‘No!’ said Lizzie. ‘It’s my problem to sort out, not his.’
Her father gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘Don’t tell me. You’ve got in with a lot of women’s libbers while you were in London!’
‘It does take two to make a baby, Elizabeth,’ said her mother. ‘You can’t take responsibility for it all on your own.’
Lizzie felt a pang of guilt. This was true and in any other circumstances – particularly if the circumstances involved someone other than her – she’d wholeheartedly agree. ‘I’m sorry but I’m not telling him.’
‘If you don’t it’s Cousin Margaret and the Mother and Baby Home,’ said her father.
‘Maybe you should write to Cousin Margaret and see what she thinks before you send me off there,’ said Lizzie. ‘Although I’m not going into any home.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told, my girl!’ said her father. ‘You’ve been spoilt all your life, been given everything, and now you’ll obey us! And as for this “nottelling the father” nonsense, you’ll stay in your room until you do tell him!’
Lizzie could feel everyone, including herself, getting angry and outraged in a way that was far from helpful. ‘Daddy! We’re not living in a Victorian melodrama! You can’t lock me in my room. I’m not a child.’ She didn’t think this was the moment to point out that she and her friend had once tried climbing out of her window and back in again and had done it quite easily. It would create more unhappiness and upset.
‘I’ll do what I like in my house, young lady! And you’ll obey the rules while you’re under my roof!’
‘Daddy, I know I’ve got pregnant, but I haven’t broken any rules,’ she said gently. ‘Supposing I’d been a widow? How would you treat me then?’
Lizzie’s mother became a bit misty-eyed. ‘I wouldn’t wish that on you, darling, but it would be quite different. You’d live here with us and we’d help you bring up the baby.’ Her mother seemed quite taken with this idea.
‘Well, couldn’t we just pretend? I could live with you here for a bit – get a job – work until I can’t any more …’
In fact she intended to go back to London as soon as she could – tomorrow morning probably – but she felt she ought to make sure her parents wouldn’t look after her before she put her friends in a positionwhere they had to. After all, although no one ever spoke about it, they all knew that staying in Alexandra’s house couldn’t go on for ever. Her relations could turn up at any moment and turn all Alexandra’s lodgers out.
‘You are not going into town!’ Her misty-eyed mother had turned back into a strict headmistress. ‘I’m not having you flaunting your condition in front of all my friends!’
‘Mummy! Can you tell I’m pregnant just by looking at me? Really?’
‘Of course not, it’s far too soon,’ said her mother crossly.
‘So, while it doesn’t show, I could get a little job—’
‘No,’ said the Voice of Doom that was her father. ‘Certainly not. You can live here until it’s convenient for you to go north to Cousin Margaret, or you decide to come to your senses and tell the father. But you’re not going out!’
Lizzie sighed. ‘Daddy, be sensible now. I am an adult. I know I won’t be getting the “key to the door” for a couple more years yet, but are you really expecting me to stay inside the house for the next six months? It would mean I could never do the shopping for Mummy, or pop to the shop if we run out of something.’ Lizzie would have liked to be able to specify the something but her mother was a very efficient shopper who bought the same things every week. She never ran out of anything. ‘I mightneed to buy Mummy a box of Maltesers. You know she loves them.’
Lizzie’s parents looked at each other, trying to have a silent conversation about how to deal with their disappointing child. It was going to be hard to put up a united front when they couldn’t discuss it.
‘I think it would be all right if she went to the local shop, don’t you? Before she starts showing?’ said her mother.
‘She’ll be up north long before there’s any sign of a baby!’ said her father. He wasn’t ready to make any concessions yet.
‘Shall I make some more tea?’ suggested Lizzie, hoping that if she gave them some privacy her mother might be able to get her father to soften a bit.
‘No thank you!’ said her father, unusually outraged at such a harmless suggestion. ‘You know perfectly well that too much tea stops your mother sleeping! Not that she’ll be doing much of that anyway, now she’s found out about your condition.’
‘OK. I’ll do the washing-up then. Excuse me, you two,’ said Lizzie and left the room.
She made sure the kitchen was as her mother liked it, and that everything was put away in the places that hadn’t altered in her lifetime (although some of them were not very convenient). Lizzie realised it would take her parents years to get overthe shock of her being unmarried and pregnant. She had to leave as quickly as possible. And although she desperately wanted to be on the early train tomorrow, she felt this would be a bit unkind. And the news was still very fresh; maybe a couple of days seeing that Lizzie was still the same daughter they had always loved would soften them a little.
But if Lizzie had imagined her parents would relent a bit she was wrong; they remained resolutely furious. And after two days of being shunned and shouted at in turns she made a decision. She packed a few extra things into her case, found her Post Office book in her mother’s bureau, wrote a message for her mother in a Waverley notelet (a touching picture of a foal sitting in a field of poppies), apologising yet again for her condition and explaining that she’d taken the train back to London, and left the house very early the next day.
‘They want me to go and stay with a cousin I’ve never met and then go into a Mother and Baby Home. They’ll take away my baby,’ said Lizzie when she’d arrived back in Belgravia, while David made her breakfast.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Alexandra. She sat down next to Lizzie, wearing a man’s dressing gown made out of silk. ‘We’ll think of something. You keep calm. We won’t let you go into a Mother and Baby Home.’
‘It’s earning my keep I’m worrying about,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’ll need to save up for when I can’t work. And I know I can’t depend on staying here for ever.’
