in teaching them good manners and obedience. Briony too was firm about not giving in to the impulse to over-compensate for her absences by too much indulgence, and already Nicky knew what was and was not permissible.
He was an attractive child, with soft dimples and a roguish smile, his dark curly hair making him easily mistakable for Gina’s own child. Briony never made any attempt to hide her unmarried state. She was proud of her son and loved him dearly, but she also wanted him to grow up in truth.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked Gina anxiously as she closed the door.
‘Nothing really. It was just that while we were in the Park today Nicky started asking about his father. He’s very intelligent, you know, Briony. He sees that Caterina has a mummy and daddy and constantly he asks me what has happened to his daddy.’ She saw the look of anguish in Briony’s eyes and mistaking its cause said gently, ‘Can it really be that his father does not want him? Surely.…’
‘His father doesn’t even know he exists,’ Briony told her harshly, taking a deep breath. ‘Oh, Gina, please don’t ask me about him. Not tonight of all nights. I just couldn’t bear it.…’
‘For Nicky’s sake you must,’ Gina said gently. ‘You cannot fob him off for ever. Soon he will be old enough for play school, and children can be so unkind.…’
‘One-parent families are nothing unusual these days,’ Briony defended, ‘and surely Nicky is better off with me than with two parents who fight continuously, or worse—–’
Watching her compassionately, Gina said softly, ‘He is a sensitive child, and when he asks about his daddy there is such a puzzled, hurt look in his eyes that my heart fails me. Today he asked me if his daddy didn’t want him.’ She spread her hands wide in a gesture of dismay. ‘What could I say? Fortunately I managed to distract his attention, but he is growing all the time. He is two; soon he will be three.… What are you going to tell him?’
‘What can I tell him?’ Briony asked bitterly. ‘He was conceived entirely by accident, and my… affair with his father was long over by the time I discovered I was expecting a child.’ Her lips twisted bitterly. ‘How do you tell a child that his father doesn’t care a row of beans for his existence, which is the truth?’ They heard the door opening and Nicky ran towards them clutching a huge teddy bear and a bag of plastic bricks.
‘Say goodnight to Gina,’ Briony instructed him.
Later, when she was tucking him up in bed, she inspected his features carefully. He showed his fathering, this child born out of what she had thought a night of perfect love and which instead had been an act of ruthless and deliberate expediency. He had nothing of her in him, unless it was his temperament. In looks he was all Kieron; his father in exact miniature from his dark blue eyes to his thick glossy hair.
When she first discovered she was pregnant she had been out of work and depressed. She had fainted twice in one week and put it down to nervous strain until, despite the fact that she had barely been eating, she discovered that her skirt wouldn’t fasten round her waist. She had known the truth then, but refused to accept it, confirmation finally coming in the shabby, impersonal interview room of a pregnancy advice bureau. They had been kind and helpful, offering to arrange for a termination of her pregnancy, despite its advanced state. They had probably considered that she wasn’t capable of bringing up a child, she thought wryly. She had been practically hysterical with all that she had endured from the Press and police, and the information that she was expecting Kieron’s child could have been the final straw which tipped her into insanity.
When it came to the point, though, she could not go through with it. As though bearing her child was some means of punishing herself for being so easily taken in by Kieron, she forced herself to accept it.
When he had been born, after a night of pain and anguish, she had not even wanted to look at him, but the midwife, experienced in the ways and mysteries of birth, had placed him in her arms, and from that moment she had been lost.
God had seen fit to grant her the gift of life, the midwife had said softly, and Briony had held to that thought in the long lonely months which followed.
Since then it had afforded her some slight satisfaction to know that Kieron had been deprived of this child, who must surely be the most perfect being ever created. It hadn’t been easy trying to bring him up single-handed, continually torn by the desire to be with him, gloating over every tiny step forward, and the need to earn sufficient money to safeguard their future.
Until recently he had accepted quite readily the fact that he only had a ‘mummy’, but as Gina had said, he was quick and intelligent, and it would not be long before he was questioning why he did not have a father.
It would not make any difference, she assured herself firmly; she would give him everything that two parents could, and never, never would he be allowed to know how callous had been his conception.
She watched him while he slept, wondering what little-boy dreams he dreamed, her forehead puckered in a faint frown as she contemplated the future.
Briony glanced at her watch and grimaced. Nicky was being unusually fractious this morning, and she wondered if he had caught her own tense mood. He had played naughtily with his breakfast, something he never normally did, his mouth sulky and pouting when she scolded him.
‘Don’t go to work, Mummy,’ he pleaded tearfully. ‘Stay with me!’
‘You know I have to go, Nicky,’ she reminded him gently, ‘but tomorrow’s Friday, and then after that Mummy will be at home with you for two whole days. Perhaps we’ll go somewhere nice, if you’re a good boy for Gina.’
‘Where nice?’ he breathed, tears forgotten. ‘To the Zoo to see the bears?’
‘Maybe. Finish your egg, there’s a good boy.’
His recalcitrance had made her late, and although she ran all the way down the bottom of the avenue, she was just in time to see her bus go sailing past. Groaning, she pressed a hand to her side to stifle the aching stitch. She was going to be late, and there was nothing she could do about it, so she might as well make up her mind to accept the fact. Although she frequently worked late, she hated being late in the morning, but Doug would understand. Not that he knew about Nicky. No one at the office had the slightest inkling that she had a child, and that was the way she wanted it to stay. Employers were wary of young women without husbands and with babies to bring up, and she had always needed her job too much to risk it. Besides, she didn’t want people talking about her behind her back, speculating about the identity of Nicky’s father, and now with Kieron Blake working on the paper she was glad she had kept silent. He hadn’t even asked her why she had changed her name, she thought bitterly—although she had not changed it entirely. Her name had been Elisabeth Briony and all she had done had been to drop her first name and change her surname for her mother’s maiden name. But then no doubt he had no need to ask. He must have followed the details in the papers—and there had been plenty. He must have known the ordéal she had endured; the shock she had sustained on learning that the man she had thought of as her tender, caring lover, ready to protect her from everything, was in fact a hardbitten journalist in search of a story, and ready to do anything to get it.
It was ten past nine when she walked into her office. She removed her jacket with a sigh.
‘So. You’ve arrived, have you?’
She swung round, eyes widening at the silky drawl, her heart jerking as though it were on strings.
‘You’re
