Conveniently His Omnibus (14 page)

When the doorbell rang she started up in surprise, her heart thudding nervously. She was not expecting anyone and after Chris’s visit yesterday she felt acutely nervous, her mouth dry and her palms sticky. The bell rang again and she forced herself to get to her feet and walk to the front door.

Keeping the safety catch on, she opened it fractionally.

A tall, dark-haired woman stood there, her back to the door, one high-heeled, sandalled foot tapping imperiously, scarlet nails drumming impatiently against a cream leather shoulder bag.

Water-straight black hair fell to her shoulders in a satin sheet, her arms and legs were deeply tanned and the perfection of her slim body was provocatively revealed in a vibrant red cotton sheath dress that clung to her curves.

As Sophy opened the door she turned her head, slanting faintly almond-shaped, brown eyes surveying Sophy with arrogant disdain. Her face was as beautifully tanned as her body, her mouth painted the same rich scarlet as her dress. The car she had arrived in was parked across the drive, as though it had been stopped in a hurry.

‘You are Jon’s wife?’

Sophy felt her heart sink as she caught the challenging ring in the American-accented voice.

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

‘Good. We have to talk.’ She stepped closer to the door, and Sophy automatically released the chain, stepping back.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know you...’ she began, fascinated as well as slightly repelled by the sneering curl of the full mouth as the other woman mocked.

‘I cannot believe that. I’m sure Jon must have mentioned me to you. I am Lillian Banks. Jon and I are lovers.’

Sophy recognised the name immediately but distantly, all her powers of concentration focused on her visitor’s final statement.

This was the woman whose pool Jon had used when he was in Nassau. The woman Mary-Beth had described to her as rather unbalanced...as almost obsessive about Jon.

‘Lovers?’ Her tongue felt thick and clumsy, making it difficult for her to form the words. ‘I...’

‘You are shocked. I can see.’ Slim shoulders shrugged. ‘I knew how it would be, but I told Jon it was better that you knew. He is a gentle man and would not wish to cause anyone pain.’ She shrugged again. ‘He has married you because of his responsibilities of course but from the moment we met both of us knew—’

‘You’re lying.’

The scarlet mouth smiled.

‘Why don’t we sit down comfortably and discuss this as adults?’

Sophy could not understand how Mary-Beth could ever have thought of this woman as being anything other than completely self-possessed and in control. Like a robot she found herself leading the way to the sitting room, doing what she was instructed to do.

‘I know this must be a shock to you but these things do happen. Jon and I knew the moment we met. We have so much in common. His work...our feelings about so many things. You may not believe this—’ she looked sideways at Sophy and then smiled secretively, the almond eyes veiled by thick dark lashes as though she were gloating over something very special and private ‘—but it was several days before Jon and I even went to bed together. We had so much to talk about.’ She laughed, and then looked at Sophy again, adding softly, ‘Of course when we did go to bed, I knew immediately how it would be.’ She moistened her lips with her tongue, and Sophy felt acutely sick, imagining that full mouth clinging to Jon’s, touching his body.

‘But I love him.’ She hadn’t realised she had said the painful words out loud until she realised that Lillian was looking directly at her, the almond eyes narrowed and almost feral in their hatred.

‘Maybe,’ Lillian said flatly, ‘but Jon does not love you. He loves me. Oh, yes, it is true,’ she continued before Sophy could interrupt. ‘Why else would he invite me to come to England? Why else would he meet my plane...book us both into the same hotel?’ She smiled again, the cold cruelty in her smile making Sophy feel as though those scarlet nails had just been raked across her heart, inflicting wounds that would never heal.

‘Oh, it is quite true,’ Lillian said softly. ‘You may check if you wish. We were booked into separate rooms of course. Here, I have the number of the hotel.’ She opened her bag and gave Sophy a brochure.

‘Well...are you going to ring them?’

What was the point? Sophy knew she couldn’t be lying. Everything was so clear now. No wonder Jon had been so off-hand with her...so strained before he went to London. But he had come back. He had made love to her...

‘Unfortunately we had a quarrel while we were there.’ She shrugged again. ‘Jon wanted me to come back here with him but I told him he must tell you about us first. We argued and he left. This morning though he telephoned me and we made up...’

Suddenly the reason Jon had made love to her was sickeningly clear to Sophy. He had quarrelled with Lillian and had made love to her out of nothing more than sheer physical frustration. She felt sick to her soul when she thought of how she had responded to him, how she had felt in his arms...but it had not been her he was loving, it had been this woman sitting so triumphantly opposite her, watching her now with hard, cold eyes.

‘Why have you come here?’ Sophy asked tonelessly.

‘Surely that is obvious? To see Jon and to tell you that you no longer have any place in his life. You must understand that Jon and I love one another, that I am the one he wants at his side.’

‘But
I
am the one he married,’ Sophy persisted, not really knowing why she was fighting or what for; she had already lost it all.

‘A piece of paper that means nothing...Jon will divorce you.’

What could she say? Part of her could not believe that any of this was really happening. The Jon that Lillian was talking about was not the Jon she knew...but then what did she really know about the man she had married? She had thought him sexless, remote, totally engrossed in his work and she had discovered for herself that none of those things were true.

‘Of course you will be provided for financially.’

Sophy glanced up at that, her mouth hardening, but before she could speak her tormentor continued coolly. ‘You will stay here in this house with the children. Jon will come back to Nassau with me.’

She
would stay with the children? She blinked and stared at Lillian. ‘The children are Jon’s responsibility,’ she said coldly. ‘They are the son and daughter of his dead brother.’

For the first time since Lillian’s arrival she felt she was the one with the advantage. Lillian blinked and frowned, her superb composure deserting her briefly, her mouth twisting petulantly.

‘Jon does not want them,’ she said positively at last. ‘All he wants is me.’

Now it was Sophy’s turn to frown. That did not sound like the Jon she knew...or at least thought she knew but then she remembered that before they had married Jon had mentioned putting the children in a home. He seemed to love them so much, though. Just as he seemed to want you so much, a bitter little voice mocked her, and look how real that was.

Through the sitting-room window she saw a taxi come down the drive and stop. Motionlessly she watched Jon get out, and pause to pay the driver. He looked tired, she noticed, immediately checking the pain and anguish that welled up inside her.

From her chair Lillian could not see the window. Smiling tightly at her Sophy got up.

‘Please excuse me a second,’ she muttered moving to open the door. She really could not endure anymore, and certainly not the sight of Jon being reunited with the woman he loved.

She reached the front door at the same time as Jon, opening it for him. He started to smile at her, the smile freezing suddenly, as he demanded, ‘What’s wrong?’

Sophy was shaking now with a mixture of anger and agony. How could he stand there and pretend a concern for her they both knew he could not possibly feel?

In a voice tight with pain she told him. ‘You’ve got a visitor—in the sitting room. Lillian Banks!’ She almost spat the name at him, half of her knowing that she was reacting like someone in a soap melodrama, the other half acknowledging that like any other human being she was conditioned to react to pain so instinctively that her responses were bound to appear trite and theatrical. ‘She’s just been telling me about your plans for the future—plans which it seems don’t include either me or the children... Well, that’s fine by me,’ she rushed on bitterly. ‘In fact it’s probably the very best thing that could have happened.’ It wasn’t what she had intended to say at all, but hurt pride compelled her to make some attempt at self-defence; to at least try to hide from Jon the hurt he was causing her.

His hand shot out gripping her wrist, making her cry out sharply in physical pain.

She had never seen him look so hard or so angry before, and she could not understand why he was doing so now. ‘Are you trying to tell me you want our marriage to end, Sophy?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ She practically screamed the word at him, tears flooding down her face as she tried desperately to pull away from him. The sitting-room door opened and Lillian exclaimed purringly, ‘Jon, darling...’ Sophy felt the pressure round her wrist relax and instinctively made her escape, fleeing upstairs to the privacy and sanctuary of her own bedroom.

Once there, oddly enough, her tears stopped. The pain inside her was too intense for crying. Later she couldn’t recall how long she stayed there...how much time elapsed after Jon’s arrival before he left again, this time with Lillian.

From her window Sophy saw them both get into Lillian’s car. Lillian was smiling but she couldn’t see Jon’s face.

So this was how marriages ended, she thought emptily once they had gone. So this was what it felt like to be the victim of a broken marriage. Empty...alone...waiting for a pain so enormous and overwhelming that the very thought of it made her shiver in dread.

Somehow she managed to go downstairs and through the motions of making herself a cup of coffee. Somehow she remembered that the children had to be collected from school, that life had to go on as normal.

The phone rang. She hesitated before answering it, and then picked up the receiver.

‘Sophy?’

She recognised Harry’s American accent straight away.

‘Is Jon there?’ He sounded anxious and flustered.

‘He’s just left.’ How toneless and light her own voice was. She replaced the receiver slowly. The phone started to ring again almost immediately, its summons imperative and sharp. She stared at it unblinkingly and then took it off the hook. She had the children to pick up, she must remember that.

Later Sophy realised that she had had no right to be driving at all that afternoon, never mind in such a potentially lethal, powerful car. All her actions were automatic and reflexive, directed by that tiny part of her brain which was not trying desperately to assimilate her pain.

She even managed to smile at David and Alex as they clambered into the car and started chattering to her, although she was conscious of David giving her one or two puzzled looks.

How could Jon not want them? A fierce wave of protective love for them surged over her. Well she would want them and she would fight for the right to love and care for them. Slowly different pieces of information were filtering through her brain. She stared at the house as she parked the car. How could she afford to keep it on? How much of an allowance would Jon give her? He was a comparatively wealthy man but her heart rebelled at the thought of taking so much as a penny from him. If she wanted to keep the children though, she would have to support them. She couldn’t work full-time and give them the love and attention they were going to need. Didn’t Jon care what he was doing to them, even if he didn’t care about her? He owed it to them. She sighed and tried to redirect her thoughts. She had seen this same situation played out so often before...when did adults ever really think about their children, when they were gripped by the intensity of love? People these days weren’t brought up to put others before themselves any longer and in many ways that was a good thing. Too many people, mainly of her own sex, had made themselves martyrs to others’ demands and needs too often in the past...but the children. Stop thinking about it, she told herself as she went into the house. She knew she had to stop the tormenting thoughts swirling round in her mind or go mad from the agony of them. She tried to submerge them in physical activity, busying herself making the milkshake the children always had when they came back from school.

‘When will Uncle Jon be back?’ David asked as he and Alex sat down at the table. Instantly Sophy stiffened. What should she tell them? For the first time it struck her that Jon might not come back at all, ever. The knowledge was like a physical blow, so painful that she went white.

‘Sophy, what’s wrong?’ There was anxiety and something else in David’s voice. Fear?

Resolutely Sophy pulled herself together and tried to smile. Her facial muscles were so stiff she could barely move them.

‘Nothing,’ she said as reassuringly as she could. ‘I’m not sure when he will be back.’

‘Where’s he gone?’

That was Alex, frowning slightly, picking up the atmosphere of tension that hung over the kitchen. ‘Where is he?’

‘He had to go out.’ Careful, Sophy, she warned herself, any more of this and you’ll be breaking down completely. Walking over to the sink so that she had her back to them, she said as carelessly as she could, ‘You know what he’s like when he’s...working. I don’t really know when he’ll be back.’

It seemed to satisfy them, but for how long? Surely Jon wouldn’t leave her to tell them alone? But no...he wasn’t that sort of man. Was he?

CHAPTER NINE

T
HE
PHONE
RANG
at ten o’clock and she knew it was Jon even before she picked up the receiver. It was the call she had been dreading all evening, ever since she had put the receiver in its place after putting the children to bed.

‘Sophy?’ He said her name roughly, angrily almost and that hurt. By what right was he angry with her? She was the one who should feel that emotion but her pain was too great to allow her the relief of anger.

‘Sophy, we need to talk.’ Urgency laced the words closely together making his voice sharper, different. Already he was alien to her...not the Jon she knew but a different Jon.

Jealousy tore at her, making it impossible for her to speak to him without breaking down completely, her ‘No!’ rough and unsteady.

‘Sophy!’ He said her name again, and the receiver shook in her damp hand. She knew she did not have the control to go through what had to be gone through right now. She couldn’t even listen to the angry cadences of his voice without breaking apart inside, without remembering how he had said her name while they made love...how the reverberations of it had passed from his body to her own.

‘Jon, please. Lillian has told me everything.’ She was speaking quickly, lightly as though not daring to linger over the words in case that made them too real. She heard him swear and flinched.

‘Sophy...please...’

‘No...no. I don’t want to talk about it, Jon. Let’s just go ahead and get a divorce. I’ll stay here with the children.’ Her voice petered out as she sensed his shock. ‘Unless you want us to move out.’ She thought she heard him draw in his breath harshly, a sound of painful anguish as though somehow she had hurt him. Or was it that hearing the words was making it real for him too...making him see what he would be doing to David and Alex. The children will stay with you, Lillian had said, we don’t want them.

‘No! Promise me you won’t move out, Sophy. Promise me.’

‘Very well...’

She heard him sigh as though her soft acquiescence was not enough and then he was saying thickly, ‘Have you thought about what this is going to do to the kids, Sophy?’

Had
she
thought about it? All at once she was angry, so much so that she could not speak to him any more. She put down the receiver with a bang and then wiped her damp palm distastefully on her skirt.

The phone rang again almost immediately and she stared at it wanting to deny its imperative call, but somehow impelled to pick up the receiver.

‘Sophy. No, don’t hang up...listen to me. If you need to get in touch with me for anything, I’m staying with Harry and Mary-Beth in Cambridge.’ As though something in her silence encouraged him he went on raggedly. ‘We have to talk, Sophy. We...’

It was that ‘we’ that did it. There was no ‘we’ where they were concerned. They were not a single unit but two separate ones.

In a cold precise little voice she barely recognised as her own she asked slowly. ‘And Lillian, Jon, is she staying with Harry and Mary-Beth too?’

She heard him swear, and then say curtly. ‘Yes, she is, but Sophy—’

She cut him off before he could say any more, telling him quietly, ‘Then I don’t think we have anything to say to one another really, do you, Jon?’

This time, after she had replaced the receiver, the telephone did not ring again and she did not really expect it to.

Upstairs alone in bed, she tried to clear her mind so that she could force it to accept a truth it did not want to know. It hurt that Jon had not even told her himself about Lillian. She had known something was wrong but she had had no idea what that something was.

She laughed then, a high hysterical sound that shocked her own ears until she controlled it. How ironic that Jon should meet and fall in love with Lillian such a very short time after marrying her.

How doubly ironic when she remembered what Mary-Beth had said about Jon postponing the trip so that they could be married first. How he must have regretted not waiting. She turned uneasily in her bed wondering how long it would take their divorce to go through. She wasn’t very well up in the legalities of these things. And then her mind drifted to David and Alex. Both of them adored Jon. How could she tell them what was happening in such a way that neither of them would ever know that their uncle had rejected them?

It was all so out of character somehow and yet wasn’t she just telling herself that because she didn’t want to believe the truth? She had to hand it to Lillian, coming to see her like that. In her place she doubted that she would have had the courage to do so. And yet Sophy knew that Lillian had enjoyed telling her, hurting her. The thought of Jon deliberately lying to her, so that he could be with Lillian, was so galling and painful that she could scarcely endure it. And then to come back and make love to her...to substitute her for Lillian, because that was surely what he had done.

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.’