by—’
The doctor looked indignant. ‘Actually, mate, I got the distinct impression you’re the last person she wants to contact,’ he revealed frankly.
‘Indeed!’
‘She was pretty shocked when she saw me. In fact,’ he admitted, ‘I thought she was going to run out of the office. And when I said your name she looked…’ He stopped; there were no words that could accurately describe the bleak expression that had filled the young mother’s eyes. ‘Not happy,’ Paul finished lamely.
Angolos leaned back in his seat and, loosening a button on his jacket, folded his arms across his chest. ‘Yet you are here.’
‘I am.’ Paul ran a hand across his jaw. ‘This is hard. Mirrie does this sort of thing so much better than I do.’
At this point, if he had been having this conversation with anyone else Angolos would have told them to get on with it, but this was Paul, so he controlled his impatience and made suitably encouraging noises.
‘The thing is, Angolos, she brought the boy.’ The expression on his friend’s face as he looked at him from beneath knitted brows was less than encouraging, but Paul persisted. ‘Have you ever seen…?’
‘No, I have never seen the child,’ Angolos responded glacially.
‘He’s a fine little lad and not spoilt either. Georgie’s done a fine job, though I got the impression reading between the lines that money’s tight.’
Angolos’s lip curled contemptuously. ‘So this is what this is about—she’s been playing the poverty card. I deposit a more than adequate amount of money in a bank account for the child’s needs. If Georgette has got greedy, if she has some deluded hope of extracting a more substantial amount from me, she can forget it. She’s taken me for a fool once…’
‘She honestly didn’t mention money, Angolos, but if she wanted to bleed you… Did you see how much that rock star who denied paternity got taken for when the girl took him to court? DNA testing can—’
‘DNA testing,’ Angolos cut in, ‘has robbed her of the opportunity of passing the child off as mine. If she’s that desperate she could always sell her story to some tabloid.’ His nostrils flared as he drummed his long fingers on the tabletop. ‘That would be her style.’
‘Wouldn’t she have done that before now if she was going to? And if she wanted money I imagine the divorce settlement would be pretty generous.’
‘Over my dead body.’
‘I get the feeling you mean that literally.’
‘I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that,’ Angolos returned smoothly. ‘Are we drifting here, Paul?’
‘Yes, well, actually, it’s…the DNA thing…’
‘The DNA thing?’ Angolos said blankly.
‘Are you totally sure a test would come up negative?’
‘Sure…?’ Angolos looked at his friend incredulously. ‘You of all people can ask me that? The chemo saved my life but there was a price to pay—it rendered me sterile. My only chance of having a child is stored in a deep-freeze somewhere.’
‘It was tough luck,’ Paul, very conscious of his own impending fatherhood, admitted.
‘Tough luck?’ Angolos’s expressive mouth dropped at one corner. ‘Yes, I suppose it was tough luck. However, considering that without the treatment and, more importantly, your early diagnosis I would not be here at all, I consider myself lucky.’
‘But it’s not an easy thing to come to terms with.’
‘Actually, intellectually I have no problem with the situation, but somehow, no matter how many times I tell myself there’s more to a man’s masculinity than his sperm count, I still feel…’ His mouth twisted in a self-derisive smile, he met Paul’s eyes. ‘Maybe Georgette was right about that, at least—perhaps at heart I am an unreconstructed chauvinist…’
‘Was there ever any doubt?’
This retort drew a rueful smile from Angolos.
‘Is that why you never told her about the chemo and the cancer? Were you afraid she’d…?’ Paul gave an embarrassed grimace. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t…’
‘Was I afraid she’d think me any less a man, you mean? What do you think, Paul?’
‘I think if I knew what went on in your head I’d be the only one,’ his friend returned frankly. ‘You know, when it comes to answering questions you’d give the slipperiest politician a run for his money. If you want my opinion, you were wrong. I know Georgie was young, but she always struck me as pretty mature…’
‘Mature enough to cheat on me and try to pass off the product of her amorous adventures as mine.’
Paul winced. ‘Ah, about that, Angolos…’
‘You want to discuss my wife’s infidelity?’
‘Of course not.’
‘If you’ve discovered who her lover was…’ Right up to the end she had refused to admit her guilt or provide the name of her lover. Though he knew who he was. ‘I’m really no longer interested.’
‘Maybe there was no lover?’
Angolos’s dark brows knitted as he gave a contemptuous smile. ‘Was no lover…? What are you suggesting—immaculate conception?’
Paul held up his hand. ‘Angolos, hear me out. I know that the sort of chemotherapy you had normally results in infertility, but there are exceptions…you didn’t have any tests post—’
‘No, or the counselling, which apparently would have made me content to be less than a man.’
‘Yes, you made your opinion of counselling quite plain at the time.’
‘One cannot alter what has happened; one must just accept.’
‘Terribly fatalistic and fine.’
‘We Greeks are fatalists.’
‘You’re the least fatalistic person I’ve ever met. And sometimes it helps to talk…but I didn’t come here to discuss the benefits of counselling.’
‘Are you likely to tell me what you did come for any time this side of Christmas?’
‘The boy is yours.’
A spasm of anger passed across Angolos’s face. Paul watched with some trepidation as his friend took several deep breaths. There was a white line etched around his lips as he said in a low, carefully controlled voice, ‘Anyone but you…Paul…’
‘You’d knock my block off, I know, but I still have to say it. The boy, Angolos, he’s the living spit of you. Oh, I don’t mean a little bit like—I mean a miniature version. There’s absolutely no doubt about it in my mind—Nicky
