The Secret Path

by Karen Swan

  Tara took another sip of her coffee, the steam swirling in the cold air. Holly was having her signature hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles, the first of her many daily sugar hits.

  ‘And what did he say then?’ Tara asked, as Holly drew breath. Her friend was in the midst of a protracted breakup with Dev, a radiographer in Oncology. What had started as a drunken hook-up in the Irish bar just down from St Mary’s hospital had become a more regular arrangement, and it had all been going well for several months till Dev had surprised her by clearing a drawer for her. Holly had reacted by walking out. Cue reams of anguished texts and some excellent make-up sex. The drawer had been hurriedly restuffed with mismatched sports socks and the tall can of athlete’s foot spray, but the damage had been done – Dev wanted commitment, and Holly wanted out.

  ‘He said I’ve got abandonment issues!’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘I mean, please. I said to him, don’t you push your clichés onto me. Not everyone whose mother walks out falls apart, you know. Some of us pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and do even fucking better than we would have done if she’d bloody stayed.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Holly muttered something unintelligible under her breath. ‘I really mean it this time. I told him in no uncertain terms last night that we are done.’

  ‘Your terms are never uncertain, Hols.’

  ‘Right?’ Holly asked indignantly.

  ‘But you still slept with him?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. He looked really sad. You know those puppy-dog eyes he gets . . .’

  ‘I do. So cute.’

  Holly sighed. ‘But anyway, he knows that’s it now. I can’t be distracted by this kind of drama. I swear – no more men for me for a bit.’

  ‘Good idea. Take some time out, let everything settle.’

  Behind them, coming up the sandy path, the Household Cavalry was going through its drills, the clatter of brass breastplates and highly polished weaponry and the steady drumbeat of hooves drawing ever closer.

  Tara took another sip of coffee as they turned down West Carriage Drive, heading for the rush-hour stampede along Kensington Gore.

  ‘And I suppose you had another night of beautiful lovemaking with Pretty Boy?’

  Tara grinned. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Ugh, you’re nauseating. It’s completely contemptible, all this unblemished happiness. And . . . and it’s boring, actually. Where are the highs, if there are never any lows?’

  ‘In bed,’ Tara shrugged.

  ‘Oh shut up! Come on, you’ve got to give me something – a chink in the armour. No one’s life is this perfect.’

  Tara thought for a moment. ‘Well, he cooked me chicken risotto for dinner and if I’m being really honest . . . it was a little dry.’

  Holly’s lip curled. ‘That’s it? That’s your chink?’

  ‘Make way for the Blues and Royals!’ The warning call from the Horse Master meant the cavalry was almost upon them now and they automatically moved out of the way, standing patiently on the sidelines as several hundred tonnes of glistening horses trotted past, the soldiers dressed in full regalia of shiny buttons and sharp spurs, red full-length cavalry coats, extravagant gold silky plumes swaying from their helmets. It was the same routine every morning, a part of their commute to lectures, but the thrill never diminished. This was also a wholly British thing – that and the torturous politeness Alex found so baffling – and a smile escaped her as she remembered his proposal last night. How a joke had turned into something profound and life-changing . . .

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ Holly asked, noticing how her friend was staring into space, biting down on the rim of her KeepCup. ‘One of them tip you a wink, did they? Rascals!’ she laughed as the soldiers passed by, stares dead ahead and impassive.

  Tara turned to face her. ‘Alex proposed last night.’

  Holly’s jaw dropped open. It was like watching a trapdoor fall. ‘. . . What?’

  Tara nodded. ‘I know, I can’t believe it either. It was all such a surprise. For him too. He hadn’t planned it.’ Holly was staring at her, open-mouthed. Carefully, Tara pushed her friend’s jaw back up again. ‘Well, say something!’

  ‘What the actual fuck?’ The teasing quality in Holly’s voice had disappeared and now reverberated, hollow with shock.

  Tara hesitated. ‘. . . Say something else.’

  ‘Tits!’

  One of the gold plumes twitched in their direction. Tits was her friend’s unique nickname for her, combined from her initials, TT, and not because she was especially well endowed. No one else called her by it – they didn’t dare – and it was reserved for moments of either extreme happiness or extreme annoyance. From the look on Holly’s face . . .

  ‘He asked you to marry him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’re twenty.’

  ‘You make that sound like twelve.’

  ‘It basically is.’ They stared at one another, the moment becoming ever more awkward as Holly’s lack of instinctive joy grew more apparent. She gave a short, hollow laugh as she realized it too. ‘I mean . . . I’m happy for you, of course I am.’

  Tara blinked at the weak lie. Her friend sounded like she was being strangled and even her distinctive fiery red corkscrew curls were beginning to look a little limp.

  ‘A-and you . . . clearly fancy the pants off each other,’ she stammered. ‘And he makes you laugh. You’re always laughing.’

  Tara frowned. ‘But?’

  Holly’s shoulders slumped. ‘Why can’t you wait? Even if you weren’t going to be a child-bride, you’ve still only been together a few months.’

  Tara could only shrug. ‘Neither one of us ever planned on getting married so young. I totally expected to be in my thirties, but it’s turned out how they say in books – when you know, you know. Really, the question to us is – why wait?’

  ‘Because you’re twenty.’

  ‘You said that already. I don’t think our age is that big a deal,’ Tara said calmly, but her heart was pounding. Holly’s reaction had been completely unexpected. She had known it would be a shock – as it had been for her – but her friend’s clear reservations about it, her inability to convincingly pretend that this was a good idea . . .

  They walked in silence for a while, each lost in their own conflicted thoughts. ‘And there you were, letting me bang on about Dev,’ Holly muttered. She gave a little frown. ‘How did he take it when you told him he’s going to be Mr Tara Tremain? And don’t tell me he’s completely fine with it,’ she said sternly. ‘He might have that sexy, dishevelled vibe going on, but the guy’s also got ego.’

  Tara swallowed. ‘Well, actually, I haven’t told him that bit yet.’

  ‘Still?’ Holly’s voice scaled up two octaves. ‘I don’t get it! What exactly are you waiting for?’

  ‘The right time.’

  Holly raised an eyebrow again. ‘And that moment where the two of you decided to join your lives together for all eternity – that wasn’t the right time?’

  Tara winced. ‘I know. I fumbled the bag, I should have told him then.’

  ‘Duh!’

  ‘It was just all happening so fast. I didn’t want to . . . spoil the moment.’

  ‘Yeah, because discovering your future father-in-law is actually a billionaire is what everyone calls having a bad day.’

  Tara jogged her friend with her elbow just as Holly went to take another sip, so that a smudge of whipped cream moustached her top lip. ‘I’ve told you before, it complicates things.’ Although she’d never told Holly just how much. She preferred not to remember the time her best friend at boarding school had been selling stories about her to the press, or how the girls in her dorm had thought it funny to steal an item from her every day because ‘she 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 w
eeks 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 and then come back in September next year.’

  ‘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.’