Rachel is sitting at the kitchen table wrestling with a PowerPoint presentation on her laptop, when she hears the soft click of the front door. ‘Ellie?’ she calls. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yeah.’
Just one word, but from its flat delivery she knows that Ellie has returned tired and cranky, in one of her especially tricky moods.
Rachel has spent the morning working on a student presentation about the dangers of recreational drugs. Given a recent overdose incident at the local high school across town, it had seemed pertinent to move the topic as a priority into the term’s personal health programme. She’d argued to Margaret Crowe that it would be naïve to assume the prestige of Folly View College was in any way a shield for their students. If it was happening at the local secondary school, then it was almost certainly happening at Folly View, too.
She slides her laptop across the table to join a plate of discarded sandwich crusts. ‘You’re earlier than I expected,’ she calls. ‘Dad got called into work?’ Her question is met by silence, so she tries again. ‘I didn’t hear a car. Did Chrissie drop you back?’
Ellie acknowledges the question with an indecipherable murmur that is neither ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Rachel has only met Chrissie once, during an awkward doorstep exchange she’d insisted on, knowing that Ellie would be spending time with the woman at her home. She’d seemed perfectly nice, if a little nervous to be standing face-to-face with Ben’s ex. Younger than her by a good few years. Blonde curls and a pretty face, with immaculate eyebrows and bright red lipstick, the sight of which had made Rachel feel frumpy and dishevelled. An office administrator from Bath, Ben had told her. She’s desperate to know what Ellie makes of her and can’t help a small, uncharitable flutter of pleasure that she’s chosen to return home early – to her – rather than hang out with Chrissie in her neat new build on the other side of town.
Still, it hardly fills her with joy to think of Chrissie dropping Ellie home, hovering outside in her car, scoping out the cottage. The place was lovely in the warmer months, the tiny front garden blossoming with roses and a scrambling clematis that shrouded the peeling paint and flaking window frames. But come late autumn, the cottage grew decidedly gloomy, the woods crowding oppressively close, as if they would reach out and one day entirely swallow the stone building from view. Inside, it was draughty and lacking insulation, with old iron radiators that never quite seemed to warm up and a temperamental hearth where the fire would smoke and spit, whenever she could be bothered to light one. Still, of the staff members who lived on campus, she knew she was one of the luckier ones. Some resident teachers lived in flats attached to the boarders’ dormitories. At least out here on the fringes they were afforded a little more privacy. If Chrissie wants to judge their living arrangements, she can’t exactly stop her.
Hearing Ellie’s footsteps creaking towards the stairs, Rachel calls out again, ‘Wait, I want to talk to you.’
There’s a pointed sigh before her daughter’s ashen face peers round the door, violet shadows and yesterday’s eye make-up still smeared beneath her green eyes, her short red hair springing up in its usual wild nest. ‘What?’
Breathe, Rachel warns herself. She doesn’t want to start with an argument, not when Ellie’s just walked in the door. This is an adjustment for them all. She fixes a smile to her face. ‘So? How was it?’
‘Fine.’
‘Come in here. I missed you.’
She sees Ellie’s eye-roll as she emerges from behind the door. ‘Your hoodie’s on inside out. You must be tired. Late night?’
Ellie doesn’t reply.
‘So…’ she says, hating the false note of cheer in her voice, ‘what did you guys get up to?’
‘Nothing much.’
Rachel purses her lips. ‘I know you’re annoyed about missing the party, but it was important you spend time with your dad.’
‘I know. Is that all?’
Rachel’s about to wave her away when a distinct scent carries across the room. She sniffs pointedly. ‘You smell of smoke.’
‘Chill out, Mum. It’s charcoal. Dad bought a pizza oven. He was cooking in the garden last night.’
‘Oh. Nice. And it was OK? You’re OK?’ Rachel eyes Ellie. Something isn’t right. She can feel it. Ellie is avoiding her gaze, shifting uncomfortably by the door, a look in her eyes. Guilt. Fear. She can’t tell. ‘Ellie, if there’s something you want to talk—’
‘Is this about the baby?’
Rachel frowns, thinking she’s misheard. ‘Baby?’
‘Because if it is, I’m totally fine with it. You don’t have to do one of your “therapy” numbers on me.’
It’s like a punch to the guts. ‘You don’t mean…?’
‘Dad’s a free agent. He can do what he likes. Have as many babies as he likes, with whoever.’
Rachel’s momentary relief to realise this isn’t Ellie’s baby they’re talking about evaporates. Ben’s baby. The truth is another fist slamming into her. Ben and Chrissie are having a baby? They’ve only been together five minutes.
‘Honestly,’ continues Ellie in her flat delivery, her hands burrowed in her sleeves, twisting the fabric, ‘I know you won’t believe me, but I don’t care. I’ll be leaving as soon as I’ve got my A-level results.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘You did know about Chrissie being pregnant?’
‘Sure,’ she lies. ‘Course.’
‘So, was there something else?’
‘Um… I…’ Rachel’s mind crackles with static. Logical thought seems to have escaped her. A baby? Ben’s having a baby with Chrissie. She scrambles for something to cover her shock. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘What about homework?’
‘On it.’
Still distracted by her daughter’s unintentional landmine, she lets Ellie duck away, her footsteps thudding up the stairs. At the sound of the bedroom door shutting firmly overhead, Rachel slumps in her seat and stares at the Folly View screen-saver logo bouncing haphazardly across her laptop screen, the small stone tower performing a chaotic dance that seems to mirror the pattern of her thoughts.
Chrissie is pregnant? Ben told Ellie yesterday at a cosy pizza night and he didn’t think it appropriate to at least warn Rachel? To give her a polite heads-up? Didn’t think that their complicated, emotional daughter might need a little support from her mum to process this huge life change? Eighteen years of marriage and Ben thought so little of Rachel’s feelings that he didn’t think she might like to hear it from him, directly?
My God. She shakes her head in bewilderment. That man was something else. How galling to spend the best part of your life with someone and to only now realise that you barely knew them at all.
She reaches for her phone and sees her last message to Ben still hanging unanswered. The single ‘?’ she’d sent that morning in response to his nonsensical reply about schedules. The solitary punctuation mark seems even more apposite now. As tempting as it is to fire off a stinging dispatch, she’ll wait for him to grace her with a reply before she opens this whole new can of worms.
Unsure what else to do, she fills the kettle then stands for a while looking out the window at the scruffy garden with its tilting wooden fence, at the dead seed heads of summer’s long-gone flowers waving in the autumn light, at the dark wooded hills rising towards the sky. Standing there thinking about Ben and Chrissie and the pregnancy they hadn’t had the decency to tell her about, she lets her anger rise with the piercing scream of the kettle.