Take What You Want

‘All right, all right, my stepsister.’ Robert raked a hand through his hair, staring out at the unceasing curtain of rain. ‘Even so, you know this is—ridiculous!’

‘Ridiculous?’ Sophie felt unsure of her ground. For a few moments she had been confident that everything was going to be all right, but now … ‘Why is it ridiculous?’

‘Don’t be naïve, Sophie!’ He drew savagely on his cigarette. ‘Look, let’s get this into perspective, shall we? You—that is, the last time we—were together was that Christmas a couple of years ago when I’d had—too much to drink——’

‘That’s not true!’

‘It is true, Sophie. What other reason could there be for—for what happened?’

‘And just now?’

‘Yes. Just now.’ He ran the back of his hand across his damp forehead. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have come. I knew—or at least, I guessed what kind of an emotional scene you’d have built up of that incident between us.’

‘Incident?’

‘Yes, incident, Sophie. For heaven’s sake, what do you expect me to call it? You can have no notion of my feelings after—after touching you. I was sick—really sick to my stomach, do you know that? There was I, a supposedly mature and sensible man of twenty-eight, kissing a kid of sixteen——’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ she denied, a little desperately.

‘Yes, it was. Just like that.’ He raised his eyes heavenward. ‘I despised myself utterly.’

‘Do you despise yourself now?’

He turned his head to look at her. ‘What do you think?’

Sophie moved her shoulders helplessly, feeling the hot prick of tears behind her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘Don’t you?’ Robert seemed to be enjoying taunting her. ‘My God, Sophie, do you know what you just did?’ He uttered a mirthless laugh. ‘You’re a beautiful girl. That’s no excuse, I know, but it does help.’

‘Does it?’

‘Oh, stop it,’ he muttered, straightening to squash out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘You know what you did as well as I do. You’re fully aware why those two Army kids offered to carry your cases. I never realised before what a menace you might be.’

‘Stop trying to hurt me.’

‘Why should I? You don’t seem to care who you hurt, do you? Oh, lord, Sophie, stop looking so tragic!’ He was gradually recovering his sense of humour. ‘All right, I apologise for what happened. I guess it was my fault.’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘All right, if you don’t want an apology I won’t make one. I’m sorry. I was forgetting what a permissive society we live in!’

Her fingers stung across his cheek and she sat in horror staring at the marks of her fingers appearing against the tanned flesh. She caught her breath. ‘Oh, Robert,’ she exclaimed, starting to cry. ‘I’m sorry …’

Robert took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. ‘It’s all right, Sophie,’ he said steadily. ‘Look, I think we’d better start all over again, hmm?’ He paused. ‘You’ve got rid of all that pent-up emotionalism and I’ve given myself a—well, we won’t go into that. Perhaps your father was right. Perhaps it was as well to come and meet you after all. Get all this foolishness out of your system right at the beginning——’

‘My father?’ Sophie dried her eyes with the sleeve of her blazer. ‘What does my father know about this? What do you mean?’

Robert sighed. ‘Naturally I told him what had happened.’

‘You—didn’t!’

‘Why not? Good God, Sophie, how many more times do I have to tell you? I was sick of myself. I had to give some reason for not coming back to Penn Warren while you were there.’

‘But—but—there was that job in the Far East …’

‘There was no job. At least, not for a couple of months anyway. Sophie, I had to tell him. I was ashamed …’

‘Ashamed?’ Sophie moved her head from side to side. This couldn’t be happening—not after—not after the way he had kissed her … ‘Oh,. Robert, I’ll never forgive you!’

‘I’m not asking for your forgiveness! Hell, I’m just trying to show you the way things really are. I don’t want you to go on imagining that what happened that Christmas—well, that it was anything more than a fleeting impulse——’

‘It was!’ she cried.

Robert shook his head resignedly. ‘No, Sophie.’ He sighed. ‘I thought you were more mature. I was your first—experience, but you certainly weren’t mine! And that’s all it was, Sophie—an experience.’

‘Not for me,’ she declared chokingly. ‘Oh, I don’t know how you can say such things after—after what just happened.’

‘Oh, God, Sophie! I’m only human. You invited what just happened, you know you did. I’m not proud of it, but how was I to know——’ He broke off and made an impatient gesture. ‘I wanted to comfort you, Sophie—because of the storm. I’ve comforted you before—remember? As I recall it, you once came to my bed in the middle of the night because of a storm. You were about eight years old at the time. You were petrified. I let you stay with me, I put my arms about you—just as I did just now. What happened afterwards was not of my instigation.’

‘You’re hateful!’ she exclaimed in a muffled voice, drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms round her drawn-up legs. ‘I—I never thought you could be so—so cruel, Robert.’

Robert raked his hair back again with a vehemence that spoke of his frustration. He glared out at the storm and made a sound of relief that at last the rain was easing and watery rays of sun were casting spears of rainbow colour across the lake that lay below them in the valley. He leant forward and turned the ignition, breathing a sigh of satisfaction as the powerful engine leapt to instant life. Glancing through the rearview mirror, he drove off the grassy verge and on to the rain-soaked road, controlling the skidding of tyres caked with mud.

‘You’d better tidy yourself,’ he commented briefly, as they began the descent into the valley. Conwynneth lay in a fold of the hills and already it was possible to see the grey roofs of the cottages that edged the village green. ‘Or do you want to have to explain what’s been happening?’

Sophie pushed her feet to the floor and fumbled in her pocket for her tie. As she slotted it under the collar of her blouse and fastened it carelessly, her lips were pressed tightly together. She guessed that Robert saw her expression as mutinous. He was not to know that had she not pressed her lips together they would have trembled violently. She felt sick and shaken, and totally unprepared for the confrontation with the family which was to come. All her hopes and fantasies about Robert had been shattered during the last half hour and the last thing she wanted was to have to make any unnecessary explanations. What she really wanted to do was to crawl away somewhere and hide until her wounds had healed a little.

CHAPTER TWO (#u1b133f23-1451-5722-8cc4-30bd9e8f91a9)

PENN WARREN was a rambling old house which stood on the outskirts of the village. The Kembles had modernised it to the extent of adding decent plumbing and an efficient central heating system, but much of its atmosphere remained in the oak panelling and wide stone fireplaces. As the boys grew up they constantly seemed to be giving themselves crippling blows on low beams, and yet, for all that, none of them would have had it any different.

To Sophie, it spelled the days of her childhood and adolescence. Long summer days swimming or fishing with the boys, playing cricket or tennis in the huge, partially overgrown garden of the house, autumn with its fires and roasted chestnuts, winter when the snow coated the trees outside and they had all sat round a glowing peat fire drinking mugs of mulled ale. She had always been happy there, and it was doubly hard for her to accept that that happiness had depended so completely on her love for Robert.

She awoke on the morning after her return from school with an unfamiliar feeling of depression causing a dull little ache behind her eyes. She lay for a few minutes wondering what had caused it, and then recollection of the events of the day before came back to her and she rolled on to her stomach, burying her face in the pillow. Oh, God, she thought desperately, what am I going to do?

It had been almost dinner time when she arrived the night before. To her relief, her father was out on a call, and only Laura and Simon had been there to greet her. She thought of Simon with affection. He had been so reassuringly normal—so delighted to see her—so good-natured and kind and sweet. He had made things much easier for her, and although at times she had caught him watching her with a rather anxious expression in his eyes, she didn’t think her stepmother had noticed anything amiss in her relationship with Robert. By the time her father came home after delivering Mrs. Jones’ fourth, the meal was over and Sophie’s initial nervousness controlled. Robert had gone out straight after dinner. He had made some excuse about promising to go over to the Hall to see John Meredith, the son of the largest local landowner, who had been at university with him, and no one had demurred. Indeed, if Sophie had not been so wrapped up in her own misery she might have noticed that both her stepmother and Simon relaxed more fully once Robert had left them. Instead, she made a great effort to talk gaily about her last few weeks at school, and she was almost sure she had convinced them that she had no greater problem on her mind than whether or not to apply for university entrance before Christmas.

Now she pushed herself up on her elbows and peered at the Noddy clock ticking away on her bedside table. The clock had been a seventh birthday present from the boys and in spite of its incongruity in her teenage bedroom she had never wanted to change it.

She blinked. It couldn’t be half past ten already, could it? Although as she had lain awake for hours listening for the sound of Robert’s car and even after his return had been unable to get to sleep for ages, it was possible that she had overslept. But why had no one awakened her? She hunched her shoulders. And why should she want them to anyway? It was better to be asleep and oblivious of what had happened.

However, she could not stay in bed all day. Besides, she owed it to her parents to pull herself together and act normally. After all, nothing had really changed, that was the amazing thing. Just because her illusions had been shattered did not alter the situation. So far as Robert was concerned, she was still the little sister he had always regarded her.

She forced her mind away from this train of thought. Right now it was almost impossible to accept that never, at any time, had he regarded her in any other light. She would have to accept it, of course, but for the present her most sensible course of action would be to try and behave to him as she had always done. Their relationship had been such a deep and satisfying thing. Surely that had not been destroyed too? Who knows, maybe at some future date he might become attracted to her …

With a determination she had not known she possessed, Sophie bathed and put on her underwear and was rummaging through her wardrobe for her jeans when there was a knock at the door.

‘Who is it?’ she called a little breathlessly, and then expelled her breath more steadily as her stepmother’s head appeared.