“Excuse me?” My voice is cold.
“How much for you to stay here tonight?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Not happening.”
“I’ll double your day rate.”
“You can triple it, for all I care. I’m not staying over. You have to take care of her tonight.”
He frowns. “Why? Do you have something better to do?”
I grit my teeth. “Whether I do or not is none of your business. For God’s sake, you just found out you have a bloody daughter. I’m not facilitating you ignoring your own kid. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He calls out to me again, but I step out into the hallway, slamming the door behind me.
Twelve
Sebastian
I watch Beth disappear, then turn on my heel and head straight back to my bedroom. Even when I shut the door, I can hear Cami gurgling in the background. Fury lashes through me.
I pace up and down my room, fists clenched, jaw locked. My mind is whirring so fast I can barely think.
My baby. She’s my baby. And her mother left her on a damndoorstep.
Anisha didn’t let me see the birth. She didn’t tell me she was pregnant. She leftmy daughterin the cold, on a doorstep, with a packet of oversized nappies and a cheap car seat.
The past half a year, I’ve been going about my business, not knowing that I’ve got a fuckingchild.
I shake my head, panic rising. I can’t have a child.I can’t even touch Cami without her crying, for God’s sake. When we first brought her up to the flat, I tried to pick her up and hold her. She screamed like I’dhurther. It scared me so much I put her right back down again.
And now she’smine. How the Hell can she be mine?
I rub a hand over my face and slump down at my desk. It’s obsessively clean. The surface is wiped down, the pens are separated by ink colour and stored in their own pen pots, and my papers are all colour-coded and neatly filed. I twitch my stapler so it’s parallel to the wall, and try to take a deep breath.
This is how I like to keep things. Orderly. Clean. Tidy. When your external environment is controlled, it’s much easier to control your internal one. And Ineedto keep myself under control. When I don’t, people get hurt.
A memory flashes through my head. Anger flooding through me, consuming me. My fist smashing through someone’s face. My mother’s shrill voice, screaming.
That’s it. I’m sending you away! I can’t live with a cruel, violent bully! You’re a monster!
I brace myself against my desk, my breath coming hard. I can’t think about that. I need to calm down. I can’t be angry. Not around this child. I’ll hurt her.
I try to remember what my old anger management therapists told me.Talk to a friend. Write a diary entry. Meditate.
But you can’t meditateaway an abandoned baby.
I bury my face in my hands and try to just breathe.
When I’m finally calm enough to head back into the lounge, Jack and Cyrus have cleaned up the mess of Amazon boxes. They’re both sitting on the sofa, staring at Cami’s cot. She’s sleeping, her little fingers stuck in her mouth. My heart squeezes painfully when I look at her.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Cyrus looks up. Sadness is etched all over his face. “Why?”
“That she’s not yours.”
I wish Cami were his. For her sake, if nothing else. Cyrus would be a fantastic dad. Jack, too. But this poor kid somehow drew the short straw.