Second Chance Read Online Free PDF Page B

to have done while on this earth; and they left those who loved them with happy memories albeit some wishes that there had been less left unsaid.
    But this? This is something entirely different. This is a deep, searing, tearing, raw grief. This isn’t just emotional. This is physical. This unexpected grief is with Holly all the time. It wakes her up in the morning by settling itself on her chest, sinks down on the floor with her as she collapses in sobs next to her desk, works with its friend gravity to pull her eyes and mouth down in an expression of such deep sadness that strangers come up to her in the street and in shops and ask her if she is all right, then have to hover awkwardly as Holly nods, tears streaming down her cheeks.
    She took a week off working altogether, after going back into the studio at Jubilations feeling numb, but thinking she would be able to cope, thinking that she would be better off being surrounded by people, having to make conversation, having to act as if everything in life was normal.
    Sitting in a meeting with the marketing department, someone had asked Holly an opinion, someone who worked in a different building and had heard that Holly had lost a person she knew, but didn’t understandhow it could be different to losing, say, a grandparent.
    ‘I heard you knew someone who died on the train,’ the man had said nonchalantly. ‘Awful thing, wasn’t it?’ He’d shaken his head, preparing to move on to the business at hand – Holly presenting her drawings of elephants for their new line of belated birthday cards. ‘Such a shame. I just can’t believe what’s happening in the world today.’
    And Holly had immediately replayed in her head the tape of the train blowing up in flames (a tourist had captured the precise moment on film: grainy, blurred, the train way off in the distance, but the only film that existed) and watched the moment of Tom’s death as she’d seen it on television, trying to imagine whether he knew, whether it was quick, whether he had burnt to death or had been blown apart by the bomb.
    Holly had looked up at the man, and then the tears had started falling again.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how this could happen to Tom. This just doesn’t make sense to me…’ And her shoulders had started heaving, her body racked with sobs as her colleagues had looked at one another nervously, none of them knowing quite what to say with this oh-so-public display of grief, none of them knowing how to fix it, but all of them wanting to climb back into their comfort zone, to have the old Holly back.
    ‘I’ll take her out,’ Simone had mouthed, leading Holly out through the door and into the small kitchenette, gathering her in her arms and letting Holly sob.
    ‘You need to take a break,’ Simone had said whenHolly had finished. ‘Grief is a process and one you have to work through, and you certainly shouldn’t be in here. You’ve worked incredibly hard on the elephant campaign and we’re not in a hurry. Take some time. It can wait a month, at least.’ Holly had nodded mutely and looked down at her hands, unable to meet Simone’s eyes.
    Things like this aren’t supposed to happen to people like me and Tom, she’d thought, as she gathered her things and allowed herself to be put in a radiocab to go home. This is not what my life is supposed to be.
    This was not supposed to happen.
    But she can’t sit at home doing nothing, replaying in her head all the memories, all the horror stories of how Tom might have died, how it must have felt. Did he know, was it quick?
    Do the others know? Their gang from school, people she hasn’t spoken to for years but who suddenly seem as close as the day they finished their A levels, old friends she now feels compelled to see.
    She phones Paul first. Given his high-profile wife, he is easy to track down. A phone call to Anna Johanssen at Fashionista, an urgent message left with the