“You no longer belong here!” Margaret’s voice trembled with barely contained fury. “Do you understand? You are not part of this family anymore!”
“Margaret, please calm down,” Charles attempted to interject, but his wife cut him off.
“Be quiet! Your silence all these years has given her the impression she can do anything!”
Charlotte stood in the lounge doorway, a travel bag gripped tightly in her hand. Her face was pale, her lips quivered, yet her gaze remained defiant.
“Alright, Mum. As you say.”
“Don’t call me that!” Margaret hissed. “I have one daughter, and it is not you!” Charles sank heavily into his armchair, covering his face with his hands. Charlotte looked at her father, silently pleading for him to speak in her defence. The man remained mute.
“Dad?” she whispered.
“Charlotte, perhaps this is all too sudden?” Charles finally raised his head. “Let’s all calm down and discuss it.”
“Discuss what?” Margaret snatched a framed photo from the sideboard and hurled it to the floor. Glass shattered into tiny fragments. “She has disgraced us! The entire town is talking!”
Charlotte glanced at the broken frame. It held their family photograph from last Christmas – smiling faces, a picture of happiness. Now it felt like a vicious mockery.
“Mum… Mrs. Dalton,” Charlotte corrected herself, “I’m not to blame for how things turned out.”
“Not to blame?” Her mother took a step closer. “You’re carrying on with a married man! Destroying another family! And now pregnant with his child!”
Charlotte instinctively pressed a hand against her stomach. The pregnancy was early, yet the news had spread like wildfire through their small market town.
“I love him,” she murmured.
“Love!” Margaret sneered. “A man twice your age with three children? What could you possibly see in him? He’s leaving his wife?”
Charlotte blanched.
“He loves *me*. We’re going to live together.”
“Where?” her mother demanded scornfully. “Here? In *my* house? Do you imagine I would allow you to bring that… that creature here?”
“Margaret, that’s enough,” Charles intervened. “She is still our child.”
“*Ours*?” Margaret wheeled on her husband. “I bore no such daughter! Raised her, paid for university, helped her get that job. And how does she repay us? Takes up with the first roguish fellow who looked her way!”
Charlotte set her bag down.
“Victor is not just anyone. We’ve known each other over a year.”
“Over a year!” Margaret threw her hands up. “So, for a whole year you’ve lied to me! Saying you were working late while running off to your lover!”
“I didn’t lie, I simply…”
“Simply hid it? That is lying!”
Charles rose and moved to the window. Outside, a light rain fell, mist clinging to the slate roofs of the neighbouring terraced houses.
“Charlotte,” he said without turning, “what does this Victor say? Is he truly divorcing?”
“Of course he is,” Charlotte replied. “He’s filed the papers.”
“Filed the papers,” Margaret repeated. “After the damage is done. Leaving his children fatherless.”
“There was no love left,” Charlotte tried to explain. “They lived like strangers. Victor says he married for security, not love.”
“Of course he says that!” Margaret let out a harsh laugh. “They *all* say that! They don’t love their wives, regret the children, claim they were pressured into marriage! And then, when they tire of the mistress, they crawl back!”
“Victor isn’t like that,” Charlotte insisted stubbornly.
“*All* are like that!” Margaret snapped. “Do you think I haven’t seen life? How many such stories have I heard? They promise the world, then vanish the instant they learn of a pregnancy!”
Charlotte flinched.
“He knows about the baby. And he’s happy.”
“Happy? Then where is he now? Why isn’t he beside you? Defending his beloved?”
“He… he’s overseas on business. Returns next week.”
“How very convenient,” Margaret remarked acidly. “Disappeared just as this all came to light.”
Charlotte lowered her eyes. She too had been surprised by Victor’s timing. He explained the trip was unavoidable, planned long ago.
“Margaret, perhaps we shouldn’t jump to conclusions?” Charles pleaded. “Give Charlotte time to sort things out.”
“Sort things out?” His wife stared at him as if he were mad. “She’s made decisions for all of us! Pregnant by a married man! Now the entire town knows Charles Dalton’s daughter is entangled with another woman’s husband!”
“We’re not living together,” Charlotte said quietly. “Not yet.”
“Ah, not yet! But the child is already here! Illegitimate! Do you grasp what that signifies?”
Charlotte lifted her head.
“It signifies I will be a mother. And I don’t care what the neighbours think.”
“You don’t care?” Margaret clutched her chest. “*I* care! I live here! I work here! I’ll be the subject of every gossip! They’ll say I failed as a parent!”
“Mum, it’s the twenty-first century…”
“The twenty-first century!” Margaret interrupted. “Do you imagine people have changed? They gossip like starlings! Especially in a place like this!”
Charles turned from the window and sat back down.
“Charlotte, have you thought how you’ll manage? Your salary is modest. Raising a child is expensive.”
“Victor will provide,” Charlotte answered.
“Will he?” Margaret echoed. “And if he doesn’t? If he changes his mind? If his wife takes him back?”
“She won’t. They’ve lived apart a year.”
“A year apart, yet he only files for divorce *now*?” Margaret questioned disbelievingly.
Charlotte fell silent. She didn’t understand the delay herself. Victor spoke of protecting the children, but doubts were creeping in.
“You see?” said Margaret. “You can’t answer. Because it’s lies. He spins tales, the way they all deceive their mistresses.”
“He’s not lying!” Charlotte flared. “We love each other!”
“Love,” Margaret snorted contemptuously. “At your age, you should be thinking with your head, not hormones.”
“Margaret, please, there’s no need for rudeness,” Charles asked.
“No rudeness?” She turned on him. “She has humiliated us, and I must be polite? Look at her! Twenty-six years old, acting like a foolish teenager!”
Charlotte picked up her bag.
“Fine. I understand. I’ll leave and spare you further disgrace.”
“Go,” Margaret stated coldly. “And don’t return until you’ve come to your senses.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I have no daughter.”
Charles struggled up from the armchair.
“Margaret, what are you saying? She is our child!”
“*Our* child wouldn’t wreck another family!” his wife shot back. “This stranger… she is nothing to me.”
Charlotte felt tears sting her eyes. She turned towards the front door.
“Charlotte, wait,” her father called.
She paused, her back to them.
“Truly, shouldn’t you reconsider? Think it over. This man… he’s so much older. He has another life, other commitments.”
“I love him,” Charlotte repeated.
“Love,” Charles sighed heavily. “And what then? When the passion fades? When the baby comes and there will be sleepless nights? When you need help, and he is occupied with his own children?”
“I don’t know,”
Staring at the relentless downpour blurring Sophie’s window, Charlotte finally comprehended the crushing weight of her solitude: Victor’s return wouldn’t rescue her, the fractured trust with her parents might never heal, and the fragile life growing within her now demanded a resilience she wasn’t sure she possessed, yet knew she must summon.
