‘But she has reneged on a legal contract,’ Raul spelt out harshly. ‘Dios mio! All I want is the right to take my own child back to Venezuela. I haven’t the slightest desire to take this into a courtroom! There has to be some other way in which I can get custody.’
Digby grimaced. ‘You could marry her...’
Raul gave him a forbidding look. ‘If that was a joke, Digby...it was in the worst possible taste.’
Henry pulled out a chair for Polly to sit down to her evening meal. His mother, Janice Grey, frowned at the young woman’s shadowed blue eyes and too prominent cheekbones. At eight months pregnant, Polly looked drawn and ill.
‘You should be resting at this stage of your pregnancy,’ Janice reproved. ‘If you married Henry now, you could give up work. You could take things easy while he helped you get your godmother’s will sorted out.’
‘It would be the best move you could make.’ Solid and bespectacled, with thinning fair hair, Henry nodded in pompous agreement. ‘You’ll have to be careful that the Inland Revenue doesn’t take too large a slice of your inheritance. ’
‘I really don’t want to marry anybody.’ Beneath her wealth of rich, reddish brown hair, Polly’s delicate features were becoming stiff and her smile strained.
An awkward silence fell while mother and son exchanged meaningful glances.
Polly focused on her nicely cooked meal with a guilty lack of appetite. It had been a mistake to take a room in Janice’s comfortable terraced home. But how could she ever have guessed that her late godmother’s trusted housekeeper had had an ulterior motive for offering her somewhere to stay?
Janice and her son knew the strange terms of Nancy Leeward’s will. They knew that Polly would inherit a million pounds if she found a husband within the year and stayed married for at least six months. Janice was determined to persuade Polly that marrying her son would magically solve her every problem.
And, to be fair to Janice, calculating she might be, but she saw such a marriage as a fair exchange. After all, Polly was an unmarried mum-to-be and couldn’t claim her godmother’s money without a husband. Henry was single, and in a job he loathed. Even a small share of a million pounds would enable Henry to set up as a tax consultant in a smart office of his own. Janice would do just about anything to further Henry’s prospects, and Henry wasn’t just attached to his widowed mother’s apron strings, he was welded to them.
‘Babies can be very demanding,’ Janice pointed out when her son had left the room. ‘And, talking as someone who has done it, raising a child alone isn’t easy.’
‘I know.’ But at the mere mention of the word ‘baby’ a vague and dreamy smile had formed on Polly’s face. There was nothing practical or sensible about the warm feeling of anticipation which welled up inside her.
Janice sighed. ‘I’m only trying to advise you, Polly. You’re not in love with Henry, but where did falling in love get you?’
Polly’s blissful abstraction was cruelly punctured by that reminder. ‘Nowhere,’ she conceded tightly.
‘I’ve never liked to pry, but it’s obvious that the father of your child took off the minute you got pregnant. Unreliable and irresponsible,’ the older woman opined thinly. ‘You certainly couldn’t call my Henry either of those things.’
Polly considered Henry’s joyless and stolid outlook on life and suppressed a sigh.
‘People don’t always marry for love. People get married for all sorts of other reasons,’ Janice persisted. ‘Security, companionship, a nice home.’
‘I’m afraid I would need more.’ Polly got up slowly and heavily. ‘I think I’ll lie down for a while before I go to work.’
Breathless from climbing the stairs, Polly lay down on her bed in the prettily furnished spare room. She grimaced. Never in a million years would she marry Henry just to satisfy the terms of Nancy Leeward’s will and inherit that money.
She was too shamefully conscious that a craving for money had reduced her to her present predicament. Her late father, a strongly religious man, had been fond of saying that money was the root of all evil. And, looking back to the twisted, reckless decision she had made months earlier, Polly knew that in her case that pronouncement had proved all too true.
Her mother had been dying. But Polly had refused to accept the reality that the mother she had grown up without and had barely had time to get to know again could be dying: she hadn’t believed the hand of fate could be that cruel. Armed by that stubborn belief, Polly had gone that extra mile that people talked about, but she had gone that extra mile in entirely the wrong direction, she acknowledged wretchedly.
How could she ever have believed that she would find it possible to give her baby up to strangers? How could she ever have imagined that she could surrender all rights, hand over her own flesh and blood and agree never, ever to try and see her own child again? She had been incredibly stupid and immature. So she had run away from a situation which had become untenable, knowing even then that she would be followed and eventually traced...
As the ever-present threat of being found and called to account for her behaviour assailed Polly, her skin turned clammy with fear. In her own mind she was no better than a criminal. She had signed a contract in which she had promised to give up her baby. She had sat back while an unbelievably huge amount of money was expended on her mother’s medical care and then she had fled. She had broken the law, yet she had been wickedly and savagely deceived into signing that contract...but what proof did she have of that fact?
Sometimes she woke from nightmares about being extradited to the USA and put on trial, her baby taken from her and parcelled off to a life of luxury with his immoral and utterly unscrupulous father in Venezuela. Even when she didn’t have bad dreams, it was becoming increasingly hard to sleep. She was at that point in pregnancy when she couldn’t get comfortable even in bed, and she was often wakened by the strong, energetic movements of her baby.
And in her mind’s eye then, when she was at her weakest, she would see Raul. Raul Zaforteza, dark, devastating and dangerous. What a trusting and pathetic victim she had been! For she had fallen in love with him, hopelessly, helplessly, blindly in love for the first time in her life. She had lived only from one meeting to the next, frantically counting the days in between, agonised if he didn’t turn up and always tormented by the secret she had believed she was still contriving to keep from him. A jagged laugh was torn from her lips now. And all the time Raul had known she was pregnant. After all, he was the father of her baby...
An hour later, Polly headed to work. It was a cool, wet summer evening. She walked past the bus stop. She was presently struggling to save every penny she could. Soon she wouldn’t be able to work any more, and once she had the baby she would need her savings for all sorts of things.
The supermarket where she worked shifts was a bright beacon of light and activity in the city street. As Polly disposed of her coat and her bag in the rest room, the manageress popped her head round the door and frowned. ‘You look very tired, Polly. I hope that doctor of yours knows what he’s doing when he tells you that it’s all right for you to be still working.’
Polly flushed as the older woman withdrew again. She hadn’t actually seen a doctor in two months, but at her last visit she had been advised to rest. How could she rest when she had to keep herself? And if she approached the social services for assistance they would ask too many awkward questions. So she lived in a state of permanent exhaustion, back aching, ankles swollen, and if she pushed herself too hard she got blinding headaches and dizzy spells.
By the end of her shift on one of the checkouts Polly was very tired, and really grateful that she was off the next day. Tomorrow, she decided, she would pamper herself. Shouldering her bag, she left the shop. The rain had stopped. The street lights gleamed off the