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

‘No. I’ll have another night off tonight, I think. More tests coming up. I need to keep a clear head.’

‘Okay.’ And he sank her glass whilst still holding his own.

She watched, seeing anger still in his movements. He definitely looked wired, his eyes a bit too bright, and she knew he’d had a tough day. He never moaned, not really, but he often struggled with the politics of academia; it frustrated him, a self-titled ‘farm boy’ who just wanted to leave the world a better place than he had found it. He didn’t engage in power plays, didn’t care which of them Hamlyn bought a coffee for. Tara had never met anyone with more passion to learn, act and make a difference – not even Holly could match him for drive – and it was one of the things she loved most about him. But she was beginning to sense it wouldn’t always make him easy to live with. There was still so much they had to learn about one another, and a tiny voice in her head wondered if Holly been right. Were they rushing into this? Was it all far too much, far too soon?

He caught her watching him as he drained his own glass too – a very tough day, then – and he startled, as if embarrassed, remembering himself. He leaned forward to kiss her again, his lips soft against hers, tasting now of Chablis. She felt his tongue lightly against her lips and her stomach fluttered, butterfly-like, in response. It was always so easy to fall into one another. A default option. Their ‘factory settings’, he had joked once.

She put her hand on his chest, pushing him away lightly. ‘Why don’t you go and have a shower? Unwind a bit. This’ll be ready in five.’

His smile was grateful. ‘Thanks, baby. I just need to . . .’ He gave a shudder as though trying to physically cast off the day’s tests. He was trying so hard to be his usual loving self, but he was as tightly wound as a spring.

‘I know.’

He kissed her once more lightly, before walking through to the bedroom at the back. She watched him go, loving the breadth of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips. He was always so unaware of the physical impression he made – growing up without TV or internet meant he had no interest in how he looked; good or bad, it was all the same to him – and Tara was pretty sure part of James MacLennan’s rancour towards him was thwarted lust. Alex Carter had the charisma to make anyone fall in love with him: man, woman, young, old.

The extractor fan had stopped working at some point in the noughties, and she opened the window to let the steam escape as the steak sizzled on the heat, pausing a moment to glance over the patchwork of gardens below. A wooden swing with red abacus beads hung limply from the branch of a crab apple tree in the garden opposite theirs; Bumpy, the cockapoo two houses up, was racing around the small garden in frenzied loops; a grey squirrel leaped from the branch of a horse chestnut to a silver birch, straddling No. 24 and No. 26 Tor Gardens in one graceful jump. She gave a small smile. The Sumatran rainforest it might not be, but they still had a mini paradise outside their window.

She caught herself. Their window. So would she move in here with him, then? They hadn’t discussed specifics yet, but that was the intimation. The flat she shared a mile and a half away in Bayswater with Holly was a study in student grot. It looked onto a laundrette at the front and the bins of the Chinese restaurant at the back, and she was woken every morning by the dawn delivery lorry to the Polish store four numbers down. There was mildew in the shower, the kitchen sink was stained, the tap leaked – dripping noisily all day and night – and the cracks in the walls seemed more substantial than ‘settlement’ to her eye. Nonetheless, it had been her choice to live there and, in an odd way, she loved it. She and Holly had chosen it together, before Tara had admitted the truth about her family’s wealth, and it was all Holly could afford. Once she did find out, Holly had spent a year alternately pleading with her not to ‘sacrifice herself’ to their subpar accommodation and berating Tara for not having come clean earlier and put them up in a Hyde Park penthouse. She had been fully incredulous at Tara’s insistence that she wanted to be there. That she liked being normal.

Alex’s flat – a grace-and-favour residence in the gift of the university – was still tiny but it had two bedrooms at least (although one was so small she was certain she’d received bigger Amazon boxes) and it came up well after a clean. But perhaps they would get somewhere new, somewhere they would start afresh as a family?

Her hands fell to her tummy again – a fresh habit. She smoothed it tenderly, still so flat. She wasn’t showing at all although her breasts were more tender and the nausea was beginning to steadily dial up. Alex hadn’t noticed yet that she’d found excuses not to drink alcohol for the past couple of weeks – a test the next day, a headache – but he soon would. He had an eye for detail, and she felt a twinge of guilt to be keeping it a secret from him still. It felt like a deception somehow, almost a theft, but Holly’s reaction that morning had startled her. There was no guarantee he would take the news of imminent parenthood well and she had to be prepared for another bad response. She had to judge the right moment to tell him.

She was dressing the salad when Alex came back a few minutes later, towelling his wet hair and wearing just