There was no choice given in the matter and it was hard to cling to the belief that she was in charge when she felt as though she were in the path of a steamroller.
When her cell phone buzzed next to her at nine sharp that evening, every muscle in her body froze.
The results are back. We need to talk.
Yes. Of course.
I will be over in half an hour.
What? Tonight?
Tell me where you live.
You can’t rock up at nine in the evening!
Why? Is there someone with you?
No, but I have a child. Remember?
I think it’s fair to say that it is a situation that needs to be urgently addressed. Your address?
Taut with consternation and aware of that steamroller gathering pace and moving ever faster in her direction, Georgie rattled off her address and then sprang into action.
Tilly was fast asleep, curled up under her duvet with just one foot poking out. For a few seconds, Georgie looked down at her daughter and marvelled at the absolute innocence. She drew the duvet over that tiny foot, smoothed down the rebellious dark curls and then quietly shut the door as she left the room.
She had only just managed to change into some old jeans and a jumper when her mobile rang and Abe announced his arrival.
Of course, there had been no doubt in her mind that he was Tilly’s father but she was still a bag of nerves as she pulled open the door and fell back for him to brush past her.
She didn’t have to see his face to sense his heightened, restless energy. It was there in the jerkiness of his powerful stride as he spun round on his heel to look at her as she closed the door to her flat quietly behind her and then pressed herself against it to stare back at him.
He dwarfed the small space. Her flat was tiny and she had gone for it because it had been in a good neighbourhood. Better somewhere small where she felt safe than bigger where walking through the streets with a small child posed a problem.
It was in a pleasant made-to-measure block overlooking the Thames with sufficient communal gardens to ensure her daughter had somewhere outside to play, because the trip to the nearest park was a bus ride away.
‘I want to see my daughter,’ he said abruptly, his lashes sweeping down to hide his expression.
‘She’s asleep.’
‘I have no intention of waking her,’ he pressed.
Georgie nodded. She unglued herself from the door and padded past him up the short, narrow flight of steps where two small bedrooms nestled on either side of a bathroom.
She stood aside in silence and watched as he tentatively approached the low bed and peered down in the semi-darkness.
What was going through his head?
Figuring it out was not beyond the wit of man, she thought. He’d been well and truly dumped in it and he was probably frantically trying to work out damage limitation.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told him stiffly, after ushering him into the kitchen and offering him something to drink.
Every nerve in her body was alive to his presence. Her back was to him but she was very much aware of him pulling out one of the kitchen chairs to sit. He had tossed his camel cashmere coat over one of the other chairs and when she finally turned to hand him the coffee she had made, she couldn’t help but think how out of place that coat looked...how out of placehelooked. Too expensive, too elegant, too sophisticated for her little kitchen where all the detritus left behind in the wake of an energetic toddler was piled here, there and everywhere.
With the width of the small white kitchen table between them, they could have been adversaries waiting for a fight to begin.
Regret at having told him what he evidently hadn’t wanted to hear poured through her like poison battling against the certainty that she had done the right thing, for better or for worse.
Besides, how would it have played out if she had kept Tilly’s existence to herself? What would have happened when the innocent toddler turned into an inquisitive adolescent who found out that she had been wilfully deprived of the opportunity to have a relationship with her own father?
