Chapter 22: Chapter 22
The family had a hill farm in the border lands between England and Scotland made little money but her father loved it dearly.
He was happy getting up before the sun broke through, looking after stock, mending dry stone walls, injecting sheep against the dozen or so diseases they were prone to, doing all the kinds of job that needed doing on the farm at any time of the year.
Her father was a big man but though he was still tall, he now stooped. He had lived a hard life but it was the life he had chosen for himself and he never regretted it nor complained.
Sharon's mother never complained either nor gave any sign of resentment for toughness of her daily life. She worked as hard as her husband, indoors and out. She made the bread they ate, fed the hens and collected their eggs, killed them too and cooked them.
She washed the clothes and linen, ironed and baked and scrubbed and cleaned.
There was never any money and this had spurred Sharon on to achieve all she possibly could. She soon understood that if she wanted to make it in life, she had to get good grades at school. She had worked with intense concentration and got the results she needed. She had chosen banking as a career be ause she had not wanted to teach, go into law or engage in any other profession.
Her mother's brother who had been a local bank manager had encouraged her telling her that banking was the best career for girls these days.
So, she had come down to London, and got a first job here in the bank, riding with surprising speed as she realized what an aptitude she had for such a job.
She found it all so fascinating, the big bank buildings, the transfer and sale of shares, the electrifying nervous tension of the market whether good or bad, to any one who observed the day to day routine of the bank, banking might seem full but if they were in the middle of the action, then they would definitely feel the excitement and charged tension of it all.
As the years went by, she had grown away from her parents to some extent. She lived her father but she was never able to relax with him. He had tunnel vision, saw life only from one point of view.
She couldn't talk to him, he had no idea about the world she inhabited, the sort of life she lived and she was bored to death with the talk of sheep diseases a d the unending talk about the farm. They had nothing in common anymore except shared blood.
He wouldn't even accept her offer to help out financially even with the hard times they were facing. However, Sharon assured them that she could afford to send them money every month but he wouldn't accept it.
'You keep your money to yourself, girl' was all he said. After living for many years in the farm and grown used to the hard life of the farm, he had become so old fashioned and his pride would not allow him accept anything from anyone even his own daughter. He might have accepted it from a son but never from girl, definitely.
When Sharon had secretly sent some money to her mother, her father had asked her to send it back and her mother had sent it back accompanied with a short note asking Sharon not to do it again.
Joe Smith, her father had fixed ideas, fixed moral standards that he had learnt in his youth. He never watched TV, listened to the radio nor read newspaper. Sharon knew that her father would be shocked if he knew that she had slept with Bryan. He probably thought that she was still a virgin at twenty six, waiting for the right man to come along before she married.
Her mother, Jane Smith was a gentle, tolerant woman but she had never supported Sharon against her father in the past and Sharon didn't think that she ever would.
Jane was the type of woman who said, 'My husband, right or wrong....' and stuck to it.
Nearly sixty now, she looked older, the auburn hair she had passed on to her daughter had turned grey. Her face had too many lines and she seemed to be tired always.
Sharon saw the way, long hours of hard work was turning her mother older and weaker and anytime she went home, it was worse and she had to bite her tongue to prevent her from saying anything to her father because her interference always upset her mother and never achieved anything.
The truth was that her parents had shared everything all through their marriage. There was a deep quiet live between them that never changed and never would.
So it was better for her to go home, very infrequently, she could hold her tongue if she didn't see them always.
Coming back to the present where she was speaking to David about the kind of trip she would have loved to have.
'I've always thought that I'd love to spend Christmas somewhere romantic like Vienna.
'We shall. Why don't you? David said. 'I'd love to go to Vienna for Christmas. Why don't we go together?'
She gave him a startled look and laughed. 'It would be magical, wouldn't it?' She didn't take him serious. She thought that like her, he was just fantasizing, daydreaming.
She had seen a program on TV the other day and had been enchanted by its magnificent walls and everything about it.
'Let's do it!' he said and she suddenly realised that he meant it.
He met her eyes, his coaxing, 'I hate Christmas on my own, friends invite me but family Christmas makes me feel very melancholic indeed. Staying in the hotel is even worse, all that fake jollity and gaudy paper hats, waiters dressed up like father Christmas! But you and me...we both know the score we're just good friends, no complications on either side. So what do you say, Sharon? Will you come?'
There was something so wistful about his tone, she hesitated then threw caution to the winds and nodded recklessly. 'Okay, let's do it!'
They sat and planned it there and then and Sharon went to book the trip the following day. They would fly three days before Christmas and come back a week later, stay in one of the best hotels in Vienna. They were both excited- It brightened the wintery days that followed, like candles burning in a dark place.
But that was before it dawned on her that she had missed two periods. She hadn't bothered so much about the lateness of the first one. She had never had regular periods but she had never gone two months before and as the days went by and nothing happened, she became scared.
What if... but it couldn't be! She had told Bryan that she had taken no precautions and she was sure he had taken the necessary precautions. He had promised that he would take care of it and she had left it in his hands. So she couldn't be going to have his baby.