Eight years earlier
He’s beginning to recognise the pattern on the ceiling, the way the street light slips through the blind and casts stripes there. Every night this week he’s fallen into sleep like a stone in water, only to find himself wide awake at three o’clock, thoughts whirring like the second hand on a clock. Round and round, chasing the answer as elusive as time.
It’s been happening ever since he met her.
Don’t be so stupid. You’ll ruin everything. Rachel shifts next to him, mumbles in her sleep, and he rests his hand on her arm to reassure himself as much as her. She doesn’t know she needs to be reassured. Heaven forbid. Sweat pools on his back at the thought of her knowing what treacherous thoughts he’s been having, and he closes his eyes, blocking out the light but not the anxiety.
A cry breaks into the silence and he opens his eyes. Josh. He lies still, in case it’s a false alarm, but Josh, like his father, has a night-time routine. The cry becomes a whimper, quiet at first, and Tom swings his legs out of bed, not wanting to wake Rachel.
‘Is it Josh?’ she says, her voice thick with sleep.
‘Go back to sleep,’ he whispers. ‘I’ve got this.’ At least this is something he can do right.
Josh’s room is past Lara’s; her door is ajar and he pauses for a moment to watch her. She’s asleep on her back, hair spread over the pillow. She never wakes, no matter how much noise Josh makes. Josh’s cries are getting more indignant now, and Tom whips him out of his bed and clasps him to his shoulder, his small body warm against his bare skin, rocking him gently up and down. Josh’s eyes are closed already, and Tom wipes the tears from his face with his sleeve. He walks around the room in circles, slow, steady steps, his eyes prickly with fatigue. When he’s satisfied Josh is asleep, he puts him back into his bed and lies down on the floor next to him.
Being a father has overwhelmed him in a way he could never have imagined. Josh being his second child, he’s that bit more confident, and somehow having a son makes him want to burst with pride. It seemed natural to him to get up and attend to his cries before all this started, encouraging Rachel to trust him, to allow her more sleep, which she desperately needed. It was only a month ago that Tom would fall asleep no problem too, his mind filled with work and family instead of troublesome thoughts about her.
Heidi.
He wishes he’d never taken the call, never met her, never set this obsession in motion. For it is an obsession: he can’t get her face out of his head. And it so nearly never happened. The call came through to Freddie’s desk – it’s random as to how they allocate their clients – and if Freddie hadn’t been making coffee in the kitchen, he would have taken the call and picked up the commission. Instead, Tom intercepted it and took down the details of the job – a basic website for a small clothing boutique. He agreed to meet a Ms Ingram, who was acting on behalf of the shop owner, and they set up a meeting the next day at a local coffee shop.
He arrived early, waiting for his client to arrive before he ordered drinks. He was taking out his iPad when a young woman appeared in front of him.
‘Mr Webb?’
‘Tom, please. You must be…’
‘Heidi.’ She pulled out the chair and sat opposite him. Her hair was pale blonde, worn long, and she had a heart-shaped face and arresting green eyes. He met them with his own and then looked away, lest she thought he was staring, but they were the kind of eyes poets write lines about getting lost in. Her smile was friendly and he felt instantly at ease.
‘I haven’t ordered yet. What can I get you?’
‘A latte please, almond milk, no sugar.’
She’s already sweet enough.
He wishes he’d known then, when he was having corny out-of-character thoughts, that he should have passed the job on to Freddie, but the woman was so friendly and they had an instant rapport, so much so that he ordered a second round of coffees. They were in the café for two hours before he tore himself away. The attraction was mutual; he could tell by the way she looked at him and let her fingers brush against his arm when he left to go to the bathroom. In the Gents, he splashed cold water on his face and stared at his flushed reflection in the mirror, knowing he was standing on a precipice. He thought of Rachel, Lara and little Josh, the family he thought the world of, and straightened his tie, composed himself and told his mirror image not to be so ridiculous. But back in her presence, his resolve melted away when she looked at him with those piercing green eyes, and he wanted to rip her clothes off there and then.
Which he did on their second meeting. He’s been seeing her ever since, and despite knowing it is wrong, that he doesn’t love Rachel any less, Heidi is like a drug. No matter how many times he resolves to put an end to it, the minute he speaks to her, or gets a text, or her face flashes into his mind, his resolve dissolves and he makes a new arrangement to see her. Night-time is when his self-hatred kicks in, and sleep eludes him, as does a resolution.
Rachel wakes him in the morning, Josh in her arms, a bottle in his mouth.
‘You fell asleep in here again. It must be so uncomfortable. Why didn’t you come back to bed?’
‘It wasn’t intentional. I wanted to make sure he was really asleep and I must have dropped off.’ Lying to Rachel cuts into him every time, and he knows he can’t keep this up for much longer. Make a decision, choose between them; he knows already that’s what it will come to. His feelings for Heidi are too powerful and cannot be ignored.
If he chooses Heidi, his actions will upend his life and that of his family. And if he goes the other way and chooses his wife, he’ll have to confess to the affair, because he can’t live like this any longer, and Rachel may not allow him to stay. Whatever he chooses, life is not going to continue as it is, and the cloud of dread he lives under is about to burst.
Heidi is on his mind and he fears he will take the more treacherous path.
But he has so much to lose.