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Step inside the home of Holly Mac and meet her successful, distinguished husband Marcus, notice how beautiful her home is and how gorgeous her children Daisy and Oliver are.
You might say that they are the perfect family, but you would be very wrong...
Holly is desperately lonely. She has spent her entire marriage trying to be the perfect wife but she is missing the one thing she really wants - a husband she can talk to, a soul mate to share everything with, someone like her first love and best friend Tom.
Then a terrible tragedy finds Holly reunited with some old friends, and she soon realises that they too are each beset by their own problems. There's Saffron, a Hollywood actress and a recovering alcoholic, in love with a very famous and very married actor. Then there are Paul and Anna who have a great relationship but months of IVF have destroyed them financially and Anna still isn't pregnant.
As the safety net of Holly's life begins to unravel, she's about to confront her problems head-on but is she ready for the change? And faced with a second chance at life, will she take it? |
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Tom wakes up first. Lies in the blackness and sighs as he reaches over to turn off the alarm clock. Five-thirty. Blinking red, beeping madly, waiting for him to bang it off. He turns his head to see if Sarah has awakened, but no. She is still soundly asleep, rolled on her side, breathing heavily into her pillow.
He packed the night before, so accustomed now to these business trips, to getting up in the middle of the night, looking out the window to check that the town car is waiting in the driveway, the driver killing time by reading the New York Post, a large cardboard cup of steaming coffee in hand.
The payoff, as he and Sarah both know, is that these business trips won't be forever, that this acquiring phase of the business won't be forever, and soon the company will have finished buying the smaller start-ups and will be able to concentrate on growing what they already have. His life as the chief executive officer for a large software company won't be forever. He's thirty-nine now. Another two or three years and hopefully his annual bonuses will allow him to think about another life - some money already already having been put aside for their college accounts, and he'll be able to retire, maybe buy his own business, do something that doesn't involve travel or a commute, time away from the family.
In the bathroom, he trips over Tickle Me Elmo and shakes his head in exasperation before smiling at the memory of Dustin, two years old, giggling uncontrollably alongside Elmo until his older sister, Violet, grabs it away, leaving Dustin in floods of tears.
A hot shower, the last of the packing, and he's ready to go. Back into the bedroom to kiss Sarah on the cheek. "Love you Bunks," he whispers, using their pet name for each other, a name they've been using for so long they don't even remember how to came to be. Sarah stirs and opens her eyes. "Love you," she murmurs. "What time is it?"
"Just after six. The town car's here. Are you going to get up?"
"Yup. In a second. Have to get the kids ready for the first day of school."
"Promise me you'll take pictures of Dustin, okay?"
"Okay, Sweetie. Promise. Have a safe train journey."
"I will. I'll call before I get on the train."
"'kay," and Sarah smiles and sinks back into pillows and falls fast asleep again before Tom has even made it to the front door.
***
Across the Atlantic Ocean, just as Tom's town car pulls out of the driveway, Holly Macintosh also wakes up. 1 A.M. Yesterday she took the afternoon off, exhausted from the past few sleepless nights where the routine is always the same: she stumbles through her bedroom, hits the light switch just outside the doorway of her tiny bathroom, and sinks her head in her hands as she sits on the loo. This has started happening every night. At more or less exactly the same time, Holly wakes up needing to pee, and by the time she climbs back into bed her mind is up and racing, and these last few nights she has still been awake when the sun comes up.
Yesterday she had just managed to fall back into a deep sleep when Daisy came in, clad in mismatched socks, her brother's oversized Spiderman pajamas, and Holly's favourite cashmere scarf wrapped around her neck. Daisy demanded Weetabix, and Holly stumbled out of bed, shooting daggers at Marcus, who, she was convinced, was merely pretending to be fast asleep.
Again, tonight, it feels as if she were up all night. She lies in bed, her eyes closed, trying to ignore the occasional snore or grunt from her husband, too deep in sleep to notice her. When his snoring becomes too irritating to bear, even though she is wide awake and not even pretending to be trying to get back to sleep, she will shove him over from his position lying on his back. "Snoring," she will hiss, trying to suppress the urge not to push him hard enough to push him right out of bed.
Eventually Holly turns on the light, waiting as her husband stirs, then rolls over again, still sleeping. She gathers up a magazine from the pile on the floor next to her bed, resigning herself to yet another of those long, long nights, those nights that render her almost senseless in the mornings.
Yesterday morning, a zombie in oversized men's pajamas and moccasin slippers, Holly just about managed to get the children up and dressed. "Don't start," she said warningly to Oliver, who is never at his best in the mornings, and particularly not when his four-year-old sister has discovered exactly which of his buttons to push to start the tears falling, and with huge enjoyment has incorporated it into her daily morning routine.
Frauke the au pair stumbled down at the end of breakfast, and Holly smiled gratefully as Frauke bent down to get the children buttoned up, slapping some ham and cheese on pumpernickel bread for herself and holding it in her teeth as she took Daisy and Oliver by the hand.
"I'm not working today," Holly said. "But I'm exhausted. Another bad night. Would you mind organizing a playdate or something this afternoon? I'm just desperate to sleep. Is that okay?"
"Yes," Frauke nodded, with her stern, morning face - the benefits of having gone out last night with six other au pairs, and staying up until much too late drinking Starbucks. "I will phone Luciana, although the last time I tried to see her she was thirty-six minutes late, which was not good. But I will try again. Don't worry, Holly. I will keep the children out of the house today. Perhaps a museum."
Holly smiled gratefully at Frauke, who she finds herself describing to friends as "my grown-up daughter from my first marriage". Her other friends complain about their au pairs, but Holly feels constantly and consistently thankful that Frauke has come into her life. She is organized, strict, loving, and happy. When Marcus goes to work and it is just Holly and Frauke alone with the kids, the house always feels lighter, happier, the energy changing entirely.
So tonight, awake again at 1 A.M., Holly gets up and makes herself a cup of tea, loving how quiet the house is in the middle of the night. This was the house she and Marcus had lived in together well before the children had been born. It was the house she had bought expecting to fill it with children and animals, neighbors and friends popping in at all hours of the day and night. A house we can grow into, she thought. A house that will truly be a home.
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