The House of Tides

by Hannah Richell

  “Tell me something,” he asked suddenly. “What is a woman like you doing closeted away in a sleepy seaside town?”

  “What do you mean?” Helen asked. Her eyes ran over the dark tattoo encircling his arm. She had to stop herself reaching out to touch it.

  “You just seem rather different from the usual sort round here.”

  Helen was flattered. “Different? I don’t think so. I used to believe I was. I had dreams of really making something of my life. But it’s like I’ve woken up seventeen years later and I’m just a middle-aged housewife living the middle England dream. It’s depressing!”

  “You seem anything but to me, Helen.”

  “I never really wanted to move to Dorset,” she confessed. “I felt sure I’d go mad trapped out here.”

  “So why did you come?”

  “Because it was important to the rest of my family.”

  “You put them first.”

  Helen nodded.

  “Duty won over desire.” He grinned, then fell serious again. “You’re a good woman.”

  Helen shrugged. At that very moment, she felt like a very, very bad woman. She glanced at his watch. It was already three thirty. How had that happened?

  “Do you have to go?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve drunk too much. I don’t think I can drive anywhere. Not yet.” Helen did feel drunk, on a heady combination of alcohol and lust.

  Tobias nodded. “Me too.”

  “So what should we do?”

  Her question hung between them.

  He looked at her for a moment and then reached into his pocket and slowly pulled out a large brass chain with one solitary key dangling off it, his eyes never leaving hers. “It’s for a room upstairs. You can walk away now and I won’t think any the less of you, Helen. I’m not pressuring you.”

  She swallowed.

  “But,” he continued, “if you would like to…if you feel at all how I feel right now…” He reached across with one hand and caressed her cheek and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to lean her face into the curve of his hand. As she did he rubbed his thumb across her lips, a strange, sensuous gesture that made her head spin.

  “I’m older than you.”

  “So?”

  “I’m married.”

  “Me too.”

  “I have three children.”

  “I know.”

  “And you still want me?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I’ve wanted you ever since you walked into my studio on that wild, wet day.”

  Helen swallowed and closed her eyes. It was now. It was now that she should get into her car and drive away and never see this man again. It was now that she should get up from the table, thank him for the drink, and leave the pub, putting as much distance between them as possible.

  She opened her eyes. The key chain winked between them on the table. She reached out one hand and took it in her palm, testing the weight of it carefully. “No one can ever find out.”

  Tobias smiled.

  “I mean it.”

  He nodded. “No one ever will. It’s our secret, Helen. I promise.”

  She nodded once, satisfied, gulped back her last mouthful of wine, and then turned to him.

  “Well, are you coming?” she asked.

  They took the narrow staircase that led upstairs, giggling and grabbing at each other until they fell through the doorway and into their room. Tobias shut the door behind him and leaned against it, suddenly serious, his eyes holding hers.

  “Are you okay?”

  Helen nodded. “You?”

  Tobias nodded. “And you’re sure about this?”

  Helen nodded again.

  He walked toward her and pulled her into his arms, kissing her deeply until she pressed herself against him, dizzy with desire. Then he pushed her away, holding her at arm’s length.

  “God you’re beautiful. Unbutton your shirt. Let me see you.”

  “I…um…” She was flustered.

  “Shhhh.” He put a finger over her lips. “No words.”

  Helen slowly unbuttoned her blouse, holding Tobias’s gaze and fighting the urge to cover her breasts with her hands. She hadn’t been naked in front of anyone except Richard for such a long time, and she was conscious of the toll childbirth and the steady march of time had taken on her body. Tobias seemed to sense her anxiety. He smiled and pulled her into his embrace once more, kissing her lips with such passion she forgot her nerves and concentrated instead on the warm, velvet feeling melting her insides.

  “You are lovely,” he whispered. “I would like to paint you, standing there in that shaft of sunlight, your eyes closed like that.”

  He reached out and slowly traced the contour of her collarbone, running a fingertip trail all the way down to her wrist. For a moment they linked hands, their eyes still locked in a steady gaze. Then he reached across and undid the belt at her waist. Helen felt herself shiver as he lowered her skirt to the floor and knelt to kiss her. As his lips touched her skin she let out a small sigh of surrender and closed her eyes.

  She woke with a guilty start. Tobias was still lying there next to her, sprawled naked across the ugly floral bedspread they hadn’t found time to pull back. She gazed for a moment at the curve of his broad shoulders, the dark hair that spread across his chest and ran down toward his groin, to the long muscles in his legs, the flush of color that had spread across his cheeks as he slept, and the long sweep of his eyelashes. He was very much a man, and yet strangely vulnerable in his sleep. She felt another twinge of lust and checked herself. The sun had moved lower in the sky and the room was now bathed in a warm amber light. She reached across and held Tobias’s wrist so that she could see the face of his watch.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit, oh shit.” She leapt off the bed.

  Tobias opened one eye lazily. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m late. That’s what’s wrong.” She ran around the room collecting her clothes, pushing her arms through her blouse and tripping over her skirt all at the same time. There was a stickiness between her legs. She tried to ignore it; there wasn’t time for a shower.

  “Tell me you’re not going, not yet?” groaned Tobias from the bed.

  “I have to. It’s Alfie. He’ll be waiting at the nursery for me. Mrs. Kendall has already told me off once this week for being late.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong”—Tobias yawned—“but don’t you pay them to look after your son?”

  “Yes,” cried an exasperated Helen as she searched frantically for her underwear. “But they close at five thirty and at this rate I won’t be there until after six.”

  “Just tell them you got stuck in traffic.”

  Helen retrieved her knickers from underneath the antique writing desk across the room and jammed them into her handbag. “You don’t understand. It’s not just them. Poor Alfie. He’ll be waiting for me.” A rush of guilt suddenly overwhelmed her. She pictured him alone at the nursery, the last one left as Mrs. Kendall paced impatiently around him. What on earth was she doing here, in this room, with this man? She had a family—a husband—children who needed her, for God’s sake.

  Tobias read the emotion in her face and leapt up from the bed. “No, no, no. Don’t do this, Helen.” He seized her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Don’t feel guilty for what we’ve just done. We’re not hurting anyone. We’re just two adults having a bit of fun.”

  “But we’re both married.”

  “Yes, but our spouses don’t own us, do they? You’re not an object for Richard to keep under lock and key…”

  Helen tried to interrupt that Richard had never made her feel that way, but Tobias just shushed her with a finger on her lips. She smelled herself on him and swallowed hard.

  “Helen, you deserve a little happiness. We’ve done nothing wrong here, okay?”

  Helen was silent. She didn’t feel as though she’d done nothing wrong.

  “Okay?” Tobias asked again.

  “Oka
y,” Helen sighed.

  “Now, when am I going to see you again? And don’t tell me in the autumn when we go back to college because there is no way I can wait that long.”

  “I just don’t think…it’s the holidays…the kids…,” Helen gabbled nervously.

  “I’ll call you.” He raised a hand as Helen opened her mouth to protest. “It’s okay. If you can’t talk just tell me I’ve got the wrong number and I’ll hang up.”

  Helen nodded. She grabbed her handbag and slipped on her shoes. “I’m sorry. I really do have to go.”

  “I know.” He kissed her hard on the lips, as if claiming her one last time. “No regrets?”

  She smiled up at him, his brown eyes boring into hers as his body pressed against hers. She could feel he was hard again and a little groan escaped from her lips. He smiled back at her triumphantly.

  “No,” she said finally. “No regrets.”

  Summer had finally arrived and began to roam across the country, spreading warmth and beauty in her wake. Several times, Helen became overwhelmed by guilt and tried to end the affair. But each time, it proved too hard to give Tobias up. Each time she left him with the sting of sex and guilt burning inside of her, she told herself it was the last time. But he was like a drug and she couldn’t bear to let go. He was so different from Richard—so youthful, so soulful, and so persuasive. He made her feel beautiful and cherished. She rationalized that he was her one guilty pleasure, her one adventure. She put everyone else first the rest of the time—Richard, the kids—and all she wanted was a little fun. No one need ever know.

  He never came to the house. Instead she visited him at his studio, or in small, out-of-the-way village pubs, often pulling over to lie among the golden wheat fields like displaced teenagers. And it was magical. On days when the birds were in full song and the trees offered up their dappled shade, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to lie in Tobias’s arms looking up between branches at the blue sky. It was here she let her real life simply fade away, like the fleeting lace clouds drifting high above them.

  Even in the last week of the holidays, knowing that they would soon be back on campus, she couldn’t resist him.

  “I know we’re due back at college soon, but I have to see you,” he murmured down the telephone. “I miss your body. I miss your skin. I miss your smell.”

  Helen swallowed. Dora was right there in the kitchen, shoveling cereal into her mouth, seemingly in a dream world. Alfie was skidding Matchbox cars around the kitchen floor, performing an impressive range of screeches and crash effects. Cassie was upstairs, still in bed, enjoying one of the last lie-ins of the holiday. She should spend the day with them. The girls would be back at school next week and then the merry-go-round of real life would start up once more.

  “I promise, if you come, I will kiss you from the nape of your neck where your hair grows in that little curl, all the way down to the tips of your toes.”

  Helen let out a small involuntary sigh. “I’ll be there.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes. Give me an hour.”

  “Great. See you at the usual place.”

  “Yes.” Helen put the phone down and turned to Dora with a smile. “That was work, I’m afraid.”

  Dora looked up at her. She didn’t say anything; she just kept spooning cereal into her mouth.

  “I have to go onto campus; it’s a last-minute thing. Will you and Cassie be okay babysitting your brother today?”

  Dora paused with her spoon halfway between the bowl and her mouth and regarded her mother for a moment. “Today?”

  “Yes,” said Helen patiently. “It’s just for a few hours.”

  Dora sighed. “Do we have to?”

  Helen felt her blood start to boil. “Yes, you do.”

  There was a pause. “It’s not fair,” Dora whined. “Why today?”

  “Because I have important things to do.” Helen sighed. “I need to organize my office, sort through some papers, go through timetables with the dean.” The lies tripped easily off her tongue.

  “Can’t Alfie go with you?” said Dora.

  “No.”

  Dora stood, flung her cereal bowl into the sink, and kicked at the side of the fridge angrily.

  “Dora!” exclaimed Helen. “That’s enough. Now, I haven’t asked much of you all summer. You girls have been living the life of Riley these last few weeks. I haven’t even asked you to tidy your bedroom! The least you and Cass can do is look after Alfie for a few hours.” She expected tantrums from Cassie, but Dora was usually so placid. Helen hoped she wasn’t about to start her own brand of teenage rebellion. She didn’t think she could take it from both girls.

  Dora scowled. “Can we at least take him to the beach?” she asked.

  So that was what was bothering her: Dora wanted to go to the beach. Helen studied her daughter for a moment. They both knew the rule: The beach was off-limits to Alfie unless a parent was present. Helen looked at her watch and then at Dora, exasperated. She supposed they were old enough now. “You can take him with you, but you girls must stick together and keep an eye on him. And no swimming, okay?”

  “Not even if we take his armbands?”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “Beach!” Alfie exclaimed excitedly from the kitchen floor. “Ice cream?” he asked hopefully.

  “Yes, darling. You can have ice cream.” Helen reached into her purse and pulled out a ten-pound note. “This is for you all. I’m trusting you, Dora, okay? Don’t let me down.”

  Dora took the ten-pound note from her outstretched hand. “Okay.”

  Helen let out a sigh of relief. If she left soon she would still be on time.

  It took her ten minutes to get ready. She changed out of her jeans and into a pale blue skirt covered in tiny daisies that she knew Tobias liked. Then she dragged a brush through her hair, squirted perfume onto her neck and wrists, and dusted a trace of blush onto her cheeks. She looked in the mirror. Not bad, and there was no time for anything else. Grabbing her handbag, she ran down the stairs, calling out to Dora at the bottom.

  “Bye, love, I’ll be back later.”

  “Bye, Mum.” It was a muffled cry from deep within the kitchen.

  “Be good,” she added, feeling like a prize hypocrite as the front door slammed behind her. She sprinted down the steps and into her car and as she reversed down the driveway she saw Dora standing with Alfie at the kitchen window. They were grinning and waving, Alfie’s corn-colored hair tickling Dora’s face and making her laugh. Helen gave a smile and a little wave of her own, and then spun out of the drive in a spray of gravel. If she put her foot down she would be on time, assuming there were no bloody tractors of course.

  Helen was in luck.

  She made it onto the highway in record time, and it was only as she pulled across into the outside lane and put her foot to the floor that she realized in her rush to get to Tobias she had forgotten to kiss her children good-bye.

  Chapter 9

  Dora

  Eleven Years Earlier

  The air was thick like honey as Dora stomped across the beach. In one hand she held Alfie’s backpack; in the other she clutched his hot little fist. Ahead she could see Cassie giggling with Sam. They skulked along the shoreline, their heads bent together, one blond, one dark. She glowered at them and tried to concentrate instead on her steady stomp across the uneven pebbles, cursing her mother for the hundredth time that day. Dora had hatched a thousand plans for her last day of freedom and this had not been on her list.

  “Hurry up, will you,” she urged Alfie. “We’re going to lose sight of them if you can’t keep up.”

  “Too fast,” panted Alfie, stumbling on the shifting stones.

  “Well maybe if you weren’t wearing those Wellies and that stupid cape you’d be able to walk a bit faster.” Alfie had insisted on wearing his Superman outfit for their beach trip, and no amount of wheedling or cajoling could persuade him otherwise.

  “You’ll be hot,”
Cassie had tried.

  “You’ll look like a dork,” Dora had added.

  But Alfie was adamant. “I need it.”

  “Why can’t you go as Clark Kent, before he turns into Superman? You could just wear your ordinary clothes and no one would know who you are? You’d be in disguise!” Dora had said.

  “Or even better, come as the Invisible Man?” Cassie said drily.

  “No. Superman. Superman is the bestest superhero of them all.”

  The girls rolled their eyes at each other. Alfie had recently entered an action-figure phase and they’d heard a lot about the “bestest superheroes.” They left him to his costume, deciding to turn their attention to the more annoying matter of the toys.

  “You can’t take LEGOs to the beach,” Cassie had said, scanning through the growing heap of goodies Alfie was lining up by the door. “You’ll lose them. And look,” she said, kicking at a lump of brightly colored plastic. “Why do you want to take this car? The batteries don’t even work!”

  “It’s not a car,” he replied. “It’s a digger.” Alfie whizzed the toy along the floor, expertly wielding its bucket and performing the appropriate digging noises.

  Cassie sighed. Both of them knew it was impossible to rationalize with him, but Dora tried again with a little more patience. “How about we take a backpack? You can wear it like a special rocket pack.”

  “Superman doesn’t have a rocket pack,” Alfie corrected.

  “Okay,” Dora tried again. “But if Superman was going to the beach and he wanted to take his special gadgets, where would he put them?”

  “Down his underpants?” offered Cassie.

  Alfie giggled.

  “Thanks, Cassie. That’s really helpful. No,” she said, turning back to Alfie, “he’d put them in a rocket blaster backpack. Right?”

  Alfie looked at her uncertainly.

  “Right, Cassie?” Dora urged, appealing to her sister for help.

  “Sure,” replied Cassie with another labored sigh. “Look, I really don’t care what toys you kids bring, but if you don’t hurry up I’m going to the beach on my own, and that’s final.”