Free The Child's Child by Barbara Vine

Looking at James’s handsome, sensitive face, pale again, I felt for the first time that I hoped it would. “I even hope she or he will. As for you, tell me if I’m wrong, it may be your only chance of being a father. And I’m Andrew’s sister, which makes the baby halfway to being his as well. You see I’ve thought of all these things.”
    “I’ll get the coffee,” he said, and when he came back with it, I saw his hands were shaking. The tray was shuddering in his trembling hands. I took it from him, set it down, wished it had a hefty shot of brandy in it, that alcohol I’d made myself give up for the next seven months. “I don’t think Andrew will see it that way,” he said. “Another possible lie is that it was a sperm donation.”
    That made me laugh, though I didn’t feel much like laughing. “Wouldn’t we have asked his permission first?”
    Another silence fell. I drank the coffee, which was strong, and asked myself if it could be good for the baby. Apart from eschewingalcohol, this was the first time I had such a thought, but it wouldn’t be the last.
    “Do you want me to tell him?”
    I said that I couldn’t leave it to him, but that we should both tell him together, all three of us together. This was a gross mistake on my part, but I didn’t see it at the time. James sat in silence, and for a while he closed his eyes, then made a gargantuan effort to change the subject, asked me about my thesis, which I told him I sent off two weeks before. He obviously was in shock.
    “I’m sorry, Grace. I’m trying hard to get off the subject, but I just come back to you and me and Andrew. Would you mind leaving me alone now to think about it?”
    So of course I left him alone and went outside and sat in the garden. It was a lovely day, and though I thought I ought to be unhappy and anxious, I was not, not a bit. The second flowering of the roses had come, and the hollyhocks and Anemone japonica were out. The sun was warm but not hot, and I lay back and lifted my face to the clear, still light. For some unknown but surely stupid reason, I felt sure things would be all right. Forget all ideas about an abortion. How could I have considered it? I was going to have a baby, and it was going to make me so happy.
    That theory of mine about the baby’s being halfway to Andrew’s as well because I was his sister still seemed sound. Both James and I would be blamed at first, but Andrew would get over that. James would be the dad ( father is becoming an obsolete word, as mother is), and Andrew would be his or her uncle. Nothing wrong with that. We would be a family. I smiled up at the sun, not seeing what a crass fool I was being or how I would caution or even reprimand any friend who said things like that to me of her own experience.
    “N O WORRIES ” is what people say today, and for lots it means “thank you.” I think it started in Australia, though I’m not at all sure about that. When I was a child, it used to be “no problem.” Anyway, having told James and not having been denounced or made to feel wicked (another word I use in its correct sense), I had no worries apart from a little, niggling fear that my thesis might not meet with wholehearted approval. Well, of course it wouldn’t, I would have to defend it, but no real worries.
    That afternoon I was going to have a look at the Grand Union Canal and try to match it up with the descriptions in The Child’s Child . So after lunch I went out and got on the 46 bus, which took me to Maida Vale. As in Martin Greenwell’s book, the canal was coated with bright green weed, a kind of algae, I supposed. Why it was there or where it came from I didn’t know, but I’d seen it before and knew it might all be gone by tomorrow. Quite a lot of people were about, so I walked along the canal bank on the south side for a while, but past the second bridge and the pub that used to be called the Paddington Stop, I left it and walked up to the path that runs along