Sworn Secret by Amanda Jennings

before some other lucky bastard nabs her.’
    For a moment or two there was a stunned silence, and then his mother calmly laid both hands palm down on her lap and looked straight at him. ‘The girl failed maths O-level twice ?’
    And with that he walked out and hailed a second cab to Dalston.
    ‘They hated me, didn’t they?’ Kate said, as they lay tangled in the sheets.
    ‘No. How could they?’
    ‘I said “ta for dinner”. That’s wrong, isn’t it?’
    ‘You were being polite. That’s anything but wrong.’
    ‘But you call it lunch. I remembered that as soon as I said it.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter what you call it.’ He kissed her perfect nose, small and upturned with freckles and a mole on one side that looked like a full stop. There we go, one beautiful girl with a perfect nose, he imagined whoever-made-us-all saying, as she was finished with that full stop and a flourish.
    ‘Ta ever so truly very much for my super-duper delumtious luncheon, Mrs Lady Thorne, your ohsoloftyhighness, would’ve been best. You should have warned me.’
    He laughed.
    ‘They won’t be happy about the baby.’ She patted her washboard stomach.
    ‘They’ll be over the moon.’
    ‘Liar.’
    ‘If not, then, well, fuck them.’
    ‘Jon! You swore!’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them!’
    ‘No,’ she whispered as she leant in to kiss his neck with soft, lingering lips. ‘I’ll fuck you, ta very much.’
    Jon’s mother had eventually come round, and until the day of Anna’s funeral, she and Kate got along fine, because as much as his mother disapproved of her accent and her views on the importance of Michelangelo, or her lack of mathematical prowess, when the baby-out-of-wedlock appeared, the two of them were immediately united. His mother loved Anna, and then Lizzie, nearly as much as Kate did, and that shared love was enough to cement them. It broke Jon’s heart when he thought back to those days, all of them together, maybe watching one of Anna’s countless dance shows in the living room, being presented home-made tickets, Lizzie at the CD player on music duty, his wife and mother both grinning with love and affection as Anna performed and Lizzie followed her with a bike-lamp spotlight. They had barely spoken for nearly a year, their only exchanges brief and perfunctory. Jon was at a loss. His mother’s harsh lack of forgiveness and Kate’s stubborn refusal to offer any apology or regret seemed to make the chasm unbridgeable.
    Jon walked up the steps to the police station and saw Kate through the glass door, sitting on a chair beside the vending machine near the front desk. He stood for a moment or two outside the doors and watched her. She looked like a frightened child, a refugee, thin and pale, her fingers clutching her knees, her feet pressed together, shoulders stooped. She must have sensed him and looked up. As he walked through the doors he made himself smile. She didn’t give one back. There seemed to be no emotion whatsoever on her face. She was usually such an open book, her thoughts and feelings displayed for all to see in both her eyes and body language. But right now he couldn’t tell what was going on inside her and he found this disconcerting, perhaps worried that when she finally did try and explain there would be a lack of contrition which he’d be unable to take. As he approached her he felt like the young soldier charged with the job of defusing his first landmine.
    She stood up as he reached her. They were no more than a foot apart but there was a stifling awkwardness between them. He knew he should hug her, but he wasn’t sure how to instigate it. But seemingly this was something he needn’t have worried about, for despite the stilted air she fell into him, pulling him into her so hard he felt momentarily alarmed. He closed his arms around her and felt her lambswool cardigan soft beneath his fingers. He breathed in her freshly washed hair, clean and familiar, and for