The Secrets Women Keep (51 page)

As she witnessed their exchange, Beth was beginning to appreciate the strong young woman her daughter had become. When had that happened? It was no time since they had been collecting her from school, taking her to piano lessons, helping her with homework, applauding her at prizegivings and school plays, driving her to and from parties. So many snapshots from her past flicked by. Now tall and leggy in her black skinny jeans and baggy jumper, with a purposeful expression, she had grown up almost without Beth realising. She suffered a familiar pang of guilt for all those hours spent at work that might have been spent at home; all those opportunities to discover what really made her daughter tick that she would never get back. The truth was, of course, that Beth had no idea who her daughter spent her time with when she wasn’t at home. She had made assumptions about her being with her girlfriends, hanging out, sleeping over. She should have involved herself more.

But, she justified to herself, she and Jon had always agreed that she could never have been a stay-at-home mother. When they’d met, she was already well on the way to becoming a successful lawyer. She adored her family, but her job was what made her get up in the morning. She relished the challenge, the difference she could make to people’s lives, the intellectual rigour of the work. No, she had wanted to have it all – career and family – and had tried her best to make it work. She couldn’t have done more than that.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Of course that’s what you must do. It’s just such a shock. Shall we start again?’

Jon shifted in his seat, crossing his legs, clearly relieved that she wasn’t going to make a scene. She started to serve the supper, not that she would be able to stomach a mouthful.

Ella pushed her plate away. ‘Sorry, Mum, I’m just not hungry. I’ve been dreading telling you. I knew how hard it would be. Dad’s right, though. This is my decision.’

‘We only want what’s best for you,’ said Jon, toying with a bit of salmon.

Beth stared at her plate. ‘Have you thought about—’

‘Mum, don’t.’ Ella stopped her from saying any more. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’ She scraped back her chair and stood up, taking her plate over to the dishwasher, her huge monkey-faced slippers shushing over the limestone tiles.

‘I’m not thinking anything,’ Beth lied. ‘But I don’t want to see everything you’ve worked for thrown away. You shouldn’t make any decision lightly. You must look at all the possibilities.’

Ella’s resigned expression was reflected in the glass splashback in the second before she squatted down to pet Jock, their grey schnauzer, who had come in to investigate the possibility of food. Then she straightened up and walked towards the door, shoulders hunched. Jock followed her, tail wagging, hoping this was the preamble to a walk.

Oh God, thought Beth. This is just like what happened to me. The one thing I hoped the girls would never have to go through. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to go over and hug her daughter again, but something in Ella’s bearing prevented her. And then the moment had passed.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked instead, desperate to prolong the conversation, to reach some kind of resolution. ‘We can’t leave it at that.’

Ella looked back at them, biting her bottom lip hard before letting it slide away from under her teeth. ‘I’m going upstairs. I’ve got to finish last year’s physics paper for tomorrow. Not that I can concentrate, but I’ve got to try. Of course I’m not going to decide anything lightly or on my own, but there’s no point in talking about it any more. Not at the moment. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.’

‘But . . .’ Beth felt the weight of Jon’s foot on hers, warning her that she was in danger of saying too much.

‘Not now,’ he whispered.

Ella shut the door behind her.

‘But if not now, when?’ Beth hissed back.

He shook his head.

They sat together listening to the thump of Ella’s footsteps on the stairs. The kitchen was silent except for the sound of the rain beating on the glass roof of the extension. After a moment, Jon let out a deep sigh.

‘How could this have happened?’

‘We know
how
.’ Trying to get on top of her own confusion, Beth spoke sharply. She took a mouthful of her salmon, but almost gagged on the taste. Swallowing, she put down her fork. ‘What we don’t know is
who
.’

‘I can’t eat a thing either.’ He stacked the plates, sweeping her leftover food on to his. ‘If she’s kept him secret till now, she’s not going to tell us until she’s ready. Even with this. You know what she’s like.’ He stood to pick up the plates and heap some of the leftovers into Jock’s bowl. ‘I can’t believe we haven’t noticed.’

Beth hesitated. ‘But she can’t have a baby.’ Her voice broke. Jon passed her a bit of kitchen roll as she began to cry. ‘What about all her plans?’

‘Sometimes plans have to change.’ He sounded stern, as if he had to make her understand. ‘You of all people should know that.’

She ignored the dig. ‘She doesn’t have to have it, you know. There is another way.’ She hesitated to say more, because she knew how strongly he felt about the issue. He’d made that crystal clear when she had told him about the abortion she’d had long before they met. He was sympathetic, but he hadn’t hidden his feelings. ‘If only I’d known you then,’ he’d said, looking into her eyes. ‘I would never have let you go through with it.’ She’d been so touched; she had never forgotten his reaction. ‘I’d have looked after you and made sure everything worked out for the best. You can’t get rid of a life just because it’s inconvenient.’ Put like that, how could she argue?

At the same time, she had never regretted her decision. She couldn’t help thinking that now. Having a baby at sixteen – only two years younger than Ella – in the household in which she had been brought up had been unthinkable. She would never have got away from there. Or if she had, she would never have survived. Usually she and Jon agreed about everything. But not about this, and maybe not when it came to their own daughter, whose career was mapped out, beckoning. All her teachers said the same thing.

‘You’re not seriously suggesting . . . ?’ He stopped, his head cocked to one side.

She didn’t reply immediately. She needed to think the situation through, tread with care. ‘I just think we should consider all the options, that’s all. She’s only just eighteen. What about her A levels, Cambridge, her life?’ Did he not see how much those things mattered, how much a baby would disrupt everything?

‘Why couldn’t a baby be factored in? It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done it.’ He looked directly at her, challenging her, his dark eyes glittering. The silvering in the hair over his ears, the lines that deepened when he smiled and the slight pouches under his eyes gave him a lived-in look that she loved. If anything, age had improved him.

She was shocked to realise that he was quite serious. She recalled her own anguish when she had realised she was pregnant as if it was yesterday. However necessary it might have been, the decision to have an abortion had not been easy.

‘Seriously, how could she possibly study medicine and look after a baby?’ She heard the ghost of her young self talking. This was the girl who had wept with fear but hung white-knuckled on to the idea of a future, one she could never have had with a baby in tow. Surely the question was a reasonable one, something they should debate. When she had been studying law, there had certainly been no room for anything other than her career. Her family had come much later.

‘Beth, listen to yourself. This is your grandchild you’re talking about.’ Jon straightened up from the dishwasher, shut the door and leaned against the run of units. The set of his face said he was not going to be easily budged. ‘I know it’s difficult, but we can’t get rid of it just like that.’

She tried to sound reasonable. ‘I’m playing devil’s advocate here. We’re not really talking about a baby at this stage, are we? It’s just a few cells that are frantically dividing. That’s all. They don’t amount to anything yet. Plenty of young girls take the other route without coming to any harm. I did.’ The more she spoke, the more she began to see the alternative as a possible answer.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t agree with you. Think of it this way. If we’d done what you’re suggesting, we wouldn’t have had Ella, and think how empty our lives would be without her. The
only
way I would ever go along with her having an abortion is if that’s what she decides she wants. Then I’ll support her, not because I approve, but because she’s my daughter and I’d do anything for her. But I won’t encourage her.’ He twisted his wedding ring round his finger, but didn’t take his eyes off Beth. ‘I’m sorry.’

How could he be so infuriatingly calm? So closed? So wrong? Beth didn’t want to be the bad guy, but didn’t someone have to consider every option? She wouldn’t let herself think of it as a baby. If she did, she wouldn’t have the strength to argue. She would think only of Ella, the life ahead of her, and what was best for that.

Before she could say anything else, the front door slammed. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, followed by the thud of a bag being dumped on the floor, before the kitchen door was thrown wide. Amy stood there, her pleated grey school skirt disappearing under a huge green hoodie with the school logo emblazoned on the back. Her eyes, peering out from under her side-swept fringe, were rimmed with black liner and thick mascara presumably lashed on the moment the school bell rang at the end of the day. She certainly hadn’t left the house looking like that in the morning.

‘Hey, peeps. Why the serious faces? Looks like someone’s died.’ She headed for the fridge, opened the door and grabbed a carton of apple juice. Once the straw was in, the other end in her mouth, she looked up at them.

‘Do you want some supper?’ Beth asked.

‘Good game?’ Jon spoke at the same time.

Beth knew instinctively that he felt, as she did, that there was no need to involve Amy in Ella’s situation. They would have to continue their discussion later.

‘Rubbish.’ Her daughter slouched across the room and flung herself at a chair. ‘We lost thanks to that effing bitch Suzy Featherstone. Like she missed two goals. Can you believe it?’

‘Amy, please. Language.’ Beth observed Amy’s sunny mood cloud over in an instant. Beneath the too-long fringe that never quite fell enough to one side, a sullen expression took shape.

‘Well, she is. She’s an utter cow. You don’t know.’

‘Salmon?’ Jon pointed to the congealing remains of roast fish, wilted vegetables.

Amy shook her head, at the same time pulling at her skirt, which certainly did not meet the not-more-than-eight-inches-from-the-knee-when-kneeling rule that Beth remembered from her own school days. ‘Nah! We had pizza at Hannah’s.’

‘But—’

‘It was home-made,’ Amy protested before Beth could object to pizza as a school-night meal.

A sudden blast of unidentifiable tinny music interrupted them. Amy reached into her hoodie pocket for her phone and held it to her ear, glaring at them all the while. Her face lit up. ‘Yeah. You’re joking. He’s dope. No, I’ll text her now. Yeah, thanks. Laters.’ As soon as she cut the call off, she was texting, thumbs going at a million miles a minute, head bowed as she concentrated, a small smile on her lips.

Jon raised his eyebrows at Beth. They knew perfectly well the impossibility of imposing their opinions or lifestyle on their younger daughter, although they hadn’t given up trying. She was a law unto herself. They had to choose their moments carefully, and perhaps they’d had enough upset for one evening.

‘I’m going up,’ Amy announced, scraping her chair across the floor. She swept her fringe towards her left ear, where it stayed for a nanosecond before flopping back over her face.

‘Homework?’ ventured Beth tentatively.

‘Maybe. I’ve got stuff to do, though.’

Beth could imagine. In the jumble that passed for Amy’s bedroom, the still small centre was the area of desk reserved for her laptop and the chair in front of it. Hers was the one room in the house where disorder prevailed, as her clothes were pulled out or taken off and dumped unceremoniously on the floor or the bed. Occasionally Beth ventured in there. Since her own disordered childhood, chaos of any kind was anathema to her. But if she said anything, or tried to impose some sort of order herself, she was shouted at. Apart from that, she had lost count of the number of family rows that had stemmed from their daughter’s unyielding preference for social media over her schoolwork. She couldn’t face another one right now.

As Amy left the room, Jon went over and pulled a bottle of red wine from the wine rack. ‘A drink, I think,’ he said, as he opened a drawer to find the corkscrew.

Beth fetched two wine glasses from a cupboard. The more she thought about it, the more she leaned towards the arguments for Ella not keeping the baby. She felt an urgent need to talk to Megan. But this wasn’t the moment to call her – not when she and Jon were recovering together from the shock. Her closest friend would understand where she was coming from. She would understand how torn Beth was feeling. She loved Ella and Amy as if they were her own daughters, having known them and often looked after them since they were babies. And Beth loved Jake and Hannah likewise, although her work had stopped her from getting to know them in quite the same way. She and Megan had spent hours discussing their children; their hopes and fears for them. They had been equally proud of Ella’s achievements, particularly given the lack of academic prowess shown so far by the other three.

Ever since Ella was born, Megan had been there for Beth as a constant source of advice and friendship. Beth liked order. She’d been reassured by a schedule, feeding every four hours, knowing when Ella was due to go down or get up. Except of course Ella didn’t always oblige. And that provoked flurries of panic, of diving into the manuals, reading and rereading them as if an answer to a sleepless or food-refusing baby would come rearing out of the pages. When it didn’t, Beth would consult Megan, who had endured all this and survived to tell the tale. With three years of motherhood, albeit of a rather undisciplined nature, under her belt, Megan was considered by Beth as the fount of wisdom. Unlike Beth, she had binned the baby books after those initial weeks of barely suppressed panic and adopted a more laissez-faire approach. She ignored scheduled feeding, scheduled naps and scheduled bath- and bedtimes. Jake ate when he was hungry. She was completely relaxed about when he spoke, crawled or walked. She wasn’t looking for any signals that he was more or less advanced than other babies the same age. He was who he was. Beth envied her approach and tried to emulate it – without much success, but without any harm done to Ella, who became as obliging a toddler as Jake had been before her.