Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase Read Online Free PDF Page A

announces.
    ‘What kind of trouble?’
    ‘Of the old-fashioned kind. You know. “In trouble”.’
    And now she cries, shielding her face with her hand and her empty glass. I move to stand next to her, and I rub her arm, making noises of consolation. I’m not sure what to say.
    In the end, her tears subside. A box of tissues is extracted from the shelf under the large, round smoky-glass coffee table.
    ‘What do you make of me now?’ Jenna asks, pouring another drink and sipping more sedately. Her white hands shake, just a little.
    ‘I’m not going to judge you, Jenna,’ I say. ‘For heaven’s sake, you’re a grown woman, and Philip’s a grown man. It’s not unheard of, is it? It might be … unexpected, maybe … but you’ll work it out. How does Philip feel about it?’
    She looks at me, aghast.
    ‘Oh,’ I say, looking at the floor, at the curtained window, at the large gilt mirror above the fireplace.
    ‘I found out a week ago. I felt tired. My period was late. I did a test. It’s been hell, Roberta, it really has. I don’t want children, you see. I never have wanted children. I never will want children. I’ve always been so careful, but now this … catastrophe.’
    ‘I think you should be having this conversation with Philip,’ I say, and I curse myself for sounding so prim.
    ‘What the bloody hell for?’
    ‘Because … it’s nothing to do with me. It’s Philip’s baby.’
    ‘No. I don’t think so … I mean, I’m not sure.’
    Instantly, guiltily, confusedly, I feel a rush of relief. It’s not his baby. It might not be his baby.
It’s all right
. It’s somebody else’s baby. But then, whose baby is it? Has she …?
    I am not a courageous person. I shun conflict of any kind. So I sit in silence, not knowing what to say to the trembling woman before me. I cannot think about Philip – the last person in the world, by my reckoning, who would deal in duplicity. Oh, poor Jenna. I can’t imagine how she must be feeling … what a mess.
    She is incredibly pretty, really. A beauty. And like everybody else, including Philip, I’m a sucker for beauty. So you get drawn in, you don’t see. And I can’t blame Philip for … it’s understandable. He’s not a monk, and he shouldn’t have to live like one. And none of it is any of my business, of course. I’m just an employee, nothing more, though I like to think Philip might loosely describe me as a ‘friend’.
    Jenna sighs, and puts down her empty glass. ‘What are you thinking?’ she says.
    ‘Oh, nothing much,’ I say. I’m so useless, especially at wobbly moments, and this is one of those.
    This is a crisis.
    Jenna falls back into the sofa, and she cries, for perhaps a minute, then blows her nose dramatically. I sidle along the cherry-red cushions to sit alongside her, and she leans on my shoulder.
    I tap her knee, rub her back. ‘It’ll be all right, Jenna,’ I say.
    There’s a clinic. A friend of hers … anyway, there’s a clinic. She has an appointment tomorrow morning and will get it all seen to. She’ll clear up this mess. Philip will never know. Thank God he’s at the book fair again tomorrow. He must never know anything about this, ever. She loves him. She truly does. She made a mistake. Don’t we all, Roberta? An old boyfriend, he wants her back, she broke his heart … she felt sorry for him, momentarily. Stupid.
    ‘Have you ever had a termination?’ she asks me.
    ‘No,’ I say, after the briefest of pauses.
    ‘I don’t want to go alone. To the clinic, I mean.’
    ‘I understand.’
    ‘Will you come with me? Please.’
    ‘Yes. Of course I will.’
    ‘Because I can’t ask anybody else. There is nobody else.’
    ‘I’ll go with you,’ I say.
    ‘I don’t want to ask Sophie.’
    ‘I know.’
    Similar ages, twenty-something, both are straight-up, no arguments, nine-and-a-half-out-of-ten women, at least. Sophie has chestnut-brown hair, with chocolate-dream eyes, she is toned and tanned and quite