out of sight completely.’
‘So how did you find out where I was?’
She set her teeth. ‘I saw your photo in the paper.’
‘And you thought, Aha, here’s a pigeon ripe for the plucking—’
‘No! Simon has glue ear, damn you. Do you know what that means? He’s going deaf, and he can’t hear the teacher—can’t understand what she’s telling him, or the sounds she’s trying to teach him in reading. He needs grommets put into his eardrums to drain the ears and every day he waits he drops a little further behind at school.
‘They didn’t pick it up until he’d been at school for a year, so he’s already lost a lot of ground. His behaviour is getting worse too. He used to love school, but now he hates it because the other kids say he’s stupid and call him a dummy. He gets into fights and is disruptive, simply because he can’t hear and can’t keep up. The waiting list to have grommets put in is over a year, and I can’t afford to get it done privately.’
She knew she should tone her aggression down, sound moderate and demure and appealing, but when she thought of Simon’s bewildered suffering during the past year it was all she could do not to swear and shout and throw a tantrum.
‘Your devotion to the child is exemplary.’ He was watching her, his hard mouth compressed into a straight line, grey-green eyes opaque and unmoved. When he continued it was with unnerving precision. ‘But you’ve chosen the wrong man, Olivia. I’m not so conveniently weak I’d let you foist your child on me.’
‘He is not my child.’ Taking in a deep breath, she unclenched her tight jaw and said pleadingly, ‘Drake, please. You can’t turn away from your own son!’
‘You’re right,’ he agreed calmly. ‘I wouldn’t turn away from my own son. It was a nice try, Olivia, but you went about it the wrong way. If you’d written the usual begging letter I might have helped for old times’ sake.’ His eyes wandered openly down her body, returned with cool, speculative contempt to her pale face. ‘I don’t blackmail easily.’
Desperation drove her to say fiercely, ‘If you won’t help him I’ll go to the newspapers and tell them—’
His hands snaked out, catching her wrists in a grip so strong that she winced and cried out. Long fingers relaxing slightly, he said with a soft sibilance that was infinitely more frightening than a loud bluster could ever have been, ‘Stop right now.’
The tumultuous words died on her tongue. She dragged in a shaky breath, suddenly aware that she didn’t really know this man, that they were alone and she was weakened by illness.
Gripped by a sickening fear that she might have done something so irrevocable that all their lives would be marked by it, Olivia’s senses were on full alert; the skin across the back of her neck prickled and tightened, made preternaturally sensitive by her acute awareness of Drake Arundell’s fingers around her wrists. Shocked, she realised that she could smell him—a faint, infinitely troubling scent that set her nerve ends tingling.
Fight or flee, she thought, trying to calm the violent beating of her heart. She couldn’t flee, and intuition warned her that she risked more than she understood if she fought; no wonder tension iced her stomach and clouded her brain.
And then she heard Simon’s voice. ‘Liv!’ he shouted, clattering up the outside staircase. ‘Hey, Liv, guess what? There’s a cool Jag outside! I wonder...’
No! I’m not ready for this! Olivia thought feverishly, wrenching her hands free. Bending so that her face couldn’t be seen, she pretended to pick up a piece of thread from the floor, only straightening when Simon came tearing into the room, honey-gold hair tossing in the wind of his progress, golden-brown eyes sparkling with unaccustomed vitality.
‘...whose it is!’ he finished, skidding to a halt as he took in the tableau in front of him.
‘What are you doing home?’ she asked too sharply. ‘School hasn’t finished yet.’
‘Yes, it has so.’ He flushed, jutting his bottom lip.
Not now! she thought. He had gone through the ‘terrible twos’ with no sign of tantrums, but since his hearing had deteriorated they came frequently.
He thought better of it this time, though. ‘We had a concert and then they sent us home,’ he said, directing sideways looks at the man who was watching him impassively.
Later she’d make sure Simon hadn’t bunked school, but at that moment all she could say was, ‘This is Mr Arundell, Simon.’
‘Hello,’ Simon said, suddenly wary as a half-grown wolf cub. ‘I’m Simon Harley.’ He advanced into the room and looked uncertainly at Olivia.
Drake said, ‘How do you do, Simon?’ and held out his hand.
Cautiously Simon shook it. ‘How do you do?’ he replied, staring up in awe. ‘Is that your car down there?’
Olivia looked from the smooth childish features to the guarded face of the man who had just repudiated his son, and wondered whether she could see some resemblance.
No, none. Like her, Simon bore Elizabeth’s stamp.
And yet... An elusive tingle of memory teased her mind before escaping into oblivion.
‘It is,’ Drake Arundell said, all grey leached from eyes that were now pure green.
Olivia said quietly, ‘Darling, go and wash your hands—they’re filthy.’
‘What?’
She repeated the command in the clear, slightly nasal tone that seemed to get through best to him.
‘OK.’
He gave a respectful smile to Drake Arundell, who waited until the door into the bathroom had closed firmly behind him before saying in a low, level voice, ‘You can’t even claim he looks like me. He’s—’
In an equally muted voice Olivia interrupted, ‘We can’t talk now.’
His head came up as though she had struck him on the jaw. Inwardly quailing at the icy lack of emotion in his eyes, Olivia refused to back down; she stared him directly in the face, silently forbidding him to upset the child who was noisily splashing water over his hands in the bathroom.
‘We aren’t going to talk at all,’ he said curtly. ‘I fight dirty, Olivia. If you annoy me any more I’ll find a painful way to clip your claws.’ He swung around and strode out, long legs moving fast, the set of his broad shoulders and the way he held his head expressing anger and contempt.
Olivia’s breath hissed through her lips. She stood listening to the sounds of the neighbourhood, so familiar that for years she had barely heard them. Cars changed gear and swung around the corner, impatient brakes screeching on the wet tarseal. A siren wailed down the motorway, its imperative command only slightly muted by the houses between.
Her stomach felt as though it had been kicked by a rugby forward. Even though she had rehearsed their meeting ever since posting the letter, she hadn’t been prepared.
But then, nothing would have prepared her for this version of
