All afternoon Gwen followed her mother around as she packed, wearing the mournful expression of an abandoned puppy dog but, quite unlike a puppy, making no attempt to be appealing. In response to Julia’s inquiries she would only offer such valuable contributions as, “Who cares what you wear with a bunch of musicians?” Her sullen unpleasantness had been increasing since breakfast, when she had told James his aftershave made her want to vomit, and had even snapped at Nathan, complaining the eggs he had scrambled with much fanfare were slimy, undercooked, and generally offensive. She was standing in the hallway while Julia dithered over whether or not to bring a coat for the festival. Julia was indecently excited about this small, solo trip.
“If you change your mind, I’m sure James will pop you round to Katy’s party later. What have you planned for the rest of the weekend?”
“Weekends don’t matter now it’s Easter,” said Gwen, who had taken deep offense at her mother’s evident eagerness to go, and would not give an inch before this treacherous departure. “All days are the same. I’m tired, I don’t want to see a bunch of randoms.”
“Have you and Nathan got anything planned?”
“Why are you interviewing me?” Gwen whined, sitting down heavily on the stairs and slumping over her knees. “You don’t need to plan playdates for me while you’re away, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
If she hadn’t had one foot out of the door—or had James overheard—Julia might have felt fortified to check this latest discourtesy, but instead she raised her hands in surrender. Gwen laid her head on her crossed arms, the embodiment of bleak despair. Moved despite herself, Julia stroked back her daughter’s tangled hair. “No third degree, I just thought you might be doing something.”
“What, like a superfun classical music festival?” Gwen mumbled into her knees, “Woohoo, par-tay.”
Surely this mood couldn’t be attributed to her own, brief departure, Julia thought, perplexed, and then with a thrill of disloyalty, reflected that in about half an hour this state of affairs would all become Nathan’s problem. He wanted to be with her daughter? He could take her as he found her. The festival in Verbier had begun to take on the honeyed glow of a recuperative spa weekend. She was even looking forward to the drive to Heathrow.
“Mummy,” Gwen looked up, suddenly plaintive. “Mummy, I don’t feel very well.”
Julia laid the back of her hand on her daughter’s cheek. It was cool, and dry. “What’s wrong, Dolly?” she asked, softly. “I’ll be back before you know it. What’s going on?”
Gwen shook her head, hopeless. “I don’t know.” She began to cry. “I feel dizzy.”
Julia bent to kiss Gwen’s forehead. She looked down at the mass of loose, fox-red curls escaping and unraveling into a halo of fine frizz, the bursts of psychedelic swirls and flowering creepers that Gwen had drawn in blue and red Biro across one forearm and then, above the loose cotton neck of an ancient shirt of Daniel’s, she saw the blue-veined marbling of her daughter’s swollen breasts. She bent down suddenly and gripped Gwen’s shoulders.
“Gwendolen.” Her voice was steady, as steady as an ambulance dispatcher’s, as steady as due north. “Gwendolen.” Behind her she heard a key scrape in the front door but she did not turn. “Gwen. Look at me. Right now. Are you pregnant?”
Gwen looked up, her pale face striped with glossy tearstains. She shrugged.
• • •
“I’M HOME!” called James from the doorway. He held many straining plastic shopping bags and had slung several others around each wrist, so that beneath their weight his hands had turned first white and then puce with temporarily arrested circulation. He edged the door open with his knee. He had determined to consider the weekend with Julia’s daughter an opportunity, rather than a nuisance. Certainly he had made sure to tell Julia this was how he saw it, and he wished to make it true.
“Now,” he said, slamming the door shut behind him with a violent jolt of the hip and dumping the groceries at his feet before remembering the eggs, too late, “I have big news, kiddo. And the news is this: we’re making veggie pizza. Your mom’s away so you get to be the queen around here.”
He crouched down to investigate. To his relief, the eggs were all unbroken. Now he looked up, one hand still buried in a Waitrose carrier bag. Two stricken faces met him in silence.
“What’s happened? Where’s my boy? Where’s Nathan?”
• • •
THIS WAS NOT THE RIGHT WAY. She should have taken a test alone, to prove that she was responsible. She should have presented the facts in a calm and considered manner, so that Julia would admire her solemn maturity and initiative. These things happen, Gwen imagined her mother saying, stroking her hair. I can’t believe how grown up you’ve been, my brave girl. She should have gone online and found herself a doctor; should have made her own appointment to take care of it, and the magnitude of the decision and the stoic dignity with which she’d taken it would have filled both Julia and Nathan with awe. These things happen. She did not want to be pregnant. It was inconceivable that she could be a mother. But she knew she had not been foolish—in her head she had been courageous and responsible. She just hadn’t had time to prove herself. How could you test for a pregnancy in which you didn’t quite believe? Now it had all gone wrong, for her mother looked as if she hated her. They were together in the bathroom while James paced the hallway, outside.
“I don’t understand,” Julia kept saying. “I don’t understand how this happened.” She had not yet raised her eyes from the plastic window of the newly purchased pregnancy test that lay on the side of the sink, its message unequivocal. Her knuckles had whitened from her grip on the basin. And then the worst words, “How could you be so stupid?”
Gwen shrugged, hopelessly. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, but she could not yet speak. She felt flushed and dizzy and slightly sick, from fear or pregnancy or possibly both. No fate, in that moment, could have felt worse than her mother’s disappointment. She yearned for sympathy, for gentleness. She longed to be small, and to be taken care of.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” she whispered.
This had been the wrong thing to say.
“On purpose? On purpose? I never for one moment imagined it was anything other than, than damn foolishness. How long have you suspected? How many weeks—oh, God. This is a nightmare.” More softly, to herself, “This is a living nightmare.”
“I was going to deal with it. I was going to fix it so you didn’t worry and then tell you . . .”
“But have you seen a doctor? Do you know if you even have time to fix it? Does Nathan know?” This last was shouted, in a crescendo of rage.
“No.”
“No, what? No, you haven’t seen a doctor? No, you don’t know? I don’t understand how you could have allowed— We trusted you. You asked me to trust you. You promised me I could trust you, and you’ve let me down. You’ve let”—Gwen had a sudden instinct to cover her ears against the next words—“you’ve let your father down.”
Gwen felt her last hope collapse within her. She would be abandoned for this, and would never be forgiven. Now, when she needed more than ever to be restored to the full beam of her mother’s love, to that deep, old intensity, they felt further apart than ever. She fell to her knees like a penitent, laid her head against the cold edge of the bath, and began to sob. “Don’t talk about Daddy!” she begged, gasping for breath. Her shoulders heaved, and she waited for warm arms to enfold her. She longed to lay her head in her mother’s lap and sob, You used to love me—love me now. But though she cried harder and harder nothing happened, and when she looked up Julia was shaking her head in disbelief, and there was something new in her eyes that frightened Gwen. Hatred, maybe. What happened now hardly mattered.