Page 8 of The Love Position

Now they’d started up again.

Hearing footsteps outside of her bedroom door, Sophia wiped her eyes. She had to put on her big-girl pants. What she was going through with Marcus was nothing compared to what her mother was currently having to handle.

‘You in there, babe?’ her mum called through the door.

‘Yes, come in.’

Beverley Hunter-Savage entered the room and Sophia drew her in for a hug. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ her mother replied.

The two women sat on the edge of the bed, hands intertwined. Apart from the same brown eyes and cupid’s bow lips, they couldn’t have appeared more different. Sophia’s thick brown hair was unstyled and tied in a ponytail, whereas her mother’s had been bleached to within an inch of its life then carefully coiffed into a donut bun.

Sophia rarely wore make-up, however Beverley had never gone a day in her adult life without a full face of war paint. And whilst Sophia lived in off-the-peg jeans, her mum favoured animal-print designer clothes.

Beverley’s manicured nails flicked the edges of Sophia’s bitten ones. ‘You need to get a set of acrylics done. Then you won’t bite them.’

‘Not great for work, Mum.’

‘You could bring a bit of glam to archaeology. You’re so pretty. You should be on the telly.’

Sophia repressed a shudder. It had taken her long enough just to deliver a lecture without an anxiety attack. The last thing she wanted was to be the centre of attention like that.

Beverley squeezed her hand. ‘I don’t know where we went wrong, babes. Your brother’s got confidence flying out his arse, but you…’

‘We’re just very different, Mum.’

‘Yeah… You sure I can’t do you a makeover?’

Sophia shook her head. Growing up with crippling shyness, she’d wanted to fade into the background. However, her mother dreamed of creating a little princess in her own image. Luckily, Beverley loved her daughter more than her desire to create an ‘it girl’.

‘You seen Marcus?’

‘At work.’

‘You sure you’re not going to get back with him?’

‘I’m sure.’

Sophia hadn’t told her parents the details of what went wrong. It was too mortifying. She also didn’t trust her father not to call in a favour from an old gangster friend and have Marcus beaten up. Or worse…

‘I just don’t understand, babe. We thought you were so settled.’

An image of Marcus pounding into Darcie flashed into Sophia’s mind, and she tensed. It was now an open secret in the archaeology department of Salisbury University that Professor Marcus Thwaites was in a polyamorous relationship with two of his students. But rather than this news creating uproar and condemnation, he’d received envious back slaps from men and offers of sex from other women.

Sophia, on the other hand, was treated like a morbidly fascinating train wreck, or someone who’d got what they deserved for having the gall to take up Marcus’s precious time over the last ten years.

Anxiety pricked her chest like a thousand tiny needles, and her heart quickened.

‘Soph?’

She shook her head rapidly, gulping in breaths. ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

Beverley put her arms around her. ‘I’m here, babe. Do your breathing thing.’

Squeezing her eyes tightly closed, Sophia pursed her lips and exhaled a slow, steady breath. Then did it again. Her doctor had suggested breathing techniques to control her anxiety, but they didn’t always work. Held in her mother’s embrace, she got herself back under control.

‘Are the pills helping?’

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