Happy Mother's Day!

‘No, he’s not married.’

‘Then why all the secrecy?’

Aisling twisted her fingers together, the need to tell someone building inside her, like a pent-up dam which was bursting to break free. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’

Suzy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

‘I don’t.’ Aisling buried her face in her hands. ‘It’s Gianluca,’ she said, her words muffled.

There was utter silence. ‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Suzy eventually—in a voice which sounded almost frozen with disbelief.

Aisling looked up as tears began to spill through her fingers. ‘It’s Gianluca,’ she repeated hoarsely.

‘Not … not Gianluca Palladio?’

Was there more than one Gianluca in this corner of West London? wondered Aisling slightly hysterically. ‘Yes,’ she answered dully. ‘The very same.’

‘Gianluca Palladio—our most illustrious client? The billionaire financier with a penchant for nubile actresses? The man who once gave a famous interview saying that he wouldn’t settle down and marry until he was forty? And that’s six years away, Aisling!’

Aisling winced. Did Suzy really have to rub salt into the wound? ‘Yes. And yes! Oh, Suzy!’

‘For heaven’s sake, Aisling—what were you thinking of? And how long has this been going on?’ Suzy shook her short-bobbed head. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice.’

In a way, this was even worse, but Aisling couldn’t face telling Suzy that the reason she hadn’t noticed was because there was, in fact, nothing to notice—and that nothing had ever really begun. It had just been a bizarre pact fuelled by nothing deeper than a mutual desire. Viewed now with a dispassionate eye in the cold light of day—it seemed that she must have temporarily taken leave of her senses.

‘How pregnant are you?’ Suzy’s voice broke into her thoughts.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You haven’t seen a doctor?’

Aisling shook her head.

Suzy stood up and went and put her arms around Aisling’s stiff shoulders. ‘Well, that’s the first thing you need to do—to find out for sure.’

Was this helpless mass of conflicting emotions really her—Aisling Armstrong—or had some weepy impostor taken over her body? ‘And the second?’ she questioned weakly.

> ‘You’ll have to think about telling Gianluca.’

But just what was she going to tell him? That she was carrying his child—she who had been nothing but the briefest of flings in his busy life?

And when was she going to tell him? Now? When the little baby inside her was little more than a fast-growing bunch of cells, hidden by a gym-flat stomach? Or when those cells had begun to take on an undeniably human form—when she could show him the first amazing black and white photo of the thumb-sucking infant in her womb?

Those thoughts brought her up short. She could accept the pregnancy, yes—the pragmatic side of her knew that was what nature had designed her body for. But a baby?

‘It’s over, Suzy,’ she said.

‘I guessed that.’ Suzy’s voice was soft.

‘And how the hell am I going to manage to work?’ Aisling asked, suddenly scared.

Suzy frowned. ‘You’re putting the cart before the horse, Aisling. First, you’ve got to get yourself checked out, and then you’ve got to tell Gianluca. Work is the least of your worries right now.’

It was so easy to put off something you were dreading—like failing to revise before an important exam and hoping you’d get by on memory and luck. The doctor posed no problem—that was the easy part. He told her that she was in splendid health—and the only thing which made him frown was her workload.

‘You’ve got to cut back a bit on your schedule,’ he insisted. ‘I know how you modern women like to take everything in their stride—but you mustn’t forget that you’re growing another human being inside you.’

A human being who bore Gianluca’s genes. His dark, mocking face swam into her memory as the reality hit her like a cushioned blow. Aisling went to the coffee bar next door to the office and stared at the flattening clouds of froth on the top of her cappuccino.