Looking back, she was lucky to have come out of the escapade with nothing worse than a badly bruised body and ego, Sophy told herself. It could have been so much worse. She could have been pregnant…pregnant and unmarried.
‘Darling, you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying,’ her mother complained a little petulantly, ‘and why do you scrape your hair back like that? It’s so pretty.’
‘It’s also heavy, Mother…and today it’s very hot.’ She said it patiently, forcing a placatory smile.
‘I wish you’d have it properly styled, darling…and get some new clothes. Those awful jeans you’re wearing…’
Sighing faintly, Sophy put down her book. If only her mother could understand that she could not be what she wanted her to be. If only…
‘I’ve told Brenda to bring Chris and his wife round to see us. She’s a lovely girl, Brenda was saying. An American…they got married last year while we were away on that cruise.’ She looked across at her daughter. ‘It’s time you were thinking of settling down, darling, after all you are twenty-six…’
So she was, and wouldn’t Chris just crow to know that his cruel prediction all those years ago had proved so correct.
Not that she wanted to get married. She moved restlessly in her deck chair, unwanted images flashing through her mind…pictures of the men she had dated over the years, and the look on their faces when she turned cold and unresponsive in their arms. She had never totally been able to overcome the fears Chris had instilled in her—not of the physical reality of male possession, but of her own inability to respond to him…her own innate sexual coldness. Well it was something no other man was ever going to find out about her. It was her own private burden and she was going to carry it alone.
No male possession meant no children, though. Sighing once again, she opened her eyes and stared unseeingly at her father’s neat flower border. Just when she had first felt this fierce need to have children of her own she wasn’t quite sure but lately she was rarely unaware of it. She very much wanted children…a family of her own. But she wasn’t going to get them, as Chris had so rightly taunted her. No man was going to want a woman who was physically incapable of responding to him sexually.
The sharp ring of the telephone bell on the wall outside the house cut through her despondent thoughts.
Her mother got up and hurried into the house via the french windows. Several seconds later she reappeared, beckoning Sophy, a frown marring her forehead.
‘It’s Jonathan,’ she told Sophy peevishly. ‘Why on earth does he need to ring you at weekends?’
Jonathan Phillips was her boss. Sophy had been working for him for two years. She’d first met him at a party thrown by a mutual acquaintance to which she had gone in a mood of bitter introspection having finally come to the realisation that the happiness and fulfilment of marriage and children would never be hers. She had also been well on her way to getting drunk. She had bumped into him on her way to get herself yet another glass of wine, the totally unexpected impediment of a solidly muscled chest knocking her completely off balance.
Jonathan had grasped her awkwardly round the waist looking at her through his glasses with eyes that registered his discomfort and shock at finding her in his arms.
She had pulled away and he had released her immediately, looking very relieved to do so. She would have walked away and that would have been that if she had not suddenly betrayed her half inebriated state by teetering uncertainly on her high heels.
It was then that Jon had taken charge, dragging her outside into the fresh air, procuring from somewhere a cup of black coffee. Both were acts which, now that she knew him better, were so alien to his normal vague, muddledly hopeless inability to organise anything, that they still had the power to surprise her slightly.
They had talked. She had learned that he was a computer consultant working from an office in Cambridge; that he had his orphaned niece and nephew in his care and that he was the mildest and most unaggressive man she had ever come across.
She, in turn, had told him about her languages degree—gained much to the disapproval of her mother, who still believed that a young woman had no need to earn her own living but should simply use her time to find herself a suitable husband—her secretarial abilities, and the dull job she had working in her father’s office.
She had eventually sobered up enough to drive home and by the end of the next week she had forgotten Jonathan completely.
His letter to her offering her a job as his assistant had come totally out of the blue but, after discussing it with him, she had realised that here was the chance she needed so desperately to get herself out of the rut her life had become.
It was then that she realised that Jonathan was one of that elite band of graduates who had emerged from Cambridge in the late ’sixties and early ’seventies, fired by enthusiasm for the new computer age about to dawn, and that Jonathan was a world-renowned expert in his field.
Against her mother’s wishes she had accepted the job and on the strength of the generous salary he paid her she had found herself a pleasant flat in Cambridge.
She went into the hall and took the receiver from her mother, who moved away but not out of earshot. Her mother disapproved of Jonathan. Tall, and untidy with a shock of dark hair and mild, dark blue eyes which were always hidden behind the glasses he needed to wear, he was not like the bright, socially adept sons of her friends. Jonathan never indulged in social chit-chat—he didn’t know how to. He was vague and slightly clumsy, often giving the impression that he lived almost exclusively in a world of his own. Which in many ways he did, Sophy reflected, speaking his name into the receiver.
‘Ah, Sophy…thank goodness you’re there. It’s Louise…the children’s nanny. She’s left…and I have to fly to Brussels in the morning. Would you…?’
‘I’ll be there just as soon as I can,’ Sophy promised with alacrity, mentally sending a prayer of thanks up to her guardian angel.
Now she had a valid excuse for missing tonight’s dinner party and inevitable conversation about Chris.
‘What did he want?’ her mother questioned as Sophy replaced the receiver.
‘Louise, the nanny, has left. He wants me to look after the children for him, until he comes back from Brussels on Wednesday.’
‘But you’re his secretary,’ her mother expostulated. ‘He has no right to ring you here at weekends. You’re far too soft with him, Sophy. He’s only himself to blame…I’ve never met a more disorganised man. What he needs isn’t a secretary, it’s a wife…and what you need is a husband and children of your own,’ she added bitterly. ‘You’re getting far too attached to those children…you know that, don’t you?’
Mentally acknowledging that her mother was more astute than she had thought, Sophy gave her a brief smile. ‘I like them, yes,’ she admitted evenly, ‘and Jon is my boss. I can hardly refuse his request you know, Mother.’
‘Of course you can. I wish you weren’t working for the man. I don’t like him. Why on earth doesn’t he do something about himself? He ought to tidy himself up a bit, buy some new clothes…’
Sophy hid a smile. ‘Because those sort of things aren’t important to him, Mother.’
‘But they should be important. Appearance is important.’
Maybe for more ordinary mortals, Sophy reflected as she went upstairs to re-pack the weekend bag she had brought with her when she had come home, but the rules that governed ordinary people did not apply to near geniuses and that was what Jon was. He was so involved with his computers that she doubted he was aware of anything else.
At thirty-four