Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [102]
It was like that with Jeremy and Nancy, too. Easy and comfortable. She felt safe here. She’d fallen in love with the man and the whole family.
“SO, YOU TWO DELIGHTFUL YOUNG CREATURES…” THEY’D finished dinner and were in the process of finishing a bottle of wine—except for Jeremy who was drinking grape juice under duress and with a fair amount of moaning. “I’m very thrilled that you’ve chosen to base your bohemian life here, and your mother and I love having the pair of you. And I may be terribly bourgeois to even consider it, but I do begin to wonder whether there are any actual plans…for the immediate future….”
Ed and Amanda exchanged glances. “Aha!” Jeremy exclaimed. “I see that there are….” He sat back to listen to them.
“I’ve spoken to the dean. They’re prepared to let me take the rest of the year off. Start again in September.”
“I presume you laid it on with a trowel—how ill and decrepit I am?” Ed blushed, which provided the answer.
“Good for you. Why be a rat in the run, I say. You never took enough time off when you had the chance, if you ask me.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Jeremy raised his hand. “Fine. I’ll try to sound weak and close to death, should I answer the phone to someone I don’t know.” Amanda giggled. “So what will you be doing with this free time?”
“We want to travel together,” Amanda answered.
“Ah—little nomad. That’s what I hoped you’d say. Where to?”
“We thought…South America…Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil.”
“Splendid.”
“We’ll need to get jobs here, for a while, first. If that’s all right. To help pay. It isn’t easy to get casual work in those places, while you’re traveling. You sort of have to live on what you take. I’ve got some saved up, from when I was temping, but…”
Again, Jeremy raised his hand. The gesture might seem imperious in some people, but with him, it didn’t. He was just always in rather a hurry to get to his point.
“Your mother and I have put our heads together. We’ll finance the tickets, and bung you a wedge for living expenses. We thoroughly approve.”
“You can’t do that!” Amanda was embarrassed. Mum had bailed her out once or twice, sure, but she’d never actually funded a trip. It was always understood that, after college, Amanda had to earn what she spent, just like her sisters. They spent it on mortgages and shoes; she spent it on plane tickets.
“Yes, I can. Call it a reward for helping out. We’ve got lots, relatively speaking. We’ll be giving HMS Revenue and Customs plenty when we’re gone. There’s all sorts of nonsense about trusts and so forth. You won’t have to think about that until they’ve carried me out. This bit will just be for fun. Go and do the gallivanting we’re too crumbly to do. I’m too crumbly; your mother’s just too loyal…” Nancy laid her hand on his cheek, and he took it and kissed it. “Go. Live. Love.”
Amanda felt tears spring to her eyes at his extraordinary generosity. She stood up and bent over him. “You’re lovely. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Very, very welcome.”
She kissed Nancy, who stroked her head. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY WOULD DO THAT FOR US.” THEY WERE curled into each other in Ed’s bed. The wind was howling outside, and the branches on a tree near the window tapped against the glass, but their minds were already in Rio.
“I can. It’s very them.”
“So you’re just a spoiled rich bastard, are you?”
He pinched her bottom. “And you’re just a spoiled rich bastard’s girlfriend.”
“Ouch.”
“Not really. I mean, I’ve had jobs since