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By Root 1459 0

relationship for both of them; they’d been virgins when they first had sex together, in her bedroom on Boxing Day, while her family sat downstairs, eating Quality Street and watching television. She was called Kate, and he had believed himself in love with her. They’d gotten careless, carried away, whatever you called it, and she’d become pregnant. She took the test while he was sitting his last A level mathematics paper and told him when he came out. He watched his friends whooping and laughing and felt like the sky had fallen in on him. They told their parents, of course. What else could they have done? He still remembered, all these years later, the abject humiliation and embarrassment of sitting with them all, in Kate’s living room, at a meeting called to discuss their “situation.” His mother’s disappointed face, his father’s cheek muscles flexing with suppressed rage. Kate’s mother had cried throughout, silent tears mopped with a white handkerchief. Kate’s father had done the talking for both of them, but he never once looked Mark in the eye. It was a fait accompli, the discussion more a briefing. Their futures must be safeguarded. They were too young to handle the responsibility of a baby. There was, of course, no question of them getting married. It was the 1970s, for God’s sake, not the 1950s. Kate was only a few weeks pregnant, less than three months—and she would have an abortion. They would both get over it. Any relationship the two of them might have had was killed that day. Kate, her blue eyes red and downcast, didn’t say a word. He never really knew what she felt about it. He felt relieved. Kate went away that summer, while he stayed at home, working at the pick-your-own farm outside town and trying to regain some kind of footing with his father. He didn’t see her before he left for Bath, and he never saw her or spoke to her again. He thought only occasionally about her, and the child they never had together. That child would be almost thirty now. Which seemed ridiculous—how was it that your life sped up without you even noticing it happening?

THAT WAS THE SECRET HE NEVER TOLD BARBARA. EVERYONE HAD secrets, didn’t they? Silly, really. She would have felt desperately sorry for him, he knew. And that is how he realized he would have felt about her, if she had told him that Donald wasn’t Amanda’s father.

She never promised him that she was perfect. How could Jennifer, who had lived with her for so long, think that she thought she was? Have gotten it so wrong? Barbara knew her flaws better than most people. There was no pretense about her. She didn’t want Jennifer to be like her. She didn’t want anyone to be just like her. She wanted Jennifer to be happy. And that was all.

He hated Jennifer—in that moment—because a plague seed of doubt had been shaken free by the row. He hated the doubt, and his brain and his heart battled against the spores of it. She hadn’t. She hadn’t. She couldn’t have.

After a few minutes, he was calmer. He felt sober, out here in the fresh air, and back in control of himself. And cold. He’d been outside for about half an hour. Long enough for Jennifer to get out of his sight, he hoped. He opened the door from the terrace and went inside just as Hannah stepped through the front door.

“Are you mounting a search party? I’m not even late yet!”

“Just getting some fresh air.”

“Fresh air! It’s freezing, you nutter.” Hannah peered at him from across the room. “Have you been smoking out there? You promised, special occasion cigars only,” she asked, suspicious.

“No!”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, Dad, would you?”

“Of course not. I just drank too much wine, felt a bit fuzzy, and went out there to sober up, while I was waiting for you…Sergeant.”

“Where’s Jennifer?”

“She went to bed already.”

“Did you guys have fun tonight?”

Hardly. Mark opened the dishwasher and began stacking it with the dirty plates and cutlery on the side.

“Just a peaceful evening. How about you?”

Hannah drew up a bar stool and put her elbows on the granite, watching her dad while he worked. “Brilliant. Party of the year.