‘I’ve seen a little place I want to buy,’ she says, ‘and I’m earning good money. I’ve got enough for a deposit and I can pay the mortgage. But I can’t get a mortgage, without a man to guarantee it.’ She hears her voice waver, almost tearful, and she knows it’s not because of anything except the ridiculousness of the situation, that women are put in this position. But her father is bound to misinterpret the shake in her voice.

Stanley pats her hand. ‘What’s the hurry? You still might meet someone, you know.’

Please, Vee thinks, don’t tell me about Barry and his nice wife and his lovely kids, not again. In case he starts, she cuts in, ‘No, Dad, I really want to buy this place. As an investment.’

‘Investment, eh?’ He smiles, and then considers. ‘I thought you might come back here, one day. Live in this house. It will be yours when I go. You know that, girl. I won’t go on forever, and those sisters of your mother’s will get nothing from me.’

‘Dad, you’re not even sixty,’ Vee says, ‘and I’m working in London now. And all over. It’s not practical for me to be here.’ She thinks about saying that she would if she could, but her father isn’t stupid.

‘I suppose,’ he says, ‘you could always sell it. If you did meet someone. Or if you did decide to move back here.’

Vee nods. She can’t bring herself to agree out loud.

‘And you’re sure you can pay the mortgage? It’s a big step.’

‘I’m sure, Dad.’

Stanley rises, and before he picks up the bowls to take through to the kitchen, he rests one hand on his daughter’s head in absent-minded blessing, ‘Then you just bring me what you need signed, Veronica, and I’ll sign it.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

Only Leonie to tell, now.

July 1977

July 1977

This Month magazine

Leonie Barratt: Letters from a Feminist

Our monthly column from the front line of the Battle of the Sexes

Dear John,

I’ve had an abortion.

I didn’t tell you before I went because I had a feeling you would make it all about you. Or all about the squatting, breeding group of cells that you would doubtless call ‘the baby’, as though it already had a favourite spoon and a bike with stabilisers.

And I didn’t tell you because the baby might have been yours and it might not. And I didn’t need to put up with the conversation that would follow, as surely as Black Forest gateau follows steak Diane in a Berni Inn on a Friday night.