Conveniently His Omnibus

She also spent time planning how she was going to refurbish the house. Jon had given her permission to do exactly what she wanted and had also told her she need not stint on cost. She had been a little surprised to discover that he had also organised a new bank account for her and had placed into it what seemed to be an impossibly large sum of money.

She had always known that he was a reasonably wealthy man but she had not realised, until now, exactly how wealthy. Perhaps because Jon himself never looked like an even remotely prosperous man, never mind a rich one.

That was something else she would have to do something about, she decided on the Wednesday before he was due back. She would go through his wardrobe, discover what size he was and start restocking it. She still burned with resentment when she thought about the way Chris had looked at him.

If ever she had worried about falling for Chris again she did so no longer. Indeed it amazed her that she could ever have found him the slightest bit attractive. The wounds he had inflicted still hurt but she found the man himself contemptible.

Sophy was familiar enough with the clothes Jon wore not to be too surprised by the collection of hairy suits and worn tweed jackets she discovered in his wardrobe. Rather wryly she wondered what on earth it was about the colour of mud that attracted him so much but other than that, her search was briskly impersonal and she stopped only to check on sizes before closing the wardrobe door and leaving the bedroom. Its furniture, like that in the rest of the house, was of no particular style or beauty. Jon had told her that he had bought it with the house. She planned to get rid of the majority of it, but not until she had decided what was to take its place.

Her decision made, she didn’t waste any time. After picking the children up from school she drove briskly towards Cambridge.

‘You’re going the wrong way,’ Alex told her.

Sophy shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. I want to do some shopping. Your uncle needs some new clothes.’

The silence from the pair in the back seat confirmed Sophy’s view that she was far from the only one to note the lack of appeal about Jon’s attire.

He must be boiled alive in those heavy cords he favoured and those woollen shirts, especially during the heatwave they were having at the moment.

She wondered wryly how on earth he was getting on in Nassau. When she had remarked that he was going to be hot he had told her that the temperature in computer operational rooms was always maintained at a set point, no matter what the climate.

It didn’t take long to park the car and Sophy knew Cambridge well enough to head straight for a small street which housed half a dozen or so exclusive shops catering for both men and women.

She stopped outside the window of one of them surveying the grey blouson jacket with its royal blue lining and the matching, pleated trousers, also trimmed in blue.

‘I don’t think Uncle Jon would like that,’ David informed her doubtfully.

Sophy grinned. She could just picture Jon’s face if she produced something as radically modern as that. No, what she had in mind was something rather more conservative.

‘Then we won’t go in,’ she told David equably, herding the pair instead to a shop two doors down which stocked a range of Jaeger clothes for men.

It took her over an hour to make her final choice, which included two shirts, one in silk and one in cotton in a shade of blue which Alex had informed her was exactly the same as Jon’s eyes.

Having chosen those it had proved fairly easy to pick out the basis of a new wardrobe for him based almost entirely on blue and cream—including a softly blue herringbone tweed jacket which she was pleased to see bore no resemblance whatsoever to the ones already in his wardrobe.

Having paid the bill and escorted the children outside she remembered that both of them seemed short of casual T-shirts and that she could do with some inexpensive casual wear herself. The heatwave which had begun in the early part of the month was still persisting with no let-up forecast and her wardrobe was not really geared to such hot weather.

It only took them a few minutes to walk to Marks & Spencer, where she gave in to Alex’s entirely feminine whim to be kitted out in a range of separates in pretty pinks. Even David allowed himself to be persuaded into a pair of brushed denim jeans in a soft olive colour to which Sophy added several T-shirts and thin cotton jumpers.