‘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
THE 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?’