The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

could afford it’; their own parents were well off too, of course, but the B-word still had a rare cachet even in those circles. ‘It can overwhelm people – as I recall you didn’t talk to me for three weeks when I told you.’

‘That was very different. You lied by omission when I was clearly never out for anything from you.’

‘You mean, apart from my stash of peanut butter, magnum of rosé and any fresh bread?’

‘Excuse me, I was – am – a starving student.’

‘And my favourite navy cashmere V-neck. You’ve still got that, by the way.’

Holly shrugged. ‘Statute of limitations. It’s mine now.’

‘But it’s my favourite!’

‘Bite me, bitch.’ Holly stared at her, that small characteristic glint in her eye, and Tara felt the momentary chill between them begin to thaw. ‘Anyway, the boy’s besotted. He’s clearly not out for anything from you, except getting into your pants.’

‘Except that,’ Tara agreed, allowing herself a small smile. ‘In a weird way, it’s almost the fact that he’s so uninterested in money that makes me worry about telling him. I mean, his parents were Californian hippies. He grew up on biodynamic farms and communes.’

‘Christ. It’s like they actively chased poverty!’ Holly muttered, looking away.

They were almost at the Serpentine Bridge, the lake looking mercurial in the frigid temperatures, a couple of red-beaked black swans gliding towards the boathouses. The last of the early morning swimmers were ploughing rhythmically up and down the lido. They stopped to cross the road, waiting for a black cab to rumble past, its light on.

‘But I know I can’t keep putting it off. He was always going to have to meet my parents sooner or later, and it looks like it’s going to be sooner. He says he wants to ask my father for my hand.’

‘Huh. How old school.’ Holly’s tone had cooled again, disappointment butting at her, as though knocking her off balance.

‘I know, it surprised me too.’ Tara bit her lip distractedly as they walked across the bridge. ‘But it’ll be fine. He’ll be fine with it. I’ll just . . . mention it in passing tonight. I’m probably making it into a bigger deal than it actually is.’

‘You think?’ Holly quipped.

‘I mean, maybe . . . maybe I don’t even need to explicitly say anything about it at all? I could just . . . imply that we’re—’

‘Rich as Croesus?’

‘I was going to say affluent.’

‘No one says affluent. Apart from sociologists doing surveys.’

‘Fine, then. Comfortable.’

Holly choked on the dregs of her drink. ‘Comfortable? Well, so long as you get there after the helicopter’s dropped your folks off, or before the chauffeur hops out of the Bentley, Alex will be none the wiser and then yeah, you can pretend to be . . . y’know, comfortable.’

Tara mouthed a silent, sarcastic ha ha at her friend’s tease. Holly had been raised singlehandedly by her father on a school caretaker’s income after her mother had walked out when she was four. For some reason, this entitled her to unlimited sarcasm any time the subject of money (or more specifically, fortunes) came up.

Holly sighed, as if sensing the cruelty in her jibes. ‘Listen, if that boy doesn’t accept you as you are – private jets and all – then he isn’t worth holding on to anyway. But I doubt it’s going to be a problem.’ She gave a small mocking laugh. ‘He’ll probably be on a mission to impregnate you straight away to seal the deal.’

Tara stopped walking.

Holly looked back, a look of regret already plastered all over her face. ‘Too much?’ She took in Tara’s look of horror. ‘Sorry.’ She gripped a hand through her red hair and angled her face to the sky. She looked strained and tense. ‘That was a shitty thing to say. You’ve just got me . . . jangled, that’s all. I’m misfiring arrows.’

But Tara’s feet wouldn’t move. Her mouth wouldn’t close.

‘Look, you know I didn’t mean it,’ Holly said, walking back to her and placing a hand on her arm. ‘He’s a good bloke. Of course that’s not what he’ll do.’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘I mean, like you’d let him anyway! No chance! You’re not going to fuck your life up doing something that stupid—’

For the first time, she saw the tears shining in Tara’s eyes. Her face fell. ‘Ta, oh please . . . don’t look like that. I didn’t mean . . .’ But something in the way Tara was standing, the rigidity in her shoulders . . . Her gaze fell to Tara’s hand, placed instinctively over her stomach. Slowly, she looked up at her, open-mouthed. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered.

Tara tensed further, bracing for the next onslaught. For the past twelve days, since she’d taken the test, she’d vacillated between joy and despair, clarity and confusion – until Alex’s pledges last night. Without even realizing, he’d pushed aside her doubts and talked her into keeping the baby. Clearly, this wasn’t the path she’d set for herself, but she had somehow persuaded herself it meant a deferral, not an abandonment, of her plans. As he’d slept beside her, she had lain awake growing ever more convinced that this was what she wanted, that she could make it work, so that when she’d woken this morning, she’d been so excited to finally share her news with her best friend. Now, instead, she waited for the words to come . . . But you’re twenty.

None came. Not immediately. A silence stretched between them, Holly’s eyes swimming with emotions that for once – for the first time ever – she wasn’t articulating. The silence was worse than any harsh rebuke. Tara felt it was like watching a rainstorm sweeping over distant fields, seeing it coming her way, knowing that she couldn’t outrun it.

‘So what about this?’ Holly asked quietly, carefully, her arm sweeping in an arc around them, gesticulating to the park but meaning London, their medical degrees, their lives here.

‘Well,’ Tara said slowly. ‘I’ve been thinking it all through and I’m going to take a sabbatical after our summer exams. The timing will work quite well. I’ll be seven months along by then. I can rest up for the last few weeks before the birth