“You can get revenge when she’s a teenager and wanting to sleep past noon.” I remember my mother waking me up with the greatest of pleasure by vacuuming my room on a Saturday morning when all I’d wanted to do was snooze the day away before going out again that night.
“I’ll be catching up on all the sleep she’s deprived me of, so she can sleep as long as she likes.” She stifled a yawn. “When Olivia didn’t live with us, Rose would occasionally spend a Friday or a Saturday night with her and sleep over. That was bliss. I stayed in bed the whole morning after, sprawled out.”
I laughed. “Does she never see her dad?”
“No.” Her eyes met mine and she gave a deep sigh. “Do you want a cup of tea and I’ll tell you what happened?”
“Yes. If it won’t keep you from too much beauty sleep.”
The taxi pulled up outside her home and I followed her in; she was swifter at finding her keys this time, the house silent and still when the door opened, with just a lamp on in the hallway.
“Don’t be surprised if Liv wakes up and comes down. She’s been midnight feasting since she was about eleven. It’s at the point now where she actually prepares a snack before she goes to bed. I think that’s called acceptance and as long as Rose doesn’t pick up on that habit, we’re good.” She went straight for the kettle, chucking the coat she’d remembered to collect on the way out of the hotel over the back of a chair.
The kettle boiled while she undid her shoes, breathing an audible sigh of relief when she took them off. “It must’ve been a man who came up with the idea for those things.”
“Probably.” I was too interested in looking at her legs to formulate a decent response. “Nice shoes though.”
She laughed, as if she could read my mind and knew exactly what I was thinking.
“I just wish they were more comfortable.”
The kettle boiled and she poured the water in to the two mugs she’d grabbed. The quiet wrapped around us like a blanket, and I waited to see if she still wanted to tell me about Rose’s dad.
“Here.” She passed the mug over to me and then went to sit down. “Although we should probably have a bottle of Jack for this story, not tea.”
I sat down facing her, noticing that her lips were still void of lipstick. “I can afford a good hitman.”
She laughed. “So can Olivia and she nearly did just that.” She fiddled with her hair. “I started at my previous firm as a trainee and I worked hard. A couple of years after I’d finished my training contract, a new partner started. He was professional, intelligent, a few years older than me and we started a relationship away from work. About nine months in, I found out I was pregnant.
“When I told him, he was dismissive and suggested I get a termination. That wasn’t something I was prepared to do – although a baby wasn’t in my plans at that point, it didn’t scare me and I figured that after nine months of a solid romance it wasn’t something we couldn’t deal with.” She laughed and tossed her hair to one side.
“I take it he freaked?”
There was another sigh and a smile that told me she’d found some kind of peace with this. “Two days after I’d told him that I was going through with it, an announcement was made in the office that he’d just gotten engaged to his long-term girlfriend.”
I didn’t know exactly what to say. I could call him names or make threats, but these were words that were right for five years ago and were now redundant. I could make his career less profitable by spreading a few discreet rumours, but I’d have no idea on how that would affect Georgie.
“No one knew?”
She shook her head. “The other partners, but not the rest of us. He didn’t really socialise with his colleagues, other than the senior partners. I’d assisted on a case with him and we’d spent some time in Leeds together, staying over in a hotel, then continued seeing each other. I’d been to his house, but it turned out he had two, so I’d never had a clue about his girlfriend.”
“What happened?”
She was quiet for a second. “We came to an agreement about child support. He pays into a trust fund for Rose, and he signed his rights away, unless she wants to meet him when she’s older. The problem was, his secretary found the paperwork and outed us both – when I started showing it was a bit of a scandal because no one knew I’d been seeing someone, so there were already rumours about us which I’d denied. When it came out, it got awkward at work and the slurs started about me sleeping my way to the top, and that I’d tried to trap him. A couple of the other women started rumours that I’d slept with half the partners and destroyed another marriage.”
“How did you deal with it?”
“By working my arse off and ignoring them. Steve never said anything; he ignored everything including me, married his fiancée and that was that. Rose was born and I kept work and her separate. For all my colleagues knew, I could’ve had her adopted.”
I thought of the little girl sleeping upstairs, how she loved books and chocolate and fairy tales about handsome princes and wondered how the fuck anyone wouldn’t want to have her in their lives. I thought about how Max and Vic had been desperate for a baby, how Payton, even though it was unexpected, was over the moon to become a mum in a few more months and I wondered again what sort of man it took to say no to loving the life he’d help create.
I didn’t want to meet him, because the right hook I’d perfected would be used on his face.
“Does she ask about him?”
“Yes.” It was a simple answer. “She’s asked what he’s like, so I’ve shown her pictures. And she asked why he doesn’t want to see her, so I tell her the truth. He had another family and chose to stay with them before she was born. Then I explain it’s his loss and we go through all the people that love her.”
“How do you not want to take up Olivia’s offer about the hit man?” I was considering commissioning one.
