Head Over Heels

by Sara Downing

  Over a solitary breakfast in the sunshine on Evie’s decking, I decide on a bit of shopping in town first thing, then a surprise visit to Tom’s. I’ll land on his doorstep bearing food and wow him with the prospect of a home-cooked meal – it’ll be our first proper night in together. I’m not going to call him & pre-warn him – that would spoil the surprise. He told me he had some paperwork to catch up on today so he would be in all day. And how could he not be pleased to see me, the love of his life (so he told me yesterday) arriving on his threshold with all the ingredients to knock up a gourmet meal for two. He can pour me a large glass of something cold and crisp and sit and watch me cook, and we can chat and……well, we’ll just see, but if previous experience is anything to go by, I’ll still be there tomorrow morning. Fab. Better make sure I have a toothbrush and an emergency set of stop-over undies in my bag…..

  My phone beeps, and it’s a text from Evie. They’re all in Mallorca now, for three weeks, lucky things, which works out well for me staying here and getting my life in order for just a bit longer. Mark and I have put our house on the market, and there has already been some interest, so we should be able to sort things out financially before too long. Evie is still insistent that I stay at hers for as long as I need to, but I think I may well look into renting somewhere if the house sale drags on a bit – it’s not really fair to them all otherwise. But in the meantime I am enjoying her gorgeous house and garden, and acting as house-sitter, so everybody is happy.

  ‘Having great time here, weather fab, girls brown as berries & getting webbed feet. Forgot to send you this pic of me, Lydia and our new mate David in Florence,’ it reads. ‘He reminds me of your Tom, but only U can know how much!!! Hope all OK at home xxx’ I scroll down to see a photo of the sisters standing in front of the copy of Michelangelo’s David in the Piazza della Signoria, smiling away and pointing to the more obviously male attributes of David’s. Trust Evie, cheeky as ever……although I can see where she’s coming from. With his curly hair and muscular body there is some resemblance, although thankfully I can say that Tom is significantly better endowed than his sculpted counterpart. I giggle at that thought and tap out a reply to Evie:

  ‘Yes can see the likeness – in some places more than others!!! x’ Let her make of that what she will!

  Animals fed and watered, and all my house-keeping responsibilities dealt with, it’s just before noon when I finally head off into town, for a bit of a leisurely browse round the shops, (I am meant to be keeping my spending on a tight leash, remember) followed by a trip to the supermarket to stock up on ingredients for tonight’s surprise dinner.

  I’d raided Evie’s collection of cookery books this morning, and settled on grilled swordfish, green beans and tomato salsa, followed by crème brûlée, but then changed my mind on the pud when it occurred to me that Tom’s kitchen just might not harbour a cook’s blowtorch. To me it exudes an air of a warmer-upper’s kitchen than a cook’s kitchen, but as yet I’ve had no opportunity to discover how extensive or otherwise Tom’s culinary skills are, other than I know he makes a cracking bacon sandwich. Having lived with Mark for so long, I was used to having every possible kitchen appliance known to man, lurking in my cupboards. So instead I settle on chocolate pots, adding the ingredients to my list, although on second thoughts I might actually cheat and buy puds, just in case we get carried away and decide we have better things to do than make puddings….

  A couple of hours later and I am sitting in the window of Costa, poring over today’s paper and nursing a half-cold cappuccino. It hadn’t occurred to me how hard it would be to go shopping but not actually go shopping – abstaining from spending is torture, and I just don’t have the commitment to it that I possess when my credit cards are ready, willing and able to be flexed. So I have parked myself here to pass some time before I head off on my food-buying mission. And it’s great, don’t get me wrong. I love watching the world go by, in all its multi-coloured, multi-racial glory, and am enjoying catching up with what’s going on around the globe, as I so rarely get a chance to read a paper. Slowing down to the pace of the holidays just takes a bit of getting used to, that’s all.

  Something catches my eye – a man that looks a lot like Tom. Hang on a minute, it is Tom. I go to wave, to beckon him over to come and join me but then see that he is not alone. He is not looking my way at all, but is totally engrossed in the company of the tall, slim blonde who has his arm draped casually over her shoulder.

  I feel sick. Completely and utterly sick to the pit of my stomach. I don’t know whether to run out of the coffee shop, chase after him and demand to know who she is and what right she has to be parading in front of the world with MY boyfriend, or to crawl into a hole and wail until my heart breaks. I have a physical pain in my chest, and want to double up with it and howl, give full vent to my rage and jealousy. Either way I have to get out of here and I stagger out of the coffee shop in a blind panic, no longer sure of where I am going or what I am supposed to be doing.

  Somehow I manage to make my way back to my car. I open the door, climb inside, clasp the steering wheel tightly in both hands and cry and cry and cry. I feel like my heart is broken in two, I feel totally crushed, and confused too. Who is she? What right does he have to do that to me? None whatsoever is my verdict. He’s only just declared to me that I am the love of his life; look how long he’s waited for me to be free? Is that what the problem is then? Now that I am no longer a challenge, suddenly it’s all too easy and he’s off to make the next conquest? Somehow it just doesn’t fit with the Tom that I thought I knew and loved.

  Eventually I find enough energy to start the car up and drive away. I don’t know where to, though, as suddenly my plans for the day are in tatters. Completely decimated, more like. You can forget the surprise visit and home-cooked meal, Tom; in any case you’ll probably still be out with the blonde and not safely tucked away in your flat, tackling your paperwork like you told me you would. Liar! How dare he! No wonder he’d been low-key about his plans for today, probably trying to put me off seeing him, in case I interrupt his liaison with this woman, whoever she is? And who is she, anyway? Some ex-girlfriend or other, or the latest challenge to add to the notches on the bedpost, now that I am too readily available and not exciting enough?

  I don’t recall much of the drive back to Evie’s house; somehow my own personal in-built sat-nav gets me there safely, and I pull onto Evie’s drive, absolutely shattered. I am totally knocked for six and don’t know which way to turn. Suddenly I revert to a childlike form and all I want is my Mum. I want to run home crying and screaming, and have Mum rub my back and say comforting things, make me some homemade soup and tuck me into bed. I don’t feel I can cope with facing up to this – I want to go off and hide, so that is exactly what I decide to do.

  ‘Mum, can I come and stay for a few days?’ I wail into the phone a few minutes later. Mum senses the desperation in my voice, but doesn’t ask what’s wrong.

  ‘Of course you can, sweetheart, come now. Text me the train time once you’re on it and I’ll send Dad to come and pick you up. You can tell me all about it then. We haven’t seen you for ages, it’ll be really nice.’ Yeah, right. She doesn’t know what she’s in for, poor thing. Her heartbroken youngest daughter is about to arrive on her doorstep, in desperate need of some major TLC and serious love-life counselling.

  I haven’t even told my parents about Tom. It seemed too soon to have to explain it all to them. They wouldn’t have understood how I could move on so quickly – it didn’t happen like that in their day. Couples worked at it then and made more of an effort to get their relationship back on track. Although in those days I would have had a ring on my finger by now, so the break-up would have been a lot harder, from an organisational perspective. Thank God Mark and I weren’t married – I am glad of that now – as I have been able to just walk away from our life together, and the only thing still binding us is our house full of joint possessions. And most of those I could live without.
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  Mum will no doubt assume my heart is breaking over Mark. I’ll have to tell them about Tom, of course. Eventually. Somehow. I can’t go to them for help and then not be entirely truthful with them. I just hope they can see it in their hearts to understand why my love-life became so complicated, and how I could fall in love with another man when I was already in a supposedly secure relationship with another.

  I put in a quick call to Evie’s mother to tell her I am going to be away for a few days, and to ask if she can take over responsibility for pet feeding and house-care. She accepts graciously and can quite clearly sense that I am not entirely right in myself. She tells me kindly to ‘Take care, dear, and don’t worry about the house,’ and promises to come up that evening to make sure everything is OK.

  Absolved of my responsibilities to Evie, I pack a quick bag and ring for a cab. Three and a half hours later I am hanging out of the train window and have already spotted my dad, standing on the platform, waiting for my train to pull in. I feel myself well up when I first set eyes on him – something to do with the normal-ness of him. He looks so unchanged from the last time I saw him, maybe just a teensy bit older, but otherwise just my plain ole regular ole Dad, lovely and comforting and my rock in stormy seas, a bit of normality amid the current chaos of my life.

  I hurl myself off the train as soon as it stops and into Dad’s hug. And then the tears start to flow.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, your Mum’s made chicken soup,’ is all he says, and it’s all he needs to say.

  Twenty-Two

  ‘Oh, Muuuuummmm,’ I wail into her shoulder the minute I walk through the door. She grabs me and pulls me into a big hug, whilst Dad quietly fetches my bags out of the car and makes himself useful putting the kettle on.

  ‘Oh, my poor baby girl,’ Mum says, and she rocks me from side to side as we stand together in the hall. ‘I never thought he’d treat you like this, not in a million years. He always seemed so reliable.’ She sounds so indignant – how dare anyone do this to her precious daughter?

  Just as I thought, and because they have no reason to think otherwise, my parents do believe my tears are for Mark, and I don’t have the heart, or the soul, at the moment to tell them otherwise, so I go along with it for now. I’m not deliberately misleading them, of course I’m not. It’s just that at this point in time I don’t think they’d be ready to hear the real reason for my anguish. I suppose I am terrified of being thought of as a foolish girl, which is exactly what I feel I am at the moment.

  ‘Come and sit down, dear, tell us all about it,’ she goes on. Yikes, that’s just what I don’t want to do. So I decide to stick to generalisations and soak up their sympathy for a while longer, as I have a feeling their reactions may be a little less compassionate if I tell them about Tom and my post-Mark life so far.

  ‘It was horrid, Mum,’ I say, ‘But I don’t think I really want to talk about it just yet. What I really need is some time away from there to get my head straight. Is that OK?’

  Mum makes promises of staying as long as I like and, seeing that she won’t be needed just yet as chief shoulder-to-cry-on and all-round relationship counsellor, reverts to her usual busy-bee mode, buzzing around the kitchen, warming up the soup, setting the table, and doing what she does best and has given her life to – looking after her offspring.

  I can hear my mobile ringing from my bag in the hall but decide to let it ring out. Whoever it is can leave me a message, after all. I don’t want to speak to anyone, particularly if that someone turns out to be Tom. I haven’t spoken to him at all yet today, so the likelihood is that it’s him. Well, he can go hang, for all I care.

  But I’m such a techno-addict and rubbish at being parted from my mobile for too long – I try to leave it but then can’t resist popping out to the hall to check my call history. Missed call – Tom the display reads. Thought so. Phoning up to tell me it’s all over then, were you, Tom? Were you going to tell me all about the new blonde in your life and how you and I were a passing little fling, and how sorry you are, but that’s it? Yeah, I bet you were. Either that or you are planning to have your cake and eat it – string us both along at the same time. Well, I don’t want to hear it. It’s the biggest mistake I ever made, thinking you were someone special and that I could trust you and be happy with you. How could I have been so wrong? I ignore the flashing ‘message received’ signal and bravely, for me, switch the thing off. No more than two points braver on the bravery scale and I would flush it down the loo. I have better things to do with my time than listen to excuses.

  Mum spends the rest of the evening consoling me with beautiful food, and I stuff my face as though I haven’t eaten for weeks – which I haven’t properly, I suppose. Falling out of love with Tom bizarrely has given me my appetite back and I astonish my parents with the amount of food I manage to tuck away. But then I haven’t fallen out of love with you, my heart wails to my head inside my body, via a rumble in my stomach, and it’s as much as I can do not to cry out loud, mid-mouthful of Mum’s gorgeous apple pie, with sheer broken-heartedness and physical pain as I remember the last few times we were together, and how special it was. There may only have been a few times, but each one was perfect. No, I haven’t fallen out of love with him, I love him more than anything, and that just makes it so much worse. If I could switch off the emotions and hate him, then it would all be a lot easier to swallow, I feel sure.

  Mum puts me to bed and tucks me in with a hot water bottle, back in the room that I used to share with my sister, Alice, in that comfortable, homely semi-detached house where I spent my childhood years. It’s all so familiar, yet so different; our once pink ballerina’d walls are now tastefully painted in cream, and there is a double bed and duvet where our twin pink candlewick bedspreads used to sit. Mum has let go of the past and redecorated her daughter’s bedrooms to accommodate her now adult offspring, their partners and in some cases, children, when they come to stay, instead of leaving the rooms intact as a shrine to their childhoods. I am glad of it as I lie on the bed, trying to sleep. This feels like neutral territory now, only with the added bonus of the familiar and comforting presence of my parents.

  The next morning I wake to the noisy rabble of children in the kitchen. I glance at the clock and see that it’s 11.08 – I have slept for over twelve hours. Total exhaustion had taken control of my body, and I feel so much better, physically, at least, than I did last night. But then I remember, and a pang of pain shoots up through my body, along the same tracks where only so recently the thoughts of Tom sent pangs of lust. How things have turned about in such a short space of time…..

  I check my phone and there are nine messages from him, varying from cheeky little texts, sent yesterday, saying the naughty but nice things that he usually does, gradually migrating into very concerned voice messages this morning, wondering where I am and asking me to contact him as he’s so worried about me. Which I’m not going to, of course.

  I realise my presence must be expected downstairs – no doubt Mum has rallied the troops round in an effort to keep me occupied and cheer me up, so I quickly shower and attempt to scrub the ‘victim’ stamp from my forehead. I plaster on a smile and head for the kitchen.

  Sarah, my eldest sister, is there, with her brood; Charlie, who is ten, and, shockingly, nearly as tall as me, and the girls, Amy and Lulu, Louise really, but no one has ever called her that, as far as I know. They are eight and six, if my Good Auntie vibes are working correctly. I haven’t seen them for ages and they charge at me like a small herd of wild buffalo, planting sticky kisses (Mum’s latest round of baking – brownie this time?) all over my face. The reception they give me is totally natural and unprompted and it cheers me up no end.

  ‘Look at you all, you’ve grown so much,’ I say, with genuine surprise and affection, but hating that I’m trolling out the same comments that my relatives used to inflict on me as a child. Why do grown-up relations do that to children? I used to really take offence at it when I was in my teens and tho
se ageing aunties and uncles were still saying it – did they think I was getting fat or something?

  ‘We’re taking you to Chessington, Auntie Grace!’ Lulu, exclaims. ‘There are loads of rides and animals and a roller coaster and……………’ she nearly bursts with the excitement of it all, pogo-ing around the kitchen, her dark brown plaits flapping up and down, but her mother cuts in quick.

  ‘Slow down, Lulu,’ Sarah pleads. ‘We haven’t even asked Auntie Grace if she’d like to come yet,’ but she looks at me imploringly as if to say, Do come, please. Mum’s arranged this to try to cheer you up but actually I’d really like you to come. It’s funny how an expression like that, cast quickly between two women, can say so much. She doesn’t need to tell me about the amount of conniving that might have gone on between her and Mum, but Sarah being Sarah, she won’t have minded one iota, and will love the fact that we sisters get to spend the day together, whether forced into it or not, as we see so little of each other these days.

  Sarah and I were very close as children, well, all three of us were. Even though Alice is nearest to me in age at only eighteen months older, and we shared not just a room but so much more, Sarah is my Big Sister, at a whopping three whole years older than me, and that means a lot. She was the one we both used to look up to, and, poor thing, the one who had to furrow the paths which Alice and I would then follow so easily. Dad would always come down so hard on her, being the eldest. She was never allowed to stay out as late as we were when we reached her age, never allowed to take boys to her room – we did, even though Mum would hover nervously at the foot of the stairs – and if there was so much as a whiff of alcohol on her breath when she came home, then she was summarily grounded for a week. I lost count of the number of times that Alice or I would stagger home after a night out, seriously worse for wear after a bottle of cheap cider or something equally noxious, and manage to convince Mum and Dad that we were perfectly sober. Poor thing, but I suppose it’s the lot of any eldest child, especially when that child is a girl.