The Five-Year Baby Secret

Then she was tearing at her scarf, clawing it from about her throat, gasping for breath as the contents of the letter, rather than its author, struck home, driving the air from her body. The coldness of the words chilled her to the bone.

Matt had written this? Her Matt had applied these foul words to paper?

She stared at the letter, lying where it had fallen at her feet, scarcely able, even now, to believe him capable of such cruelty.

He hadn’t even troubled himself to pick up a pen. He’d typed it, sitting in front of a PC as he’d put those knife-edged words together before sending it, with the impersonal click of a mouse, to print. Only his name had been written in the bold cursive that she’d once known as well as her own hand.

Just the one word. Matt.

None of the words, full of love, that he’d once used to close his notes to her. No little drawings of flowers. No kisses.

Only the words Hanovers—Everything For Your Garden, embossed in blue and gold on the pale grey paper, to mock her.

He hadn’t even bothered to use personal notepaper, but had written to her on the company letterhead.

Then what?

Had he stuffed it into an envelope before, too impatient to wait for the mail to take its time about delivering his bombshell, he’d walked the hundred yards from his front gate to hers, to push it through her letterbox?

Had he been that close and she hadn’t felt his presence? Hadn’t known that he was just feet away?

She covered her mouth with her hand, as if to hold in the pain.

Would he have taken the risk of being seen by his mother? Did she know?

Her head began to swim at the thought.

No.

She clutched at the steering wheel, as if to a lifeline, forcing herself to swallow down the rising tide of panic.

No.

If Katherine Hanover had even suspected that Tom was her grandson there would have been no warning. The first she’d have known about it would have been a letter from the woman’s lawyer. There had been enough of those in the last few years.

A sagging fence. The branch of a tree daring to intrude over Hanover land. The slightest excuse to make their lives difficult had brought the threat of the law down on them.

No. She knew nothing about this.

But the cold reference to blood tests, the Family Court, costs, that was pure Hanover. This man whom she’d loved at first sight, had deceived her parents to meet, had married in secret, who had declared he would love her until death, had written this unfeeling note with as little compassion as if she were a bug, something to be squashed between his fingers.

And suddenly it was anger, rather than fear, surging through her veins.

How dared he turn up now, out of the blue, after all these years and demand his rights? He had no rights. Not morally, anyway.

Not that the morality of the case would matter a damn when it came to the law. She knew that his lawyers would obtain a court order if she refused to allow the blood test.

At least he hadn’t added insult to injury by suggesting the result was in doubt.

But that was small comfort. Once the blood test proved his claim, the Family Court would probably decide that she was the one at fault for depriving a man of his son and he would be occupying the moral high ground.

But that wasn’t how it had been.

He was the one who’d left.

She hadn’t had that luxury. She hadn’t been able to pack her bags, leave the country, start a new life, not with her mother in intensive care, her father in the throes of a breakdown.

There had been no way to hide the fact that she was expecting a baby from the speculative stares of the village gossips. She’d had to stay and face down the sudden silences whenever she’d gone into the village shop. As if she didn’t know exactly what they’d been saying. That she was no better than her mother.

Even the women who took their wages every week from her hand, who’d known her all her life, had thrilled themselves with whispers that the only reason she wouldn’t tell the father’s name was because she couldn’t. That she didn’t know.

She knew. That was the reason she’d kept silent.

There had only ever been one man in her life and she had both dreamed of and dreaded this moment.

Had dreamed of Matt bursting into the house, gathering them both up in his arms and begging her to forgive him.

Had dreaded having to admit what she’d done to her father. The lies, the deceit.

Exactly like her mother.

And, like an asthmatic grabbing for an inhaler, she flung open the Land Rover door to suck the chill air deep into her lungs.

An angry blast from a passing motorist who’d been forced to swerve out of the way brought her back to her senses. She banged the door shut and sat there for a moment, trying to block out the panic, the pain. She had no right to think of herself, indulge in self-pity, misery, waste energy raging against fate.

Only Tom mattered. His world, until now, had consisted of her, his grandfather, his life in the village. All that was about to change and she was going to have to make what was about to happen as simple, as straightforward, as painless for him as she could.

She didn’t have the luxury of time to formulate a strategy. She had to react to the situation as it had been presented to her and her first task was to put a stop to the blood test. Now.

She picked up the letter, dug out her mobile phone and, without stopping to think about what she was going to say, punched in the number. It rang only once before a familiar voice said, ‘Matthew Hanover.’

She nearly dropped the phone. She’d been prepared for a receptionist, a secretary, even for Katherine Hanover to answer the telephone, although if it had been Katherine she’d have hung up.

And she discovered that his voice, even now, went straight to her heart’s core, leaving her feeling bone weak.

After a moment she lifted the phone back to her ear. There was no prompt, no puzzled ‘Hello.’ He’d been waiting for her to ring. Knew it was her. Let the cruel silence stretch on for what seemed like minutes as he waited for her to speak, as she tried to find some word to break the silence.

How are you? What have you been doing for the last six years? I missed you…

In her dreams words hadn’t been necessary, but this wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.

‘I—I received your letter,’ she said finally. Then, quickly, before she fell apart, ‘There’s no need for a blood test. I don’t want Tom to go through that.’

‘I’m not particularly interested in what you want, Fleur,’ he replied, like her ignoring the niceties and going straight to the heart of the thing. ‘I just want the truth.’

Straight to the point, his mother’s son.

‘You know the truth.’