Anya tapped lightly on Sophie’s door, then opened it and poked her head into her room. Sophie was sitting at the typewriter, but she did not appear to be working and the moment she saw her friend a broad smile broke out.
‘Hello, Anya, have you come to lunch? I can only offer you Stephen’s coffee, but there’s plenty of that. Oh, and a yoghurt, if you’re in the mood for one.’
Anya came fully into the room and revealed that she was carrying a packet of sandwiches and a string bag with some fruit in it. She dumped the bag on Sophie’s desk and sat down on the visitor’s chair.
‘I’ve brought my own lunch, thanks, but I could do with some coffee. I wanted to ask how your weekend went.’
‘The Tunbridge Wells one?’ The girls had not met for a week, since Anya’s boss had been filming in the provinces and had taken his secretary with him. ‘I had a lovely time, thanks. How did your week go?’
‘Not bad. Penny said you came back from the weekend all aglow, though – Stephen propose?’
‘What, marriage?’ Sophie laughed. ‘No, not exactly. We enjoyed ourselves no end. On Sunday morning we got up at five to see the sunrise, and that was wonderful, with mist in the hollows and every cobweb diamonded with dew. I’ve seen a summer sunrise before, of course, when we filmed it that time, but nothing could be as magical as last weekend’s. The sun edged up and the light was so pure and clean, nothing could be cleaner, and the shadows were flat and blue and the wrong way round, and the air was as fresh as morning air when you’re very little, and staying on a farm.’
‘It sounds quite an experience.’
‘It was. It was like when you believe in magic, you know how that haloes things? Well, if a woman with stars in her hair had formed in the mist, or if Aslan had come gliding out of the sun’s core, I wouldn’t have turned a hair.’
Anya, watching her, nodded.
‘I know the feeling. Did Stephen make love to you?’
Sophie went scarlet and hung her head, started to deny it and then, sheepishly, nodded.
‘Was it that, then? Was that what made the sunrise magical? If so, then love really is a many-splendoured thing!’
‘I don’t know, but Soph, why I popped in … it’s a bit sordid, love, but when Penny sort of hinted … Did you take precautions?’
Sophie shook her head.
‘No. How could I? I didn’t know what was going to happen. But Stephen did. Take precautions, I mean. And he’s told me how to get hold of the pill. I have to take if for a month before it’s effective, he says, but until the month’s up, he’s going to take care of us, which I think means he’ll buy those things, you know, the things they get at the chemist’s.’
Sophie got up from behind her typewriter and poured two cups of coffee, then sat down again after handing one of them to her friend. Anya sipped the delicous brew appreciatively, then began to take her sandwiches out of their cellophane wrapping.
‘Right, that’s all I wanted to know. I’m not being nosy, love, but you’re not very old and you’ve not been around much.’ She sighed and bit into the first sandwich. ‘But who am I to talk? Only I wouldn’t want to see you landed, like I am.’
‘I wouldn’t be,’ Sophie said, beginning to spoon yoghurt. ‘Stephen isn’t likely to disappear, and he’d stand by me, I know he would. He’s being marvellous, Anya,’ she went on eagerly. ‘Advising me about clothes, and what I should do and shouldn’t do. I never would have dared to buy black stockings, but he wanted me to, and they do look rather good on my legs.’
‘Stockings? Crumbs, that’s going back to the dark ages, isn’t it?’
Sophie blushed but held her ground.
‘No, not really. Stephen thinks they’re sexy, and …’
The door opening cut her off short. Stephen walked in, already in full flow.
‘Soph, I want …’ He broke off and smiled politely at Anya, ‘Oh, hi, I didn’t see you sitting there at first.’ He turned back to Sophie, and even with his profile half averted from her, Anya could see the look of loving ownership he turned on her friend. Even if Penny had not hinted and Sophie admitted, I should have known they were lovers, she thought. How good it is to see Stephen out of his mind over a decent kid like Sophie.
Later, returning to her own office, the thought crossed her mind that Sophie was not only a decent kid, she was becoming a very lovely girl. She was still well-rounded, but her curves were luscious rather than overlarge and her personality was beginning to make itself felt. She joked quite a lot, was no longer afraid of answering sharply if she felt so inclined, and could hold her own in the flat even when Penny was at her most awkward.
She worships Stephen, of course, Anya told herself, taking her place behind her desk. She had always admired him and enjoyed working for him but now she just plain worshipped him. Was it a good thing? She had no idea, but since Stephen, also, felt strongly about her friend, it could surely not be bad?
Anya reached over for her shorthand pad and, as she did so, something stirred in her stomach. I was an odd feeling, more a sensation than a feeling, if one could differentiate between the two. It was as if, somewhere deep within her, a tiny fish had fluttered a fin, paused, and then fluttered again.
Odd. Surely it could not be the baby? Her heart hurt for a moment, giving a little twinge of pain, but she dismissed the idea as ludicrous. How could a splodge of jelly, and unwanted jelly furthermore, make itself felt? No, it could not have been the baby, because the baby was just a nothing, and a nothing that she was about to have ejected from her body without a qualm of conscience. It must have been wind.
The buzzer on her desk sounded but Anya sat where she was, staring at the internal telephone. Her mind registered that it was Derek Eade buzzing her, that he would want her to take dictation or buy him some tickets or do some other small task. She would go through to his office and he might very likely smile absently at her, or pat her shoulder as he gave her the money for the tickets. Otherwise, nothing. He was a married man, in love with his wife, so what more should she expect?
Unless you counted the baby? Given in a moment of loneliness or boredom, or both, given perhaps from a desperate desire to prove to himself that he was not a dull and settled married man, that he was still capable of stirring passion in a woman, of arousing a female sufficiently for her to throw discretion to the winds whilst he made love to her.
The buzzer buzzed again, contriving to sound as though its patience was running short, but still Anya made no attempt to touch the instrument. Now that she thought about it, he had never pretended to love her, had scarcely pretended to want her. They had been working late and they were alone and he had taken her almost without a word spoken.
Did she love him? No more and no less than she had loved him since she had started work for him two – no, three – years earlier. He was kind and good, marvellous to work for, a man both strong and sensitive, she would have said. Yet he could possess her, use her, and simply walk away. Never refer to the incident again by a word or a glance. Want no more of her, it seemed, than that one, ego-building experience. He had cared nothing for the fact that she had gone to him willingly, had clung and murmured love-words and let him catch a glimpse of that other Anya, not the cool, calm, efficient one who managed her office work and her social life with equal ease, but the lonely, misunderstood child of elderly parents who longed for a love that was warmer, easier, than the mild and stilted affection that had come her way.
She was still sitting behind her desk staring at the internal telephone when the communicating door shot open and Derek strode into her room.
‘I’ve been buzzing you,’ he said peevishly. ‘Is that bloody thing on the blink again? Get it fixed, there’s a good girl, and then find out who’s using Studio 4 on Thursday afternoon.’ He turned to leave the room again, then turned back, staring at her. ‘You all right, Anya? You’re looking a bit pale.’
It flashed through Anya’s mind that she could tell him, could let him prove his humanity. She imagined his face if she was to say, ‘I’m pregnant and you’re the father,’ and knew she could not do so. Because there was so little he could do, apart from helping with the money angle. And if he were to cast doubts on who had fathered the child she would hate him for ever, which would be a poor way of spending the years ahead.
‘I’m all right, Derek, thanks. But I’m looking forward to having some time off next week, whilst you’re away.’
He smiled and nodded, relieved to be taken off whatever hook he had imagined he was on. Anya was sure he had never considered for one moment that she might be pregnant, because he must have assumed she was on the pill, like everyone else. He might think she was having a bad time with her period, and that would embarrass Derek. She smiled dismissively at him and picked up her phone, dialled, then spoke into the receiver.
‘Hello, Madge? I wonder if you could tell me …’
‘Look, there’s absolutely no point in snapping my head off since I’ve got the afternoon off,’ Sophie said with unaccustomed firmness as she and Anya approached the huge, red-brick building which housed the clinic. ‘You said you could use company and here I am, so for goodness sake stop carping! If the positions were reversed you’d do the same for me, and I’d be glad, I wouldn’t moan about you going back to work.’
‘I’m sorry, Sophie, I’m being a bitch. In fact I’m scared witless and so thankful you’re here that I can’t put it into words,’ Anya said fervently. ‘But I can’t help thinking it’s terribly unfair – you’re younger than me and you’re not involved in any way. I ought never to have told you.’
‘Shut up. I’m twenty and involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in anything my friends do. No man is an island. Anyway, think what a moral lesson this is – every time I feel inclined to chuck my pills down the loo I’ll think of you! Oh, that reminds me, didn’t you ever think of the morning-after pill? That was what Stephen gave me, that first time.’
‘The devil,’ Anya said appreciatively. ‘Does it occur to you, love, that your handsome boss must have had every intention of seducing you that weekend? No one carries round morning-after pills just in case.’
‘It didn’t at the time, but it has since,’ Sophie admitted. ‘Of course I’m glad of it now, because we’re together; at the time I never really thought past the event itself, if you understand me.’
‘I do. Well, here we go.’ Anya, with a resolute squaring of the shoulders, pushed open the door of the clinic and then stood still for a moment, a hand going to her throat. ‘Glory, I’m scared! What must the staff think of people like me, who …’
Sophie guessed that the staff had cause to be grateful to people like Anya, but was spared the necessity of answering by the prompt appearance of a woman in a pink twinset who came briskly out of a nearby doorway and smiled at them.
‘Good afternoon. Miss Evans? Would you and your friend wait here, please. There are a few forms to be filled in – just a formality.’
They had barely settled themselves in the small waiting room, though, when a nurse, in a uniform so white that it hurt the eyes, came in with the forms and, when they had been filled in, smiled dismissively at Sophie.
‘Miss Evans will be going straight to theatre, Miss er … er, so if you’d like to come back in about four hours …’
‘I want to be with her when she comes round,’ Sophie said, scarlet-cheeked. ‘Can’t I wait here? Then you could send someone to fetch me as soon as she begins to regain consciousness.’
‘I’m afraid you wouldn’t be allowed in the recovery room,’ the nurse said, her smile growing a trifle fixed. ‘Anyway, this waiting area will be needed for other patients, so if you wouldn’t mind …’
‘Do go, Soph,’ Anya said. She was so white that the two patches of blusher on her cheeks stood out like clown’s makeup. ‘I’ll be all right.’
‘I want to be in the recovery room,’ Sophie said obstinately. ‘Why not, for God’s sake? It would save a member of the nursing staff hanging about.’
‘I’m afraid it isn’t allowed,’ the nurse said. Her smile had become a travesty; Sophie could see that the rest of her face was frowning with annoyance, she had simply forgotten to remove the smile. ‘However, if you’d like to come back in four hours and see a member of the medical staff, you could do that.’
‘My friend is paying a great deal of money for this operation,’ Sophie said, her own smile long gone. ‘I intend to be with her when she regains consciousness. Please tell that to the rest of the medical staff.’ She turned, winked at Anya and made for the door. ‘Good afternoon!’
Someone, somewhere, was crying. Anya registered the fact whilst she was still so heavy with the anaesthetic that she could not have lifted an eyelid, let alone a finger. It was a sad little sound, and it made her wish she could comfort the weeper. When she began to listen she could hear words mingling with the sobs, words that she knew had a meaning for her as well as for the poor girl who was crying.
‘Gone,’ the weeper mourned. ‘Torn from me, taken, killed! No light for it, ever, no sunshine, no bright colours. It won’t know sweetness, sourness, warmth, cold …’
Another voice, brisk, impersonal, cut across the weeping, telling the girl not to tire herself but to rest so that, presently, all would be well.
Vaguely, from her great distance, Anya found herself resenting the brisk-voiced one. It was all very well for her, she did not know what it felt like, to have that feeling of loss heavy in one’s breast, to suffer the wound of having a part of you torn away, to know the weight of your own wickedness.
The sobbing quietened, faltered, stopped. And, gradually, Anya began to regain full consciousness.
It was only when she opened her eyelids at last and felt the tears wet on her cheeks that she knew the weeper had been herself.
‘Hi, Sofa, anything nice for dinner?’
Penny entered the kitchen cheerfully, noisily, then stopped short as Sophie put a finger to her lips.
‘Ssh, Penny, Anya’s in bed, she isn’t too well.’
‘Oh? I thought she looked a bit off-colour this morning. Have you called the quack? Want me to give him a ring?’
‘It’s all right, she’s seen a doctor. I’m cooking up some chicken broth for her and something a bit more substantial for us. Oh, and there’s a rice pudd in the oven.’ Sophie saw Penny’s face change, saw the frown flit across her brow, and wished, devoutly, that Anya had not wanted to keep her friend in the dark. It would not be easy to hide the truth if Penny decided to find out what ailed Anya.
‘Chicken broth? What …’
She whipped round on the words and hurried out of the kitchen. Sophie heard her heels tap-tappeting down the hall, heard Anya’s bedroom door flung open and Penny start to speak, then the heels tap-tappeted back again. Penny came back into the kitchen, shut the door and leaned against it, scowling at Sophie.
‘She’s asleep, and there’s an odd smell in that room. What’s going on?’
‘Oh, she’s been overdoing it, I dare say. Look, make her a cup of tea, could you, and perhaps by the time it’s done she’ll have woken up and be a bit more talkative.’
As Penny began, grudgingly, to make up a tray, Sophie thought of the journey back from the clinic. It had been dreadful, for she had barely got Anya right round before the staff were ushering them, kindly but very firmly, into a taxi.
‘Bring her back in three days for a check-up,’ the nurse said as she prepared to shut the taxi door on them. ‘If you have any problems, contact Miss Evans’ G.P.’
It had not helped to find Anya either unconscious or asleep when they reached Gloucester Terrace again, either. The driver, helping Sophie to carry her friend up to the flat, had been frank, obviously knowing full well what had taken Anya to the clinic.
‘They treat them young gals like kippers, fillet ’em wiv no more care than they’d give a fish, an’ chuck ’em out soon’s the money’s ’anded over,’ he said contemptuously. ‘I wouldn’t see no gal of mine in there, I tell yer.’
It had done little to ease Sophie’s fears and she had already resolved to get in touch with Anya’s doctor if Anya continued to sleep as deeply as she had been doing.
But now Penny finished the tray and left the kitchen, to return barely a moment later with the tea patently untouched. She slammed the tray down on the kitchen table and grabbed Sophie’s arm.
‘Anya’s been my closest friend for years, long before you turned up Sofa. Look, I can see you know what’s been happening, so you either tell me right now or you get out of this flat and never come near it again!’ Fear was fighting with suspicion on Penny’s normally bland little face. ‘Why should Anya tell you anything, and not me? Unless you’ve been filling her up with a lot of lies about me! We’ve shared everything, or we did until you came along.’
‘I haven’t told anyone any lies,’ Sophie said as soothingly as she could. ‘Look, let’s not quarrel now, with Anya ill; she’s going to need both of us. We’ll sort it out …’
‘We only let you come here because you were so fat and ugly that we knew you wouldn’t interfere with us,’ Penny said wildly. ‘You wouldn’t try to make up threesomes or bring fellows back or anything like that, otherwise we wouldn’t have let you share. And you went creeping round Anya, trying to make her feel sorry for you, and now you’ve succeeded and she’s ill and you’re trying to push me out. Me!’ Penny’s voice was at full throttle. ‘She’s my friend and this is my flat. Clear out, Markham, you fat pig!’
‘I will, as soon as Anya’s better. Tomorrow, if you like,’ Sophie said. She knew that it was concern for their friend which made Penny behave as she did. ‘Do keep your voice down, Penny, she needs sleep; it won’t do her any good to get startled awake.’
‘Right. Either you tell me what’s wrong with her and what’s been happening or I’ll go in there, wake her, and browbeat her till I get the truth. I mean it, I’m getting to the bottom of this if it kills me.’
‘Or Anya, presumably. All right, I know Anya would rather tell you herself, but here goes. She’s had an abortion.’
Penny sat down as if her knees had suddenly ceased to function and picked up one of the cups of tea. Sophie took the other, watching as Penny wrapped her hands around her cup as if for warmth.
‘Anya? An abortion? I don’t believe it, she wouldn’t, not without … and besides, she hasn’t …’
Her voice faded into silence as she thought back. At last she raised her head and stared at Sophie.
‘Where? Not some back-street place? Who’s the father? Surely not Freddy, she hasn’t seen him for yonks. Did the chap stand by her? And how in hell did you find out?’
Sophie was glad that Penny took it for granted that she herself had found out, rather than that Anya had confided in her. It was the truth, too.
‘She went to a reputable clinic, so that should be all right, and I don’t know who the father was, it wasn’t any of my business; but she did say it was someone she met by chance and wouldn’t meet again. I found out when she fainted in the middle of a game of tennis, but she wanted to keep it from you until the operation was over.’
Pointless as well as cruel to tell Penny that Anya had hoped to keep her in ignorance for ever.
‘I see. I wish to God she’d told me, but that’s Anya all over – hates people worrying about her.’
‘That’s right. Look, I’m a bit worried because she’s slept ever since we – the taxi driver and me – got her back here, so do you think you could take her a cup of tea and sit down by the bed and try to wake her very, very gently? She’s seen enough of my face for one day, so if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll get on with the cooking.’
Penny nodded ungraciously and got to her feet, her cup in one hand.
‘Right. I won’t take anything through, I’ll wake her very gently and slowly and ask her what she’d like.’ She was halfway to the door when she hesitated, then turned back, slopping tea from her cup onto the lino. ‘I’m sorry I was so rude, Sofa. In Anya’s shoes …’ She hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Well, if I got myself into that sort of mess, I’d probably rather have you than me hanging around when I came out of the anaesthetic. I can be a bit unfeeling. Seeing you was probably best for Anya, as things were.’
‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ Sophie said. She fished out a hanky and blew her nose. ‘You aren’t unfeeling, you just find it difficult …’
‘Yes I am, and don’t snivel, for God’s sake,’ Penny said sharply. ‘If there’s one thing fat girls should never do, it’s snivel. You look all blubbery and whalelike. I’m off.’
Sophie shut the door behind Penny and returned to stirring the chicken broth. You had to smile at Penny, she seemed to make a point of being thoroughly unlikeable to her own sex. Or is it just me, Sophie wondered, walking over to the vegetable rack and beginning to peel an onion. With tear-filled eyes, she sliced the onion into the broth and concluded that Penny was all right really. It had been sweet of her to apologise, because Penny was no believer in saying you were sorry. If you said a thing you said it, was her philosophy.
Presently she went along to Anya’s room to see if the patient was awake, opening the door so quietly that neither girl noticed. Anya lay quiet, her eyes still closed, and Penny sat on the edge of the bed, holding one of Anya’s thin, blue-veined hands in her own.
Sophie backed out as quietly as she had entered and returned to the kitchen. She felt ashamed, as if she had deliberately spied on Penny in her moment of weakness.
For Penny had been crying.
Anya was really ill for three days, and ill enough to stay in bed without complaining for the whole week. Sophie and Penny took time off and Deidre was marvellous, bringing baby Graham down in his pram and parking it in their kitchen, where she could attend to Anya without feeling that she was neglecting her child.
During the second week Anya got up and moved about the flat all day, but she was not herself. Quiet, pale, abstracted, she seemed curiously indifferent to her wonderful job and her wonderful boss, subjects which had obsessed her before the abortion. Now, she mooned round the place, playing with Graham whenever Deidre appeared with him, knitting an object which she said was a shawl, except that Graham would not be needing a shawl much longer, and occasionally watching the Flowers’ television.
Sophie tried to explain to Stephen what was wrong, but with little success. She usually went out with him three or four times a week and they slept together once a week, though he had never suggested that she spend the night there, and this, though Sophie did not realise it, kept their relationship on a far more romantic and emotional basis than it would have enjoyed had they moved in together. But it did make honest discussion more difficult, since when they were together Sophie spent quite a lot of time longing to go to bed and trying to be blasé about the fact that Stephen, so much more sophisticated and experienced, plainly did not need sex as much as she did.
She would have been surprised and indignant had she known that Stephen felt much the same, and that he was holding back from a simple feeling that good things, such as himself, should be handed out in very small doses. Perhaps fortunately, since he did not tell her and she did not guess, Sophie merely looked forward all week to their love-making and when in his company waited eagerly for a sign that it was about to begin. So, asking his advice about Anya was really quite a sacrifice, since it meant that he would talk instead of acting.
She chose to ask him, as it happened, when they were at his flat, having eaten a good meal and seen an amusing play. Stephen, sprawled on the couch with an idle hand resting on the curve of Sophie’s hip, had just decided to break with tradition and persuade Sophie into bed for the second time in a week, when she spoke.
‘Stephen, Anya said she wanted the abortion, and she’s ever so much better physically, so why should she be so odd and dreamy and uncaring? She cries, too, whilst we’re at work. I can tell because her eyes are different when she’s been crying, they go bloodshot. And before, she told me that work meant more to her than anything, yet she doesn’t even ask about it any more, and she hasn’t said a word about going back next Monday.’
‘She’s been through an exhausting experience mentally and physically,’ Stephen said rather impatiently. ‘Do you expect her to sing and dance around the flat within three weeks of something like that? She’ll be all right if she’s given time and plenty of sympathy.’
‘But we do sympathise, and the doctor says …’
‘If the doctor thinks she’s all right then she is. For God’s sake, darling, let the medical profession know best!’ His impatient fingers played with the back of her bra strap. ‘Why do you wear a bra when you know I think its unnecessary?’
‘Well, we were going to the theatre and … Stop it, Stephen, how can I concentrate when you’re doing that?’ Secure in the knowledge that she had had her weekly nooky, as the irreverent Penny would say, she brushed impatiently at his hand. He seemed to have no notion how it churned her up to be stroked and played with, and then patted on the bottom and sent off home! ‘You say do what the doctor says, but it isn’t as easy as that; he wants her to go home. He thinks she needs to get right away from the scene of her crime … no, he didn’t say that exactly, but that was what he meant.’
‘Then tell her to go home,’ Stephen said impatiently. He had wrestled her bra undone without any co-operation whatsoever, and now he was trying to undo some extraordinarily awkward little buttons so that he could get at the delectable, gently moving mounds which, freed from the restrictions of her bra, were simply begging to be touched, stroked, kissed! ‘Just tell her to go home.’
‘She won’t go, though,’ Sophie said miserably, trying to tell all her glands, pulses and nerve-endings that they had got it wrong again and might as well calm down, because this was just Stephen’s idea of a more intimate goodnight kiss. She wished fervently that she could make the first move, tell or show him that she wanted him. But she could not do so. She knew, instinctively, that he liked to be the one to say what they would do and when, and she still shrank from the thought of being refused. Yet, well though she knew him, sexual taboos were still too strong to allow her to so much as suggest that it was not fair to work her up into a state of high excitement, to put it no stronger, and then to send her home.
‘Then if she won’t go, she’ll have to stay,’ Stephen muttered. He lifted a breast in his hand, supporting it up to his mouth, and pushed Sophie backwards onto the soft couch cushions. What a girl she was for talking – yet he had never noticed it before. He began to kiss, to caress, to fondle, to undress.
Sophie realised, suddenly, that she had been wrong and that Stephen actually intended making love, but her loyalty to her friend was strong. Just as she was about to go under for the third time, diving joyously into love-making, she remembered Anya and what she had been going to ask Stephen.
‘Well, I … Oh, Stephen … I do have a way to … Oooh, Stephen … a way to make her go.’
‘Then use it,’ Stephen said, against the soft and sweet-smelling skin of her. ‘Use it!’
When he took her back to the flat, Sophie asked Stephen in for coffee and he accepted, since it was not yet eleven o’clock. Anya had, it seemed, gone to bed long since with a book which she would not read. Penny, however, was in and obligingly made – coffee for three and got out the shortbread. Then, everyone’s attention being freed from customary obsessions, they discussed Anya in a far more practical way than had been possible earlier.
‘She says she’ll go back to work next week, but you can see she couldn’t care less,’ Penny confided. ‘I said right, because I thought once she was back there things might improve, and then I suggested she take her leave – she’s still got two weeks – and go home. But she just said she didn’t think she’d bother, and the doctor did say he thought she needed to get right away for a bit.’
‘Well, Stephen and I may have solved that bit,’ Sophie said, giving Stephen an adoring look across the table. ‘I told him that I’d got a sort of blackmail hold over Anya which I’d not used yet, and he said to go ahead, because it was for her good.’
‘Oh?’ Penny smiled at Stephen. ‘Men can be pretty ruthless when they see it’s for someone’s good.’ She turned to Sophie. ‘What will you do, Soph?’
‘It isn’t all that much, really,’ Sophie said. ‘But you know how Anya’s nagged me to go home? Says it isn’t fair that I’m not prepared to let my parents see how I’ve changed and so on? She really does want me to go back, she’s not just talking, and I’m pretty sure that if I promise to go home if she does, she’ll do it. And Stephen is all for it, so that’s what I’m going to do.’
‘You’ve hit it!’ Penny beamed with genuine pleasure. ‘That’ll do it, because Anya really has worried over your parents, Soph. Well, that’s a turn-up for the books, and it’s jolly generous of Stephen not to mind his woman leaving him high and dry for two whole weeks.’ She smiled warmly at Stephen, who did his best to smile back.
Had Sophie actually said all that? If she had, even in his bemused state he was pretty sure he would have put a stop to it with some decisive words which would have left her in no doubt as to his feelings. The nerve of it, planning to go off and leave him for two whole weeks, when he was having a hard time of it with the latest play, as well! He would tell young Sophie a thing or two when he got her alone.
‘Stephen is generous,’ Sophie said gladly. ‘I’ll miss him horribly, but we both know we’re doing the right thing, don’t we, darling?’
With two bright young faces turned towards him, Stephen finally accepted defeat.
‘Of course we do,’ he said gloomily. ‘Darling.’