A Minor Indiscretion by Carole Matthews Page B

don’t. I want her to work hard and earn lots of money and be able to make informed choices about her future and have a great job that I can boast about to other mothers with less successful daughters. I don’t want her to be pregnant at sixteen and be saddled with looking after her baby while she tries to claw back some of her childhood. I want her to travel the world and break some hearts while not having hers broken in return, then I want her to meet a wonderful, financially secure, emotionally stable Ben Affleck look-alike when she’s twenty-nine and then think about having babies. Am I being unreasonable? I don’t think so. And I wish I could share this—with Tanya, with Ed, with anyone. But I can’t. No one understands me. Ed would laugh and say that I’m getting it all out of proportion just because some tight-arsed lesbian teacher who’s never had a proper job thinks it’s unusual for a fifteen-year-old to have the attention span of a flea. It’s all right for him. He was hopeless at school, did badly in all of his exams and has carved out a great career for himself in a job which he loves, through sheer determination. I worked really hard and achieved zip—unless you count a relief map of the Andes in stretch marks on my stomach.
    I crash about and put the kettle on. “Your dinner is all dried up.” I sniff. “It looks disgusting.” It looked disgusting before it dried up and it tasted fairly awful too, but I won’t tell Ed that. I’ll let him discover it for himself. He’ll eat it without complaint, because despite the fact that he has a memory like a particularly leaky sieve, he’s not a bad man.
    I watch him lift his dinner from the depths of the oven with something approaching horror. He lays it gingerly on the table. “What is it?” he says.
    â€œI can’t remember.” I put a cup of tea down next to him. “Something from Marks & Spencer. Mexican, I think. It looked okay three hours ago.”
    â€œIt looks very nice now,” he says, and my cruel, upset heart melts. “Thanks.”
    I sit down at the table opposite him. “You need to go and talk to Tanya. She’s doing really badly at school. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
    â€œCan’t you do it?”
    â€œNo, I can’t.”
    â€œYou’re so much better at it than me.” Ed is whining and I dig my heels into the kitchen floor.
    â€œYou’re the one that’s upset her.”
    â€œI’ll go up in a minute,” he promises. I hear the sigh hidden in his voice. “I’ll see to Elliott too. Where’s Thomas?”
    â€œIn bed with Harry Potter, where else?”
    Ed smiles tiredly. “Two drama queens and a pervert. We’re doing a great job.”
    â€œNo one said it would be easy.”
    He puts his fork down for a moment, and I fear he is about to abandon whatever it is I cooked for him. “No one said it would be this hard either, did they?”
    â€œNo. I guess not.”
    Sometimes I would like to stop being a parent and just walk out of the front door without thinking about anyone else. The last time I did that I was about twenty. I wonder if Ed ever feels the same? He picks up his fork again and stabs it into his food determinedly.
    â€œWhat was your meeting about?”
    Ed keeps his head over his food and takes a long time before he answers.
    â€œIt was with Orla. She’s setting up a new company.”
    I vaguely remember who Orla is and “Mmm” my interest.
    â€œAli.” Ed looks up, and his eyes are deep and distant and I can’t see what’s behind them at all. “Would you ever consider moving to the States?”
    I’m taken aback. “America?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNo.”
    Ed puts down his fork and pushes his plate away. “I thought not.” He gets up from the table. “I’ll speak to