A Reluctant Wife

‘A long time.’ She sipped from the mug, cradling it in her hands, and hoped that he didn’t intend to pursue a personal line of conversation because she would soon have to steer him off firmly. He might not be interested in her as a woman, but any interest was unwelcome. She wasn’t in the business of dispensing confidences about her private life.

‘That tells me a lot.’

She didn’t answer. ‘You don’t intend to live here full time, do you?’ she asked, making no attempt to apologise for her abruptness.

‘It’s an idea,’ he said casually, ‘Why? Don’t you consider it a good one?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘Well, you can do as you please but, frankly, I don’t think this village is suited to a person like you.’ Which, she thought immediately, had come out sounding far ruder than she’d intended. She could see from the expression on his face that he was less than impressed with the remark.

Why beat around the bush, though? Men like Gregory Wallace—men like Alan—lived in the fast lane. She had brought Alan to Ashdown precisely three times and he had hated it.

‘Like living in a morgue,’ he had said. Lying in bed next to him, still invigorated with the newness of London, the newness of her job there, the newness of the man about whom she had initially been wary but who had eventually swept her off her feet, she had pushed aside the uneasiness she had felt, hearing him say that.

Apart from three years at university and six months in London, she had lived in Ashdown all her life and she had loved it. It was small but, then, so was she. If he hated Ashdown what did he think of her? Really? It had only been later she had discovered that, and by then she was already Mrs Breakwell.

‘A person like me?’ he asked coldly.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, finishing her tea and standing up. ‘I didn’t mean to sound rude.’

‘But…?’ He didn’t stand up and when their eyes met she could see that all traces of amusement had vanished. She caught a glimpse of the man who had built an empire, who was worth millions. She wondered, fleetingly, how many women he had bowled over, how many women had responded to that air of ruthlessness which lay so close to that charming exterior. Even though she was immune to that combination, she wasn’t an idiot. She could see the attraction there, as glaringly obvious as a beacon on a foggy night.

‘But,’ she said, slinging her bag temporarily on the kitchen counter so that she could give him the benefit of a reply, ‘you strike me as the sort of man who lives hard and plays hard. Ashdown isn’t the sort of place where either gets done. Life here is conducted at an easy pace, Mr Wallace—Gregory. No clubs, no fancy restaurants, no theatres.’

‘In which case, why do you live here? You’re a young woman, unmarried. Surely the bright lights have beckoned?’

Sophie afforded him a long, even stare.

‘That is my business. Thanks for showing me around your house and thanks for the tea. I’ll be on my way now.’

Before he could respond she turned her back on him and headed out of the door, out of the house, back to the safety of her bicycle which was lying where she had left it.

As she cycled back to her cottage, she tried hard to capture her wayward thoughts and lock them into a compartment in her head. She thought about Christmas, lurking around the corner, about whether she should take advantage of Kat’s offer for Jade and her to come to her parents’ for lunch, about whether she should do more days at the library now that Jade was at school full time.

But Gregory Wallace kept getting in the way. Admit it, she thought irritably to herself, the man has got under your skin and you resent it because it’s something that hasn’t happened since Alan. Even with Alan it had been different. Gregory Wallace, she decided, got on her nerves as well as under her skin. Her own in-built suspicion of men, born of bitter experience, managed to deflect some of the forcefulness of his personality, but she was uncomfortably aware of it lying there, waiting to spring out at her.

She spent the next week keeping her head well down and her thoughts on other matters. She had started to accumulate presents for Jade and some of her friends. Jade’s she concealed in the attic, and every time she went there to deposit another small something she was startled at quite how much she had managed to collect over a period of weeks. Thank goodness Christmas Day is only a matter of a few weeks away, she thought. Much longer and she would be able to open a small toy shop with the amount of stuff she had bought over time.

She had realised a long time ago that she overcompensated for Jade’s lack of a father, but somehow she never managed to deal with the knowledge by cutting back on presents. Christmas was always a time of excess.

She was on her way out of the house two days later when she picked up the mail and opened the one letter to find an invitation inside.

You’d think they would have given up on me by now, Sophie thought, tucking the invitation into her skirt pocket and cycling to the library. It was so cold that she had been forced to wear a jacket over her jumpers. She wished that she had driven her car, which was probably in the process of seizing up due to lack of use.

By the time she got to the library the invitation in her skirt pocket had been completely forgotten, and it remained forgotten until later that evening when Kat came around to dinner and asked in passing whether she had been invited.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sophie said, tucking into a concoction of rice, vegetables and seafood, which tasted good but had the unfortunate look of something slung together randomly by a child.

‘And…?’ Kat looked at her expectantly. ‘You are going to come, aren’t you?’

‘No.’

Kat rested her head in the palms of her hands and groaned theatrically. ‘Have you ever considered that a social life might be quite a good thing for you to have?’

‘I had a social life, Kat. In London. I found that it disagreed with my system.’ Alan had loved nothing better than socialising. He had adored it, and he had been in great demand. Sophie had found herself catapulted out of her natural reticence into a whirl of activity which she had initially found invigorating, then boring and finally horrendously intrusive.

She had hated the false gaiety of everyone she met, the constant surreptitious competition with the other women, the lack of personal time it afforded her with her husband. It had been a subject of incessant, corrosive argument. Now the thought of dipping her toes into that again filled her with dread.

‘Besides,’ she said defensively, when her friend continued to stare at her in silence, ‘I have a social life. Of sorts.’

‘You occasionally see a mum from Jade’s school for lunch.’

‘Sometimes for supper,’ Sophie protested, knowing that she was on weak ground because to escalate her social life into anything resembling what a woman of her age should be doing would have necessitated more than simply an exaggeration of the truth.

‘Oh, well, I’m surprised you can contain your excitement at it all.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘You never go to London. When was the last time you met your group of friends from there?’

‘A few months ago,’ Sophie admitted, stabbing the remainder of her rice with her fork.

‘You used to invite them down for weekends now and again. Well, that certainly went out the window.’

‘It’s hard, doing stuff like that. I’m a mother. What am I supposed to do with Jade?’

‘Get someone to babysit?’

‘Who? Oh, all right. I know there are people willing to babysit, but—’

‘But nothing. Are you busy on the night of the thirtieth of November?’

‘I don’t believe I am,’ Sophie said.

‘Then I’ll expect you to come. I mean, have a heart, Soph. Who am I supposed to chat to for an entire evening at Annabel Simpson’s house? You know the place will be heaving with all her smart London set and her parents’ smart country set. I’ll be like a fish out of water.’

‘Oh, please!’ Sophie said, laughing. ‘You are never like a fish out of water. You can talk to anyone about anything, even if you know absolutely nothing about the subject in question. Why do you think you’re so good at selling houses? You can persuade someone with five homes that they’re in dire need of another.’

‘So, you’re coming, then?’

‘What exactly is it in aid of?’ Sophie asked, as they rose to clear the table, deciding as she eyed the counter buckling under the weight of unwashed dishes that she would do the lot in the morning.

‘Usual pre-Christmas bash,’ Kat said airily. ‘An opportunity for Annabel and her friends to bedeck themselves in splendid designer clothes and show the rest of us country bumpkins just how drab we all are.’

‘Oh, well, that really sounds like the sort of fun social occasion I should be cutting my teeth on.’

‘The one last year wasn’t too bad,’ Kat conceded, making them both a cup of coffee then searching through the cupboard until she located a bar of chocolate. ‘There was limitless champagne. I drank enough to see me through the next twelve months.’ She bit into her chocolate and looked at her friend thoughtfully. ‘Also, I think it’s a sort of party to welcome the new boy in town.’

‘New boy?’

‘The divine Gregory Wallace. You remember him. He was the one who showed you around his house.’

Sophie blushed and wished that Kat would stop staring at her in a suggestive, raised-eyebrows, there’s-a-story-here kind of way.

‘Which is one reason for me to avoid any party at all costs.’

‘Oh, yes? Mind explaining to me?’

Actually, Sophie found that she did mind as she couldn’t quite explain it to herself. ‘I just don’t like him,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘He rubs me up the wrong way. He’s too much like Alan.’

‘He’s nothing like Alan. OK, I’ll admit that they have the money thing in common, but that’s where the similarity ends. Alan, if you don’t mind me speaking ill of your ex, was in love with himself. He thought that he was the sun and everyone else just revolved around him. He also had no time for anyone who didn’t pander to his ego, make him look good or could do something for him.’

‘And Gregory Wallace is different?’ Sophie asked, bitterly aware that the criticism, uncannily accurate, still managed to reflect badly on her.

‘You could come and find out. Besides…’ Katherine afforded her friend a long, speculative look ‘…he might just get the wrong impression, you know.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well, you know the saying that the lady doth protest too much. He might just think that he has the opposite effect on you if you’re anything but indifferent.’

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.’

He was dressed like all the other men in the room in black suit, bow tie and white shirt, but somehow he managed to make a statement in his. He was holding a glass of champagne in his hand and looking at her very carefully and minutely, half smiling.

‘Please,’ he said with a low laugh, ‘do try and keep the delight out of your voice at seeing me.’

Sophie didn’t join him in his amusement. She had flirted lightly with some of the men she had run into in the course of the evening but her instincts warned her against flirting with this man, and her instincts were fortunately in good working order at the moment. She refocused her attention on her food.

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