Explore "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Elizabeth was worried about what her mother would say when she told her she was pregnant. Francoise had always been strict about such things, to the extent that Elizabeth had not told her that her boyfriend was married. "He works abroad," she had been able to say, when Francoise had wanted to know why they had never been introduced.
She postponed the moment when she would have to tell her, but by March she was beginning to put on weight. Rather than work it into the conversation during one of her teatime visits to Twickenham, she decided to invite her mother up to dinner in London and make a celebration of the announcement. Part of the reason, she admitted to herself, was to wrong-foot Francoise, to put her on the defensive; but she hoped that her mother would share in her own happiness at the prospect. The date was fixed and the restaurant was booked.