On the walk home, she found herself looking at other young women. It bothered her when she caught herself thinking that the ones without kids seemed more youthful, light-hearted and attractive. She saw her reflection in a shop window and stared, her heart sinking. Suddenly she wanted to cry. There had been a time when, had she made the required effort, she would have been called pretty. Now that was just a memory, and she was a small thin girl with a pinched face and red hair caught back in a ponytail. She looked nondescript and plain. She swallowed hard, knowing that Toby and Connor’s father would never look at her now.
Once she had marvelled that he had ever deigned to notice her. She had thought it was so romantic that a dazzlingly attractive male who could have had literally any woman should instead have chosen her. But the passage of time and cruel experience had destroyed her fanciful illusions one by one and forced her to face less palatable truths. Now Katie accepted that he had only noticed her because she had been the sole female in his vicinity when he’d felt like sex. She had given him what he wanted without making a single demand. He had never at any stage regarded her as anything other than a social inferior—for he had never even taken her out on a date. When her breathless adoration had palled, he had dumped her so hard and fast she still shivered thinking about it. Nothing had ever hurt her as much as that cold, harsh descent from fantasy to reality.
Only a few minutes after she’d got back to her bedsit, her landlord appeared at her door. ‘You’ll have to go,’ he told her bluntly. ‘I’ve had another complaint about the noise your kids make at night.’
Katie stared at him in horror. ‘But all babies cry—’
‘And two babies make twice as much of a din.’
‘I swear I’ll try to keep them quieter—’
‘You said that the last time I spoke to you, and nothing’s changed,’ the older man cut in, unimpressed. ‘You’ve had your warning and I’m giving you two weeks’ notice. If you don’t move out willingly, I’ll have you evicted. So let’s keep it simple. Get yourself down to Social Services and they’ll soon sort you out with another place!’
Appalled at his belligerent attitude, Katie tried in vain to reason with him. Long after he had gone, she sat with her arms wrapped round herself while she fought the awful feeling of despair stealing over her. She was painfully aware that she had virtually no hope of fighting such a decree when complaints had been lodged against her. Her tenancy was only of the unassured variety, and she did not even feel she could blame the other tenants for kicking up a fuss. The walls were paper-thin and the twins did regularly cry at night.
The bedsit needed decorating, the furniture was battered and the shared facilities were dismal. But the room had still come to feel like home to Katie. Furthermore, the building was in good repair and the area was reasonably respectable and safe. She was not afraid to walk down the street. Unlike during her pregnancy, when she had spent a couple of months in a flat on an inner city estate. Drug dealing and gang warfare had been a way of life there, and she had been terrified every time she’d had to go out.
Although she had been about to put Toby and Connor down for a nap, she realised that she would have to go straight back out again. In two short weeks she would be homeless, and she needed to give the housing authorities as much time as possible to locate alternative accommodation for them. Just when had she sunk so low that she no longer had the power to help herself? She blinked back a sudden rush of tears. She was twenty-three years old. She had always been a doer—independent, energetic and industrious. But she had not realised how difficult it would be to raise two children alone. She had not realised how poor she would be either. Indeed, in the latter stages of pregnancy she had made enthusiastic plans about getting her career back on track. She had expected to return to fulltime employment, not end up dependent on welfare handouts for survival. Ill-health, accommodation problems, transport costs and sleepless nights had slowly but surely destroyed her hopes.
A week crawled past, during which Katie did everything she could to find somewhere else to live. But the few leads she had got turned into dead ends. Midway through the second week she began to panic, and a social worker informed her that she would have to go into emergency bed and breakfast accommodation.
‘You’ll hate it,’ her friend Leanne Carson declared. ‘The room won’t be yours to do what you want with, and there probably won’t be any cooking facilities.’
‘I know,’ Katie muttered heavily.
‘Crying babies won’t be flavour of the month there either.’ The pretty blue-eyed brunette whom Katie had met in hospital sighed, ‘You’ll be moved on again in no time. Why are you being such a doormat?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You told me that the twins’ dad had money. Why don’t you spread a little of that cash in your own direction? If the stingy creep is newsworthy and wealthy enough, you could sell your story to the press.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ Katie pressed pale fingers to her pounding temples.
‘Of course you’d have to spice the story up. Ten-times-a-night sex, how insatiable or kinky his demands were—you know the sort of thing…’
Katie reddened to the roots of her hair. ‘No, I don’t—’
‘The sordid details are what make tittle-tattle like that entertaining and worth oodles of cash. Don’t be such a prude! The guy’s a total bastard. He deserves to be embarrassed!’
‘Maybe he does, but I couldn’t do it. That’s not what I’m about. I appreciate that you’re only trying to help, but—’
‘You’re never going to get up out of the gutter with that bad attitude.’ Leanne rolled scornful eyes heavy with mascara and glittering blue shadow. ‘Are you just going to lie down and die? Let the bloke get away with it? If you really love your little boys, you’ll be ready to do whatever it takes to give them a better life!’
Katie flinched as though she had been slapped.
Leanne dealt her a defiant look. ‘It’s true, and you know it is. You’re letting the kids’ father…this Alexandros whatever…you’re letting him escape his responsibilities.’
‘I contacted the Child Support Agency—’
‘Yeah, like they’ve got the time and resources to try and pin your kids on some foreign business tycoon! He’s rich. He’d refuse to take DNA tests, or he’d stay out of the country, or pretend he’d lost all his money. If you insist on playing it by the book, you’ll never see a penny from him,’ the other woman forecast with cynical conviction. ‘No, if you ask me, you’re only going to escape your current problems if you do a kiss-and-tell for the tabloids!’
Katie couldn’t sleep that night. She thought of the sacrifices her own mother had had to make to bring her up. Widowed when her daughter was only six, Maura had had to work as a cleaner, a caretaker and a cook to make ends meet. In the darkness, Katie lay still and taut with discomfiture. Alexandros had dumped her, ignored her appeal for help and broken her stupid heart. She had decided she would sooner starve than appeal to him again. But had she let false pride get in the way of her duty towards her infant sons? Was Leanne right? Could she have done more to press her case with Alexandros?
Two days later, Katie moved out of her bedsit with Leanne’s help. Luckily her friend was able to store some stuff for her. The surplus had to be dumped or passed on to be sold on a market stall, because Katie could not afford storage costs. The bed and breakfast hotel was crowded and her room was small, drab and depressing.
After spending her first night there, Katie rose heavy-eyed, but driven by a new and fierce determination. She had decided that she was willing to do whatever it took to give Toby and Connor a secure roof over their heads. The prospect of public