few days beforehand, Selena was taken ill with what seemed at first to be meningitis. She was rushed to hospital with an alarmingly high fever, Francesca and Paul remaining at her bedside while I looked after a wailing Annabel and cancelled the wedding.
    It turned out that Selena’s high fever was due to a wisdom tooth coming through, something that Annabel had suspected all along, but by that time I’d convinced myself that Paul, though divorced for over a year, wasn’t a free man. I didn’t blame him, certainly didn’t condemn him for rushing to Selena’s side when she’d seemed so ill, but the illness served as a warning: I no longer wanted to marry him. Perhaps he loved me more than he loved Francesca, but Francesca plus his daughters, ‘the terrible trio’ as I often thought of them, seemed invincible. And what had changed?
    I was crying again as I reached the cottage, and the fact that Arthur turned his head towards me as I let myself in and then immediately turned away again seemed particularly cruel. I lifted him off the best chair and sat in it myself. I was hungry but too dispirited to get myself something to eat.
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    When I was about nine and starting to grow tall, I was always hungry, so hungry that I used to dream about food, plain food like bread and jam and digestive biscuits. Though I had a school dinner every day there seemed a permanent gnawing pain in my stomach.
    Luckily, at this time of great need, I made the acquaintance of Mrs Bevan, Garth Wen. I suppose she’d always been there, working in the garden on sunny days when I passed her house on my way