Acceptance

"Just say it," you silently reminded yourself. You knew you'd regret it if you didn't. Wasn't this what you had always wanted, what you had been working towards for years? You didn't want the kind of life your mother had had.

           You had known it when you were a girl, sitting under the dining table and watching your mother doing housework. Although you were eager to help, your younger brother Tim never did, and when your father was home it always seemed to be Tim he spent time with. Your father's life seemed much more interesting, and you always hung on his every word when he was in the mood to tell tales of the places he had been and the people he had met. When you told him you wanted to be an engineer, like him, he laughed and said, "My little princess an engineer? Engineering's not for you, little one!" You didn't understand why he liked so much to tell the story of his little girl who wanted to be an engineer, or why the smiles of those he told didn't feel as friendly as they looked. Everyone laughed when he told the story, but it made you feel shy and awkward. You learned that it wasn't to be talked about, but it didn't stop you reading every book about machines and buildings that you could find when your mother took you to the library every Saturday morning.

           You had known it when you grew to become a teenager, when your father told you how pretty you had become, but you didn't feel it and you wanted sometimes to hide away. In time, though, you had found other people like you, at your school's technology club. There, for the first time, you learned that a girl could like that kind of thing - really learned, in a way that none of the school careers talks could manage. Your guidance teacher, Mrs Shaw, had said that a girl could do anything a boy could do, but she didn't manage to hide the momentary surprise when you said you wanted to be an engineer. At the technology club, though, you met your best friend Fiona. Fiona loved taking machines apart and figuring out how they worked, before putting them back together. She loved it with a pure joy that transcended anything any spiteful person might have said about it. She simply didn't care what anyone thought - it didn't occur to her to care - and, strangely, nobody said anything about it. You fell in love with that way of thinking. The club, and your friendship with Fiona, provided a haven away from the increasing tension at home. You were old enough now to realise that your parents' marriage was not a happy one.

           You had known it when you went away to university to study engineering. Not only were you going to be an engineer, you were going to be a great engineer. So you had gone in with your head held high, never mind that you were one of only three women in your course. You focused on your studies, and ignored the occasional sexist remarks. You made a group of friends, and you dated a few guys, but nothing too serious. At the end of your first year, your exam results put you among the best students in the course. On a night out with your friends to celebrate the end of the exams, though, you were not surprised to get a call from your mother to tell you that your father had finally walked out. Over the summer, it became clear that your mother needed you around, especially because Tim was going away to university that autumn. Even though you dropped out of your course to stay at home, you tried not to let it knock you off track too much. You were able to use the credits you had gained in first year to get straight into second year in a course closer to home. It was a less prestigious course at a less prestigious university, but it let you stay with your mother.

           You had struggled through, and now, at twenty-nine, you had begun to make a career for yourself, first at a small local firm and now at a local branch office of a major international engineering company. This evening, though, was what you had been working towards. Edward Shapiro, the company's regional director for the UK and Ireland, had come personally to meet with you, and here you were in a restaurant beyond what you could have afforded yourself, sitting across from the man himself.

           "I have heard great things about you," he said, "and I have looked at your work. I have to say that what I saw was beyond even what I had been led to expect. I see great things in your future."

           Mr Shapiro, a strikingly handsome man in early middle age, and with an accent that was difficult to pin down, paused to sip from his wine - a very expensive red.

           "In short, I want to move you onto the fast track. In ten years, if you work hard, and keep progressing as you have been, you could be at the top of the profession."

           As he described what he was proposing, your excitement built. This was an amazing opportunity, of a kind that rarely came along. It would take you around the world, to work on the biggest and most technically challenging projects. You could do it! This was what it had all been building up to, all your efforts, all your sacrifices!

           As you looked up and met his eyes, though, the words caught in your throat. The feeling that had been building up subsided as quickly as it had come, and you felt yourself flush as you dropped your gaze. You thought of your mother, still not recovered from the break-up of her marriage to your father. You thought of your father, not as happy without your mother as he had thought he would be, and beginning to drink too much. Both of them depended on you. Could you really leave them to chase this dream around the world? You turned the ring on your finger as the pause opened up into a gaping hole in the conversation. You could feel his questioning look on you - polite, of course, not insistent, but nonetheless waiting for an answer. All around, you could hear the sounds of conversation, of clinking cutlery, of waiters bustling.

           At length, you lifted your head back up and tried to ignore his faint expression of surprise as you spoke - hesitantly at first, but then rushing to get the words out, just to bring this to an end. "I can't do it. I'm sorry, but the answer is no. They need me too much. I'm sorry. I have to go."

           And then you stood up, fixing your skirt, and dropping your napkin on the table. And then you turned around and walked out of the restaurant, back to real life. And you didn't look back. And you always wondered whether you'd done the right thing. But you knew it was too late now, and that the chance wouldn't come again. And it didn't.