Her Perfect Family by Driscoll Teresa

Author:Driscoll, Teresa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2021-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

THE DAUGHTER – BEFORE

Explore the relationship between fiction and metaphysics and/or ethics in any work by D. H. Lawrence.

Today has been just awful. The worst.

When I woke up and set off, I really was clinging to the hope there’s an explanation; that ‘S’ has been telling me the truth and there’s a reason he’s not been in touch.

Over the last couple of days, after the second (and third) pregnancy test came back positive, I tried again and again to arrange to meet him, but he just didn’t answer my texts. We keep messages to a minimum, obviously, and always delete them straight away, but he’s normally pretty quick to reply so this really threw me.

These days we meet off campus – a small, low-key hotel somewhere. It’s become too risky to meet up in his office as most students don’t see their tutors very often – if at all – so ‘S’ has been worried someone would notice me coming and going. I’ve finished the module he was teaching so technically I have no call to see him, except in that ‘tutor’ capacity, and he says it would arouse suspicion to use that card too frequently.

He normally texts the name of a hotel, different each time, and I meet him in the room. Not in the bar, in case we get unlucky and anyone sees us. To be perfectly honest, I’ve hated this because it feels sort of dirty and seedy and underhand. And yeah – I get that an affair with a married man is, in theory, dirty and seedy and underhand but I’ve always told myself it’s not like that with us because his marriage is over anyway.

In the end, I realised there must be something wrong with his phone. I couldn’t find him around campus, not at all, and so I did something really risky. I’d already checked out where he lived online. Nosy. Jealous? Curious. Call it whatever you like, I couldn’t resist seeing what his house was like. I found him on the electoral register and I used Google Earth to look at the place. Big red-brick affair with bay windows. Lovely actually. I got this horrible pang of proper, full-on jealousy when I first saw it. I suppose I’ve put the fact he’s married in a box that I try not to think about. Looking at the house made it real, but then I remembered how he described his marriage – as like a prison, a place he just couldn’t yet escape – and so I realised it was important not to over-think it all. I haven’t forgotten that’s what ‘A’ said I always do.

Over-think things.

I tried to put the house out of my mind but when ‘S’ didn’t answer my texts, I couldn’t help myself. I started to look on Google Earth more and more. I started to fantasise. To imagine us in a red-brick house with our baby. I started to tell myself that, yes, ‘S’ would be a little shocked when he found out about the pregnancy, but ultimately he would be supportive.

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