Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels Read Online Free PDF Page B

late, usually just in time to see Lily and Jack before they went to bed, but at least, most nights, when he did get back he had generally done everything he needed to do for the next day.
    ‘I am right, and don’t you forget it,’ Tom laughed, pulling her closer and stroking her hair.
    ‘Whatever did I do to deserve you?’ she replied, nestling in to his warm and comforting body.
    ‘Nothing.  I just know what makes you happy, that’s all.’
    ‘You’re a star, my lovely husband.’  Grace could feel some of the weight of the world lifting from her shoulders already.
     

Three - Mark
July 2015
     
    ‘Ha, beat you, loser,’ Archie yelled, flinging the PlayStation handset – slightly more aggressively than the situation called for – across the room and, fortunately for him, onto the soft landing of the sofa.  The fourteen-year-old had just thrashed his stepdad, yet again, at Just Cause II, one of those bloodthirsty, shooting everyone and everything games that Mark wasn’t entirely sure were appropriate for a child of such a young and impressionable age.  Alex had given in, somewhat reluctantly, to the All my friends have it argument on his last birthday, and was pleased that, despite its content, it was an activity that he could share with Mark.  There was no point in her trying to join in, she wouldn’t have the first clue what to do with the handset; she just wasn’t programmed with gaming genes.  Or enough patience to even want to try.
    ‘You’re really crap at this, Mark,’ Archie spat, making the L for Loser sign on his forehead and skulking off to the kitchen to replenish his drink.  Mark stood open-mouthed.
    ‘Hey, young man, what’s all this with the bad language?’ Alex confronted her son as he came through the kitchen door.  ‘Go and apologise to Mark now.  No one speaks to him like that, least of all you.’
    ‘Sorreee,’ Archie said pointedly, in the vague direction of his stepfather.  Alex didn’t think it was worth trawling out the ‘Say it like you mean it’ comment when her son was in a mood like this.  He stalked off, the reason for his sudden change of mood still unclear.  Teenagers appeared not to need a reason to flip from happy one minute, to monster the next.  You simply had to be prepared for whatever they would throw at you.
    ‘I’m sorry, honey,’ Alex said.  Mark put his arms round his wife’s waist as she stood peeling the vegetables for their Sunday lunch.  ‘I really don’t know what’s got into him lately.’
    ‘You don’t need to apologise to me, love.  It’s just his hormones.  I can remember what it was like.’  Mark didn’t want to get his stepson into too much trouble, and tried to gloss over it, hurtful though Archie’s comments might be.   Archie had been a mild-mannered thirteen-year-old, and Alex thought naively that maybe her son was going to be the exception to the teenage rule.  But on hitting fourteen, almost overnight he had morphed into standard teen mode.  His arms seemed to have grown by several inches, and hung disproportionately and gorilla-like at his sides.  Good deportment was a thing of the past; slouching seemed to go with the territory now.  His hair, once short, dark and gleaming seemed forever to look greasy, despite Alex’s insistence on a daily shower and her presumption that ‘having a shower’ actually involved the use of shampoo and shower gel, not just getting wet, getting out and getting dry again.  But the worst trait belonging to this new era in his life was the permanently down-turned mouth, the constant frown he wore, as though the world was ‘so not fair’ and everything he was required to do, ‘so boring.’  Things had never been that straightforward between Mark and Archie, not like they were with the girls, but his apparent coming of age as a fully-fledged teenager had definitely made them worse.
    ‘Don’t worry about silly, grumpy Archie, Daddy.  I still love you.’