Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels (2 page)

‘Eleven years,’ Evie whispered to James as they lay on the sofa together.  ‘Eleven glorious years.  Here’s to the next eleven.’  She raised her wine glass and clinked it against his.

It was a chilly summer’s evening, so they had lit the fire in the sitting room.  Their little girls had gone to their grandparents’ for the night, and the two of them were alone to celebrate their anniversary together.  They had eschewed a night out; James was just back from a business trip to New York, and the two of them craved some time together, alone.  No waiters hovering around them, no fellow diners’ conversations to distract from their own.

James had cooked dinner.  Well, more accurately, he had heated up a Waitrose pre-cooked meal, but that was good enough.  Evie had more romantic plans for their evening ahead than slaving over a hot stove for hours on end. 

In the early days of their courtship, James had been something of a gourmet chef.  He would spend hours in the kitchen, fiddling about and creating.  He was one of those people who could pretty much conjure up a meal from whatever happened to be in the fridge.  Evie had loved that.  They hadn’t waited long before moving in together and within a year of meeting they were married, with Immy coming along not long after, so nights like these, when they didn’t have to worry about anything child-related, had been few and far between over the years.  Now, when they had the time together, Evie would much rather that she were the centre of his attentions than the contents of the fridge.

‘Yeah, I’d have got less than that for armed robbery, wouldn’t I?’ James joked, pulling Evie closer and squeezing her waist.  She giggled.  After eleven years of marriage the spark was still there between them.  She still went weak at the knees when she saw him, still rippled with excitement when he came home from work of an evening.  She knew it was the same for him too; they were very lucky to have such magic in their relationship.  Right now James had that look in his eye, the one that said he’d like to have her for dessert.  She’d made him wait long enough, and the rug by the fire was very soft and warm…

‘Whatever did I do to deserve you?’ James asked, pulling Evie down onto the rug, and tenderly stroking her hair. 

‘You don’t deserve me,’ she joked.  ‘I’m far too good for you, didn’t my mother tell you that?’ 

James laughed.  ‘Oh, yes, on plenty of occasions.  Even on the morning of our wedding, if I remember rightly.  Bit late now, though, isn’t it?  Eleven years on and this wicked man has you trapped and is going to gobble you all up.  I will never let you out of my clutches.  I am going to make you scream, you gorgeous creature.  Ha, ha, ha!’  Evie giggled and succumbed to her husband’s attentions.

‘Evie, I’m home.’

James looked shattered.  The latest deal he was working on had him out of the house for upwards of fourteen hours a day, and he’d actually spent the previous night away from home.  Evie wasn’t happy about it; she could see what it was doing to his health, but in the current climate, he had to take business where he could get it.  His financial advisory company had weathered the worst times of the economic storm fairly well, even after the issues of last summer, but both of them knew it would only take a couple of lean months to set them back again.  They were responsible for a lot of employees, which in turn meant a lot of families, and she didn’t want that level of guilt hanging over her.  She wanted them all to stay gainfully employed somehow or other, until the tide turned fully and they were back on dry land again.  Then they could start to think about good pay rises and substantial bonuses, and look after the staff who had been so loyal to them.

‘Hi babe, welcome home.  You look knackered.’  Evie kissed his cheek and put a large glass of wine straight into his hand.  He propped himself against the stove with a sigh, loosened his tie and threw his laptop bag onto the kitchen worktop.

‘Not done yet, either, I’m afraid.  Got some calls to make later, sorry.  The girls in?’

‘Yeah, both in their rooms.  Immy’s on Facebook again.  Look in on her when you go up to change, will you?’  She didn’t have the energy to regale her husband with the events of this morning, and she was sure he wouldn’t want to hear it, either.  He had enough on his plate at the moment; Immy’s adventures would keep.  Their eldest could most definitely do with some fatherly intervention; James being away so much wasn’t helping with the standard of behaviour, Evie knew that.  In the past he had always been the one to get through to Imogen.  She could run rings round Evie, but then defer to her father in a matter of minutes.  It seemed so unfair, given that Evie was the one who put in the biggest share of child-rearing hours.

James cleared his throat, ran a finger around the inside of his collar and looked sideways.  Evie had a feeling there was something coming that she wasn’t necessarily going to like. 

‘Remind me again what date we go to France?’  Uh-oh, here we go.

‘Leave here on the eighth, stop over that night and arrive at the chateau Saturday the ninth.  Why?  You know all this, it’s been in your diary for months.  Don’t tell me now there’s a problem?  We all need this holiday, James.’

She could feel her hackles rising but was wary of putting his back up practically the minute he walked through the door. 

‘No, nothing like that.  Just that one of our potential clients is going to be out there at a similar time.  I said we might meet up with them.  Not for business, pleasure of course.  We could get them over to the chateau for the day, maybe?  Cook some nice lunch and get their kids together with ours?  Everyone in the pool, barbie after, that sort of thing.’

Evie wasn’t massively keen, but supposed it all sounded harmless enough.  Sometimes she just wished holidays could be purely that, but appreciated that James needed to put in the work if there was a good potential deal coming their way.  They couldn’t afford to turn down new business; it was a competitive market.

It wasn’t just on a professional level that this had been a hard year.  They’d been through a lot emotionally and things were still quite awkward between them sometimes, but somehow they had ridden out the storm that had brewed up and threatened to destroy their relationship.  She hadn’t quite put what James had done behind her yet, but she was working on it.  James
was
trying his best, but it was hard, with the hours he worked, for them to spend the time on their marriage that it warranted. 

They needed this holiday badly.  Some quality time together, away from all the distractions here.  She just hoped those distractions weren’t going to follow them across the Channel.

‘Mummy says you’re stinky,’ Jack giggled, grabbing a fistful of cake from his sister’s plate.  She was too busy looking indignant at his insult to notice.

‘No Mummy didn’t,’ Grace reassured her daughter, trying not to smile, but inwardly giggling at her son’s cheekiness.  ‘Mummy doesn’t say things like that, Jack.  Eat your own cake, please, and stop being horrible to your sister.’

Lily sat at the table, drinking her squash and eating her cake, with a little silver cake fork, as though she were taking high tea at The Ritz.  Other than the expression on her face, which was one of utter disgust that her slightly younger brother could stoop so low, she hadn’t risen to Jack’s comments at all.  Grace had to wonder where her poise and self-assurance came from; she was sure she never had that much confidence at five.  Lily had slipped on a pair of Grace’s shoes, whose high heels dangled loose from her little feet, as she swung them to and fro under the table.

‘Does Father Christmas come to naughty boys?’ Lily asked her mother imperiously, whilst casting a look like daggers at her brother.  He instantly stopped chewing and waited to see what his mother’s response would be.  Lily loved to think she was getting the upper hand over her brother.  Every situation could be turned into a point-scoring opportunity, if you tried hard enough.  Her brother was just too stupid to have worked that one out.  She knew she was the mistress of the put-down comment, a skill a five-year-old boy couldn’t possibly be expected to possess for many years yet.

‘Well, you both need to be really good, don’t you?  Remember he can see you all the time, can’t he?  Even when Mummy can’t.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, sitting up straight and drinking his juice as quietly and neatly as he could.  He looked crestfallen at the thought that Santa had seen him steal the cake, and that he could have ruined all his chances for a huge pile of presents come Christmas morning.  Bless him, thought Grace.  He wasn’t what you would call a naughty child; he just took great delight in winding up his sister.  Wasn’t that in the job description for a younger brother, even if he was only a little bit younger?  Grace knew the pair of them absolutely adored each other really, and she delighted in the special moments they shared, even if it meant she sometimes felt just a little bit excluded.  There was such a unique bond between twins, and she hoped they’d always feel like this about each other.  But despite their deep connection, the pair of them could still fight like cat and dog when they chose to, just like any regular pair of siblings, twins or otherwise.  It was a kind of fifty-fifty relationship; they were either inseparable, or at war, and you could never predict from one moment to the next what the situation was going to be.

Grace felt sorry for her son and knew she needed to reassure him: ‘But it is the summertime, Jack.  So maybe Father Christmas is on holiday at the moment, and with any luck he won’t have seen you.’  She went over to him and gave him a little squeeze and a kiss, dropping one onto Lily’s soft head too.  It was one thing to perpetuate the childhood myths of Santa and the Tooth Fairy, with all the adult white-lies that were involved in keeping up with such a conspiracy, but quite another to use them to hold a child to ransom.  Grace didn’t agree with that style of parenting at all.  She would much rather reward for good behaviour than threaten withdrawal of treats for bad.

‘So, Mummy,’ Jack began seriously.  ‘I need to know something.  It’s really important.  Did God make Santa?’  Jack had a habit of coming out with questions like this, deeply probing ones which belied his young age and really made her think sometimes.

‘Well, I suppose he must have done, darling,’ she replied, hoping her son wasn’t quite forward enough in his learning to link the theory of evolution with the contradiction it presented regarding God and all things holy.  She wasn’t quite ready for that.  Thank heavens for the internet, was all she could think to herself.  She wasn’t sure what answer Google would provide to that particular question, but it had helped her out of the ‘don’t know’s’ many a time. 

‘Have an apple.’  She passed one to him, hoping that a full mouth might bring an end to his current line of questioning.  At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before he worked out that Santa was a fake anyway, she thought.  After all, even in these days of the internet, and data travelling at the speed of light, how could any intelligent child be expected to believe that a man in a flying sleigh (and it didn’t even have any jet-packs, Jack had pointed out to her on more than one occasion) get around the whole world in one night and still manage not to be spotted by anyone? 

Tom came into the kitchen carrying the grocery bags from their shopping trip.  ‘Will you look at her with those shoes, like mother like daughter,’ he laughed. 

Grace, Queen of Shoppers, she had once been known, with a shoe collection to rival only Imelda Marcos.  But in recent years she had reined in her retail habits.  It was a case of having to.  With two teaching salaries plus two small children to support, she no longer had the disposable income to lavish on designer footwear, but actually it didn’t bother her one little bit.  That materialistic part of Grace belonged to her old life with Mark; physical possessions weren’t what made her happy anymore.  Nowadays being with Tom and the kids was her source of contentment; and if that happened to coincide with five gorgeous pairs of shoes residing in her wardrobe at any one time, then that was an added bonus, but not a necessity.  She’d done very well selling her once vast shoe collection on eBay (well, most of it, with a few favourites kept for sentimental reasons and emergency high heel usage) after she and Mark had separated.  She had been astounded at what people were prepared to pay for a pair of pre-loved Louboutins or Jimmy Choos.  And loved they had certainly been.  But parting with them hadn’t been as hard as she’d anticipated, and the sudden influx of cash into her PayPal account had softened the blow somewhat.  The proceeds had been substantial enough to see her comfortably through her whole year of maternity leave, with enough left over for a holiday in the summer for them all before she had gone back at work. 

Grace still saw Mark fairly regularly; it couldn’t be avoided, as he was now married to Alex, her other best friend.  Things were as good as one could hope for between the two couples, which Grace considered to be a blessing.  She would have hated to lose Alex over that love-triangle episode in their lives, and was relieved that their friendship had survived, even if things could be awkward sometimes.  It was a small price to pay for still having Alex in her life.

‘Grace, I’d be really honoured if you would be my Matron of Honour,’ Alex asked nervously.  She had just announced to her two best friends that she and Mark were engaged.  They had guessed that marriage was on the cards, especially now that the couple had little Bertie, and knowing how Alex liked the traditional unit of husband and wife at the head of a family.  She wouldn’t have been content just to be Mark’s girlfriend or fiancée for long; she needed something more permanent.  Ironic, really, thought Grace, given the battle she had had with Mark on the same subject.

It had taken a lot of soul-searching but Alex really did want Grace to be at her side on her big day.  After asking the question, she didn’t know where to look and glanced sideways at Grace, twiddling her fingers.  ‘But I quite understand if you’d rather not.  I mean, it’s a tricky one, isn’t it?  How many women could say they had been bridesmaid to their ex-boyfriend’s new wife?  And if you didn’t mean so much to me
–
well, to us both of course
–
then I’d never have dreamed of asking.’ 

Alex knew she was babbling, but she was terrified.  Odd though the situation was, she wanted Grace as her Matron of Honour, not from a sense of duty to a good friend who had stood by her in times of trouble, but simply because she loved her friend to bits.  Grace had seen Alex through the hardest of times when Peter died, and beyond.  It was
a real dilemma.

‘Oh Alex, really, it’s lovely of you to ask,’ Grace replied, racking her brains for the right thing to say to let her friend down gently and without causing offence.  Much as she loved Alex, she couldn’t think of anything worse than being her Matron of Honour, as her friend married the man she had once been engaged to.  Just imagine, having to hold the train of Alex’s dress, and delivering her to the man who had never quite managed to commit to marriage with her.  Grace had to do the let-down quickly, to avoid any more embarrassment on either side; both of them were squirming with the awkwardness of it all, but the last thing she wanted to do was accept, and then feel uncomfortable about the whole thing and wish she hadn’t.

All vestiges of love for Mark were long gone; there was nothing left at all, nothing beyond the realms of friendship and wishing him happiness in his life.  But in an ideal world she would have planned never to see him again.  She had never kept in touch with any of the other men from her past, and that was how she preferred it.  She was glad for him that he had managed to find in Alex whatever it was that had been lacking with her, even if that did sting a little.  Alex was a beautiful and very special lady, no doubt about it, but she couldn’t help feeling second fiddle to her, even though she didn’t actually want
Mark.

Grace and Mark had evolved their present day relationship
–
if you could call it that
–
into a kind of tacit friendship at arms’ length.  Months, and then years on, each still avoided being alone in a room with the other, although they were quite happy to chat in a group, in public, and put a pleasant face on things.  Surely it had to be worse for Mark, though, didn’t it?  Whenever he set eyes on Tom, did he not just see the man who had started an affair with his girlfriend, a man who had ‘stolen’ her from him and then got her pregnant?  Or had so much water passed under the bridge since then that none of that mattered anymore?  Grace thought that actually both men handled the situation in a very mature fashion.  Outwardly they seemed like friends, although they would never be best mates, and that was understandable.  Even if their so-called friendship was an act, for the sake of their womenfolk, and neither could actually forget what had happened in the past, then they made a pretty good job of getting on with their lives and putting it all behind them.

‘I’m honoured, really I am,’ Grace replied to Alex, stalling for time and hoping the right words would just pop into her head.  If only Alex hadn’t asked her.  Surely she couldn’t have thought Grace would expect it, just by virtue of being her best friend?

Fortunately Evie came to the rescue: ‘I’ll do it!’ She piped up excitedly.  ‘I never got to be a bridesmaid when I was a kid, and Alex, just look at Grace, she’s squirming!  You can’t do that to her!’  Bless her, Evie couldn’t help but blurt out the honest truth which was staring them all in the face, but it saved everyone’s blushes and brought the three of them to giggles of relief instead.

‘Oh, thank you, Evie,’ Grace and Alex chorused together, and the three women hugged one another, two of them mightily thankful to have been rescued from an awkward situation so quickly, and the third simply thrilled at finally getting to be a bridesmaid.

‘Just don’t make me wear peach, OK?  And no nasty satin, either.’