False Tongues by Kate Charles

asked about her urgent errands.
    â€˜Well, I do.’ Her son paused, then went on. ‘I was in the Bodders on Saturday afternoon. After a few hours I had to go out and get some air. I stopped at a little caf to grab a cup of tea, and who do you think I saw?’
    The Archbishop of Canterbury? Lady Gaga? ‘Surprise me,’ Jane said obediently.
    Charlie launched into a long and highly coloured account of the sighting of one of his lecturers, ‘that dry old stick,’ as he described him, having tea with a pretty undergraduate. ‘Honestly, Mum,’ he said. ‘You should have seen the way he was looking at her. It was exactly like something out of a Barbara Pym novel. Crampton Hodnet , to be precise.’
    â€˜Oh, really?’ Jane wasn’t a huge fan of Barbara Pym’s novels—she always found them uncomfortably close to her own life—but for some reason Charlie adored them.
    â€˜I mean, who would have thought it of old Mathieson? He looked positively besotted!’
    Ordinarily Jane would have relished this titbit, and the fact that her son had shared it with her. Today, though, with the memory of Saturday’s overheard conversation—Brian, Callie—still fresh in her mind, it struck her as vaguely unpleasant, if not indecent. ‘You might be reading more into it than you should,’ she heard herself saying, more sharply than she’d intended. ‘I’m sure it was perfectly innocent.’
    â€˜You didn’t see the expression on his face.’ Charlie laughed. ‘Practically drooling. You know what they say, Mum—no fool like an old fool.’
    That was close to the bone. ‘Well,’ Jane said, ‘That may be, but I really ought to ring off now, and get a start on your father’s lunch.’
    When she’d hung up, though, she only opened the fridge to put the sausages and cucumber away, before heading to the lavatory.
    In just a few minutes she had her result.
    She was pregnant. Staring at the unmistakable lines on the test stick, Jane didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
    The one thing she wasn’t going to do—not yet, anyway—was tell anyone. Not even Brian.
    ***
    After her conversation with Marco, Callie spent a few minutes leaning on the windowsill of her room, enjoying the amazing view. King’s College Chapel, in all its late gothic splendour. And spring: it was about time, she told herself, after the long, cold winter. Green grass, greening trees, yellow drifts of daffodils and concentrated clumps of crocuses, yellow and purple and white. Cambridge was a magical place in the spring, and there was no better spot to enjoy it than this window.
    A bell chimed somewhere, from one of the colleges. Callie looked at her watch and realised she’d been standing there for far longer than she’d realised. She was going to be late for the first session.
    No time to do her makeup properly. She took a quick look at herself in the mirror, ran her brush through her hair, put on some lip gloss, and decided that would have to suffice.
    Callie clattered down two flights of stairs and headed through the courtyard toward the lecture hall. There was only one other person in the courtyard, seemingly headed in the same direction; as she overtook her, she recognised her friend Val.
    â€˜Callie!’ Val stopped and they hugged each other.
    â€˜We’re late,’ Callie said, glancing at her watch.
    Val put up a hand. ‘Don’t worry. I have inside information. The facilitator hasn’t arrived yet—his train has been delayed.’
    That sounded familiar. ‘Oh, we’re all right, then.’
    â€˜We have a few minutes.’ Val gestured toward the bench under the cherry tree. It was a favourite spot of Callie’s; when the weather was fine she used to sit there often, reading heavy tomes for her essays.
    They sat down and Callie took a good look at her friend. Val seemed much the