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

‘But you won’t.’ Holly’s voice was abrupt, her tone flat, the words final.

‘Hols, I will.’

‘You’re telling me you’re going to go straight from months without sleep, into night shifts, ward rounds, fifteen hours on your feet?’

Tara swallowed. ‘Yes.’

‘No. It’s not gonna happen. Face facts – this is an either-or situation. If you have this baby, then you can’t have that career. It demands too much of you. You can’t have both, no one can.’

‘That’s not true. Plenty of women are doctors and mothers.’

‘Not at twenty they’re not.’

There they were – the words that repeated again and again why this was all wrong. Doomed to failure. A disaster of epic proportions.

‘. . . Five years down the line – fine, if that’s your bag. But you’re not even out of the starters’ block.’ Holly stared at her flatly. ‘What does Alex say about it?’

Tara could hardly bear to see the disappointment in her friend’s eyes; she couldn’t think of the counter-arguments she had rehearsed in her head. She hesitated. ‘He doesn’t know yet.’

‘Fucking hell, Ta!’ In a flash, Holly sounded angry. ‘So you’ve agreed to marry the guy but he doesn’t know who you really are, or that you’re pregnant with his kid?’

Tara felt panicked. Everything was going wrong. She hadn’t imagined it going like this. Surprise, yes, but then hugs, excited squeals, a rush of plans. ‘I didn’t know he was going to propose!’ she replied defensively. ‘I told you, it all just happened on the spur of the moment. I’d been building up to telling him about the baby last night, but then when he asked me to marry him . . . it was sort of a joke, but then not . . . I worried that telling him I was pregnant too, there and then, might have made it feel a bit . . . shotgun?’

‘But he asked you without knowing about the pregnancy,’ Holly said flatly. ‘Ta, you are making this harder than it needs to be and you should be asking yourself why. Either you trust the guy or you don’t.’

‘I do! There’s no question of it.’

‘Then stop keeping secrets from him! These are things he deserves to know!’

Tara’s shoulders slumped. It was all true. ‘You’re right. I’ll tell him about the family tonight and the baby later in the week.’

‘What’s wrong with doing it all tonight? He’s about to find out his future parents-in-law are billionaires. You may as well throw imminent fatherhood into the mix as well.’

‘No, I . . . I want to be sure he’s marrying me because he loves me, not because he feels trapped by me.’

‘So you don’t trust him.’

‘I do! It’s just . . .’ She felt exasperated. ‘Ugh. I know it’s hard to understand but I just instinctively feel I need to deal with one thing at a time – my family isn’t normal, no matter how much I wish it was. It’ll be a shock for him to find out who we are. He should meet my parents first and have the big chat with my dad. Get that done and out of the way. Then we can deal with the rest.’

Holly leaned on the railings, her gaze on the parked-up pedalos on the opposite shore. She was biting her lip, looking pale.

Tara took her arm gently. ‘Please be happy for me, Hols. You’re the only person I’ve told.’

Holly looked back at her. ‘I want to be, really I do. But how can I lie when I think you’re making the biggest mistake of your life? What sort of friend would I be?’

‘You could be a lying friend.’

Holly turned to face her. ‘No, I can’t be that. You’re being naive about what this will mean for you. Getting married’s one thing – I think you’re mad to be committing the rest of your life to this guy you just met when you haven’t even properly left home yet! – but hey, it’s reversible. Things don’t work out, you get a divorce, carry on.’ She shook her head. ‘But you can’t do that with a baby. This is a deal-breaker. You’re going to have to give up the one thing that you said defines you.’ Holly leaned closer to her now. ‘When we first met, you told me medicine was your way to give back and be separate from your family. You said it gave you purpose and that it’s all you’ve ever wanted to do since you were six. You never once said you wanted to be married with a kid at twenty-one.’ She paused to draw breath. ‘Alex is cute – but, Ta, no one’s that cute.’

Tara felt her stomach swoop and fall at her friend’s brutal frankness. It was everything she had told herself since that dark blue line had shown up on the pregnancy stick; all her own doubts voiced.

‘You had that plan, remember? You wanted to get your dad to help you build those mother and child health clinics in every country that had communities living off grid – no power, no running water. You said if you could protect and empower the women—’

‘I know what I said,’ Tara interrupted, not wanting to hear it.

Holly stared at her with a look of sadness. ‘Coming from anyone else, it was pie in the sky. But you? You actually could have done it! You told me it was your way of justifying being so lucky; you said your mother couldn’t understand why you’d want a career and that you had to fight to get them to allow you to go to uni at all. And now you’re just giving all that up for a guy you’ve known for less than six months?’

Tears pricked at Tara’s eyes. She felt there was a weight pressing on her chest. ‘We love each other.’ It was a feeble argument, but all she could muster. She could feel Holly already withdrawing from her, as if they were two boats on separate tides, and she realized how much they had been bonded by their mutual ambition: the princess and the pauper who both wanted the