She didn’t tell them that she knew what it concerned. Or anything about Brant Cadman. Ridiculously, she was nursing the hope that if she didn’t bring his name into it, this whole harrowing nightmare might not be true.
For what other reason the hospital might be writing to her, she didn’t stop to imagine. The fact that Brant had said he would be calling round again today was very real and she was keen to get out of the flat before he arrived. She didn’t think she could face him until someone told her for certain that there had been a mix-up. Until then, he presented a dark threat to everything she cherished.
‘I take it you know Brant Cadman was here,’ Katrina King told her as soon as Annie rang to ask her friend if she would have Sean for a couple of hours. A year older than Annie, the woman worked from home as a freelance sportswear designer. She loved children and had volunteered to entertain Sean if ever Annie needed a babysitter. ‘You did get my email, didn’t you?’
She hadn’t. She’d been too worried and overtaken by the man’s visit to even remember to check her emails.
‘When did he call?’ was all Annie could respond with.
‘About coffee-time yesterday. Still looking like every woman’s darkest fantasy. What did he want?’ Katrina asked, sounding suspicious.
‘Just to see me,’ Annie returned, thinking how pretentious that sounded, but at that moment she couldn’t begin to tell her friend the nature of Brant’s visit.
‘I’ll bet!’ Katrina’s words held a mixture of caution and envy, but Annie ignored them.
‘See you later,’ she said quickly, ringing off.
She didn’t want to let Sean out of her sight, but decided it would be best if he was with Katrina. Her friend only lived a short drive away, and fifteen minutes later, with Sean safely delivered into the woman’s care, Annie was driving back through the suburbs only to realise that, with all the trauma of what was happening, she had forgotten both the letter from the hospital and the name of the person she was supposed to see.
Forced to make a detour back to the flat, she was tripping down the steps again to her little purple Ka when she saw the dark blue Mercedes saloon suddenly pulling up in front of her home.
Brant Cadman! She didn’t even need to look at the driver to know it would be him. Not too many cars of that sort parked outside her modest little address!
She felt her whole body tense as he unfolded himself from the big car.
‘Good morning.’
Somehow, Annie found her tongue to acknowledge him and felt his eyes flit over her, noticing, no doubt, the sharp rise and fall of her small breasts in response to seeing him standing there.
‘Are you going out?’
Of course, he would want to know, she thought with her stomach knotting, struck by how devastating he looked in his casual grey polo shirt and pale chinos. But that was what men like Brant Cadman did. Devastate.
‘That letter came today.’ She started towards the Ka. ‘I’m going to the hospital.’ She couldn’t have lied to him even if she had wanted to and was suddenly disconcerted to find his tall, lean frame blocking her path.
‘Then get into the car.’ He was indicating his own plush saloon. ‘We’ll go together.’
‘No!’ Even to her own ears she sounded like a frightened schoolgirl.
‘Annie!’ His sigh was exasperated. ‘The last thing I want to do is hurt you.’
He meant emotionally, she thought, but he had already done that.
‘I just need to do this alone. To be alone.’ It wasn’t meant to, but it came out as a plea.
‘You won’t want to, Annie. Not afterwards,’ he assured her softly.
He had been through it already, she remembered. But just because he had been sent home with the wrong baby, it didn’t mean for certain that she had, did it? So he had got her name off the computer. So she had been in the hospital giving birth at the same time as his wife. But so had a number of other women, probably. And blood tests weren’t a hundred per cent accurate, were they? Sean couldn’t be the only baby that the Cadman boy could have been switched with. Could he?
The anguish that accompanied her silent, tortured questions momentarily disarmed her, leaving her open to his decisive will.
‘Come on. I’ll drive you,’ he stated. And that was that.
Her tension might have got the better of her, holding her rigid as a statue for most of the journey. But Brant kept her talking so that she couldn’t spend the whole of the drive dwelling on the traumatic situation, something deliberately calculated to relax her, she was sure.
Only once did she feel the sickening dread in the pit of her stomach threaten to overwhelm her, and that was at the outset when he asked, ‘Where’s Sean?’
‘I thought it best that he didn’t come.’ Annie’s tone was defensive. ‘He’s at Katrina’s.’
She was expecting some demand from him to see the son he claimed was his, but all he said was, ‘You get on well with her. Where did the two of you meet? At Cadman Sport?’
‘No. We were at art college together. She left before me, then told me about the vacancy in the art department, and so I joined too.’
She was aware of him steering the powerful car through the heavy traffic, of the courtesy he extended to other drivers as he slowed to let someone out of a side-turning.
‘What do you do now?’
‘I sell miniature water-colours to anyone who’ll take them, basically.’ She had a couple of regular outlets. A small gallery in Essex. A tea-shop selling crafts in a smaller village out of town.
‘Is it rewarding?’
She glanced at him, pulling a face. ‘You mean financially?’ That sort of thing, she thought, would probably rank as a priority to a man like him.
But he said, ‘Not necessarily,’ slowing down to stop at a red light.
‘You mean spiritually?’ Annie’s dark lashes shot up under the strands of her fringe. ‘As food for my well-being?’
‘Don’t knock it,’ he said, wise to the hint of surprised cynicism she had directed towards him. ‘Isn’t that the most important form of reward?’
‘Yes, it is,’ she answered, to both his questions, because financially she only just scraped a living at present, and she certainly didn’t intend going back to work for anyone else yet and leaving Sean with strangers. She had decided from the beginning that she would look after her baby herself.
Her baby. And now here was Brant, driving her to an interview that might rob her of the right to call him that forever.
No! Panic brought on that queasy feeling again with sickening intensity, draining the colour from her cheeks.
The sun struck the polished bonnet of the car, hurting her eyes with its remorseless glare. Her head tilted to one side to avoid it, as Brant put the car in motion again, she didn’t even see him glance her way.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked quietly.
Annie shot a look at his harshly defined profile. ‘Sure. I feel great! How do you expect me to feel?’ She felt too hurt, too angry, too everything to avoid making the challenge. For the briefest moment, as he turned his head, she noticed the deep concern in his eyes.
‘’Course.’ His jaw seemed clenched as his attention returned to the road. ‘Stupid question.’
‘I’m sorry.’ It was all she could say to excuse herself. She was too strung up, as well as much too conscious of him sitting beside her: of those long-tapered fingers as they flicked