Hand On Heart
SARA DOWNING
© Sara Downing 2015
The right of Sara Downing to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Also by Sara Downing:
Head Over Heels
Urban Venus
Stage Fright
© Cover Design – Gemma Lewis 2015
‘Hand On Heart’ is the sequel to ‘Head Over Heels’.
To My Parents
One - Evie
July 2015
‘This had better be good.’
Stony faced at her kitchen sink, Evie watched the taxi deposit her sixteen-year-old daughter on the gravel drive outside, before reversing into the turning space and speeding off. Imogen, dark bags under her eyes and wearing the same clothes she had left home in the night before, took a deep breath and braced herself to face the music. Or at least, her mother, whose music she fully expected to be less than harmonious this morning.
‘So, young lady, you’ve decided to come home – finally.’ Evie was unable to help the sarcastic edge to her voice.
‘Sorry, Mum. Need a shower, can we chat later?’ Imogen said dismissively, hoping to make light of her first wholly unauthorised absence. She attempted to bolt for the stairs, but Evie was having none of it, and grabbed her daughter by the arm, turning her around and forcing Imogen to make eye contact with her.
‘Anything could have happened to you. Are you crazy, child? This is why we give you a mobile phone, not so that we can get a text from some girl we’ve never even heard of, at two in the morning, telling us you’ll be back tomorrow. What the hell was all that about? I’ve been going mad with worry.’
‘But I was only at Lucy’s house, sorry Mum, my phone ran out of juice, you know how it is.’ She shrugged, in that annoyingly nonchalant way only teenagers seem to be able to pull off with any aplomb.
‘No, I don’t know how it is,’ Evie went on, folding her arms across her chest. ‘There are still such things as landlines, you know. As far as I know they still work. That’s what we used to do in the old, prehistoric days when I was your age. We’d phone. On a real phone with a cable. Sometimes it was still even attached to the wall.’
Evie couldn’t stop herself from laying into her daughter; it was a defence mechanism for the blind fear she had felt only a few hours earlier. Part of her just wanted to hug her little girl tight and breathe a sigh of relief that she was home safely and nothing had happened to her, the other part was still steaming, furious that Immy could put her through so much anguish in the space of a few short hours. She’d barely slept a wink and she was teetering on the brink of losing the plot completely.
It was only the second week of the school holidays. If this was how the rest of the long summer break was going to be, then it would certainly be no picnic for Evie. She envisaged a living hell of six more weeks of teenage spats, confrontation, and endless attempts at pushing the boundaries from her eldest child. Thank heavens their younger daughter, Anastasia, hadn’t yet reached the stage where she wanted to be out and about with her friends every night. Although it probably wouldn’t be long, heaven forbid. Where had those innocent days of the sleepover gone, Evie wondered, when they’d been happy to have a few friends over, eat sweets, watch boy band DVDs and do each other’s hair. If not at their own house, then at the home of another trusted friend, where Evie knew the mother and was comfortable that a similar standard of parental policing would most likely take place.
Now it wasn’t just school friends they socialised with; there was a group Immy had fallen in with, kids from all over the town, none of which Evie had met, and although she realised they were going to come into contact with people from the big wide world outside their school at some point, she wished it didn’t have to happen so soon. She felt she had lost control, and although she appreciated the fact that her daughter was growing up and becoming independent, she was only just sixteen, and still seemed so young, and in many ways, quite immature. Evie recognised the fact that Immy was legally old enough now to drink alcohol and – heaven forbid – have sex, but the consequences of all that filled her with horror. There were still many things that were off limits to her, but girls these days looked so much older than their years, so who knew what they got up to when out from under the parental eye? She felt sick, partly with worry and frustration and partly through lack of sleep, and she slumped down onto the bottom stair as Imogen finally escaped to the sanctuary of the bathroom.
The doorbell rang. Damn, Evie had forgotten Grace was coming round this morning. Perhaps her arrival was a good thing; it might prevent manslaughter taking place in the Brookes household.
‘Grace, hi, how are you,’ she said, welcoming her best friend into the hall, and pressing her hands to the frown lines on her forehead. ‘Sorry, had a bit of a night with Immy. And morning. She’s only just come home. I’ve had practically no sleep.’ She rubbed her eyes wearily.
Grace kissed her friend on the cheek. ‘What a nightmare, poor you, you look shattered. Shall I put the kettle on?’
Grace felt as comfortable in Evie’s kitchen as she did in her own. The two friends never needed an excuse to get together, and they didn’t have one for this morning either. Both of them were overwhelmingly excited about their impending holiday to France, and simply wanted to chat about it some more over coffee. As a teacher, Grace was already on leave, and occasionally at a loose end for something to do, particularly when Tom, her husband, had something Head-Teacherly to be doing, as was the case today.
‘Where are the kids?’ Evie asked, looking behind Grace for Lily and Jack.
‘Sorry, they made a beeline straight for your garden,’ Grace replied, moving over to the window to check on her five-year-old twins, who were already on the trampoline along with Jessie, Evie’s gorgeous cocker spaniel/poodle cross, the hilariously named ‘Cockapoo’ breed. Jack never called the puppy by her real name; Cockapoo was what she was called as far as he was concerned. He had hit that age when scatological humour kicked in, and any word that contained ‘poo’ was far more exciting than calling the poor creature by her real name.
‘Come here, Cockapoo,’ she could hear him yelling. ‘Poopy puppy poopachoo, bounce with me, come on poopy puppychoo.’
‘Oh well, I suppose we should just be grateful you didn’t get a Shih Tzu crossed with a poodle,’ said Grace, laughing, and gazing fondly at her son, a die-cast ‘mini-me’ for his blond, curly-haired father. Evie laughed, her heavy heart lifting a little. Life had seemed so much simpler when her own children were that age. Oh, for the innocence of youth, and that utter dependence on parents that small children had. Evie had found it a little stifling at the time, the constant need to keep an eye on them, the all-consuming fear for their lives every time they tried something new, even if it was just going down a slide, or trampolining for the first time. Now, though, she wished her girls needed her more than they did. Wished she still had some sort of control over what happened in their lives, and knew even just a little more about what went on in their world from day to day.
Poor Jessie was clearly feeling the strain of keeping up with a couple of energetic five-year-olds and was now sitting on the side of the trampoline, her head in Lily’s lap. Lily was by far the quieter twin, although Grace knew that, from her position of calm and serenity, she well and truly ruled the roost, and had her brother utterly under her spell. He worshipped her, and would bow to her absolute wisdom and seniority (all twenty-seven minutes of it) if unsure of what t
o do in any given situation. Their characters were really starting to come out now, Grace thought to herself, they were proper little people, no longer babies. They had just completed their first year at Cropley School and she would never forget their little faces the first time they were allowed to go ‘for real’ to the big school where Mummy worked.
But Mummy wasn’t their teacher, not just yet. Grace taught the Year Four children, and wasn’t quite sure how things would pan out when the twins got to that stage. She and Tom had talked about moving them to his school before then. He was now Head Master at a larger, private school in Worcester. He and Grace had met whilst he worked at Cropley School, but it was always obvious that he was destined for higher things, and would need a greater challenge at some point. So it was no surprise that he was snapped up by the Cathedral Junior School when a vacancy for Head came up, a few years earlier. Grace missed him being at school with her, but bizarrely her career had flourished since he left – she supposed she was now out from under his shadow. Just recently she had been promoted to Deputy Head and, despite the additional paperwork involved, was loving every minute of it, working with Tom’s replacement, a dynamic new female Head who had some great ideas for the school.
Evie and Grace sat down together to talk holidays, whilst the children entertained themselves, bouncing and tearing round the garden. Evie suspected that tired and stroppy Immy probably wouldn’t put in an appearance this morning, but she had clocked Anastasia slinking quietly down from her room and into the garden to play with the twins, and smiled indulgently at her daughter. The girls adored the twins, and in the company of these two little monkeys, reverted to the children that they still were. Immy frequently babysat for Lily and Jack, and Ana was desperate to get her share of the action too, if only her big sister would let her get a look in on earning some money now and again.
The two families were all off to France together in less than two weeks’ time. They were renting a chateau in the Dordogne, a huge place which would accommodate them all with room to spare, and had its own pool and acres of woodlands to stroll in of an evening. Grace couldn’t wait. There was no way she and Tom could afford a holiday like that on their own, but James had been adamant that he and Evie take the lion’s share of the cost, no protesting allowed. Whilst Tom didn’t like the idea of handouts, it had been presented to him as a belated fortieth birthday gift from the Brookes, and he could get his head round that, sort of. Grace hoped he could relax about it and enjoy it without feeling like a charity case. It was still a very extravagant fortieth birthday present, they knew that, but the Brookes were good enough friends for it not to be an issue between them, even though they could never reciprocate to the same degree.
The planning was done; everything had been sorted out weeks ago. Both families were driving down to the chateau, with a stopover in northern France on the first night. All that was left to do was pack. At this late stage the two women reverted to a pair of excitable teenagers and were more interested in talking about what clothes they would take – Grace hadn’t changed that much really, Evie mused. And of course they had to check out any good restaurants in the locality where they could dine out if they’d had enough of self-catering. Evie switched on her laptop and the two women settled down for some fun ‘Googling’.
They giggled as they stumbled across ‘Your 12 Point Plan for Holiday Packing Perfection’.
‘Blimey, who sits about all day making lists like this?’ Evie laughed. ‘And who reads these things?’
‘Um, er, well, looks like we’re about to. Come on then, what do they suggest?’ asked Grace, peering at the screen.
‘Number 1, The Swimwear,’ read Evie. ‘Well, that goes without saying. Ooh, I must make sure that James packs his skimpiest pair of speedos. I know what a treat that’ll give you guys by the pool.’
‘Nooo! No budgie-smugglers allowed, absolutely not,’ laughed Grace, safe in the knowledge that her friend’s husband was much more of a Villebrequin shorts man than any attempt at looking like Daniel Craig in that Bond film. Thank heavens. No one could pull off a pair of light blue trunks quite like Daniel. Most men shouldn’t even be allowed to try.
‘Ooh, now look at this, Number 6, De-Fuzzing. I trust you’ve had your pre-holiday waxing session, Mrs Parry, and won’t be subjecting us all to your overgrown nether regions. No one wants to see you knitting by the pool.’ Grace almost fell off her stool with laughter.
‘Yeah, I’ll get Tom to get the heavy duty hedge-trimmers out before we go, don’t worry.’
‘Number 8, The Suitcase,’ Grace read. ‘Blimey, what do they think we are, morons or something?’
What a tonic her friend was, Evie thought to herself, the trauma of the morning beginning to fade. She couldn’t wait to get going on this holiday. She just hoped James would behave like the loving, devoted husband she knew he really was, and they could all relax and enjoy it.
August 2009
‘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.
July 2015
‘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 stor
m 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.
Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels Page 1
