Free The Summer of Secrets by Alison Lucy

Claudia
    Barely any time at all elapsed between Lucy thinking that she might be pregnant and Lucy knowing that she most definitely was. It took a certain kind of girl to keep a bundle of pregnancy tests in the bathroom drawer but she had found in the past that occasionally she needed one for reassurance. In the past the tests had all been negative.
    Until today. As she stared at her positive pregnancy test, Lucy felt overcome with excitement. She was normally so careful with the rhythms of her body, finding other ways to pleasure if it was not a safe time, but that night in Mexico was different. The moonlight that bathed the island that night on the beach and the sound of waves that crashed against the shore made her wild. Danny’s touch still lingered on her skin, despite everything that had happened. Lucy was excited to have a keepsake of that night on the beach, a lovechild that would have his eyes and her thirst for adventure. But then she remembered the vow she had made. She knew what she had to do.
    Tonight she would tell her parent that she was pregnant, over dinner in a crowded restaurant.
    Mary and Patrick were divorced and the fact that she had asked to meet them both together spoke volumes. When she walked into the restaurant, she saw the flicker of disappointment that crossed her mother’s face when she saw that Lucy was alone. She knew her mother well and it was clear then that she had been expecting to meet a suitor, perhaps even a fiancé?
    She waited until dessert. She saw no reason why her father couldn’t enjoy a good meal. It was about to get uncomfortable.
    ‘I have news,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant.’
    She watched, and waited, as her words settle on them, like a cloud of explosive dust. She waited until her mother’s mouth framed a response and then she added. ‘And don’t worry, I’ve worked it all out. I’ll be giving the baby up.’
    Her father spoke first, a blustering request for clarification. ‘What do you mean, “giving the baby up.”?
    ‘For adoption, Patrick, don’t be an idiot,’ snapped her mother. ‘Of course she can’t possibly raise the child herself.’
    ‘Of course not,’ said Lucy faintly, letting another spoon of cheesecake act as a balm against the sharp words. She wanted a family one day. But not now, living halfway between Mexico City and London, no place to call her own, and she had made a solemn vow never to speak to Danny Featherbow ever again. ‘And Daddy I know how you feel about abortion.’
    Her father had tried to raise her as a strict Catholic, in the manner that he was raised, but some of the best Catholic schools all over the world, had tried and failed to get Lucy to knuckle down to a life of good thoughts and deeds.
    ‘My whole life is a good deed,’ she used to say.
    ‘Paying for your friends to go on holiday with you is not a good deed,’ said her father.
    ‘To them it is.’
    He was staring at her now across the table, fixing her with his penetrating stare while he formed a considered response. Her mother was asking predictable questions about dates and names, but as she rattled on it became clear to Lucy and her father that she was only thinking aloud, the very first things that came to mind, no actual answers were required.
    ‘This is why you brought us here to a restaurant,’ he said eventually. ‘So that we didn’t make a scene.’
    ‘Are you very upset?’
    ‘Why adoption, Lulu? You will be a good mother.’
    Her eyes flooded with tears so quickly that she was crying before she even knew his words had touched her.
    ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Not yet. I can barely look after myself.’
    She couldn’t tell him the whole truth. She didn’t want to raise Danny Featherbow’s child and be reminded every day of what she had lost. She wasn’t strong enough.
    ‘My first grandchild,’ said her father.
    ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself,’ said her mother.
    Lucy sat up straight in her chair. ‘Do you really think I would be