Elizabeth Elgin - All the Sweet Promises

Richard Kendal nodded, his eyes bright with pain. ‘Perhaps you’re right. We saw it coming and we did nothing.’ He walked over to the window. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked without looking at her. ‘Mother said she thought you haven’t been looking too good lately – a bit peaky.’

She knew what he was trying to say. They thought she might be having a baby, and if she really wanted to hurt them she could tell them she might be. But all the fight had gone out of her and she was afraid. Not of having Rob’s child, but of having it without him. But Rob had said it wouldn’t happen.

‘I’m all right, Dad. Don’t worry.’ She saw kindness in his face and compassion, and she whispered, ‘I did love him so. Don’t blame us. There was so little time.’

He held out his arms then, and because she hurt so much, because she wanted to be a little girl again, she went to him and the tears came.

It was good to weep. She wept until there was nothing inside her but low, gasping sobs and her body was limp.

Her father rocked her in his arms, just as he had done when she was little, and when her mother came in with a cup of hot milk and one of her soothing tablets, she swallowed it obediently, a child again.

‘There now. It’s going to be all right.’ Her father held her tightly until her eyes began to close and from far away she heard her mother pick up the cup and saucer.

‘I think she’s asleep now. When she wakes, don’t tell her the letter has come. Leave it for a while.’

So it was here, the OHMS envelope she had dreaded. Her call-up papers had come and she must go away.

Oh, Rob, I have to leave you …

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