The Secret Daughter Read Online Free PDF

panic by being mindful of the hard facts about a moment, to ground myself in reality, instead of floating around in my fears.
    So yes, the sun was still streaming through the window, a patch of bright light reflecting uncomfortably into my face from the polished floorboards in the kitchen – the world had not ended. The oven was still ticking down, and judging by the hearty smell, the lentils and lamb were just about done. Time was marching onward, just as it always had. My bare feet on the floorboards were comfortably cool. I was still me, and I was still here. The red lines on the skin of my stomach caused by my too-small work trousers would have faded now.
    And as for that tiny life sprouting deep inside me, I felt a supreme confidence that no circumstance on this earth could inspire me to give it up, and no force in the universe could make me. It was the physical manifestation of the soul-solidifying love I felt for Ted. How could someone ever part with such a thing? An answer came to me almost instantly.
    Her story . . . my story . . . might not be one of love.
    A chill came over me. I released Mum, and stood.
    ‘We should go and let you think about this.’ Dad rose too, extending his long body to its full height, and I took a moment to think back to the fear I’d had when he first arrived and I thought he might be sick. I’d have preferred that outcome – sickness, we could fight together. Sickness and age were inevitable. Sickness meant there was still some kind of hope, even if it was fragile. This . . . this meant that everything would immediately and forever be topsy-turvy.
    ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ my ever vigilant husband was staring at my face, and I wondered what he was thinking and if he knew how shaken I was. I could taste panic simmering in my gut. When the shock wore off, I would be wrecked.
    ‘Do you still love us?’ Mum asked. While Dad was already making moves towards the door, it was obvious that she didn’t want to leave until I promised her that everything was okay. And in any other circumstances I’d have done just that, so she was probably expecting it.
    I looked from her gaunt, tear-stained face, to Dad’s more subtly pleading gaze, and then to the floor.
    ‘Of course I st-still love you.’ I was mumbling and stumbling, the words clumping together into a mangled mess. ‘You just need to let me t-think this through.’
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    They left, and after Ted shut the door behind them, we stood in silent confusion side by side at the entrance, almost frozen in time until the oven timer rang. Ted moved first; he turned the oven off, removed the casserole dish onto the top of the stove, and then wordlessly poured me a glass of the ginger beer I’d made several months earlier with Dad. I followed Ted, meandering hopelessly in his general direction, not really cognisant of where I was or what I was doing. After a moment or two of standing near the TV staring at the floor, I took a few further steps to the dining room table and sank into a chair. The upholstered cushion was still warm from when I’d left it only five minutes earlier. How could so much have changed in the time it takes a seat to cool down?
    Ted pushed aside my lesson plans to sit beside me. I stared at the bubbles rising through the soft drink he placed before me.
    ‘I wish this was real beer,’ I whispered.
    ‘I can get you one if you want, Bean. I’m sure one won’t hurt.’
    ‘No, no.’
    I took a long, soothing sip of the beer and then turned to him. The evening’s normality had shattered, and in its place, I sat in the bubble of a nightmare. I tried again to re-ground myself in the warmth of the fading sunshine, in the glow of the floor lamp between the table and our little kitchen, in the bitterness of the ginger beer, in the closeness of Ted’s thigh near to, but not quite touching, mine.
    It wasn’t working now. What kind of stress relief could I employ in this particular instance? Was there a mindfulness