Wishful Thinking Read Online Free PDF Page A

dark.’ He was staying in the north for two weeks, and during that period she found herself borne off to nightclubs and restaurants, shrinking from the flash-bulbs of the paparazzi, to other hotel rooms, even to a lochside castle where a friend took him grouse-shooting and Lin struggled to quell her compunction for the hapless birds, telling herself it was only Nature. Her studies and her job were brushed aside: Sean bore her along in his swath like a favoured pet. He didn’t talk about the future but, naïve to a fault, she assumed that was because it was taken for granted they’d be together. She deplored her own sneaking doubts, and did her best to ignore them.
    And then came the day when he told her he was returning, not to the relative proximity of Liverpool and Mandela Street , but to London. To the deep south with its pollution and corruption, its hot climate, its posh accents and overpriced cuisine. She knew he had been written out of the soap at his own request, to graduate on to Higher Things, and now he told her that he would be making a new series, to be filmed in the capital, in which he would be the principal star.
    â€˜Wish me luck, acushla,’ he said.
    â€˜Of course, but . . . what about me?’
    â€˜You’ll be doing fine. We’ll meet again, one of these days; I can read it in the stars. When I’ve a Bafta or two to my name and you’re a meedja sophisticate, we’ll turn up at the same charity event and our eyes will meet and – POW! That’ll be a moment to live for, won’t it? Until then, you can always tell the Press how much fun we had. They’ll be glad to run your picture under my name, though you don’t photograph as good as you look.’
    â€˜I don’t want my picture in the Press,’ Lin said, feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of her world. ‘I just want to be with you.’
    â€˜Ah, now, me darling, you’ve a deal of growing up to do, and you need to do it without me. Don’t be crying now; it doesn’t suit you. We’ll be seeing each other, I promise you.’
    And that was that.
    What about my innocence? Lin might have asked, but she knew it had been used up and thrown away. Now, she was supposed to become a meedja sophisticate, just like all the rest. She returned to her studies, tried to concentrate, noticed belatedly that she had missed a period or two. She attempted two home pregnancy tests and got two different answers. Finally, she nerved herself to go to the doctor.
    Once she knew the worst, she was flooded with a torrent of conflicting emotions. Shame at her easy acquiescence in her own seduction, remorse for both the pain and the problems she was going to cause her parents, panic at the premature onset of adulthood and responsibility – and a desperate, overwhelming love for that tiny seed that was growing unwanted inside her. She rejected abortion immediately, out of hand. When she told her Presbyterian father and conventional mother they did their best to suppress their disillusionment with their daughter and offered both moral and financial support, though Mr Macleod’s meagre income would be strained to feed another mouth. Perhaps it was because of this that Lin decided she had to talk to Sean. Reeling from his effortless act of desertion, she still retained an unacknowledged optimism about the male sex, somewhere underneath her emotional numbness. Surely, if he knew the truth, he would help. She wanted to write to him, but had no address. So she packed a single holdall, and braved the long train journey south.
    Sean had occasionally mentioned hanging out at a club called the Groucho and on reaching London, after lengthy inquiries, she found her way there. ‘I’m a friend of Sean Corrigan’s,’ she explained. ‘I know it’s silly, but I lost his address.’ She hated the lie, feeling it contaminated her, but circumstances had taught her a