Conveniently His Omnibus

CHAPTER SIX

ONLY HE DIDN’T come home. At least not immediately, and he wasn’t back when she returned from collecting the children from school either. She had dialled the office several times without getting a reply and was now beginning to get seriously alarmed...he had every right to be angry with her but to do this. Where was he?

She had to fib to David and Alex, telling them that he had gone out on business. Fortunately they were too accustomed to his sudden departures and arrivals to question her more closely, because she was sure her anxious expression would not have deceived them for very long if they had.

Supper time came and went and there was still no sign of him. Sophy stayed up until gone midnight, her mind in total panic. Had he walked out on her? Was he so angry with her that he could not bear to come back? Or had he perhaps taken her sudden flight as an indication that she found his revelations totally repellent...that she found him totally repellent? Biting her lip anxiously she paced the floor, tension seizing her body as she heard a car coming up the drive.

The taxi driver greeted her appearance with a relieved grimace. ‘Passed out cold I think he has,’ he informed her bluntly.

At first when she looked into the taxi she thought he was right but Jon was conscious, although undeniably drunk. Between them she and the driver managed to get him into the house where he collapsed on to the settee.

The smell of whisky clung to his skin and his breath.

‘At least he’s not a violent drunk,’ the taxi driver comforted her when she went out to pay him. ‘Real gentlemanly he was until he passed out.’

Slowly Sophy went back inside. Jon never drank more than the odd glass of spirits or wine; she had never ever seen him like this, nor thought that she would. Had he done this to himself because he wanted her? She ached to tell him the truth...that she wanted him too, and wished more than ever that she had not rushed off in that silly fashion at lunchtime, but she had been shocked and, yes, angry too that he could be so blind about her. It was insulting that he should believe that she could not see beyond his public façade to what lay behind but until very recently she could not, she reminded herself...until she had married him, until David had made that innocent remark about Louise—in fact, she had never considered him as a sexual human being at all...so perhaps it was no wonder he had spoken the way he had.

He moaned and she went across to the sofa, reflecting grimly that in the morning he would have an outsize hangover and a stiff neck if she left him where he was...but how could she move him? She tried and found it impossible and instead made him as comfortable as she could, relief invading her now that he was actually back.

* * *

‘WHY IS UNCLE JON sleeping in the sitting room?’ Alex asked the question innocently at breakfast time.

It was David who replied, eyeing his sister faintly scornfully, as he said. ‘It’s because he’s been drinking. He smells just like Daddy did when he and Mummy had been to a party.’

‘Yes, but why does that make him sleep downstairs?’ Alex persisted, breaking off as the subject of her question came into the kitchen. The blue eyes looked slightly bloodshot, the brown skin faintly sallow.

‘Coffee?’ Sophy asked quietly.

Jon nodded and then closed his eyes, moaning faintly as he did so. ‘What happened?’ he demanded wryly, sitting down beside Alex and taking the coffee Sophy poured for him.

‘I don’t really know. A taxi driver brought you back.’

‘Oh, God, yes...I bumped into some friends I was at Cambridge with. Which reminds me...I think I accepted an invitation to a party for both of us tonight.’ He fished in his pocket and produced a scrap of paper with an address scribbled down on it. ‘Yes, there it is...’

‘You haven’t had enough partying?’ Sophy asked him drily, taking the paper and smoothing it out.

‘Mmm...but we ought to go. It’s someone who’s just setting up on his own and he needs my help. If you don’t fancy it, I could always go alone.’

Instantly Sophy recognised that she did not want that at all. She wanted to be with him...accepted by his friends as his wife.

‘No...no. It will be a pleasant change.’ She would have to arrange a babysitter, but that should not be too difficult. Helen Saunders at the Post Office had a teenage daughter who was trying to save up to buy her first car. Susan was a pleasant, responsible girl, who Sophy knew she could trust with the children.