of the doorbell ringing stalled the rest of her sentence. She tossed the bubbles aside and quickly pulled the plug out of the bath and, scooping Matthew up in his towel, called out, ‘Just a second.’
‘Who is it, Mummy?’ Matthew asked as Scarlett did her best to dry him as she walked to the front door of her flat. ‘Are we having pizza again?’
‘No, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s not the pizza-delivery man. It’s…it’s…’
‘A surprise?’ he asked, with excitement building in his eyes. ‘What sort of surprise?’
‘Er…I’m not sure…it could be Mrs West. She might have run out of milk again.’
Scarlett opened the door, already knowing who it was, for she had felt it in every single cell of her body at the first sound of that bell.
Alessandro stood there, his eyes going immediately to the child wriggling in her arms. Such a rush of pain, panic and guilt passed through his body he felt as if he was not going to be able to keep upright. He tried to speak, but for some reason his throat refused to work. He swallowed half a dozen times but still nothing came out.
‘Who is it, Mummy?’ Matthew asked in a small-toddler sibilant whisper.
Scarlett looked at Alessandro with a direct and somewhat challenging look. ‘This is your father, Matthew.’
Matthew wrinkled his brow and looked at her again. ‘He’s not dead, like Mrs West’s cat Tinkles?’
‘No, darling, he’s not dead. He’s very much alive.’
A silence measured the erratic pace of Alessandro’s heartbeat before the little boy whispered up against his mother’s ear, ‘Can he speak?’
Scarlett smiled in spite of the tension of the moment, and when she looked at Alessandro his mouth, too, had tilted a fraction.
‘Hello, Matthew,’ Alessandro said, not knowing whether to offer his hand or bend down and kiss the child.
What did one do these days with small children?
He didn’t know.
Over the years he’d actively avoided children of any age, knowing how much worse it made him feel about the decision he’d been forced to make.
‘Hello…’ the child said with a shy but totally engaging smile. ‘Do you like cars?’
Alessandro felt a sharp pain begin in his abdomen and travel right through to his backbone, like a savage drill. ‘Yes…yes, I love cars. I have several.’
The boy’s eyes lit up, and Alessandro couldn’t help noticing they were exactly the same colour as his, fringed with thick, sooty lashes.
‘I’ve got twenteen,’ Matthew announced proudly.
‘Twenteen?’ Alessandro glanced at Scarlett with a quizzical look on his face.
‘Twenty, darling,’ she said, addressing the child. ‘Remember how it goes after ten? Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—’
‘Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!’ Matthew crowed.
‘That is indeed a lot of cars,’ Alessandro said, still struggling to hold himself together.
‘Umm…perhaps you should come inside,’ Scarlett said when she noticed a neighbour she didn’t particularly like hovering in the stairwell.
‘Thank you,’ Alessandro said, stepped inside and closed the door.
Scarlett brushed a strand of her hair back with her one free hand. ‘Umm…would you excuse us while I get Matthew into his pyjamas? He was in the bath when you rang the bell.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. ‘Perhaps I should have phoned first.’
Scarlett wondered why he hadn’t. But then, looking at him now, she realised he had probably needed time to gather himself. The news would no doubt have shocked him. He had clearly not expected to be proved wrong.
She felt for him, even as she felt angry that she had suffered alone for so long. It was a bewildering mix of emotions: resentment, regret, hate, love…
No she didn’t love him any more, she decided. How could she? She had suffered too much as a result of his lack of trust. She wasn’t going to allow herself to get caught out a second time.
‘Can I wear my racing-car jammies?’ Matthew asked as she carried him out of the small living-room.
‘Sure you can,’ she said. ‘I washed them yesterday.’
‘You won’t tell Daddy I still sometimes wet the bed, will you Mummy?’ he asked in another whisper, but his little voice carried regardless.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
Alessandro turned to look around the room, knowing it was pointless feeling shut out and angry. It was his fault for being so arrogantly confident. He should have at least given her the benefit of the doubt. He could have repeated the tests. He could even have checked the statistics on the internet like any other layman, for God’s sake. He’d done it after he’d left the doctor’s surgery, ashamed that he hadn’t thought of it earlier.
It was all there. He’d even read of two pregnancies occurring five years after surgery.
He wondered how those two men had treated their partners. Had they cut them from their lives, accusing them of being unfaithful. Or had they stayed close, supporting them, and guiding them through what to all intents and purposes was an unplanned pregnancy.
It shocked him to the core that he hadn’t once considered Scarlett’s feelings about being pregnant at twenty-three. That was considered young these days, when most women got their career established before they thought about settling down. She had not only been young, but only just qualified as an interior designer. And he had thrown her out on the street, late at night in a foreign country, pregnant and alone.
No wonder she still hated him.
His eyes went to a photograph sitting on a side table and he picked it up and looked at it, emotion beginning to tighten his chest. It had obviously been taken the day she left hospital after the birth of Matthew. He could see the run-down outer-suburbs hospital building in the background.
Scarlett was holding him, a tiny bundle of blue in her arms, her still-swollen stomach visible, her breasts fuller than normal, and her gaze full of love as she looked down at the infant. But there was sadness in her smile. He could sense it.
You should have been there, the voice of accusation thundered in his brain. You missed the birth of your child out of arrogance, ignorance and prejudice.
Three whole years had passed.
He had not been there for a moment of his son’s life. Not a single moment. He hadn’t felt the first fluttery kicks in Scarlett’s womb with his hand pressed against her abdomen. He hadn’t been there for the first ultrasonic image of his son. He hadn’t witnessed
