Free Killing a Stranger by Jane A. Adams Page B

sending her work in the hope she’d change her mind and there had been talk, for the New Year, of placing her in a specialist unit set up for girls in her position.
    â€˜In her position’, Jennifer thought. Seventeen, pregnant, disapproved of. The more so since her utter refusal to name the dad. Her own father had gone all macho on her and stormed round to the home of every boy he even suspected of looking the wrong way at her – behavior that had not exactly helped on the college front. But he had drawn a blank as she had known he would.
    After that, his fury had seemed to dissipate, transmuting, instead, into a grudgingly uncomfortable silence. He seemed, now, Jennifer thought, to be going out of his way to ignore her expanding belly, while her mother, ever the practical one, had been looking round for the best deals on baby paraphernalia. The spare room, destined to become the nursery, was already stacked with packs of nappies.
    Jennifer, hearing a car door slam, glanced out of the window, surprised she had not heard the engine. She saw her aunt get out of the car and her parents’ 4 × 4 pull round it and on to their drive.
    Jennifer sighed. She’d been spared the funeral, but the wake was going to be as bad, if not worse; relatives and friends no doubt dividing themselves into the two parental camps: ignore the fact that she was pregnant or offering unwelcome advice.
    Truthfully, Jennifer was unsure which was worse.
    The front door opened and her mother called up to her. Reluctantly, Jennifer left the sanctuary of her room. She paused on the landing, sitting for a moment on the top step to gaze down into the hall, remembering the many times she’d done that as a child, sent to bed while the family party still went on downstairs, sharing in the noise and laughter of the adults, though at one remove. As she’d got older and bedtimes been delayed, she had been allowed to share in the grown-up gossip and discovered that, in fact, it often got quite boring. Parents and relatives getting slowly more inebriated – though never to the point of disgrace; her mother would never have countenanced that – and talk turning to politics or sport or long-dead strangers that Jennifer had never known. She had, almost, longed to be back on the stairs, catching the snatches of conversation and Uncle Adam’s shouts of raucous laughter. The little treats he’d sneak out to her, while her mother pretended not to notice.
    Once, when she’d been about ten, and he more sauced than usual, he had brought her a glass of cherry brandy. Liking the taste, she’d drunk it like pop and asked him for more. She tried to recall if he’d obliged, but couldn’t. She bit her lip and fought down the urge to cry.
    Here, at the head of the stairs, she was almost on a level with the tinsel star set atop the tall tree. December the twenty-first, time to begin the celebrations and the tree had been set up as usual, delivered by the friend of her dad’s who owned the Christmas-tree farm, and set carefully in its pot guided by her father’s instructions. Even her uncle’s death was not allowed to interfere with such a family tradition.
    She and her mother had trimmed it last night ready for the arrival of today’s guests, almost as if this were just another family celebration, the usual coming together of the generations. It was possible to forget … no, not quite, seeing her mother dressed in formal black and her father in the suit that came out only on such solemn occasions and Aunt Carol’s inappropriately bright red hair covered with a sober blue scarf. No, not really possible to forget that this was not some pre-Christmas ritual, but was instead the wake for a murdered man.
    â€˜How was the funeral?’ Naomi asked.
    â€˜It was a funeral.’ Alec pulled her close and planted a kiss on her nose.
    â€˜Yeuk. Now a proper one.’ She wiped her face on his shirt.