RATING: AVERAGE
SPOILERS!!!
The ending of the book was nice, but I have to say that I found Claire’s behaviour all through the book really stupid. I don’t mean the parts when she was a teenager because we can excuse her behaviour, but a grown-up woman still fantasising about Andy after what he did to her in the past beggars belief.
In the parts in 1986 Claire does work experience in the Crown Court. As luck will have it, Andy is there as well because he has been injured in a match and while he is recovering, he is just learning some of the ropes from his lawyer friend. He and Claire talk, and when it is time to go, he offers to give her a lift. She agrees, and he tells her that he will show him inside the club. As they are admiring a trophy, he kisses her, and to my shock he asks her… a fifteen-year-old girl to pleasure him sexually in the middle of a corridor. Claire is such an idiot that she thinks this means he is in love with her, and even though she doesn’t hear from him, she is still smitten. The next time they meet, Andy invites himself into her home, and he never asks Claire what he wants. He wants to have sex and they do.
After that, disaster strikes. Journalists were watching them, so the next day the photo of her and Andy kissing is on the front page of newspapers. Claire feels humiliated as her mother, father, school mates and everybody else think the worst about her, and she is being humiliated. Andy gets suspended and transferred to another club. Not once does he call her to see how she is doing, and when she tries to phone him, he won’t answer. Claire is so miserable that after watching the game that Andy got her tickets for, she tries to kill herself by jumping before a train. Thankfully, she just gets hit slightly as she falls in the pitch beside the tracks. When she comes to, her mother is there, and for the first time they talk seriously about what happened with Andy and also with her father because we know that when she was eight or so, Claire found her father with another woman. Claire has always felt guilty for the failure in her parents’ marriage, but now her mother reassures her and even thanks her for making her realise that she had to stop being so blind about him.
Claire doesn’t hear from Andy, but she gets a lovely card from her friend Frankie. Days before Frankie had confessed that the man who taught her tap classes had also taken advantage of her, and what Claire did with Andy made the whole fan thing dirty. Claire, naturally, doesn’t see things that way… actually, the silly woman with the insight of an adult still can’t see how bad Andy was!!!
At present Mark confesses that he saw her 20-year list, and that was why he had changed lately because he wanted to be the man who Claire wanted. Then he surprises her by giving her Andy’s address so that she can put her ghosts to rest. Claire goes to see Andy, and they talk. Andy doesn’t want this to be the last time they see each other, so he tells her when he can see her the next time he goes to find her. Silly Claire tells him when, and even though she feels guilty, she knows she won’t be missing the date.
In the meantime, Claire and Mark have entered the list for marrow donors, and then Mark is called as he is a match for someone who needs a marrow transplant. Mark is nervous as he has never liked hospitals, but he wants to do it. And then they learn that the person who will get the marrow is Emily, Frankie’s daughter. So while Mark is in hospital, Claire goes to see Andy. And somehow she sees the truth for the first time, and she tells him how badly she treated her years ago, and she realises that now Andy wants her because he is a sad, lonely man.
So in the end everything is happy. Emily has a hope thanks to Mark, and Claire goes to talk to her boyfriend, confessing about her past and her date with Andy. I think Mark is too good and generous. Yet, I am glad that they finally end happily and plan to move in together.
In general, I was quite annoyed about the main character most of the time. She was supposed to be an intelligent woman, but most of the time she was an idiot about her crush on her idol in her teenage years. I have to say that I loved Frankie, her natural coolness and honesty, and I think Mark was a dream!!!
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