Take a Look at Me Now Read online

  By Kendra Smith

  The Chance of a Lifetime

  A Year of Second Chances

  TAKE A LOOK AT ME NOW

  Kendra Smith

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  This edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Kendra Smith, 2020

  The moral right of Kendra Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781789541885

  Cover design © Cherie Chapman

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

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  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  Tempus fugit.

  Maddie Brown – the woman who flew away from her empty nest.

  1

  Maddie

  Exeter University July 2018

  Uni reunion. Class of 1998 – Faculty of Arts

  The venue: The Great Hall, place of finals, end-of-year balls, graduation ceremonies, Freshers’ Week festival, and a moment etched into memory that can never be forgotten

  The weather: chilly, dry evening

  Feelings: nervous as hell

  Hello, my name’s Maddie Brown. You might not remember me. I was the kid who had dreams and ambition and then blew it all with a—

  No. She wouldn’t think about that. It had taken quite a lot of guts, two pairs of laddered tights, an hour at the hairdresser’s and an exorbitant rail fare to get there. This was the place she left behind in anguish. But it would be OK. She wouldn’t have to relive any of it. Liz had been so sure in her Facebook messages.

  Just come, Maddie. You can’t hide forever.

  And hiding’s exactly what she’d spent the last twenty years doing. Hiding those emotions, brick by brick, layers of determination, cemented with pain: a sturdy wall to keep those feelings out.

  She pulled her shoulders back and hesitated, wondering which Maddie was about to walk up those enormous concrete steps. The twenty-one-year-old one with a life hopelessly unlived in front of her or the one who was actually there tonight? Forty-one, weary, teary, with an empty nest and a dog with halitosis.

  She couldn’t quite believe she was about to step back into the Great Hall she’d done her final exams in. How terrified she’d been that week – and not just about her finals, but about the enormity of her situation. Her Sociology paper was first. She’d stared around at the windows, the parquet flooring in case any of it could give her some clues about the final question: ethnicity – it had been a twenty-five-mark bastard.

  ‘Maddie, there you are!’ She peered at the face. There was something about the green eyes. She knew those eyes… or at least she thought she did. Elliot had had eyes like that, Elliot who had studied first-year Psychology with her – he’d been such a laugh, but this…

  ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ The woman laughed. ‘I’m Ellie – you’ll remember me as Elliot.’ She winked at Maddie, batting down huge fluttery fake eyelashes. ‘But things change, you know?’ She turned her head coquettishly to one side, as if a new view of the thickly applied foundation would help Maddie absorb such a shock. It was, she had to admit, a great party-opener. Hey, remember me, that bloke you knew? Well, now I rock mascara and five-inch heels.

  Ellie looked fabulous.

  ‘Right, Ellie, yes, yes of course I remember! It’s your eyes – beautiful eyes, you always had! You look amazing!’ And she leant over and kissed her on both cheeks, inhaling a very floral perfume. White Linen? And before her, Ellie turned deep red beneath her Max Factor. ‘Oh, that’s very kind, and I’ve found that if I use purple eyeshadow, a kind of mauve actually, it really brings out the green.’ Ellie winked at Maddie.

  ‘Spot on.’ Maddie grinned at her friend. ‘So, er, how are things?’

  ‘Well,’ Ellie began, as a waitress filled up their glasses and Maddie took a huge gulp, ‘a bit unsettled, actually, since uni – but I’ve found a new lease of life, found a new life, to be honest.’ She laughed again. ‘A new me!’

  ‘Well, it really suits you—’ And with that, there was a chink of someone tapping a glass and the room was told to hush.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ It was the University Chancellor welcoming them back to the campus, telling them that dinner would be served now and to look at the seating plan.

  Maddie accepted a refill from another waitress and walked towards the dining hall. She wasn’t exactly scanning the room, but really, she realised, she was. Looking for a certain…

  Maddie was suddenly accosted from behind by a shrieking noise. ‘Maddie! Maddie Brown! I knew it would be you! I would have spotted those legs a mile away. I remember them pedalling your bike around the place – always late for lectures!’

  It was Liz – from Yorkshire. They’d done second-year Psychology together, sworn to keep in touch on graduation day, then promptly gone off and led very different lives. There was no Facebook back then to keep tabs on people or virtually stalk anyone
. But they’d connected a few years ago and were now ‘friends’ on Facebook – hence the invitation to the reunion.

  ‘How are you, Liz?’ Maddie kissed her on the cheek and wondered quite how many foreign holidays she’d taken as her skin resembled a leather boot. ‘Good to see you.’

  They chatted for a while about life now: Liz, four kids, owned a riding school – did Maddie ride? No? Well, there was always a first time – two cats and a dog. Maddie filled Liz in on her only son, Ed, who’d just finished sixth-form college, now in Bali on a gap year, her life working at a school, her husband who was a wine salesman.

  It all sounded so normal, didn’t it? So plausible that she was that happily married woman. That she trod an entirely different path to the one in her mind. Eventually, she looked behind Liz’s shoulder to find an escape. As endearing as it was to listen to chat about the menagerie chez Liz, Maddie wanted to meet more old pals. First though, she nipped to the loo and checked her make-up. No, there was no lipstick on her teeth, she just saw a frazzled-looking brunette with a lopsided fringe (cheap hairdresser), hair piled up behind her with a few escaping russet tendrils, wearing an emerald wrap-over jersey-knit dress – good for her bust, not great for the belly. She sighed.

  She pulled out some lip gloss and reapplied it. That would do. Grin, girl. She held her own gaze in the mirror for a while and then swiftly turned around and went to the door.

  As she was coming out of the ladies’, a figure in the corner made her look twice. If she was honest, she had been thinking about him. It was hard not to in that Great Hall, where even the familiar air of the place brought memories skidding back to her frontal lobe.

  She twisted a bit of her hair between her fingers and remembered when she’d first seen him. He’d been down by the beach, at Widemouth Bay. Surfing was his thing and she’d been there because it was Freshers’ Week. She’d been with the Try-to-Surf Club, ten of them giggling in the minibus before pouring out of the bus, heady with the sight of the sea, comparing what their wetsuits would look like. (Without Facebook or Insta, it was just sideways looks and memories. If you were lucky, a Post-it left on your door or a number scribbled on a beer mat.)

  Maddie had glanced over, seen the muscly outline whilst she was getting her wetsuit on, and had stopped mid-yank, halfway up her thigh. The musty neoprene remained clamped on her leg. She’d stared at this man as a sensation unfurled in her lower belly; he was no boy.

  Now she carefully tucked the loose hair behind her ear with shaky fingers and scanned to the right again in the dim corridor. There were two women talking in hushed tones. One of them had a fascinator in her hair, an electric-blue fluffy creation, and the other was in a tight black pencil skirt. They glanced at Maddie as she wandered past and she caught a whiff of expensive perfume.

  But as she turned the corner, she stopped in her tracks. Air left her lungs as if she’d been punched.

  That silhouette.

  She could make out the languid stance of his huge frame leaning on the wall, his back to her. She watched for a moment, like a deer sensing a predator, trembling in the shadows, terrified of its next move, but in her case, terrified of seeing him again and of what it would do to her. She gaped, mouth dry, as he ran his hands through his hair. The hair that she used to slide her hands through when—

  Her heart hammered in her chest. His legs were long and slender, and his body was solid. It had to be him. That burnt-toffee hair. Her whole world spun on its axis.

  She reached out and felt the cold, solid wall beneath her fingertips as she steadied herself. There was no going back. She stared ahead of her and blinked a few times. She watched, transfixed, as he slowly bent down to kiss the girl he was chatting to goodbye. Then he turned around and stood completely motionless as their eyes met.

  Both of them were silent. His gaze searched her face, eyes wide and hoping for clues. No words could fill the divide between them, stretch across the years of reticence, broker a language of what – forgiveness? How do you forgive twenty years of silence, of dreams smashed, of wondering? Of your finger hovering over the button on Facebook to send a friend request, then snatching it back again.

  Oh, she’d seen him all right. She’d looked at the profile shots. She’d had friends in common who would share a photo or two, affording her tantalising glimpses of him, and of his wife, who she assumed was the golden-haired goddess hanging off his arm… She realised she was hardly breathing as he slowly came towards her. ‘Maddie’ was his first word to her in twenty years, accompanied by twinkly eyes in the hazy light.

  And there it was. The spell was broken. The wondering. He was here. Right. In. Front. Of. Her. With one hand in his pocket.

  Those same earthy brown eyes, the crinkles a bit more etched into his tanned face, with cheekbones that really should be on a model… She couldn’t help glancing down at his left hand to confirm what she already knew. Ring. On. Finger. It was as if someone had stabbed her. She took a deep breath in and tried to keep her smile fixed on her face.

  ‘Greg.’ She was rooted to the spot.

  ‘How are you?’ A lifted eyebrow, offhand. It was the one underneath the little scar. Yes, it was still there. He laughed, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He leant towards her and in that moment she felt both faint and exhilarated. He kissed her on the cheek and she was immediately back. Back to graduation day in 1998: the smell of leather, the woody aftershave, that feeling of a quickening heartbeat – but then the pain, how she felt out of place. Then heartache. The sickening feeling. The disappointment in her mother’s eyes, how Maddie had watched her lips twitch. Oh, Maddie.

  There was a reason why she’d hesitated when the invitation for the university reunion had come through, forwarded by Liz, ‘Twenty Year Reunion!’; it was more than just a bit of Botox and a push-up bra that was stopping her going. Those weighty trunks of emotion stored in her personal attic were heavy to bear. He won’t be there, Maddie, another mutual friend had assured her. She’d decided to go, to find a bit of the ‘old Maddie’ – whoever that was. She’d disappeared under a pile of 50 per cent polycotton duvets waiting to be ironed a long time ago.

  But now she was in a room with him. Talking.

  He was still looking at her, but not really seeing. She was back to being twenty-one, glued to the spot and short of breath. And there it was, the bitter bile rising up, the pain seeping into her heart. The memory of all those years ago. Oh, Greg. She gave a nod and smoothed down her hair.

  ‘I’m fine.’ A tight smile.

  Fine. Stupid Maddie. You didn’t want it to be like this, did you? Polite. Smiling. Fucking friends.

  He tipped his head to one side and awkwardly smiled. Then he took his hand out of his pocket and for a moment she wondered if he was going to reach out. Touch her even. She inhaled sharply.

  ‘Actually, I’m on my way out of here,’ he said, straightening up and adjusting his collar. He looked at her intently, and she was sure it was still there: that bond, that unspoken connection. Neither of them wanted to mention the past. They couldn’t right now, but she could feel the undercurrents, the tow of emotion running deep between them, pulling them towards each other like a rip tide; the unsaid words, the silence before he spoke, saying only what he could say, not what he seemed to want to say.

  It was the familiarity, the way she knew that he had a mole right there, just under his left ear, where the earlobe met his jaw. She glanced up at him; yes, it was still there. How can it be that you remember the landscape of your lover’s face twenty years on? The detail, the way nature has carved out particular idiosyncrasies that you know about, the ones on show and those buried beneath clothes: the scars, the birthmark, the lopsided nipples. She blushed, remembering. A ripple ran across her skin.

  Suddenly, there was a clattering of heels.

  ‘There you are!’ Ellie came toward them, as Greg frowned at Maddie.

  ‘It’s Elliot,’ she whispered to Greg – the electricity between them was almost tangible. But as soon a
s Ellie appeared, Greg made his excuses and shot off through the doors to the dinner hall.

  They sat at separate tables. Maddie picked at her food and allowed her glass to be refilled several times, and eventually emerged from the fuggy hall, where the fog of drinks, steam and aromas of the four-course dinner came up against the sharp evening wind outside.

  It was dusky, the horizon swallowing up the smear of crimson streaked across it, like a watercolour painting turning dark at the edges. Maddie looked around as she inhaled the air heavy with the scent of honeysuckle. She could see him standing at the bottom of the steps, his face glowing in the eerie white light of his mobile phone. Then he was taking a call, his shoulders hunched over. She pulled back and waited by the doorway, unsure of her place.

  She swayed slightly on her heels, knowing she’d had too many drinks. Whatever the conversation was, it was heated. He was gesturing with his free hand towards the grass, as if conducting his own private, invisible orchestra. After a minute, he spun around and jammed his phone in his pocket. Then he saw her, walking slowly down the steps. She pulled her wrap around her shoulders tightly as she got to him.

  ‘I have to go,’ he muttered, and jerked his head to the left.

  Like the last time, Greg? she wanted to ask. But instead she calmed the butterflies in her stomach, as the wave of emotion overwhelmed her and forced a smile. Theirs was a story from the past.

  They used to miss lectures on a Friday as they both only had one – they’d stay in bed most of the day. He’d wander around her tiny bedsit in not much more than a towel tied around his waist after a scalding-hot shower. In fact, she realised with a shudder, that’s what she missed the most: the easy intimacy. He used to wash her hair sometimes, with gentle hands on her scalp, circling the back of her neck with his strong thumbs. He’d sit her down in front of the basin and gently wet it all, pour over shampoo then put on honey-scented conditioner and comb it through.

  It was wonderful and so relaxing. Sometimes it had led to something more… but normally he’d wrap her hair in a towel and they’d sit, watching her tiny TV, and she’d feel like the luckiest girl in the world. And now, here he was, in a dinner jacket and black tie, standing right next to her. Stony-faced. She bit her lip, tasted the blood, so she could focus on the present.