Hidden Cottage by Erica James Page A

‘Just a little. What time is the party?’
    ‘It’s started already. I’m late. I was trying to finish an essay and lost track of the time.’
    ‘What are you studying?’
    ‘French.’
    ‘I’m impressed.’
    She dug around in her bag for her purse. ‘I must pay you.’
    ‘Must you? Why not pay me in kind by having a drink with me?’
    ‘But the party . . . I’m already late.’
    ‘Then why not give it a miss altogether and have dinner with me instead?’
    ‘Dinner?’
    ‘I know a particularly good French restaurant in Clifton. You could help me with the menu.’
    ‘I don’t think you need help with anything.’
    ‘Now you’re teasing me . Come on, have dinner with me. You look like you could do with feeding up. No wonder the man in the off-licence thought you were underage – there’s not a spare ounce on you.’
    ‘But I don’t know you. I can’t have dinner with a total stranger.’
    ‘I promise you, I’m not a danger to you. I’ll be the perfect gentleman at all times, and what’s more I’ll drive you back to wherever you live afterwards. Come on, live a little. Have some fun.’
    How could she refuse such a gauntlet? Especially as she hadn’t really been looking forward to the party. Dinner at a French restaurant in Clifton sounded a much better evening.
    His car – a burgundy-coloured sports car – was parked a few yards up the road and after he’d helped her in and he was behind the steering wheel, she thought of her father’s Volvo Estate and said, ‘I’ve never been in a car like this before. What is it?’
    ‘It’s a Jensen Interceptor. A classic.’
    ‘Are you rich?’
    He laughed. ‘No. But I fully intend to be.’
    He kept his promise that evening; he behaved impeccably and asked if he could take her out for dinner again when he was back from a business trip up north. She agreed and found herself counting the days until she saw him next. From then on she saw him as often as she could.
    He was a man of grand romantic gestures, but lacked what she would later discern as any romantic sensibility. He took her to London, to expensive restaurants. He bought her clothes. Grown-up clothes, he called them. She started wearing make-up, something she had never done before. Her studies suffered. But she didn’t care. She was happy. Happier than she’d ever been. She felt so alive. And in love. In love with a man who in all truth wasn’t exactly handsome, but his attraction lay in his ceaseless energy and absolute certainty that he knew exactly where he was going. When he agreed to meet her parents – their prejudice against him was subsequently confirmed on sight and he was dismissed as brash and too full of himself – she knew that he was as committed to her as she was to him.
    Six months after meeting she was pregnant, and that’s when she realized he wasn’t as committed as she’d believed. ‘You can’t keep the baby,’ he’d said matter-of-factly. ‘You have to get rid of it. You’re much too young to have a child. And what about your degree?’
    ‘I don’t care about my degree. I want to have your baby. I love you, Jeff. I want us to be together.’
    ‘I love you too, Mia, but this is all wrong. I can’t be a father yet. I’m not ready.’
    And to prove it, he left her. He gave her money, promised to send her money regularly in the post, but she couldn’t expect any more than that from him.
    By rights she should have hated him. But she didn’t. She didn’t have that kind of energy to waste on him – she was too mired in shock and shame. Even then, 1982, girls of her class and background didn’t end up pregnant: they were meant to be smarter than that. There was a moment when she really did think that the only answer was to do as Jeff had said: get rid of the baby. But an abortion? How did one go about it? She knew nothing of such things. So, as absurd as it now sounds, she tried the cliché of sitting in a hot bath while drinking lots and lots of gin. All