‘Oh, but I have something to say to you.’ The smugness was right out in the open now and Angelo allowed his feelings to get the better of him. Damned if he was going to let her have free rein to gloat over things that were none of her business.
‘Do you now?’ he enquired coldly. ‘Well, I’m not interested and, in fact, I’m on my way out to see Francesca. So if you’ll excuse me…’ He hung up, almost expecting to hear the insistent ringing of the phone as she tried to reconnect, but the house was silent.
He left before the silence could be broken and forced himself not to drive like a madman over to her house. The situation felt almost dreamlike, surreal. With the ease of habit, he began thinking about the consequences of the situation. She would have kept this baby to herself because, at the end of the day, whatever good sex they had shared, it wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been enough three years ago and it wasn’t enough now. But she was having his baby and her feelings would have to be secondary, whether she liked it or not.
His jaw clenched in anger and he breathed in slowly and deeply, taking his time in the Saturday morning traffic.
It was mid-morning by the time he reached her place and he almost expected to find that she had gone out, but no. He rang the doorbell and heard the sound of footsteps behind the closed door.
Francesca took a deep breath, hand on the door knob. She had been dreading this moment, knowing it would come, and knowing, as well, that he wouldn’t give her any advance warning. No time for her to prepare herself. It wouldn’t have mattered at any rate. She was as prepared now as she would ever be.
She opened the door and her courage failed her at the sight of his grim, implacable face.
‘Come in.’ She turned around and began walking towards the sitting room. She only faced him when they were both in the room, at which point she had no choice, but that didn’t mean that she was any less afraid. Her heart was thumping inside her and she felt sweaty.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked, clasping her hands together on her lap and leaning forward.
Angelo’s mouth twisted. ‘Bit late in the day for polite exchanges, don’t you think? Bearing in mind that you were going to disappear off the face of the earth with my baby?’
Francesca blanched. ‘I…I…wasn’t going to disappear off the face of the earth…’
‘No? Just duck out of sight? Call it whatever you want to call it, Francesca, but you had no intention of telling me, did you?’ He clenched his fists to stop himself from hitting something. ‘How dare you,’ he said coldly, ‘think that you could keep my child away from me?’
‘I did intend to tell you, Angelo, but, if you recall, you weren’t exactly receptive when we last met!’
‘And you didn’t think that the information was important enough to make a stand!’
‘I didn’t think that it would do any good telling you!’
Angelo stared at her as though she had taken leave of her senses, stared at her until a soft pink glow invaded her cheeks. ‘Run that by me again,’ he said with silky threat. ‘I’m struggling to understand how having my child and keeping it a secret would benefit me.’
‘Look at your life, Angelo! You know where you’re going. You like to be in control. What happened was my fault. I got swept away that first time we…Well, anyway, I wasn’t using any protection on that one occasion, I lied to you when I said I was, and now I’m pregnant. I didn’t think it was right for you to spend the rest of your life paying for the mistake.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you that I should have been given the choice?’
‘Yes, of course it did! Which is why I went to see you, to tell you, but you wanted me out and I realised that leaving was probably the best way.’
‘Handy conclusion, wasn’t it? Any time you had a struggle with your conscience you could always remind yourself that you had tried, after all, given it your best shot.’ He moved to stand in front of her, his towering anger sheathing his body like a steel glove.
But fighting the anger. She could tell from the way his jaw clenched. He was forcibly biting back what he wanted to say. Her mind played with the pleasing fantasy of how peaceful life would have been if she had really just run away. At least for a few years. Then she remembered the stress that had been eating away at her.
‘There’s no point laying into me, Angelo,’ she said quietly. ‘Now that you know, I shall try and include you in our child’s life. I understand that you might want to help support him, or her, financially, but I just want you to know upfront that I won’t accept any money from you for myself.’
Angelo gave an incredulous laugh and moved to one of the chairs, where he promptly sat down, crossing his long legs. ‘That’s very generous of you, Francesca. Sadly, it falls somewhat short of what I had in mind.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ Francesca asked faintly. She unconsciously placed one hand protectively on her stomach.
‘Something a little more…shall we say, involved?’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Visions of him showing up every afternoon on her doorstep flooded her mind. In the space of a few seconds she had a blinding vision of him always being around, a stranger with whom she had once shared a fleeting past, a stranger she would continually struggle to fall out of love with. It would never work.
‘I mean,’ Angelo explained patiently but ruthlessly, ‘I don’t intend to be sidelined into visitor mode. I didn’t ask to be catapulted into fatherhood but, now that that’s the reality, I intend to deal with it.’
‘Deal with it?’ Francesca didn’t like the sound of that. ‘It’s not a knotty work problem, Angelo!’
‘No,’ he agreed smoothly. ‘But, like every other situation in life, there is a solution and the solution I have in mind will be a permanent one.’
‘I won’t let you take this baby away from me!’ She stood up, trembling with a mixture of apprehension and anger and immediately sat back down. ‘You may have a lot of money but there’s no court in this land that would tear a mother apart from her child because of that!’
‘Nor should there be. Do you really think that I would be monstrous enough to suggest such a thing? I was raised in a very secure family environment, both parents very active on the upbringing front. I would never contemplate splitting a mother from her child to pursue fatherhood on my own.’
‘What then?’
‘We will be married.’
Four words dropped into the silence like time bombs. Time, for a few seconds, seemed to stand completely still and the colour drained from her face. She shook her head slowly, in a daze.
This time, Angelo thought, sensing the sour whiff of refusal, there would be no running out on him. He would marry her for the sake of his child if he had to haul her up the aisle kicking and screaming. It should have made him feel enraged and impotent at the situation thrust upon him, but he found himself contentedly watching her squirm. Why was that? He skirted over the business of trying to work that one out and maintained his silence.
‘That’s a crazy suggestion.’ Francesca tried a laugh which stalled in her throat. ‘People don’t just get married because of a pregnancy. Not in this day and age.’
‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the world.’ Angelo shrugged. ‘However, I’m not one of those people. I don’t walk away from my responsibilities in the hope that someone else will come along and pick up the pieces.’
‘I wasn’t asking you to run away from your responsibilities!’ Francesca cried. ‘I already told you that you can have as much input as you like into what goes on!’ Already she could see the huge complications that would arise from that, but none of those complications would rival the ones raised by her marrying him.
‘Not good enough,’ Angelo pointed out patiently. ‘What happens when you find another man? Do I resign myself to sitting back in the shadows while my child calls another man Daddy?’
‘This is ludicrous! I haven’t even had the baby yet and you’re talking about what might or might not happen in the
years to come!’
‘I find that predicting potential problems is the safest way to circumnavigate them.’
Francesca tried to feel angry but this philosophy was so typical of him that she was almost tempted to smile. What some would describe as controlling, Angelo would always describe as practical. Right now, he was behaving in the most practical way he could imagine, because in his head he was already predicting the possible consequences of acting in any other manner. And, like it or not, he was part Italian. The thought of his child being raised without his name would cause him severe problems. Francesca wondered why she hadn’t foreseen this dilemma but she had been so wrapped up in the enormity of trying to work out the suddenly altered logistics of her own life that she simply hadn’t paused to think ahead.
‘You don’t understand, Angelo. I can’t do the wife thing with you.’
‘I don’t believe I heard myself giving you a choice.’
‘Which doesn’t mean that you’re going to get your own way. I just…I just can’t marry you…whatever the situation. I’m sorry…’
‘What a noble little thing you are!’
Angelo and Francesca both looked around at precisely the same time and there she was, standing framed in the doorway, perky in a small, dove-grey suit with the requisite string of pearls and ivory clutch bag. Georgina was going for the cool, sophisticated look. Not a strand of hair was out of place.
‘Sorry to intrude, but the front door was open. I did knock…’ she strolled elegantly into the sitting room and then found a spot by the bay window, against which she proceeded to perch ‘…but no one heard. Obviously too absorbed…chatting.’
Angelo was the first to speak. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Georgina?’ His voice was perfectly modulated, politely interested even, but there was a thread of steel underlying it that sent a chill racing down Francesca’s spine. Georgina, who was casually glancing around the room, seemed oblivious to any threat. In fact, Francesca thought, she appeared utterly at ease and quite pleased with herself.
‘I did try calling you, Angelo—’ she looked at him sorrowfully ‘—but you didn’t see fit to return any of my calls, even though I did try to make it clear that I had something of importance to tell you.’
‘And, as I made perfectly clear to you when you did get through to me, I wasn’t interested in whatever you had to say.’
Georgina treated this with a tight, vindictive little smile. Neither of them had heard the front door opening and Francesca wondered how long the other woman had been in the house. Had she been standing by the sitting room door, listening to every word of the conversation?
‘Well, you should be because I can tell you why your little slapper can’t get too involved with you, whatever the situation.’ For the first time she directed her glance to Francesca, who was watching her warily. ‘Oh, dear. Pregnant.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘Bit of a slip-up, Ellie. Or should I say, Francesca?’
‘How dare you come into my house and insult me?’ She half rose but Angelo was there before her, his face black as thunder. The feeling of events rushing upon him like a steamroller had intensified, but there was one event he intended to do something about.
‘Leave. Now.’
‘Or else?’ Georgina arched her eyebrows. ‘What will you do, break off our engagement? I believe you’ve already done that, Angelo.’
‘Oh, but there’s so much more that I could do, Georgina,’ he said conversationally. He strolled away from her, moving towards the back of Francesca’s chair and leaning forward on it, a gesture of intense protectiveness which Georgina didn’t fail to notice. Her mouth thinned into a hard, unattractive line but she was still looking at him as though his threats were empty. Francesca could have warned her that if she had any sense at all she would take him seriously. Against her will, she found herself liking the way he was protecting her, making sure that she wasn’t tossed to the wolf. It wouldn’t change anything but…it felt good.
‘Really, Angelo? Like what?’
‘Oh, friendships can be such fiendishly fickle things, especially among the rich and beautiful in London. And how demeaning for you were word to get around that you were finding it hard to cope with the misery of rejection, that you were willing to creep around trying to make trouble for me long after the event. You might even find yourself being portrayed as somewhat unbalanced, and the whiff of emotional instability is a major turn-off when it comes to friends, I would have said. No one likes a stalker. ‘
Some of the confidence was draining away but Georgina still managed to maintain eye contact with him, while Francesca watched in fascinated silence.
‘Stalker?’ She dropped her eyes and when she next looked at Angelo it was with contrition. Francesca had never seen such a rapid transformation of facial expression. The woman could have been nominated for an Oscar. ‘How could you accuse me of that? Don’t you know that I’m only here because I really care about you? And don’t want you to be seen as a laughing stock?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Georgina, and I don’t intend to waste any more time listening to the rantings of a jealous woman.’
‘I’m not ranting. Ask your girlfriend about Birmingham and that unfortunate brush with trouble she had. I’m sure she’ll only be too happy to tell you what I’m talking about—to fill you in on why exactly she won’t be marrying you. Ditched for the second time, Angelo…how degrading for you.’ She pushed herself away from the window ledge and slanted a malicious smile at Francesca. ‘Well, I’ll be off now. Hope you haven’t too many pieces to pick up, Angelo.’ She left as she had entered, in a swirl of elegant complacency.
‘Care to tell me what that was all about?’ Angelo swung round so that he was facing Francesca.
The house of cards had finally come crashing down. She took a deep breath and met his cool, curious gaze steadily.
‘It’s something I should have told you a long time ago. When we first met, in fact.’
‘Which is?’
‘When we met, Angelo, I was a model, working in Europe, a glamorous person without any roots anywhere and no past. Or rather, no past that I felt I could let on to you.’ And the bits that I did fill you in on were creations, little figments I never thought would come back to haunt me…
‘And why would that be?’ Angelo had gone very still but that was only for a moment. Then he walked across to the sofa and sat down.
‘That would be because…because of who you are, someone huge and important, moving in all the right circles, mixing with all the right people.’ Francesca looked down and was surprised to see that her hands were fluttering nervously on her lap. She didn’t feel nervous. Just numb. ‘The truth is that you never really knew me at all, not the real me.’
‘The real you being…?’
‘The real me being someone who grew up on one of the roughest council estates in Birmingham, ran with all the wrong people. My mother died from a drugs overdose when I was eight and at sixteen I left school altogether to take care of my father. He was an alcoholic, you see, and—well, somebody had to take care of him so that’s what I did. I didn’t mind. I was fed up at school anyway. They tried to get me back but I wasn’t having any of it. Dad was on benefits and we had enough to just about struggle through.’
Angelo, sitting in complete silence, was trying hard to equate the glamorous model he had met, dated and loved with the person she was now describing. She had always avoided questions about her past but the impression she had left him with was of someone who had lived a fairly ordinary middle-class life. Her revelations now were peeling off the layers of what he thought he knew and exposing the face of someone who was a complete stranger to him and always had been. It left a harshly sour taste in his throat, the sour taste of deception.
‘Then Dad died, quite suddenly, and I was left with nothing. I had no education to speak of and, anyway, it was too late for me to think of going back to school. Where I grew up, people didn’t think about going to school, they
thought of ways to get out of it. Even if I had wanted to, I would never have been able to, the peer pressure would have been too much.’ Francesca watched Angelo’s expressionless face with a sinking heart. Maybe if she had given him some indication in the past that her life had been troubled, then he wouldn’t now be sitting there, looking at her as though he was seeing her for the first time.
She took a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘Jack was one of the lads in our group and my best friend. I didn’t have many girlfriends. They didn’t like the way I looked, but Jack and I were mates. It was his suggestion that we just clear off, head for London. It seemed a good idea at the time. I was seventeen by then but I knew that with Dad no longer around, the Social Services might be inclined to get involved and I didn’t want to go down that road. The minute Social Services get involved there’s a good chance that you’ll end up worse off than you were to start with.’
‘So you just…took off…’
‘We stole a car, something else that seemed a good idea at the time. I didn’t think about whether it was right or wrong, it was all just a means to an end. Jack drove.’ In retrospect, she could see the craziness of it all but she could remember how she had felt at the time. An orphan, missing her drunken but humorous father, just trying to escape the trap she had seen other girls fall into. The baby at seventeen, then another two years later, the pathetic desperation of endless relationships with abusive boyfriends who disappeared after a few months or a few weeks. The hopelessness.
She just wished that he would say something, even if it was to condemn her, but his silence was complete and, really, wasn’t his complete silence damning in itself?
‘Of course, we were caught. We hadn’t even made it halfway down to London when Jack was picked up for speeding. It didn’t take long before we were hauled into a police station and, because there had been a lot in the press about joyriders, we were dealt with pretty harshly. Fingerprints, the lot. I got off because I was just a passenger, but Jack went to prison for six months.’
‘And where were you at the time?’
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