‘I want to honour my father’s wishes, by ensuring that everything he detailed in his will is actioned. I want every word of his intentions followed.’
‘I presume that includes inheriting what is rightfully yours?’
‘Yes. I know that we might have to wait until I turn eighteen, but I want to remove my mother from the estate, and my stepbrother too, and divorce my husband. I don’t care what you have to pay him, but I know that there is a price at which he would consent. Your job is to discover what that price is.’
‘The divorce might be the hardest part, but I understand that you wouldn’t want to remove your mother, only to have your husband step in to claim what was left to you.’
Valentina closed her eyes for a moment. ‘There is one other thing that I need to tell you.’
When she opened them, he was staring back at her.
‘I’m pregnant.’
He dropped his pen. ‘Valentina?—’
‘Don’t tell me that this changes things, because it doesn’t. You are the only other person who knows that I’m expecting, and we’re going to keep it that way,’ she said. ‘I need your help to leave Argentina until after the baby is born.’
‘You want to leave Argentina?’
‘Yes. And when I come back, it will be to claim what is mine.’
When Valentina returned to the lawyer’s office five days later, she felt like a different woman. The bruise around her eye fromher husband’s last show of dominance was finally fading, and she was quietly confident that her plan was going to work. So long as the lawyer had done his part, she had every confidence that she would be leaving Argentina before the end of the month. And most important, before anyone else discovered that she was expecting. Her biggest worry was that one of the maids would hear her being sick in the mornings.
‘Please go straight into his office,’ Lorenzo’s secretary said when she stepped through the door.
Valentina nodded to her, pleased that she didn’t have to wait.
‘Good morning,’ she said, standing at the door a moment until the lawyer looked up.
When a smile lit the man’s face, she breathed a sigh of relief.
‘You have good news for me, don’t you?’
‘You can read me like a book,’ he said, setting aside whatever papers he was working on to face her. ‘It just so happens that I do.’
His secretary appeared then with a coffee pot but Valentina shook her head, not able to stomach it, sitting in silence until she’d gone and closed the door behind her. She didn’t trust anyone other than Lorenzo.
‘I have a proposition for you,’ he said, as she folded her hands in her lap.
Valentina found herself leaning forward in her seat. ‘Please, tell me.’
‘I propose that we send you to London for the time being, well away from your mother and husband, until you turn eighteen.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And after you have had the baby, because that would certainly complicate matters if anyone were to find out.’
She nodded. It was only a couple of months until she was of age, but she understood that the baby complicated matters. ‘Go on.’
‘Once you’re eighteen and the infant has been born, we will mount a claim to contest the will, and at the same time we will apply for an annulment of your marriage, rather than a divorce. Of course, we will have to offer your husband a significant sum of money to walk away from your marriage, but everyone has a price, and if we are successful in challenging your mother in court, then you will be a young woman with enormous funds at your disposal.’
Valentina sat back in the chair. ‘And how, exactly, do you suggest I hide my baby when I return?’
At that, the lawyer’s cheeks turned a deep shade of pink, but she was impressed that he didn’t break eye contact, however embarrassed the subject might make him.
‘After some discreet research, I have found two options in London,’ Lorenzo said. ‘There is a woman running a place called Hope’s House, only very recently opened and hardly known about yet, and you would be able to deliver your baby there and place the infant for adoption to an approved family. It seems to be a more progressive place, one that understands how these things happen without bringing judgement on the mother.’
Valentina’s mouth went dry. ‘Adoption?’ She hadn’t imagined the idea of actually giving her baby up. In truth, she hadn’t thought what it would be like to have a child at all, or the logistics of hiding another human being as she fought her mother.
‘I can’t see any other way, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Although, of course, you would potentially be able to return for the child and come to an agreement with the adoptive parents after your annulment and inheritance. It would be difficult, but not impossible with the right guidance and of course funds.’
‘So, I would have the baby, and then return immediately to Argentina?’ Valentina asked. ‘That would be seven months from now, give or take a few weeks. I’m afraid of what my mothercould do during that time, the interests of my father’s that she might dispose of. He was adamant that I not sell off any of the property and that I continue to run the olive oil business.’
