‘I drifted along in some kind of fantastical dream, a fairytale come true. Doing whatever you wanted, abjectly grateful for the chance. Until you woke me from that dream—and it’s as well I did wake up, Markos. Because otherwise I could have spent my life like that, being grateful to you.’
She rested her eyes on him. They were no longer hard or bright. They were very clear, and quite expressionless.
‘But that’s over now, Markos. It has to be. Because now the only person I must think about is my baby. I didn’t intend to conceive it—from what the doctor has told me, the reason I got pregnant is because the antibiotics I took just after Christmas must have interfered with the Pill—but it’s too late for regrets. Mine or yours. The only person in this entire situation who counts at all is the baby. And it’s for the baby’s sake that I won’t marry you.’
‘Why the hell not?’ he bit out. There was incomprehension and frustration in his voice.
‘Because it’s not necessary. I don’t need to marry you. I’ve dealt with the situation. I’ve walked out of an…an affair—if I can even call it that. I certainly can’t call it a relationship, can I? Men don’t have relationships with their mistresses. I’ve got my life sorted. I’ve got a good place to live, to bring up my child, with the seaside and clean air and good schools, and I’ve got enough money to do so. I’m making a new life for myself—a fresh start. I’ve joined a pre-natal mother-and-baby group, I’m meeting other people, making friends. I’m settling in and settling down. Me and my baby are going to be fine. I’ve got everything covered. Which means you’re off the hook. You can go with a clear conscience. I’m not going to make any demands on you—none whatsoever—and I don’t require any sacrifices from you, let alone marriage! I don’t need you and neither does my baby.
‘So go back to your gilded life and pick yourself another mistress from all the beautiful women queuing up for you. Make loads more money and spend it however you want, on whoever you want. Sleep with hordes of fantastic females. Have Taki and Stelios trail around after you, picking up your skis and handing you your jacket and paying your restaurant bills and smoothing your path so that nothing irritating ever happens to you, and be happy. Be happy, Markos. Because it’s the life you want and the life you’ve got. And send down your team of highly paid lawyers with all their legally binding documents, and I’ll sign anything you want me to.’
She ran breathlessly to the end and picked up her coffee, taking a large, reviving mouthful, needing the caffeine, fighting off the blackness that was drenching her. He was still standing there, hands on his hips, jacket pushed back, his face stark. A nerve was ticking in his cheek.
He looked as tense as a leashed tiger.
‘You are carrying my child and I have responsibilities to it,’ he said.
‘I relieve you of all of them. Every one.’
‘That is not in your gift. A child needs a father.’ His voice was implacable.
Her eyes flashed, emotion biting through her. She knew she should suppress it, but she couldn’t. Not any longer. Everything about his presence had been stretching her to breaking point, and now she snapped like wire pulled too tight. Her hands clenched around her coffee mug.
‘A father like you?’ Her voice stung. ‘So our baby can grow up knowing that you never wanted him or her to be born, that you first checked that he or she was actually your child and then married me, the woman who’d been your walking, talking sex toy, out of duty, and that you think I trapped you into marriage by getting pregnant against your express instructions?’ The words spat from her. ‘Does my baby need a father like that, Markos? I don’t think so. Some fathers aren’t worth having!’
Her eyes bored into his. For one long, unbearable moment he just stood there as she hurled her judgement at him. His face was stark, as if carved with a knife. The colour had leached from his skin.
Then, without another word, he walked from the room. From the flat. From the house.
From her life.
Slowly, very slowly, she got to her feet. She felt immensely tired, as if weights had been tied to her arms, her legs. She almost stumbled as she carried the half-empty coffee mug back into the kitchen. Beside the kettle the other, untouched mug sat, cooling. Mechanically she poured them both down the sink, washing the mugs and placing them on the draining board. Then she looked out through the kitchen window, out over the tiny patio garden behind.
He’s gone, she thought. This time he’s gone. For good. He won’t come back again.
She tried to feel glad. Knew she must feel glad. Knew that the only sane, rational response to what had happened had to be gladness.
Gratitude.
She was grateful that she’d been able to spell out for him at last what she knew she had been with him—to him. She’d purged it from her so that it was no longer part of her. Now she could move on, take hold of the rest of her life, which waited for her just as she waited for the child she carried to be born.
Her child didn’t need a father who did not want them, had never wanted them. He’d never wanted her for anything more than a mistress.
And now she must only be grateful that he had gone, that she’d relieved him of all responsibility, all duty. His only reasons for wanting to marry her.
But as she stared unseeing over the summer sunlit patio she might have been staring out over an Arctic landscape as desolate as the icy bleakness in her heart.
What have I done? Dear God, what have I done?
The question tore at her like a polar wind, and the answer mocked her as savagely.
‘Well?’
Leo’s voice was expectant, requiring an answer. Markos gave it to him.
‘The baby’s mine.’
His cousin’s expression did not change. ‘And?’