Difficult questions that had required thought and composure to answer. She’d always sworn she wouldn’t lie to him, but answering his queries was a minefield.
Not for the first time, guilt at the way she was raising their child spread through her. Not just the relative poverty in which they lived, with Annie having to scrimp and save to afford even the most basic necessities, but the fact she was doing it alone.
A lump formed in her throat, the past heavy in her mind. The night she’d gone to tell Dimitrios the truth had been one of the worst of her life. Seeing him three months after they’d slept together was something she’d had to brace herself for. She’d dressed in the most grown-up outfit she owned, hoping to look not just sexy and glamorous but mature as well, as though she belonged in his world with him. She’d had her speech all worked out—how he didn’t need to be involved if he didn’t want to be, but that he deserved to know.
But arriving to discover him surrounded by his exclusive, glamorous crowd in one of Sydney’s most prestigious bars—and with the gorgeous redhead pressed to his body, all flame hair and milky skin—had sent Annie running. At eighteen, it had been too much to bear. Her pride had been hurt, her heart broken, and the precious kernel of meaning she’d taken from their night together had burst into flames, never to be recovered.
Lewis’s death had left Annie completely alone. An already tenuous relationship with her parents had been irrevocably destroyed by their grief—an event that might have drawn them closer had pushed them apart, as Annie’s mum refused to see that anyone else except her was hurting. Sleeping with Dimitrios had been the fulfilment of a long-cherished crush, but it had been more than that. Annie had been pulled out of the vortex of her pain and loneliness and put back together again in Dimitrios’s arms. Being made love to by him had made her feel whole in a way she’d thought impossible, even if that pleasure was fleeting.
His words the next morning had robbed her of that sense of comfort, plunging her back into darkness and despair. She’d been eighteen and it had all been too much. Lewis’s death, losing her virginity to Dimitrios and all that night had meant to her, his harsh rejection of her the next day, discovering she was pregnant and her mother’s anger at that, the subsequent estrangement from her parents... Her emotions had been all over the place then but now, as a twenty-five-year-old, she wondered if she’d made the right decisions.
Was keeping Max from Dimitrios something she could still defend?
‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’
Whoops. She’d let her smile slip. She pushed it back in place. ‘Nothing, darling. Keep eating. It’s late. You need to get to bed.’
Bedtime, though, had become something of a mission in the past six months. Gone were the days when Annie had been able to read a picture book, tuck the covers to Max’s chin, kiss his forehead and slip from the room. It took an hour to settle him these days.
Tonight there was a story, answering a thousand and one questions, letting him have another sip of water, then a trip to the bathroom, then back to be tucked in again, then at least one call of, ‘I’m scared, Mummy!’
At that point, Annie compromised and patted his back, even though all the parenting books seemed to suggest it was the wrong thing to do. At this point, it felt like the proverbial straw that was breaking the camel’s back, anyway. She’d probably done so many little things wrong—what was one extra?
With a sigh, she crept from his room, pausing in the door frame to give his sleeping figure one last look. Love burst her heart. She was exhausted, worried and stressed but so full of love.
With a wistful smile, she clicked the door shut and moved back to the table. Her laptop beckoned. Cracking it open, she was glad of the distraction of work to keep her mind off the fact she was, actually, starving. She told herself she’d work for an hour and then have a cup of tea and an oat biscuit—her one indulgence. It wasn’t usually so austere, but with Christmas just around the corner she needed to try to save enough to buy Max something. He did without so much for most of the year, while all his little friends were getting spoiled with books, sports equipment and anything their hearts desired. She wanted him to have something for Christmas.
Loading properties on to real-estate listings was work she could do without too much mental computation. She cross-checked the photographs with the property name and the description the various agents had attached, making sure each had uploaded correctly before moving on to the next.
Almost an hour after starting, a loud knock sounded at her door. She startled, quickly pushing her chair back. There was no worry that Max would stir—though he was difficult to get to sleep, once he was down for the night he slept like an immovable log. Nonetheless, the noise was loud and she needed to work.
It was probably a delivery for the flat upstairs. The house she lived in had been carved up by an industrious landlord many years earlier. Six small flats had been created and hers was the one at ground level; she often had deliveries intended for other residents simply because she was accessible.
‘Just a second.’ She closed the laptop and paused to flick on the kettle sitting on the peeling laminate bench top before unlocking the door. The peephole had been damaged years earlier and the landlord had never got round to replacing it, though at her insistence he’d added a chain lock. She slid it across now and opened the door as wide as the chain allowed.
Then had to fight every impulse she possessed to stop herself from pushing it shut again. Self-preservation and a thousand other impulses slammed into her.
Oh, damn.
Was it possible she’d somehow conjured him up? That her overactive mind and memories had willed him into her life again? What the hell was Dimitrios doing here?
She threw a guilt-laced look over her shoulder at her tiny, threadbare apartment.
‘Annabelle.’ His voice was like warm butter on brioche. He was one of the few people who used her full name. Her stomach clenched at memories of the way he’d said her name that night, of the way he’d touched her, the way he’d...
‘I had half a bottle of whisky before coming here, Annabelle. Do you think I would ever have done this if I was in my right mind? I’ve never even looked at you before. You’re just a kid, for God’s sake. A teenager—and a naïve one at that. Don’t mistake sex for anything of substance. This meant nothing.’
Recalling his words, and the hurt they’d inflicted, was exactly what she needed. She pulled herself to her full—admittedly not very impressive—height of five and a half feet and levelled him with what she hoped passed for an ice-cold glare. Inside, though, her heart was racing, making a mockery of any notion that she wasn’t affected by him...
Max.
Their son.
He was asleep only a dozen metres or so away, behind a flimsy white wall. Panic surged through her.
‘We have a problem.’
We. Just hearing him use that word sent a flood of warmth down her spine. It had been a long time since she’d been a ‘we’ with anyone except Max. The cold ache of loneliness was something with which Annie was completely familiar. She lifted one brow, unaware of the way his eyes followed the gesture, not noticing the frown that crossed his face.