Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels

by Downing, Sara

  Besides which, where was Sophie’s partner in all this? Surely he wouldn’t want her getting back in touch with an ex, after all this time? Presumably he had raised this child as his own. Tom knew he had to take a deep breath and pull himself together, and believe that this other man was Isaac’s father, not him. He had to be; Tom couldn’t imagine it otherwise.

  November 2007

  Tom and Sophie had arranged to meet for a drink after work. It was early days in the relationship and although keen, Tom was never one to rush into things. But he did like this woman. A lot. She had been introduced to him by a friend, who had invited both singletons along to a dinner party in the hope that they would hit it off. They had. Despite very different backgrounds, they seemed to have plenty of common ground.

  Sophie worked in the marketing department of a multi-national confectionary company based in the Midlands. Her job sounded glamorous to Tom, which he supposed, in retrospect, was part of the attraction. Hers was the life of power suits, conferences and international travel. It was a far cry from his little universe, centred around a small country primary school, and much as he was happy in the career he had chosen, sometimes he felt his life could do with a bit of vicarious excitement. The closest he came to business travel was the odd leadership course and the National Association of Head Teachers’ annual conference. Hardly thrilling.

  ‘So, how was work? Tell me something exciting and glamorous about your day,’ Tom asked as they took their drinks from the bar and headed off to find a table.

  ‘Well, it’s not really that glamorous,’ she laughed. ‘We had this big meeting with a design company which is helping with a new logo for some of the lines. It was quite dull, actually, there was lots of posturing from the big-wigs, directors getting too big for their boots and that sort of stuff. Honestly, it all gets so political sometimes.’

  ‘Well, you should compare that to life in the staff room at Cropley,’ Tom chuckled. ‘Three teachers and me, making huge executive decisions like what summer play we’re going to do and when we should take our training days. Big stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, but at least you’re making a difference to those kids’ lives. You’re educating the minds of the people who will lead the world tomorrow. The most earth-shattering thing that’s going to come out of today is that the colour of a wrapper or two will change by the minutest shade of purple. It’s hardly going to affect the world as we know it, and most of our customers probably won’t even notice the difference, as long as the chocolate still tastes the same. For all the money that gets spent and the teddies that get thrown out of prams you’d think it was a matter of life and death. You live in the real world, mine’s totally fake.’

  Tom thought her assessment of his career was a little grand, but then the fact that he was shaping young minds – hopefully for the better – was what gave him the immense job satisfaction he got from being a teacher. He smiled at her; he liked this woman. It wasn’t just the fact that she was gorgeous, which she was, but she was deep. There was something aloof and mysterious about her, almost like there was a little unfathomable piece of her that she didn’t want to show. Tom thought that made her seem exciting. And slightly dangerous too. He’d never dated anyone that he thought had such an edge to them, and this time he felt like taking a risk.

  Sophie got up to go to the lavatory, leaving her phone on the table. A few moments later it rang, and Tom couldn’t resist leaning over to see who was calling. ‘The Other Half,’ read the name. Oh. Well, that wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Presumably her ex, but then why was he still calling her, especially during sociable hours on a Friday night? And why was he still labelled as her other half? Wouldn’t you want to remove that tag as soon as the relationship broke down?

  Sophie sat back down again, casually glanced at her phone and didn’t flinch when she saw who had called. She shrugged nonchalantly and threw the phone back into her handbag. She looked Tom straight in the eye; if she thought he might have seen who had called, then clearly she wasn’t bothered.

  ‘So, where were we? Oh yes, tell me more about all those lovely children you teach. Well, they’re always lovely when they’re someone else’s, aren’t they?’ she laughed.

  Tom didn’t know how to reply to that. Clearly she wasn’t too fond of children, then, but OK, they could probably overcome that. And anyway, what was he thinking, this was only a second date, they were hardly planning a future together, marriage and babies and all the works, were they?

  It was a mere three months from that second date when Sophie moved into Tom’s apartment. Well, moving in was a bit of a loose term, given that she refused to surrender her own apartment, claiming that she had ‘too much stuff’ to bring it all to Tom’s. Tom, being the trusting and kind man that he was, didn’t see anything strange in this odd arrangement, if it was ‘just for storage’. So one weekend, Sophie arrived with just two boxes and one large suitcase of clothes, which took up very little space in the wardrobe that he had cleared for her to use. In the months that followed, she didn’t accumulate much more. Dirty clothes disappeared and were miraculously replaced with clean ones, but no personal items ever came with her.

  ‘I don’t like to have to say this, Tom, but are you sure her heart’s in it?’ Tom’s mother had asked, cornering him after a meal, when Sophie was out of the room. They had gone to stay with his parents for a weekend, largely so that he could introduce Sophie into the family fold. His mother had spent their first meal together questioning Sophie about her career and aspirations for the future. Tom thought it sounded as though she was being interviewed for the position of wife. His mother had made it perfectly clear to him over the past year or so that he was most certainly of marrying age now – on the latter side of it, even – and should be thinking about settling down.

  ‘You’ve got your own flat, you’re a good-looking lad, you’ve got a secure job, all your own teeth, some girl ought to be snapping you up by now,’ she had said on the phone once. He wasn’t sure how much of it – if any – was tongue in cheek. Own teeth, really, in this day and age? Tom was never one to abide by parental expectations, though, however well-meaning they might be. When he married, it would be to the right woman, for all the right reasons. All boxes would have to be ticked, not just a few.

  His father had very little to say, and for the most part, sat quietly observing Sophie. Tom just assumed he was in awe of her beauty. He knew his father had always had an eye for a pretty girl, even though he had never actually done anything about it. Or at least, as far as Tom knew, he hadn’t.

  Tom didn’t find out until he split up from Sophie that his father had taken an immense dislike to her, mistrusting her right from the start. But in the name of being a good and wise parent to an adult child, he hadn’t breathed a word until the relationship was over, taking comfort from his suspicion that this would not be a long-term affair. There was nothing more likely to drive someone into the arms of an unsuitable lover than the frown of parental disapproval, he thought. Tom had to find out for himself that Sophie wasn’t the right woman for him, no matter how painful that might be. And he had been proved right.

  ‘She loves me, Mum,’ Tom had replied. ‘She’s good for me, we lead very different lives, and that’s what keeps things interesting.’

  ‘But do you really trust her?’ his mother had been brave enough to say. At that point in time, he thought he did.

  ‘We have lot of fun, Mum,’ Tom replied, suddenly finding himself unable to give a simple ‘yes’ to that question.

  ‘Fun’s one thing, love, but do you really know her?’ His mother came from the opposite school of parenting from his father – the ‘say what you think, and say it straight away’ school. How wise and how right they had both been, Tom realised afterwards.

  Not long after Sophie had moved in, ‘The Other Half’ – still labelled as such, even now, much to Tom’s horror – had phoned again. With Sophie in the shower, Tom had been unable to resist answering the call. Maybe he thought he co
uld ‘have words’ with this chap and ask him to stop calling his girlfriend.

  Simon, the ex ‘Other Half’, informed Tom that he was not actually an ex-boyfriend, but an ex-husband. Funny that Sophie had failed to mention that she had been married before. Simon wasn’t surprised that Tom didn’t know, saying how typical it was of Sophie to be economical with the truth. Sophie and Simon had had a very acrimonious split, apparently, and he was still trying to sort out the financial side of things with her, so he informed Tom.

  Tom’s early hostility towards Simon thawed and the two men actually had a good chat. Simon sounded very pleasant, very rational and sensible about the whole thing, despite the mess their break-up had clearly left him in. Tom was almost at the point of liking him, even, until his parting shot:

  ‘Watch your back, mate. You sound like a nice bloke, I’d hate for you to get taken in, like I did.’

  Tom hung up from the call in a blind rage, his loyalties immediately jumping to the defence of the woman he loved. He could only assume that Simon’s bitterness stemmed from the anger of a jilted man. Tom adored her, and to him she could do no wrong.

  August 2015

  James and Evie were in the kitchen, about to head off out on their trip.

  ‘Tom, mate, everything alright?’ James took one look at the colour of his friend’s face and knew straight away that something was up.

  ‘Can we talk? All four of us?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Sure, everything OK, guys? We’ll go to the chateau tomorrow, James.’ She could see their friends needed them today.

  James nodded in agreement and poured them all a large glass of wine, as the two couples convened at the kitchen table.

  Grace had been wonderful earlier, Tom thought. When she left their room, looking like a woman beaten, he had been panic-stricken that Sophie had ruined everything for them. He felt desperate, angry, confused, and fully understood why she should feel the same. But half an hour later she had come back to him a changed woman, full of confidence that her husband was the one she wanted to believe in, and full of determination to get them both through this ‘episode’, as she called it. He wondered how many women, when confronted with the possible existence of a lovechild, would show their man as much compassion and support as she had. He had sent up a silent prayer for the return of his wife to his side, where he wanted and needed her to be, and it had been answered. Oh, thank you God.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom, sorry I ever doubted you,’ she said, hugging him tight.

  ‘Christ, Grace, love, you don’t need to be sorry for anything at all. You don’t deserve this. I’m just so sorry that that woman has brought all this grief on us. The boy can’t be mine, Grace, you know that as much as I do. Let’s face it, Sophie being who she is, we’d have heard about him a lot sooner than this, wouldn’t we? She’d have been after me for all sorts, that’s the way she is. We’re just part of her sick and twisted plan, I reckon, whatever that turns out to be. But I have to say, I really don’t know what to do now, don’t know how to handle this at all.’

  ‘What does she want, do you think? Money? Surely her current bloke – this boy’s father – must be supporting her through all this? Unless she’s blown it again, of course. Yeah, that would be it, she finds herself all alone with a sick child and he won’t help, so she turns to you. Crazy bitch, to think that after all this time she can just turn on the tears and you’ll come running. After all she did to you, too. Mad cow. But then, where is her partner? I mean, what kind of father is going to walk away from his wife and sick child? The whole thing stinks, nothing makes sense, does it?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea what she’s up to, love. With Sophie, it could be anything. What are we going to do?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea, and I know you’re probably not going to like this, but do you think it might be a good idea to tell Evie and James? I know there’s nothing they can do but it might just help to talk about it. In any case, they’re going to see something’s up with the pair of us, and if we don’t tell them, they’ll just worry, won’t they? And let’s face it, they’ve got enough going on as it is.’

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re right. A problem shared, and all that. They might have some idea how to handle it.’

  And so there they were. All four of them. By the time Tom had finished his story, the first bottle of wine was gone. Grace sat quietly throughout, holding Tom’s hand.

  ‘Bloody hell, Tom, that’s a shocker,’ James said afterwards. ‘She’s lying, of course?’

  ‘Of course she is. She has to be,’ Tom replied angrily. ‘This child can’t be mine. I’d have known. She’s the sort who would have been after me for money before now.’

  ‘Sorry to have to ask you, mate. You, of all people, are the last one to have any skeletons in your cupboard. She’s trouble, Sophie is. What the hell is she up to?’

  ‘God only knows.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think God ever featured too highly in Sophie’s world, that woman is immoral,’ Evie added, shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘Yeah, knowing her it’s got to be some kind of plan to get money out of us. Well, she’s come to the wrong place, we’re not exactly rolling in it, are we?’ Grace said.

  ‘What, like blackmail you mean?’ asked Evie. ‘That’s despicable. Using a child as leverage like that, I mean, you just wouldn’t, would you?’

  ‘We wouldn’t, no, but then we’re decent people. This is Sophie.’

  ‘Which hospital is this child supposedly in?’ James asked, pacing the room, glass of wine in hand. Grace could practically see the cogs turning as his brain processed the news.

  ‘Birmingham Children’s,’ Tom replied.

  ‘Well, here’s what we do.’

  James was taking charge, as he was prone to do in a crisis. Sometimes Tom resented that about him, but for once he looked visibly relieved to be letting someone else take over; his head hurt from thinking too hard. Grace wondered how James was really going to be able to help them, other than offering moral support.

  ‘First of all, we’ve got to find out if there really is a child, and if there is, is he really sick? Just how big is this lie?’

  ‘But how the hell do we do that?’

  ‘Well, one of my clients is fairly senior in the management at that hospital. And yes, I know they have to abide by patient confidentiality rules and all that, but, hey, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not as if we’re trying to find out his medical details, we just want to know if Sophie really is sitting at the bedside of her sick boy day after day, or if the whole thing is just one big, fat lie. We have to try, it’s all I can think of for now.’

  ‘Oh, James, that would be brilliant,’ Grace said with a sigh. ‘But be careful, don’t get yourself or this friend into any trouble, will you?’

  ‘No, I won’t. And don’t you worry, you two. We’ll get to the bottom of all this.’

  Tom and Grace lay in bed that night, mulling over the day.

  ‘Whoever would have thought, twenty-four hours ago, that all this would have happened today?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yeah, I still can’t get my head round it. I just hope to goodness James does manage to find something out.’

  ‘Don’t make contact with her though, until he’s tried that. Don’t answer any calls, or texts, or anything, promise me? You’ve got to distance yourself from her, find out what’s going on first. Promise me that?’

  ‘Of course I will, love. Don’t worry. You have nothing to worry about, we’re going to get this sorted out.’ He pulled his wife closer and tucked her body up against his. He felt safe with her by his side. He could cope with the worst that Sophie threw at him, as long as he had Grace.

  Fourteen - Evie

  August 2015

  James had insisted on driving. Evie had insisted on giving directions. It was just the mood she was in.

  ‘Up there, up there,’ she shouted, as the Sat-Nav tried to take them the wrong way up a one-way street. ‘Look, they obviously want all the c
ars to go up that way, to keep their pretty little village free of traffic. Someone’s put a homemade No Entry sign up. Just go, James. That’s what it says. Ignore the bloody Sat-Nav, she’s never been here, has she, SHE’s not a real person, remember. Just a voice inside a box. Listen to me, not HER.’

  Evie needed to calm down. Since coming up with the idea of the trip the previous morning, she’d had time to get used to the idea of her husband coming along too, but on the drive here, she wished she had just declared she was going on her own, and gone quickly. But then she’d have had to cope with his sulks, and hell, life was just so bloody complicated sometimes, trying to keep everyone happy.

  ‘Park in there, look. Along with all the other English cars.’ Evie loved the Dordogne, but sometimes there were so many Brits around, they felt like they were in the Cotswolds. Same pretty stone buildings, similar scenery, just a few more cliff faces. Better weather, though, definitely. She knew for a fact that the UK was not basking in the same high-twenties temperatures as they were here.

  But Evie liked to be amongst foreign voices when she went away; next year they would go somewhere where English visitors were so rare that the locals would speak to them in their native language, and if they didn’t understand, well, there was always pointing, shouting or mime to resort to. Here, you barely got a chance to practice your school French before they would come back at you in perfect English. And they often handed you English versions of the menu, too, Evie hated that. Even if you couldn’t really understand what it was – and they were lucky, as James spoke fluent French – food always sounded more appetising with a French label instead of a poor, Google-Translated interpretation. She’d seen a ‘Salade de Chèvre Chaud’ translated as ‘Hot Goat Salad’ and could just picture the poor decapitated goat’s head perched on a bed of lettuce, eyes bulging, ears sagging. But the best yet had been the ‘Man Crunch’ and ‘Lady Crunch’ for Croque Monsieur and Croque Madame. They sounded like something from ‘Fifty Shades’, she thought, but hey, at least there was something for everyone…