Kristen shook her head. ‘I never competed again after I had him. I gave up gymnastics completely. It wasn’t possible to combine the hours of training necessary to compete at world-class level with being a mother,’ she explained when she saw the surprise in Sergio’s eyes.
‘But gymnastics meant the world to you.’
‘Nico is my world now,’ she said simply. ‘Being his mother is more important to me than anything.’
She turned her head to the window to watch the traffic crawling along Tottenham Court Road, and missed the sharp look Sergio gave her. ‘It will be quicker for me to walk the rest of the way to work. The clinic isn’t far from here.’
Sergio asked the driver to pull over, but as Kristen was about to step out of the car he put his hand on her arm. ‘Here’s my phone number in case you need to get hold of me. I’ll meet you at Nico’s nursery at five-thirty to drive you both home.’
She took the business card he handed her and shoved it into her pocket. ‘There’s no need for you to come to the nursery. I usually take Nico to the park on the way home.’
‘Then I’ll bring a football and we will stop off at the park. I’m looking forward to being able to play with my son.’
‘Fine.’ She looked away from the challenge in his eyes, determined not to let him see how scared she felt that he might truly try to win custody of Nico. Sergio could easily afford the best lawyers, but heaven knew how she would afford to pay legal costs if there was a lengthy court case. The possibility that she could be forced to give up her son filled Kristen with dread.
THE DAY HAD begun badly and grew steadily worse. Arriving late for work meant that Kristen missed her first appointment and spent all day playing catch-up and trying to rearrange physiotherapy sessions.
After work she hurried to the station and squashed herself into a packed carriage. But a few minutes into the journey the Tube train ground to a halt in the tunnel and the lights flickered off, plunging the carriages into darkness. Breakdowns on the underground system happened rarely and when the train did not move after five minutes a few passengers started to become agitated. Kristen checked her phone, knowing it was unlikely she would pick up a network connection deep underground. There was nothing anyone could do except wait in the darkness but, as the minutes stretched to ten, fifteen, twenty, her tension grew as it became clear that she would be late to pick Nico up from nursery.
* * *
At five twenty-five that afternoon, Sergio parked outside Little Acorns Nursery and studied the group of parents already gathered outside the door of the building. Kristen had not arrived yet, but he was early. Five minutes later when the nursery door opened and the parents filed in she still had not shown up. Knowing that Nico was waiting, Sergio walked inside and was greeted by Lizzie Morris.
‘Hi! Kristen isn’t here yet, but she comes straight from work and sometimes she is a few minutes late.’ Lizzie smiled. ‘You can wait with Nico if you want. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you.’
Nico was sitting in the book corner, his eyes focused intently on the door. A flash of instant recognition crossed his face when he saw Sergio and he gave a tentative smile that tugged on Sergio’s heart.
‘Mummy’s not here.’ The smile faded and Nico’s bottom lip trembled.
‘She will be here soon,’ Sergio reassured him gently. ‘While we wait for her shall I read you a story?’
He was rewarded with another smile that stole his breath. Dio, his son was beautiful. He couldn’t take his eyes from the little boy’s face. Nico’s features were like his own in miniature, although he had his mother’s nose, Sergio noted. He opened the book that Nico had handed him and began to read in a voice that wasn’t quite steady.
* * *
Trapped on the Tube train, Kristen’s tension escalated with every passing minute. The staff would look after Nico until she arrived, she reassured herself. Lizzie would realise there must be a good reason why she was unable to phone and explain why she was delayed. But imagining Nico’s disappointed face when she didn’t walk through the door with the other parents brought tears to her eyes and she felt sick with worry.
Eventually the fault on the underground line was repaired, but by the time she raced out of the station and was able to phone the nursery she was forty-five minutes late and frantic.
‘Is Nico okay? Tell him I’ll be there in a couple of minutes,’ she said to Lizzie, panting as she ran along the street.
‘Kristen, calm down. Nico’s fine. His father took him.’
‘W...what?’ By now Kristen had arrived at the nursery but, on hearing Lizzie’s shocking news, she slowed her pace and walked into the building, feeling as though her heart was about to explode out of her chest. ‘What do you mean his father took him?’
‘Sergio arrived just before five-thirty and he waited around for a while, but we both realised that you must have got held up at work. I explained that it had happened on a couple of previous occasions,’ Lizzie said guilelessly. ‘Luckily he said he would take Nico with him.’ Lizzie seemed unaware of Kristen’s tension and smiled cheerfully. ‘Sergio filled out a parent/guardian form when he came in with you this morning. If he hadn’t, of course, I wouldn’t have been able to allow him to take Nico. But he was fine about it, and Nico was really excited to go in Sergio’s car. Mind you, I’d be pretty excited about travelling in a Jaguar XJ. It’s a gorgeous car.’
Lizzie stopped short of saying that Sergio was equally gorgeous, but Kristen guessed from the nursery assistant’s pink cheeks that she had been bowled over by a surfeit of Sicilian charm. Hurrying out of the nursery, she pulled Sergio’s business card from her jacket pocket and entered his number into her phone with shaking fingers. Pick up, pick up... Her imagination went into overdrive and she felt sick with terror that Sergio might have taken Nico out of the country on his private plane. She had read about so-called tug-of-love cases where children had been taken abroad by one parent without the other parent’s consent. What if Sergio disappeared with Nico and she never saw her little boy again?
‘Castellano.’ Sergio finally answered the call and at the sound of his deep voice Kristen’s knees almost gave way with relief.
‘What have you done with Nico? Where is he...?’
Sergio’s reply was terse. ‘I haven’t done anything with him. I simply collected him from nursery when you failed to show up and brought him back to my hotel. He’s perfectly okay, although he was upset that you weren’t there to pick him up,’ he told her coldly. ‘I understand from Lizzie Morris that today is not the first time you have been late.’
‘There have only been two other occasions,’ Kristen defended herself. ‘And, like today, they were not my fault. The train broke down in the tunnel and I couldn’t phone...’
‘I really think you should have tried harder to get to Nico on time,’ Sergio interrupted her. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like to be the only child left waiting to be collected? The fear he must have felt that you weren’t coming for him?’
His words scraped Kristen’s already raw feeling of guilt. She had a strange sense that Sergio was speaking from personal experience—as if knew what it felt like to be a scared little boy waiting for his mother to show up. But she told herself she must be imagining things. The Castellano family was hugely wealthy and he must have enjoyed a privileged childhood. He certainly didn’t know what it was like to be a single working mother with all the responsibility that entailed, she thought grimly. His complete lack of understanding of her situation made her want to scream.
‘You’re a bloody expert in child psychology, I suppose,’ she said grittily. ‘Of course I feel terrible that