She watched Jonathan shrug uncomfortably and get up to pace the room. ‘What else can I do?’ he asked her. ‘You know how much time I spend away. It’s not fair to them. They need a settled background. They need you, Sophy. I need you.’
‘To protect you from the likes of Louise.’ Sophy agreed drily, adding teasingly, ‘Is the thought of an attractive young woman wanting to seduce you really so very repulsive, Jon?’ She knew the moment the words left her lips that they were the wrong ones.
Slow colour crawled up under his skin and he turned away from her saying, in a faintly stifled voice, ‘I must confess, I do find such determined women...er...intimidating. I had a very domineering mother,’ he added almost apologetically.
Busy drawing the inevitable Freudian conclusions it was several seconds before Sophy observed the faintly risible gleam in his eyes and then it was so brief that she decided she must be imagining it. After all what could Jon be laughing at? It was no laughing matter for a man to have to admit he was frightened of the female sex. After all, didn’t she herself hold an almost equal fear of his own, albeit for different reasons. Temptingly the thought slid into her mind that as Jon’s wife she would be safe for all time from her own fears about her lack of sexuality. There would be no uncomfortable reminders in her unwed state about her inability to respond to his sex nor any fear that others would discover it and mock her for it as Chris had done.
Chris! No one would ever want to marry her, he had said. She took a deep breath.
‘All right, then, Jon. I agree. I’ll marry you.’
The moment she heard the words she regretted them. Had she gone mad? She couldn’t marry Jon. She couldn’t but he was already coming towards her, grasping her wrists and hauling her to her feet.
‘You will? Sophy, that’s marvellous. I can’t thank you enough!’ He made no attempt to touch her or to kiss her. Then again, why should he? She wouldn’t have wanted him to.
Panic set in. ‘Jon...’
‘I can’t tell you what this means to me, to be able to keep the children.’
The children. They would be her family. Already she loved them and found them a constant source of delight. She would have this house, its vast sprawling garden...a whole new way of life which she knew instinctively would delight her. She was no ardent career woman and it was a fallacy these days that housewives and mothers degenerated into cabbages. She would have the constant stimulation of the children’s growing minds.
But to marry Jon of all people. She glanced at his tall, slightly stooping frame. Wasn’t Jon the ideal husband for her, though? an inner voice asked. Jon, whose lack of sexuality would always ensure that he never learned of her humiliating secret. With Jon there would be no fear of rejection or contempt. Jon wouldn’t care that sexually she was frigid—wasn’t that the word—she goaded herself. Wasn’t frigid the description of herself she was always shying away from, fighting against facing, but the truth nonetheless?
‘I...er, thought we might be married by special licence. Perhaps next weekend?’
Special licence. Sophy came out of her daze to stare at him. ‘In such a rush. Is that necessary?’
Jon looked apologetic. ‘Well, it would save me having to find a new nanny. You can’t stay on here, living here while I’m living here too if we’re going to get married, Sophy,’ he told her with surprising firmness.
She wanted to laugh. She was going to laugh, Sophy thought, on a rising wave of hysteria.
Catching back her nervous giggles she expostulated, ‘Jon, this is the nineteen-eighties. You’re talking like someone out of the Victorian era.’
‘Your mother wouldn’t think so.’
His shrewdness left her lost for words for a moment. He was quite right. Her mother would most definitely not approve of her living beneath Jon’s roof once she knew they were getting married. Neither, she realised hollowly, would her mother be at all pleased by the fact that they were getting married. She closed her eyes, imagining the scenes and recriminations. Jon was not her mother’s idea of what she wanted for a son-in-law. She would also want a large wedding with Sophy in traditional white, a June wedding with a marquee and...