you’ve told me a million times. I thought that it would be a one-night stand, simple as that, and then when you told me that you were a virgin...that the ex was gay...’
‘Um, about that...’
‘Sleeping with you that first time was...mind-blowing.’
‘Er...’
‘And it wasn’t just because I’d never slept with a virgin before. It was because that person was you...’
‘I should tell you something.’ Sophie took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the eyes. So what if he hadn’t said anything about love? He had opened up and she could tell from the way he was groping with his words that this was a first for him. A big deal. Her turn. It would be a bigger deal, but so be it.
‘He wasn’t gay. Roger wasn’t gay. The opposite. He was one hundred percent straight as an arrow.’
Javier stared at her, for once in his life lost for words. ‘You said...’
‘No, Javier, you said.’ She sighed wearily and sifted her fingers through her hair. ‘It’s such a long story and I’m sorry if I just let you think that Roger...’
Javier just continued staring, his agile brain trying and failing to make connections. ‘Tell me from the beginning,’ he said slowly.
‘And you won’t interrupt?’
‘I promise nothing.’
Sophie half-smiled because why would this proud, stubborn, utterly adorable man ever take orders from anyone, even if it happened to be a very simple order?
‘Okay...’ Javier half-smiled back and a warm feeling spread through her ‘I as good as half promise.’
‘I’d been sort of going out with Roger by the time I went to university,’ Sophie began, staring back into the past and not flinching away from it as she always did. ‘I honestly don’t know why except he’d been around for ever and it was something I just drifted into. It was cosy. We mixed in the same circles, had the same friends. His mother died when he was little and he and his father spent a good deal of time at our place. When his father died, he became more or less a fixture. He was crazy about me...’ she said that without a trace of vanity ‘...and I think both my parents just assumed that we would end up getting married. Then I left home to go to university and everything just imploded.’
‘Tell me,’ Javier urged, leaning forward.
‘Roger didn’t want me to go to university. He was three years older and hadn’t gone. He’d done an apprenticeship and gone straight into work at a local company. His parents had been very well off and he’d inherited everything as an only child, so there was no need for him to do anything high-powered and, in truth, he wasn’t all that bright.’
She sighed. ‘He wanted to have fun and have a wife to cater to him. But as soon as I went to university it hit me that I didn’t love him. I liked him well enough but not enough to ever, ever consider marrying. I told him that but he wasn’t happy and then I met you and... I stopped caring whether he was happy or not. I stopped caring about anyone or anything but you.’
‘And yet you ended up marrying him. Doesn’t make sense.’
‘You promised you wouldn’t interrupt.’
Javier raised both his hands in agreement. In truth, he was too intrigued by this tale to ask too many questions.
‘My father summoned me back home,’ she said. ‘I went immediately. I knew it had to be important and I was worried that it was Mum. Her health hadn’t been good and we were all worried for her. I never expected to be told that the family was facing bankruptcy.’ She took a deep breath, eyes clouded. ‘Suddenly it was like every bad thing that could happen at once had happened. Not only was the company on the verge of collapse but my father admitted that he had been ill—cancer—and it was terminal. Roger was presented to me as the only solution, given the circumstances.’
‘Why didn’t you come to me?’
‘I wanted to but it was hard enough just fighting your corner without presenting you to my parents. They wanted nothing to do with you. They said that Roger would bring much-needed money to the table, money that would revitalise the company and drag it out of the red. Dad was worried sick that he wouldn’t be around long enough to do anything about saving the company. He was broken with guilt that he had allowed things to go down the pan but I think his own personal worries, which he had kept to himself, must have been enormous.
‘They told me that what I felt for you was...infatuation. That I was young and bowled over by someone who would be no good for me in the long run. You weren’t in my social class and you were a foreigner. Those two things would have been enough to condemn you but, had it not been for what was happening in the company, I don’t think they would have dreamt of forcing my hand.’
‘But they persuaded you that marrying Roger was vital to keep the family business afloat,’ Javier recapped slowly. ‘And, with your father facing death, there wasn’t time for long debates...’
‘I still wouldn’t have,’ Sophie whispered. ‘I was so head over heels in love with you, and I told Roger that. Pleaded with him to see it from my point of view. I knew that if he backed me up, Mum and Dad might lay off the whole convenient marriage thing, but of course he didn’t back me up. He was red with anger and jealousy. He stormed off. At the time, he had a little red sports car...’
‘He crashed, didn’t he?’
Sophie nodded and Javier picked up the story.
‘And you felt...guilty.’
‘Yes. I did. Especially because it was a very bad accident. Roger was in hospital for nearly two months and, by the time he was ready to come out, I had resigned myself to doing what had to be done. I’d even come to half believe that perhaps Mum and Dad were right—perhaps what I felt for you was a flash in the pan, whereas my relationship with Roger had the weight of shared history, which would prove a lot more powerful in the long run.’
Javier was seeing what life must have been like for her. In a matter of a few disastrous weeks, her entire future and a lot of her past had been changed for ever. She hadn’t used him. He had simply been a casualty of events that had been far too powerful for her to do anything about but bow her head and follow the path she had been instructed to follow.
Not old enough to know her own mind, and too attached to her parents to rebel, she had simply obeyed them.
‘But it didn’t go according to plan...’ he encouraged.
‘How did you guess? It was a disaster from the very start. We married but the accident had changed Roger. Maybe, like me, he went into it thinking that we could give it a shot, but there was too much water under the bridge. And there had been after-effects from the accident. He very quickly became addicted to painkillers. He used to play a lot of football but he no longer could. Our marriage became a battleground. He blamed me, and the more he blamed me, the guiltier I felt. He had affairs, which he proudly told me about. He wreaked havoc with the company. He gambled. There was nothing I could do because he could quickly turn violent. By the time he died, I’d...I’d grown up for ever.’
Javier looked at her long and hard. ‘Why did you let me believe that he was gay?’
