TWELVE

      Anneliese had changed the sheets in the spare bedroom for Beth and Marcus. She’d tidied and polished, and had even roused herself enough to buy fresh flowers for the house to lift the place somewhat. There was only one big housekeeping screw-up and that was that Beth’s father no longer lived there.

      Anneliese hadn’t the energy to practise telling her daughter the news. Goodness knows, she’d tried.

      Darling Beth, your father and I have decided…

      That wouldn’t work because it wasn’t true.

      She hadn’t decided anything, it had been decided for her. Try as she might, she couldn’t put a Beth-friendly spin on this one.

      Your father dumped me after having an affair with my so-called best friend sounded too like a television true-life confession. All she needed was a studio audience and an eager host with a microphone and a faux-worried manner and her spiel would be perfect. So no, that wouldn’t work either.

      Blunt was going to be the only answer. When Beth arrived, eager to see them, her father’s absence would start a conversation rolling. Anneliese wished Edward was the sort of man who’d be able to tell their daughter the news, but she knew he wasn’t. All the difficult talks in their house had been left to his wife.

      Beth and Marcus were due in Tamarin at lunchtime, so Anneliese had cold chicken and salad ready for them and had tried to buoy herself up to deal with her daughter’s tears.

      But when she heard Beth’s key in the door a little after one o’clock, Anneliese wished she could run away.

      Why hadn’t bloody Edward found the courage to phone his daughter and tell her…?

      ‘Mum!’

      Beth stood in the kitchen doorway, her dark hair framing her face, and Anneliese instantly realised that her daughter knew.

      ‘Dad told me this morning,’ Beth said.

      ‘Ah,’ Anneliese replied flatly. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I wanted to tell you and I didn’t know how.’

      ‘Mum, this happened ten days ago and you never said anything. Why didn’t you tell me when you rang to say Lily was in hospital?’

      Anneliese had no answer. Fear, she supposed: fear of falling apart when she told Beth the news and fear that if she began to fall apart, she wouldn’t stop. For a woman who’d tried to face life head on, this avoidance tactic felt strange but also, weirdly, like the only option.

      Beth was still raging on. ‘If I hadn’t rung on his mobile this morning asking if he wanted anything from Dublin before we came, I still wouldn’t know. I found out by fluke! Dad assumed I knew and hadn’t been phoning him on purpose. Did you ever plan on telling me? You’re my parents, I love you. I could have come, you needed me, you both needed me, what with Lily being sick and everything.’

      Anneliese smiled, Beth had always been a fair person. Even now, in the midst of her anger, she was gently telling her mother that she loved her dad too, that she wouldn’t be a pawn in any game between them.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ Anneliese said, ‘there are no sides, Beth, you know us better than that. There’s no battle, no fight for your feelings. It’s not the sort of news you can say over the phone, is it?’

      ‘Of course it is. You could have told me when you phoned about Lily being sick, couldn’t you?’ Beth demanded. ‘I would have come right down.’

      Anneliese was about to say how she hadn’t wanted to worry Beth, but Beth was too angry now and interrupted her.

      ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you’d split up. You’re my parents, I have a right to know. You always think I’m weak and stupid, that I’m not able to cope with stuff and you can’t rely on me.’

      She looked so furious that Anneliese reeled back in shock.

      ‘I just didn’t want to hurt you.’ And I was hurting inside, Anneliese thought.

      ‘Life hurts people, Mum,’ Beth yelled. ‘Life hurts us all. You think you’re in charge of it, you can control the hurt, but you can’t. Lots of things hurt me and I have to deal with them, you’re not in charge of them. Have you any idea how hurtful it is to find that you and Dad have split up and nobody told me? I bet you don’t. But I know exactly why you were waiting till I got here to break the news to me. Because you were working out how to tell me, is that it?’

      ‘Beth –’ said Marcus. He was hovering in the kitchen doorway, as if waiting for the row to blow over before he came in properly.

      ‘I’m sorry, Marcus, I have to say this,’ Beth said. ‘It’s gone on too long. Stop controlling me, Mum. I’m not a child.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Anneliese said and she felt as if the ground had been ripped away from under her feet. Beth didn’t seem to understand that she was in pain and shock. No, Anneliese, who had always been in control, must still be in control in Beth’s eyes. Somehow, she’d also been cast as the villain of the piece. She hadn’t broken up the family; Edward had, but she was the one getting shouted at. She’d hoped that she might get some sympathy from her daughter. ‘It hasn’t been easy for me.’

      ‘I could have helped,’ shouted Beth.

      You’re not helping by screaming at me, Anneliese wanted to yell right back but she didn’t. She never yelled at her daughter.

      ‘But you didn’t give me the chance to be there for you. You are so controlling, Mum!’

      ‘I wasn’t trying to control things,’ Anneliese said with absolute honesty. Or at least, the only controlling she’d been doing was trying to keep her own life under some control so she wouldn’t fall apart.

      ‘Yes you were,’ Beth interrupted. ‘This is all about controlling how you told me, Mum. Please, give me some credit for understanding you. I’m not a child any more, I have to face things, OK? And if you’d told me when it happened, that would be better, because then I wouldn’t have to get all this information on the day when I want to tell you something very special. But you’ve ruined it now.’

      ‘What?’ breathed Anneliese.

      ‘I’m pregnant,’ Beth said. ‘Three months. Marcus and I are going to have a baby.’ She laughed, but there was no humour in her laugh. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you until I’d passed the three months’ mark and knew everything was all right. You see, Mum, you’ve brought me up perfectly! You tell me nothing because you don’t want to worry me and I tell you nothing because I don’t want to worry you. We’re a fabulous family. No wonder Dad left.’

      It was like being shot, Anneliese thought. She’d never experienced a bullet, but she imagined it must feel the same, that sudden arc of pain and weakness and the feeling of blood draining out of your body and everything going dark. How could Beth say that about Edward? Like it