A Reluctant Wife

Which, Sophie thought later as she got ready for bed, had been below the belt. How could she argue when Kat might have a point? The last thing she needed to complicate her life was to have Gregory Wallace thinking that he had any effect on her, and he was too good-looking to think otherwise.

Which was why, on the evening of the thirtieth of November, she found herself in her bedroom, staring disconsolately at the few dresses in her possession which she had kept from Alan’s days. Most she had got rid of soon after they’d parted company when she’d still been fired with bitterness and rage. Then motherhood had taken over and what remained she had simply stuck in a box in the attic, meaning to send them to a similar fate, only to forget them over the course of the years.

Jade was lying on her bed, fetchingly dressed in a long, cream antique nightie which Sophie had rescued from one of her charity sales months previously, and eyeing each creation her mother tried on with a jaundiced eye.

She pointed to a black affair with a plunging neckline, which was small enough to fit into a powder compact, and Sophie shook her head and mouthed, ‘Too tiny.’ She made a face and laughed with her daughter.

‘What about this one?’ she said slowly and clearly, holding up a long, green dress which she remembered as being one of the least provocative ones she had been coerced into buying years ago.

‘Yuck. Dull,’ Jade wrote on a piece of paper. ‘Put on the green one,’ she wrote, signing the message, ‘I love you, Mummy.’ This was followed by a series of kisses and hearts, at which point she appeared to get carried away with the symbols and began to draw lots of smiley hearts floating across the A4 paper.

If Jade thinks it’s dull, Sophie decided, that’s good enough to me. At least, she thought, it doesn’t smell of hibernation in a box. She had had the lot dry-cleaned. Annabel and the rest of her cronies thought she was weird as it was, without adding an odour problem to the list.

She slipped on the dress, without looking at herself in the full-length mirror, and sat at the dressing-table, wondering what to do with her hair. Jade sidled up to her and Sophie recognised that glint in her eye. It was called Operation Hairdresser, one of her least favourite games, but she obediently sat still while her daughter combed her hair with a wide-toothed comb and tried not to grimace too much when tiny fingers intervened to get rid of knots. She should have had the lot chopped off a long time ago, but somehow she had never been able to bring herself to do it.

After fifteen minutes she gave her daughter the thumbs-up sign, even though there was virtually no difference between how her hair looked now and how it had looked previously—still a mass of unruly, undisciplined curls.

Then she applied make-up, something she wore so rarely that she was amazed that her small collection had not gone past its sell-by date.

She brushed on a little powder, dusted with blusher, reluctantly applied mascara and then lipstick. When she sat back and inspected herself she had to admit that she looked good, even though she felt like the Mrs Sophie Breakwell of a few years ago, hanging on the arm of the man who had been the catch of his social circle—someone whose looks had been prized far more highly than her intelligence had been.

The babysitter and Katherine arrived on the doorstep at precisely the same time.

‘Wow,’ Katherine said in an awe-struck voice, and Sophie sighed in an elaborate way.

‘Blame Jade,’ she said, letting them in and fetching her ridiculously small clutch bag from the sofa. ‘She chose the dress and did the hair. And…’ Sophie turned to Ann Warner, who lived a few houses down, ‘…she shows no signs of being sleepy.’ Jade, standing next to her, grinned obligingly even though she hadn’t heard the remark.

She knelt, kissed her daughter, informed her that she had better be on best behaviour what with you-know-who arriving down certain chimneys in the not too distant future and then she straightened.

‘I’ll be back by eleven-thirty,’ she said.

‘Take your time. I shall enjoy myself with Jade.’

‘Yes,’ Katherine said, as they walked towards the car, wrapping their coats tightly around them because the cold was numbing, ‘you will take your time and you will enjoy yourself because you will be the knock-out of the entire party.’

‘And that’s an order, is it?’ Sophie laughed as she slipped into the passenger seat.

‘Absolutely.’

‘In which case, I may just as well tell you that I hate taking orders.’

CHAPTER THREE

SOPHIE saw the long line of cars and knew that she wasn’t going to enjoy herself.

‘I really don’t want to be here, Kat,’ she said, nurturing the flimsy hope that her friend might suddenly become sympathetic and offer to drive her back home. She felt awkward and uncomfortable in her dress, her shoes were already beginning to make themselves felt and, whatever Kat had said about her appearance, she couldn’t help feeling like a clown with all this make-up on.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Kat said briskly, stretching into the back seat of her car and locating her bag. ‘I’ve told you a million times you can’t bury yourself in your cottage and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.’

She was right, of course. Sophie knew that, but it didn’t help. She could see a group of people entering the stately house, their figures silhouetted against the outside lights—black coats, lots of jewellery, upswept hair. Lots of kisses as they entered, laughing and talking among themselves. More were bringing up the rear, similarly clad, and, from the looks of it, in similar high humour. There was the distant sound of music, a live band, drifting out on the cold air. The trees were all bedecked with hundreds of white lights.

It was all very festive, but Sophie didn’t feel festive. She wished that she was back in her own home, curled up on the sofa with Jade half-asleep next to her, reading a book, listening to her daughter and vaguely watching television all at the same time.

‘Well?’ Kat asked, with her hand on the doorknob. ‘Ready?’

‘I suppose so,’ Sophie said glumly, getting out of the car and dragging her feet as they approached the house.

Annabel’s mother was waiting by the door, a short, plump woman who was incongruously and expensively attired in a long, sequinned, vivid blue evening dress. She hugged Katherine, whom she had known since the year dot, and then turned to Sophie with a smile.

‘I’m so glad you could come, Sophie,’ she said warmly. ‘We don’t see enough of you.’

Actually, Sophie saw Sheila Simpson quite a bit in and around the village and frequently at the charity events that Sophie organised. Not quite the same, though, she admitted to herself.

‘Thank you, Mrs Simpson,’ Sophie said, bending so that the older woman could brush her cheek with a kiss. ‘How is your husband?’

‘Recovering nicely, my dear.’ She ushered them in and chatted about Charles, who had recently had a heart attack. ‘Of course, he simply loathes taking it easy.’

The older woman’s eyes flitted across the massive hall and the moving mass of people, going from one room to another with drinks in their hands. Sophie recognised some of the younger faces as belonging to Annabel’s London set. She occasionally saw them around in the village and knew some from years back when Annabel used to bring them to Ashdown during the school holidays when she was back from boarding school.

‘Darlings, I must leave you.’ She patted Sophie’s hand in the manner of someone being kind to an invalid. ‘You know your way around, both of you, don’t you?’

‘Sure, Mrs Simpson,’ Kat said, her eyes gleaming. ‘We’ll just get stuck in.’

‘Annabel’s somewhere around…’ Mrs Simpson’s arms waved about in a vague gesture, but her attention was already on another group of people who were entering.

Kat pulled Sophie away out of the hall. A cloakroom was in operation in one of the downstairs bathrooms, an ornate Victorian affair which was large enough to accommodate three temporary coat rails.

‘OK, let’s see who’s here.’

Sophie nodded. Now that she was here it was ridiculous to droop, and as soon as she saw someone with a tray of champagne she helped herself to a glass and drank it very quickly, which relaxed her slightly—enough so that she could circulate with Kat with at least some semblance of brightness. By the time they stumbled upon Annabel, Caroline and half a dozen of their smart friends she was feeling merry enough to indulge in light-hearted conversation, without her nerves getting too much in her way.

She towered over the other women in the group, as she’d known she would in her heels, but after three glasses of champagne she didn’t feel gauche about it. One of the men, a tall, blond man with spectacles and hair that didn’t appear to have much of an acquaintance with a comb, was, she acknowledged with a surprising flush of pleasure, more than a little impressed with whatever she was saying.

‘Why on earth hasn’t Annabel produced you before?’ he was asking her, drinking his champagne but with his eyes glued to her face.

‘Because, John, darling…’ Annabel broke off from what she was saying to Kat and the rest of her entourage ‘…Sophie hides herself away like a little mole.’

‘What an adorable trait,’ John said in his cultured voice. ‘I’ve always been rather fond of moles.’ That somehow led to a raucous conversation about men and their predilection for ridiculous hobbies, and after a while Kat and Sophie drifted off. They bumped into several other familiar faces, all of whom seemed to be having a roaringly good time.

Supper was served very late. There was a massive table laid with a buffet, the pinnacle of which were six poached salmon, exquisitely adorned with cherry tomatoes and mange-tout.

By this time many people were somewhat under the influence of drink. Conversations were being conducted in voices that were over-hearty and punctuated with very loud bursts of laughter. Kat had managed to disappear in the direction of the music and, after helping herself to a plate of food, Sophie made her way in that general direction.

She was standing at the back of the room, idly watching the frolics on the dance floor and awkwardly trying to manoeuvre food to her mouth with a drink clasped in one hand, when a familiar voice said from next to her, ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’

Sophie felt a shiver of excited apprehension race through her like a sudden electric shock, and she turned to look at Gregory. Thank goodness she had stopped drinking after her third glass of champagne.

‘Oh, it’s you.’