Sharon Kendrick - His Child

For a moment, Lisi couldn’t work out what he was talking about, and then his words began to make sense. Tim was a tall boy, as Marian had said. He looked older than his years. And Philip didn’t even suspect that the child might be his. God forgive me, she thought. But this is something I have to do. For all our sakes. He hates me. He thinks the worst of me—he’s made that heartbreakingly clear. What good would it do any of us if he found out the truth?

‘I have never neglected my son, Philip,’ she said truthfully.

Did this make them quits? All the time he hadn’t told her about Carla, lying desperately sick in her hospital bed—Lisi had carried an awesome secret, too. A baby at home. And who else? he wondered. ‘So where’s the father?’ he demanded. ‘Was he still on the scene when you stripped off and climbed into my bed?’

‘How dare you say something like that?’

‘It was a simple question.’

She jerked her head in the direction of the sitting room door. ‘Just keep your voice down!’ she hissed, and then met the fury in his eyes. ‘Oh, what’s the point of all this? You’ve made your feelings about me patently clear, Philip. There is nothing between us. There never was—other than a night of mad impetuosity. We both know that. End of story. And now, if you don’t mind—I really do have a party to organise.’

He made to turn away. Hadn’t a part of him nurtured a tiny, unrealistic hope that her behaviour that night had been a one-off—that it had been something about him which had made her so wild and so free in his bed? And all the time she’d had a child by another man! It was a fact of modern life and he didn’t know why he should feel so bitterly disappointed. But he did.

‘Goodbye, Philip.’ Her overwhelming feeling was one of relief, but there was regret as well. She couldn’t have him—she would never have him—not when his fundamental lack of respect for her ran so deep. But that didn’t stop a tiny, foolish part of her from aching for what could never be.

He looked deep into her eyes and some sixth sense told him that all was not how it seemed. Something was not right. She was tense. Nervous. More nervous than she had any right to be, and he wondered why.

She started to close the door when he said, ‘Wait!’

There was something so imperious in his command, something so darkly imperative in the glacial green gaze that Lisi stopped in her tracks. ‘What?’

‘You didn’t say how old Tim was.’

She felt the blood freeze in her veins, but she kept her face calm. ‘That’s because you didn’t ask.’

‘I’m asking now.’

A thousand thoughts began to make a scrabbled journey through her mind. Could she carry it off? Would he see through the lie if she told him that Tim was four? It was credible—everybody said that he could easily pass for a four-year-old.

Her hesitation told him everything, as did the blanching of colour from her already pale face. He felt the slow, steady burn of disbelief. And anger. ‘He’s mine, isn’t he?’

If she had thought that seeing him again was both nightmareand dream, then this was the nightmare sprung into worst possible life. She stared at him. ‘Philip—’

‘ Isn’t he?’ he demanded, in a low, harsh voice which cut through her like a knife.

She leant on the door for support, and nodded mutely.

‘Say it, Lisi! Go on, say it!’

‘Tim is your son,’ she admitted tonelessly, and then almost recoiled from the look of naked fury in his eyes.

‘You bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You utter little bitch.’

She had played this unlikely scenario in her mind many times. Philip would magically appear and she would tell him about Tim, but she had never imagined a reaction like this—with him staring at her with a contempt so intense that she could have closed her eyes and wept.

‘Go away,’ she whispered. ‘Please, just go away.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I want to know everything.’

‘Philip.’ She sucked in a ragged breath. Should she appeal to his better nature? Surely he must have one? ‘I will talk to you, of course I will—’

‘Well, thanks for nothing!’ he scorned.

‘But not now. I can’t. Tim will come out again in a minute if I’m not back and it isn’t fair—’

‘ Fair ? ’ he echoed sardonically. ‘You think that what you have done is fair ? To deny me all knowledge of my own flesh and blood? And then to lie about it?’

‘I did not lie!’ she protested.

‘Oh, yes, you did,’ he contradicted roughly. ‘It was—to use your own words, my dear Lisi—a lie by omission, wasn’t it? Just now, when I asked you his age, you thought about concealing it from me.’ His mouth hardened into a cruel, contemptuous line. ‘But I’m afraid your hesitation gave you away.’

‘Just go,’ she begged. ‘Don’t let Tim hear this. Please.’

He hardened his heart against the appeal in her eyes. He had lived with death and loss and all the time she had brought new life into the world and had jealously kept that life to herself. As if they had stumbled across unexpected treasure together, and she had decided to claim it all for herself.

‘What time does his party finish?’

She could scarcely think. ‘At around s-six.’

‘And what time does he go to bed?’

‘He’ll be tired tonight. I should be able to settle him down by seven.’

‘I’ll come at seven.’

She shook her head. ‘Can’t we leave it until tomorrow?’ she pleaded.

He gave her a look of pure scorn. ‘It has already been left three years too long!’

‘Then one more night won’t make any difference. Sleep on it, Philip—you won’t feel so…so…angry about it in the morning.’

But he couldn’t ever imagine being rid of the rage which was smouldering away at the pit of his stomach. ‘How very naive you are, Lisi—if you think that I’ll agree to that. Either I come round tonight once Tim has gone to sleep, or I march straight in there now and tell him exactly what his relationship to me is.’

‘You wouldn’t do that.’

‘Just try me,’ he said, in a voice of soft menace.

Lisi swallowed. ‘Okay. I’ll see you here. Tonight. Unless…’ she renewed the appeal in her eyes ‘—unless you’d rather meet on…neutral territory? I could probably get a babysitter.’

But he shook his head resolutely. ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ he said coldly. ‘Maybe I might like to look in on my sleeping son, Lisi. Surely you wouldn’t deny me that?’

My sleeping son . The possessive way that he said it made Lisi realise that Philip Caprice was not intending to be an absentee father. Already! How the hell was she going to cope with all the implications of that ?

But what about Tim? prompted the voice of her conscience. What about him?

‘No, I won’t deny you that,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’ll see you here tonight, around seven.’

He gave a brief, mock-courteous nod and then turned on his heel, walking away from her without a second glance, the way he had done the night his son had been conceived.

She shut the door before he was halfway down the path, and looked down to see that her hands were shaking.

She waited until her breath had stopped coming in short, anxious little breaths, but as she caught a glance at her reflection in the mirror she saw that her face was completely white, her eyes dark and frightened, like a trapped animal.

I must pull myself together, she thought. She had a son and a responsibility to him. Today was his party—his big day. She had already messed up in more ways than one. She mustn’t let the complex world of adult relationships ruin it for him.