Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels (8 page)

Evie was in bits.  James had stormed out of the house in a foul temper and she didn’t know when he’d be back.  Things had come to a head when he’d been unable to explain to her where he had been the previous night.  A few years ago she wouldn’t even have thought to question him, but his recent behaviour had started to make her suspicious.  She was terrified that her suspicions might be confirmed this evening.

A hotel had called to tell him he’d left his credit card behind.  He’d told Evie earlier that he had a business dinner with a potential new client in town, and he’d be late home, but he would be home.  As far as she knew, no hotels were involved.  He hadn’t stayed away, so why would they be?  Her stomach churned with fear as the thought occurred to her that there was only one reason why someone would book a hotel room and then not stay there.

‘Come on, James, I’m not stupid.  Are you seeing someone?  Or do I need to be more graphic?  Are you FUCKING someone?  Because isn’t that what people do when they book a hotel, but don’t stay the night?  Usually married men who need somewhere to screw their mistress before they go home to their unsuspecting wives?  Isn’t that how it works?  Hotel rooms by the hour?  How seedy can you get?  How can you be so stupid, and more importantly, how can you do that to me and the girls?’

But James denied everything.  He wasn’t seeing anyone, no one at all, so he said.  He must have left his credit card there on another occasion.  He was working hard to court new business and keep the company afloat as they had weathered the recession so well, he said, managing to twist things round and make Evie feel bad for accusing him in the first place.  A couple of big clients now would sort them out for years to come, but it all took effort and, well, he was sorry if he’d been preoccupied recently, but that was all it was.

She would have liked to believe him, but his excuses sounded hollow.

The first full day of the holiday dawned bright and blue-skied, just like Henri said it had been for the entire summer so far, and would be for the full two weeks of their stay.  ‘Wow, you own a place like this AND can guarantee the weather,’ James had joked with him in near-fluent French as the kindly owner showed them round their half of the chateau.  ‘You have to be on to a winner there!’

Evie grabbed her book and a towel and headed for the pool.  Grace was already there, looking amazing in a blue and white bikini, even if she was a shade alabaster-white.  That’ll soon change if the weather stays like this, Evie thought to herself.

‘Blimey, do I need to rush out at six am and bag a lounger with my towel?’ Evie joked with her friend as she parked herself on the seat next to Grace’s.

‘Couldn’t wait for the old man to drag himself out of bed.  I mean, just look at this place.  Fabulous, isn’t it?  Best time of the day.’  The warmth of the early sun held the promise of a scorcher of a day to come.  Both women gazed from poolside to the deep valley beyond, which was filled with a dense forest.  At this time of the morning the sun caught the tips of the trees, turning them a bluey green, so that it was almost like gazing out across an ocean.

The peace of the moment was shattered by Lily and Jack, who came hurtling from the chateau like a pair of wind-up toys.

‘First one in the pool’s a loser!’ Jack shouted, making the ‘L’ sign above his head at his sister.

‘Where do they learn these delightful things from, so young?’ Evie joked.  ‘Can’t believe they pick up stuff like that in that lovely little school of yours, Grace?’

Grace laughed, then looked on in horror as Jack dive-bombed into the pool, without his armbands, which was a first.  He didn’t seem to realise, but it didn’t hold him back.  She jumped up quickly, expecting to have to fish a spluttery five-year-old from the pool, but Jack surfaced on his own, slicking back his hair and beaming from ear to ear, as surprised as she was at having done that for the first time, fearless and unaided.

‘Well done, darling, that was amazing!’ she exclaimed, quickly turning her shock into a positive reaction to her son’s antics.  Not wanting to be outdone, Lily dived in behind him and surfaced confidently at the side of the pool as well.  Both had been having swimming lessons since they were toddlers, and could doggy paddle easily across their local pool, but neither had yet been brave enough to leave the arm bands off.  Those days were over, it would seem, another milestone reached.  And this was only day one of their holiday.  If the pair of them carried on like this, they’d have webbed feet by the time they went home.  There was just something so much nicer about swimming out in the open, in a warm pool, with the sun beating down on you. 

Evie was amazed to see her girls emerging from the house, too.  OK, so not at the same speed as the twins, and with a far more nonchalant air about them.  But Evie was pleased to see they were smiling and shoulders were un-hunched; both were wearing suitable poolside attire, which, much to Evie’s relief, wasn’t accessorised by a mobile gadget of some description.  Just a book, a towel and a bottle of sun cream, all you needed for a day by the pool.  And the most astonishing thing of all was, it was only nine o’clock, which was several long hours earlier than Immy would normally surface on a non-school day, back at home.  Miracles could happen on holidays, it seemed…

‘Muuuum, the Wi-Fi’s gone again,’ had been the constant moan from their eldest daughter during the first evening of their stay, then in sheer exasperation, she had switched off her phone, accepting that Instagram and Snapchat just weren’t really going to happen for her while they were there.  Evie was glad to see the back of all that.  It would do the girls good to have a break from the constant need to update their status and inform the world every time they sniffed.

Both girls threw their things down at the side of the pool and the twins watched, utterly rapt, as they dived elegantly into the deep end.  Grace smiled at the sheer, unadulterated hero-worship on her daughter’s face as she watched the ‘big girls’.

‘Immy, Immy, catch me,’ Jack called to Immy.  Jack ran round to the side of the pool as Immy stretched out her arms.

‘Woohoo, look at me,’ he called, as his sister joined the queue to jump on Immy.

Oh no, poor girls, they were going to be stuck doing this all day, or at least until the twins wore themselves out, Grace chuckled to herself.

There was a shout from the chateau: ‘Anyone for rosé?’

‘At this time of the morning?  You’re having a laugh!’ Evie called back to her husband.  ‘Coffee, though, please?’

‘Stuff that, who wants coffee when you can have wine.  Bring it on!’ Grace called back to him, and he emerged from the kitchen, bearing a bottle.  Tom followed close on his heels with the glasses.

‘Start as you mean to go on, eh?’ Tom said, planting a kiss on his wife’s cheek as he put down the glasses.

‘Can I have some?’ asked Immy, climbing out of the water.

‘Not at this time of day, darling,’ was her mother’s reply.  ‘A little drop at lunchtime, maybe.’  Like the French, Evie had a fairly relaxed attitude towards the girls trying alcohol, provided it was in moderation and under close parental supervision.  Better that than it became a forbidden substance, and then they went off the rails at the earliest opportunity, like she’d seen so many of her friends do in their youth.

Evie was glad that the tensions of the previous day had lifted.  James had made no further mention of the incident at the service station, and had switched into full-on holiday mode.  Despite everything, she was determined to enjoy this holiday, no matter what.  Look at the girls, even they seemed to be relaxing, and they’d only been here a few hours.  Her daughters were splashing around in the pool with the twins as though they were ten years younger; all the teen hang-ups seemingly gone.  It was refreshing to think that they could still revert to being children, which, after all, was what they were.

Evie relaxed back onto her lounger, in the sure and certain knowledge that all the children could be left to get on with it, whilst she got on with the serious business of relaxing and getting a tan.  James and Tom were chatting amicably at the other end of the pool; she was pleased to see that Tom seemed happy in James’ company again.  He had been so loyal to her when things had turned nasty last year and had had trouble forgiving James when it had all settled down again, which was understandable.  He’d taken the same stance as his wife and put Evie first, which was lovely of him. 

She wondered what the next couple of weeks would hold, how she and James would get on, being under the same roof all the time.  Ideally she’d like to leave for home with a deeper sense that her marriage was fixed, or at least in the knowledge that it was fixable.  Although she and James had ticked along reasonably well for a while now, back to a near state of normalness, was there ever really a ‘normal’ again, when you’d been through what they had?  She felt there was still a lot missing from their relationship.

Too many deep thoughts for this early in the morning, she thought, reaching for her paperback with one hand and her glass of wine with the other.  What wasn’t to like about a holiday like this?  All she needed to do was get on and enjoy it.

James stretched out on his lounger with a strong sense of déjà vu.  It probably had something to do with the fact that they’d barely left the chateau in the past few days, as all were happy to chill out poolside and enjoy the endless sunshine, the warm evenings, the constant – although seldom excessive – flow of alcohol, and the general sense of wonderful camaraderie that was forming between them all, adults and children alike. 

‘Ahhh, this is the life!’ he exclaimed, as his eldest daughter filled his glass from the jug of Pimms she’d just made up.  ‘Mum’s got you well trained, hasn’t she?  But really, should I be worried that you know, at the ripe old age of sixteen, how to make up the perfect Pimms?’

‘Nahh, Dad, it’s all that waitressing I’ve had to do at your dinner parties.  You know, the ones you never paid me for?’ 

He was happy to see Immy smiling, and relieved at how quickly she’d shaken off her normal teenage angst and was relaxing into the holiday pace of life.  Evie was convinced it was the lack of Wi-Fi – or actually the really rather rubbish, intermittent ‘Wee-Fee’, as Henri, the chateau owner, called it – which had propelled their daughter from her online world back into the real one.  Sometimes he regretted the fact that his daughters’ childhoods were so blighted by the blind dependence on gadgetry which had taken over twenty-first century living.  His own summer holidays had been carefree and wild, as had most of his peers’, he was sure, and he was heartened to see just how happy his girls were once the complications of the modern world were removed.  It made everyone’s lives easier that Immy, in particular, had decided to go with the flow and join in with the holiday throng, rather than trying to beat them the whole time.  If only life was so simple at home, James thought, whilst recognising that it was usually his wife, not him, on the receiving end of Immy’s angst.  He resolved to devote more time to his girls, talk to them more.  After all, in a couple of years Immy could well have left home for university, and her childhood would be over. 

‘Daddy, can you come in the pool with us?’ yelled Anastasia.  Jack was balanced precariously on her shoulders, and she launched him, wailing with delight, into the air and then down with a splash.  Much as she adored the twins, James could see that his daughter was tiring a little of being the focus of two five-year-olds’ constant attentions.  She wanted a bit of Daddy-time for herself.

‘Again, again,’ yelled Jack, circling back on Ana as though she were a fairground attraction.  Lily, happily paddling around at the opposite end of the pool and chatting away to herself, got wise to the entertainment going on at the other end and doggie-paddled across to join the queue to be thrown up in the air.   Grace looked on, ever mindful of the fact that her babies were only five, despite their level of determination to join in with the older girls as much as they could.  She was grateful to the two teens for the time they were happy to invest in Lily and Jack.  They really seemed to be enjoying it too, and it was lovely that, despite the huge age difference, all four children could simply spend a whole day playing together.

James stood up and stretched theatrically, glancing over at Evie to see if she was watching him.  She surreptitiously raised her book a little higher so that, although she
could
see over the top, James couldn’t
see
that she could see.  Her sunglasses were dark enough for him not to be able to work out the direction of her gaze.

James was an amazing diver, and boy, did he know it, but in this pool, and in this company, just to jump into the water to play with the kids, she didn’t think all the posturing and the Tom Daly dive moves were really necessary.  Why couldn’t he just bomb in like the rest of them? She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing she was watching, even though she couldn’t help herself.  She smiled at her own cunning.  Oh, the politics of married life!

But James had found another audience in Grace, although he failed to grasp that she wasn’t actually admiring his prowess as a diver, but was humouring him.  She thought James’ efforts to impress his wife – or indeed anyone else who happened to be watching – were highly amusing, and so she decided to play along with it. 

‘Come on James, you can do it.  Rio 2016, here you come!’  James puffed out his chest even further and executed the most perfect dive into the deep end.  Evie and Grace looked at each other and collapsed into giggles.

‘What’s so funny?  It was a great dive.  A personal best, I should say!’ James moaned, climbing from the pool as slick as a seal, and seemingly forgetting that the whole point of getting into the water in the first place was to stay there and play with the children, not play to his audience.  Ana, too, was laughing at her father. 

‘Daddy, come back in!’ Ana yelled as Lily climbed onto her shoulders for yet another launch into the water.  ‘You were supposed to be coming in with us.’

‘Yeah, stop all that showing off,’ added Immy, seeing right through her father’s antics.  ‘Look at them, Dad, do you really think they’re impressed with
that
?’  He looked round at the two women and bowed.

‘OK, OK, I can see it’s all wasted on you lot,’ he moaned, running his hands through his hair to push it away from his eyes, and then adjusting his shorts to make sure they were still covering everything they should.  ‘But wouldn’t you lot just like me to perform a somersault before I stop showing off?’  Finally the man was starting to take himself with a pinch of salt, Grace thought.