Conveniently His Omnibus(27)

He said he wanted you, an inner voice taunted her...perhaps he had, Sophy acknowledged. Man was a strange animal and could desire what he did not love...or perhaps that had simply been his way of trying to fight free of his love for Lillian. Perhaps he had felt honour bound to at least try to make a success of their marriage and maybe he had hoped that in making love to her he could forget the other woman. Obviously he had not done so.

By the time morning came, she was totally exhausted and had to drag herself downstairs to get the children’s breakfast.

Both of them commented on her pale face.

‘I haven’t been feeling very well,’ she fibbed to them and saw David’s eyes widen as he asked her curiously, ‘Does that mean you and Uncle Jon are going to have a baby? Ladies sometimes aren’t very well when they do.’

A baby? She managed a tight smile and shook her head negatively. But what if she was wrong? What if she was carrying Jon’s child? It was, after all, perfectly possible.

She would just have to worry about that eventually if it actually happened, she told herself grimly.

Because it was a Saturday there was no need for her to take the children to school, but both of them had made arrangements to see friends and by the time Sophy got back from ferrying them to their individual destinations it was gone eleven o’clock.

As she turned into the drive she realised that the day had become very overcast, the threat of thunder hanging sullenly on the too still air.

It was time the weather broke; they needed a storm to clear the air and rain for the over-parched garden. A tension headache gripped her forehead in a vice as she walked inside. She had always been petrified of storms. Not so much the thunder but the lightning—a childhood hang-up from a story someone had once told her about someone being struck by lightning and ‘frizzled to death’. Knowing now that her fear was illogical still did not remove it and she shivered slightly as she made herself a cup of coffee, dreading the storm to come.

The house had never seemed more empty. She had loved it when she first came here as Jon’s assistant, and what happy plans she had made for it when she had agreed to marry him. She had pictured it as a proper home... Now she was alone with the reality that said a house no matter how pleasant was merely a shell. It was people who made that shell a home.

By one o’clock the sky was a sullen grey; and it was dark enough for her to need to switch the kitchen light on. The sudden ring on the front doorbell jarred her too sensitive nerves.

Jon! She whispered the name, trying to control the crazy leap of her pulses and to deny the sudden mental picture she had of the man. How could there ever have been a time when she had scathingly dismissed him as sexually unattractive? Being married to him had been like discovering a completely different person hidden away behind a protective disguise.

In his touch, in his kiss, was all the maleness any woman could ever want, she acknowledged weakly, knowing, even as she fought to subdue the traitorous leap of hope jerking her heart, that it would not be Jon outside. After all why would he ring the bell when he had a key and why would he come back at all, when he had already taken what he really wanted with him?

Nevertheless she went to open the door, her face losing all colour when she saw Mary-Beth standing outside.

‘No. Sophy...please let me in,’ the American woman pleaded, guessing from her expression that Sophy did not want to see her.

Good manners prevented Sophy from shutting the door in her face but her back was rigid with withdrawal as she stepped back into the hall.

‘Sophy, Jon doesn’t know I’m here,’ Mary-Beth began, following her into the kitchen, watching as Sophy tensed as she caught the distant noise of thunder—so distant that Sophy had had to strain her ears to catch it. The storm was still a good ways off. She tried to relax. She had no idea what Mary-Beth was doing here, but since she had come... She sighed, and asked her guest if she wanted a cup of coffee.

‘What I want is for you to sit down and tell me why you’ve thrown Jon out,’ Mary-Beth told her forthrightly. ‘I thought you loved him.’

‘I do.’ The admission was wrung out of her before she could silence it, her face ashen as she realised her idiocy.

Her ears, tensely alert for the sound, caught the still distant dullness of fresh thunder.

‘Do you find storms frightening?’

She gave Mary-Beth a tense grimace, and acknowledged shortly, ‘Yes.’ Another time she might have wondered at the faintly pleased gleam she saw in the other woman’s eyes but not now.

Her defences completely destroyed by losing Jon, the threat of a thunderstorm was just more than she could cope with.

‘Sophy, come and sit down.’ Very gently Mary-Beth touched her arm, picking up both mugs of coffee and gently shepherding Sophy into the sitting room.

She waited until they were both sitting down before speaking again and then said quietly, ‘I can understand why you feel hurt and angry with Jon for deceiving you but why won’t you let him talk to you...explain?’

Sophy tried to appear calmer than she felt. ‘What is there left to talk about?’ she asked emotionlessly. ‘I think Lillian has already said it all.’ She shrugged and spread her hands, disturbed to see how much they shook. ‘She and Jon are lovers...Jon wants to divorce me so that he can be with her. It is all quite plain really...I don’t need telling twice.’

Her voice sharpened with anguish over the last words and she got up, pacing over to the window to stare at the yellow tinged greyness of the overcast sky.

‘Lillian told you that she and Jon were lovers?’

Why was Mary-Beth sounding so shocked? Jon and Lillian were staying with her. She must be perfectly aware of the situation.

‘She told me everything,’ Sophy reiterated expressionlessly. ‘About how Jon asked her to come to London...how they stayed there together in an hotel.’ Her mouth twisted bitterly. ‘She even suggested I should ring the hotel and check.’

‘Sophy?’

She swung round to look at Mary-Beth as she caught the anxiety in her voice, but the frown on Mary-Beth’s face suddenly lifted. ‘Oh, it’s all right. You will be staying here?’

‘If Jon lets me. Lillian told me that they don’t want the children and even if I didn’t love both of them very much myself, I could hardly walk out and leave them.’ She saw Mary-Beth look at her watch and then the American was saying hurriedly, ‘Look I must run... Are you doing anything during the rest of the day? Going out?’

She must be embarrassed, Sophy realised, and that was why she was having to take refuge in inane social chit-chat; even so she responded to the questions, shaking her head and explaining that both children were out with friends and would not be back until after supper.

Thunder rolled again, marginally nearer this time and Sophy winced.

‘If I were you I’d go upstairs and bury your head under a pillow,’ Mary-Beth suggested. ‘That way you won’t hear it.’

Sophy walked with her to the door and watched until her car had completely disappeared feeling that somehow she had just severed her final link with Jon. The ache in her temples had become a fully fledged pain; pain, in fact, seemed to invade her whole body. She went upstairs on dragging feet, but instead of going into her own room she went into Jon’s.

The room was clean and tidy just as she had left it after cleaning it yesterday morning and yet overwhelmingly it reminded her of him. One of his shirts half hung out of the laundry basket by the door and she went automatically to push it in, tensing as her fingers curled round the soft cotton and she was irresistibly aware of how the fabric had clung to his body. Like a sleepwalker she lifted the shirt from the empty basket, pressing its softness to her face. She wanted to cry but the tears had solidified in a lump in her chest—a lump that ached and hurt with every breath she tried to take. A scent that was exclusively Jon’s filled her senses with an awareness of him, and almost without realising what she was doing she stumbled over to his bed and flung herself down full length on it, still clutching his shirt. Outside the sky darkened, suddenly split by the first sizzling arc of lightning. Sophy cried out curling up into a tense ball, burying her face in Jon’s pillow.

Her fear of the storm seemed to release the tight knot of pain inside her and suddenly she was crying, tearing, ugly sobs that shook her body and soaked the shirt and pillow she was still clinging to. Outside the storm drew nearer and her tears slowly gave way to terror. Logic told her that she should get up and close the curtains but the fear chaining her to the bed was too great.

An hour, maybe more, passed as she lay there too terrified to move and yet oddly comforted by the indefinable presence of Jon that still clung to the room.

Suddenly it started to rain, almost torrentially so, the sound of it drowning out everything else.

Downstairs a door banged and Sophy listened to it, wondering if she had left a window open. If so the floor beneath it would surely be soaked.

Closer now the thunder rolled, lightning arcing brilliant across the sky, illuminating the darkness of the room. She moaned and covered her ears.

‘Sophy.’

A hand touched her shoulder. Her eyes opened in stunned disbelief to look into Jon’s. He was bending towards the bed. His shirt was soaked through, clinging to his skin and he had brought in with him the cool fresh smell of rain. He opened his mouth to speak, the words drowned out by the ferocity of the storm, the brilliance of the lightning jagging across the sky making Sophy scream out in terror and release her pillow to fling herself against him, burying her face in his shoulder.