The Will by Rebecca Reid

Author:Rebecca Reid [Reid, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473578401
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2022-11-03T04:00:00+00:00

1981

The holidays used to be fun. Elspeth would get back from school and turn the music up as loud as she could in her bedroom, and then pour herself a huge gin and tonic, smoke one of Cecily’s cigarettes and have an hour-long bath. Then, she and Grant and David would hole up in the library to watch whatever programmes had been verboten at school, which Violet would have diligently recorded for them. But now, David was off at university and Grant was always staying with friends.

She’d arrived for the summer holidays, dumped her stuff in her bedroom and realized that she had absolutely no idea how she was going to fill the next six weeks. Though, she thought, once she’d told her mother her news, she didn’t imagine there would be much in terms of shopping trips and mother–daughter lunches. She shoved her clean clothes in her chest of drawers and everything else in the laundry basket for someone else to deal with. Then she went downstairs.

‘Can I help with supper?’ she asked.

Cecily looked surprised. ‘It’s just the two of us this evening. Violet is visiting a friend and your father is still in London. I thought we’d just have some fish and a salad.’

The word ‘fish’ made Elspeth feel a bit queasy, but anything from Roxborough would be better than the plates of grey misery she’d been eating at school for the last term. Elspeth finely chopped half a red onion on a wooden board, sitting at the kitchen table. She watched as her mother poured a glass of wine. ‘Do you want one?’

Elspeth shook her head. They worked in silence for a while. Elspeth wondered whether she could put the radio on or whether that would make things feel more awkward.

‘How’s school?’ her mother asked after a while.

Elspeth made a face. ‘I hate it.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I actually really do.’

‘Well, I’m sure you won’t always hate it. You’ve only got two and a bit more years and then you can do whatever you like.’

‘Actually, Mum,’ Elspeth said, putting down the knife that she’d been using to chop tomatoes. ‘I don’t think I’m going to go back after the holidays.’

Cecily half smiled. ‘Oh no? Why not?’

‘Because I’m pregnant.’

Cecily considered her daughter for a moment, trying to work out whether this was just another test to see what her reaction would be, like the piercings and the tattoos, the aggressive atheism and the announcement that she didn’t believe in marriage. ‘I see,’ Cecily said.

Elspeth had expected Cecily to be angry. ‘So, I’m going to have a baby.’

Cecily went to the larder to get some more peppercorns to refill the pepper grinder. She said nothing.

‘Mum,’ Elspeth repeated. ‘Are you listening?’

‘The salt needs refilling too – could you fetch it?’

‘Mum. I’m pregnant.’

‘Yes, you said.’

‘Can we talk about this?’

‘What is there to talk about?’

‘About what’s going to happen next? I thought you’d be interested, that you’d want to know who the father is, how it happened. I thought you’d want to say things about how you feel about being a grandmother?’

Cecily gave a small half-laugh.

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