Chapter Fourteen Tom
Chapter Fourteen
Tom
“I never see you now all your friends are having heart bypasses and hernias removed and knees and hips replaced,” Tom said,
raising his wineglass to meet his Dad’s, who brought his forward for a cheers.
“It was one hip replacement. Otherwise, we’re all fighting fit.”
They’d met at Gaucho in Hampstead for lunch. Tom knew he’d seen less of his dad since he and Sophie broke up. He still didn’t
understand Laura’s role in it, and he couldn’t help it. His distrust of her had put distance between them all and it was a
hard thing to bring up with their already-strained relationship, so instead he showed it through actions, through the odd
derogatory comment and fewer visits.
In amongst shooting the front cover for an international women’s magazine and an advert for a new cycling range by a popular sporting brand, Tom had spent the past week covering so many different parts of London, pointing his camera at people experiencing various moments of joy.
He’d gone to a comedy night and taken photos of the crowd.
He’d gone to restaurants and snapped groups of friends joking together.
He’d even stayed on one bus right until the end of the route and captured one of his favorites so far.
Two women in their seventies or eighties, laughing so hard that one of them leaned forward and hit her head on the railing in front of her.
He’d jumped up to help, but the knock had made them both laugh even harder, so he just kept his camera on them instead.
Each time he took someone’s photo he handed them a card he’d had printed, inviting them to the private viewing. As he jumped
off the bus, they were already discussing what they were going to wear.
Tom turned his attention back to his dad. “Glad to hear it. Got to keep yourself youthful with that younger wife.”
He frowned. “I don’t need to keep myself in any state, but I want to try anyway. For myself, not for Laura. She knew who I
was when she fell in love with me.”
Tom sighed. He could never draw his dad into a conversation about the age gap, but it just made so little sense to him. They
couldn’t have anything in common; not the way he and Sophie did. They loved to travel and watch romantic comedies. They . . .
Tom frowned. There was more than that, obviously. It just wasn’t leaping out at him now because it had been nearly six months
since all the things they had shared and enjoyed together went up in flames around him.
“Well that’s good.”
“It’s great. She’s a wonderful woman and we have a very happy life together.”
The lump of bread Tom had just put in his mouth turned solid.
“You could have that too, if you let yourself,” his dad added, leaning back in his seat.
“If Sophie hadn’t dumped me, you mean?” Tom said, swallowing the bread down as though it were kitchen foil.
“If you stopped putting your girlfriends on pedestals and just let them be themselves. You know the problem with a pedestal? The only way is down. Your mother did the same with me. She held me so high up, Tom, and that might sound like a fun place to be, but it isn’t.
You feel like you can’t put a foot wrong, and every small thing you do that isn’t what they expect is a disappointment.
It’s so much better to be seen for who you truly are, warts and all. ”
Tom stared at his dad. They spoke often about his mum, but not really about their marriage. Tom had always just presumed it
was a good one that would have continued forever if she hadn’t have died. Maybe that’s why he was always looking for signs
it wasn’t so perfect with Laura. Now his dad was implying things hadn’t been as great as he thought, and not only that, but that perhaps
things hadn’t been that great for Tom and Sophie either. The four of them had spent a lot of time together over the years.
It was how Laura and Sophie had grown so close. Through lunches and park walks, weekends away and help moving them into their
various houses. They’d been over for dinner and babysat Martha so the new parents could go out. His dad had never once mentioned
any of this to him.
“I don’t think I put anyone on a pedestal,” Tom said, leaning back to allow for the steak to be put in front of him. “I loved
Sophie, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of her flaws.”
“What were they, then?” his dad asked, cutting into his own steak and not looking up.
Tom opened his mouth to answer. Sophie’s flaws. That was unfair. Some people in life really were perfect, and it wasn’t his
fault that he’d ended up with one of them.
“Well what are Laura’s?” Tom threw back.
“Super grumpy after nine p.m. Thinks she’s the better parent but won’t admit it—she probably is, but it’s still annoying.
Terrible taste in television. Can’t reverse park for shit. Sometimes a bit too selfless.”
Tom let out an involuntary laugh. “That last one is like when you go to a job interview and they ask what your greatest weakness is and you say you’re a perfectionist. It’s a hidden positive.”
“Thank you for the critique. So what were Sophie’s?”
Still his dad didn’t look at him and Tom felt his jaw tighten as he tried to think. “She wasn’t a morning person and could
be quite frightening until she’d had a coffee,” Tom said, a wave of guilt rushing through him at having said anything bad
about her. He wanted to marry her, to spend the rest of his life with her. He had teamed up with a stranger on a bus in further
desperate attempts to win her back. He was doing it all because she was the absolute best person for him and he loved everything
about her. That wasn’t a bad thing, was it?
“I’m going to start calling Laura at nine every night, just to annoy her,” Tom said instead, pushing some steak into his mouth.
It was much more fun to think about all the reasons his dad’s wife was terrible than to try and think of one negative aspect
of Sophie.
“She’d still pick up, and she’d be warm and friendly, because she’s also an incredibly good person,” his dad said, making
it much less fun again. He locked eyes with Tom, a smirk on his face. He knew it made his son uncomfortable to talk about
Laura and either he did it on purpose, or he didn’t care. Probably both.
“I suppose she makes good children,” was all Tom could say in response.
After lunch, Tom and his dad wandered to Hampstead Heath, something they used to do a lot more before Martha came along. And
Tom’s work got busier. And then Sophie broke up with him and took away his desire to be in nature . . . or actually, really,
if he were honest with himself, his desire to do most of the things he used to enjoy.
They turned into the park, his dad strolling with his hands in his pockets as he looked around, pointing out the ducks on the pond or the shape of one of the trees.
Two dogs approached a picnic blanket, stealing a tub of cocktail sausages as the owners started shouting after them to come back, echoes of “Jesus Christ, my sausages” ringing out across the park.
Tom immediately reached for the smaller camera in his jacket pocket that he’d taken to carrying with him at all times. His
dad leaned back with his hands still in his pockets, barking a laugh into the open air. Tom caught every frame. The squinting
eyes and the open mouth. The arched back as the sun shone off his dark hair, making it glisten. An array of trees in the background,
their late autumn leaves framing the shot. Tom peered down at his screen, feeling that familiar rush. It was as though the
more he sought out happiness, the more of it there was to find, and it wasn’t in the big moments like he thought it might
be. It wasn’t Tom having to shout out something silly and set it up; it was just there, filtered throughout life.
The two on the picnic rug were now crying with laughter. One of them would say, “Jesus Christ, my sausages,” and it was enough
to set them both off, over and over again. Tom took a few photos of them too, handing them an invite in return for their consent
to use the pictures.
“What are these shots for then?” his dad asked curiously.
“It’s for an exhibition I’m putting on in December,” Tom replied and his dad turned to him, smiling.
“What kind of exhibition?” he asked, and Tom explained to his dad his very loose theory on happiness and the smaller moments
you find it in.
It was as though everyone on the heath that day had conspired to prove him right, because the farther they walked, the more scenes of quiet everyday happiness they stumbled upon.
A group of students playing rounders. A woman who’d got coffee froth all over her face and was trying and failing to lick it off, much to the amusement of the rest of her family.
A toddler who’d dived into a puddle and lay right in the middle of it, splashing and chuckling.
If Tom was going to have a problem with this exhibition, he feared it might be that he’d have too many photos for the space and he had no idea how he was going to select the best ones.
“I can’t wait to see it,” his dad said, squeezing Tom’s shoulder with his strong grip. “I’m glad you’re doing more of this
stuff again. If you were to define happiness, I’d say this is yours. You’ve always been in your element taking snapshots of
other people’s lives. Nosy little bugger, you are.”
When Tom got home, he added all the potential pictures he had into a folder, pausing on one of Daisy at the ceilidh. In all
the time he’d known her, he had never seen her look that way, except in that one frame. In fact, over the last few days he’d
felt as though she were as far removed from that photo as it was possible to be. The light seemed to have gone from her eyes,
and despite the way she tried to hide it, Tom could see something wasn’t right.
It was weird, he thought, staring at the photo of her, that she hadn’t started quizzing him yet about the wedding photos.
He hadn’t done many weddings, but the ones he’d had he’d regretted immediately due to of the number of meetings the brides
and grooms had requested in advance. They wanted to instruct him on getting natural shots so nothing seemed forced, while listing all the different group photos they wanted to make sure he’d take, but, “obviously
while making it natural.”
Not Daisy though. Since Tom had agreed to be (or rather insisted on being) the photographer, she hadn’t brought it up once.
He clicked off the photo of her and to the left, where one of Sophie appeared.
Of course he had to include her. A Tom Riley exhibition wasn’t a Tom Riley exhibition without at least one photo of Sophie.
He had a different eye for her now, and it was making it more difficult for him to choose the image he wanted.
For example, in the past, he’d definitely have selected this one of her with a giant grin on her face and one of Martha’s tiaras on her head, but if he zoomed in, he couldn’t see the smile in her eyes.
Not enough. Interrupting his thoughts, his phone started ringing and he picked it up, only realizing after he’d swiped to answer whose name had been on the screen.
Sophie. Realizing only moments after what he had thought next: that he couldn’t wait to tell Daisy.