Claiming His Secret Love-Child. Cathy Williams

addressing the child. ‘Remember how it goes after ten? Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—’

      ‘Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!’ Matthew crowed.

      ‘That is indeed a lot of cars,’ Alessandro said, still struggling to hold himself together.

      ‘Umm…perhaps you should come inside,’ Scarlett said when she noticed a neighbour she didn’t particularly like hovering in the stairwell.

      ‘Thank you,’ Alessandro said, stepped inside and closed the door.

      Scarlett brushed a strand of her hair back with her one free hand. ‘Umm…would you excuse us while I get Matthew into his pyjamas? He was in the bath when you rang the bell.’

      ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. ‘Perhaps I should have phoned first.’

      Scarlett wondered why he hadn’t. But then, looking at him now, she realised he had probably needed time to gather himself. The news would no doubt have shocked him. He had clearly not expected to be proved wrong.

      She felt for him, even as she felt angry that she had suffered alone for so long. It was a bewildering mix of emotions: resentment, regret, hate, love…

      No she didn’t love him any more, she decided. How could she? She had suffered too much as a result of his lack of trust. She wasn’t going to allow herself to get caught out a second time.

      ‘Can I wear my racing-car jammies?’ Matthew asked as she carried him out of the small living-room.

      ‘Sure you can,’ she said. ‘I washed them yesterday.’

      ‘You won’t tell Daddy I still sometimes wet the bed, will you Mummy?’ he asked in another whisper, but his little voice carried regardless.

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

      Alessandro turned to look around the room, knowing it was pointless feeling shut out and angry. It was his fault for being so arrogantly confident. He should have at least given her the benefit of the doubt. He could have repeated the tests. He could even have checked the statistics on the internet like any other layman, for God’s sake. He’d done it after he’d left the doctor’s surgery, ashamed that he hadn’t thought of it earlier.

      It was all there. He’d even read of two pregnancies occurring five years after surgery.

      He wondered how those two men had treated their partners. Had they cut them from their lives, accusing them of being unfaithful. Or had they stayed close, supporting them, and guiding them through what to all intents and purposes was an unplanned pregnancy.

      It shocked him to the core that he hadn’t once considered Scarlett’s feelings about being pregnant at twenty-three. That was considered young these days, when most women got their career established before they thought about settling down. She had not only been young, but only just qualified as an interior designer. And he had thrown her out on the street, late at night in a foreign country, pregnant and alone.

      No wonder she still hated him.

      His eyes went to a photograph sitting on a side table and he picked it up and looked at it, emotion beginning to tighten his chest. It had obviously been taken the day she left hospital after the birth of Matthew. He could see the run-down outer-suburbs hospital building in the background.

      Scarlett was holding him, a tiny bundle of blue in her arms, her still-swollen stomach visible, her breasts fuller than normal, and her gaze full of love as she looked down at the infant. But there was sadness in her smile. He could sense it.

      You should have been there, the voice of accusation thundered in his brain. You missed the birth of your child out of arrogance, ignorance and prejudice.

      Three whole years had passed.

      He had not been there for a moment of his son’s life. Not a single moment. He hadn’t felt the first fluttery kicks in Scarlett’s womb with his hand pressed against her abdomen. He hadn’t been there for the first ultrasonic image of his son. He hadn’t witnessed the moment of birth, heard that first mewing cry, had never been woken in the night by the howls of hunger that only an infant could perform with such fervour. He had missed everything, but he had no one to blame but himself.

      Scarlett had faced it all alone, and how in the world he was going to make it up to her, or even to Matthew, was anyone’s guess.

      But he wanted to.

      Oh, dear God, he wanted to—but there were several hurdles in the way.

      The first one was to find out if Matthew was healthy. He certainly looked it; his limbs were strong and rounded with the plumpness of early childhood, his hair was glossy black, and his eyes clear and bright.

      But Marco’s had been too, until their world had been turned upside down…