Tom Graham and Amy Schindler as Tom and Brenda
Brenda has finally come to the end with Tom. But how did it start, and what have the two of them been through in the past seven years?
It took the sudden death of Brenda’s mother Betty in 2005 to bring Tom Archer and Brenda Tucker together. Feeling he had to be tough for his father and the rest of the family, Brenda’s brother Roy wasn’t showing much emotion. Desperate to share her grief, distraught Brenda found Roy’s friend Tom a great support in the run-up to the funeral.
After the service on 3 January 2006, Brenda got very drunk and tried to kiss Tom. He did the decent thing and gently rejected her advances. But because she couldn’t bear to return home, he took her back to Bridge Farm where she spent the night – alone – in his bed.
However, Roy jumped to conclusions, angrily accusing Tom of taking advantage of his sister’s vulnerability. Tom had to put him right. When Brenda apologised to Tom for the kiss, he had to hide a little regret.
But the die was cast and over the next month they saw more and more of each other. By the middle of February, Brenda happily told Hayley how much she loved Tom. For a while it was a bit tricky between Brenda and Kirsty, whom Tom had dumped the previous year. But the friends were eventually reconciled, with his sister Helen’s help.
Shacked up
The relationship blossomed, despite the frustrations of being two adults still living with their parents – with the resultant lack of privacy.When in February 2007 Tom suggested they get their own place, Brenda thought it would be heaven.
As buying was not an option, they quickly moved into The Nest – one of Home Farm’s holiday cottages (later to become a home to Chris and Alice Carter). Although they were delighted to be living together at last, the location had its disadvantages. Tom was by now working in partnership with his uncle Brian, and at times found himself treated like one of the farm labourers. Added to this was Jennifer’s propensity to drop in unannounced with a Victoria sponge or a batch of scones. So in May 2008, they moved, becoming tenants of Will Grundy at 1, The Green.
Split up
The following year, the relationship faced its greatest challenge to date. Unhappy Tom was looking for a way to buy himself out of his unsatisfactory partnership with Brian. Brenda had started to suspect that her holiday-job employer Matt Crawfordwas engaged in shady dealings. Desperate to help Tom out of his bind, she pretty much blackmailed Matt into agreeing to support Tom, in exchange for silence about an overheard phone call.
But the plan collapsed when Matt (and his partner in crime Stephen Chalkman) were arrested anyway. Facing financial disaster, Tom couldn’t forgive Brenda for her well-meaning but ill-conceived actions. In March 2009, Brenda moved out and started to plan a world trip after she finished her degree.
Engaged
As the hurt subsided, Tom started to miss Brenda. The unwelcome attentions of Helen’s immature step-daughter Annette only served to emphasise how good their relationship had been. And when Tom saw first-hand the pressure that Chalkman was putting Brenda under, his protective instincts came to the fore. By May they were once more sharing a cosy breakfast in bed, and on the 29th Tom proposed.
May 2009 Tom proposes
The cracks show
Brenda seemed happy with the status of an engaged couple. But Tom saw it very much as a journey, with marriage not too far away. When Helen had her baby Henry, Tom tried unsuccessfully to press Brenda into setting a date. The news that his brother John had fathered a child (Rich) before John’s early death only emphasised Tom’s desire to have children of his own.
But although Brenda became besotted with her new half-sister Bethany, she had become certain that she did not want to be a mother. The more Tom pressed, talking about building their own house at Bridge Farm and starting a family, the bigger the distance between them grew.
And tragically, the more Tom threw himself into building his and Bridge Farm’s business – to secure the future of this imagined family – the less he became aware of Brenda’s growing dissatisfaction.
Final straw
Early 2013 saw increasing failure to support Brenda over her own work problems, and a string of ham-fisted attempts to keep the relationship alive. On 5 April, it came to a head. Tom had bulldozed two decisions past his parents – to make his ready meals non-organic, and to sell their beloved dairy herd, all the time neglecting Brenda’s deep unhappiness.
22 Mar 2013: Tom and Brenda come to blows about his proposal to sell the Bridge Farm dairy herd.
Brenda gave it to him straight. The relationship wasn’t working and she never wanted the children he so desperately needed. It was over between them.
5 Apr 2013: Brenda breaks up with Tom
Keri Davies is an Archers scriptwriter and web producer
- Learn more about Tom and Brenda in our Who's Who
- The story of Bridge Farm
