Now, with the minutes ticking past, she peered through the window and spotted two reporters skulking. Next to her, Gina was itching to be off to school. It was Victorian Children Day for the Year Fours. Gina had woken up especially early, thrilled to be heading to school dressed as a ragamuffin Victorian schoolboy with ripped shirt, waistcoat, tattered trousers held up by a piece of corded rope, and school shoes which had been specially scuffed for the purpose. Right now she was content to accept the fact that they would be leaving ‘in a minute’. Charlotte knew her daughter well enough to realise that her acceptably impatient shifting from foot to foot would quickly degenerate into querulous whining.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, making her mind up. ‘We might as well head off.’
‘Just tell them to go away, Mum!’
‘I would if I thought they’d listen.’
‘Then get Dad to do it! He knows how to do everything!’
Charlotte swallowed back a very sour rejoinder. Fact was, Riccardo was fast moving into the stellar category of Superdad. He had also, unfairly, managed to deflect all negative press reporting by flinging his hands up in the air and coming clean. A youthful romance, a baby he had known nothing about, a marriage proposed and turned down, responsibilities accepted, welcomed. He was the man willing to turn his whole life upside down for the sake of his daughter, but for reasons beyond his comprehension Charlotte had rejected his pleas to formalise their relationship. He made a lot of heart-warming references to old-fashioned values, respect for family life, and in short managed to make her seem not just ridiculously stupid, for turning down a marriage proposal from a man who could click his fingers and have any woman he wanted, but also selfish, cold and proud to the point of lunacy.
In the face of these implications, Charlotte kept resolutely silent, fearing that one slipped word would be embroidered into God only knew what.
But the past few days had been hellish, and the lurking men at the gate outside was proving to be the final straw.
She grabbed Gina and hurtled outside, wearing an expression that could curdle milk. She met the same old questions, this time more intrusive, as one of them snidely implied that she might be positioning herself for a custody battle considering she was prepared to put her welfare above that of her daughter’s.
Charlotte picked up her pace but she was perspiring by the time she was safely inside her car, windows rolled up against the clatter of voices outside.
On the way to school, she heard herself chatting to Gina, asking all the usual questions about homework, and making sure she ate all of her lunch. In her head, she replayed what that damned reporter had said about the possibility of a custody fight.
Could that happen? She feverishly wondered where he had managed to pluck that random statement from. Had Riccardo said anything about a custody battle? He had said nothing to her, had been decent and sympathetic about the whole press-invasion business, but had he let slip some intention to the wrong ears?
Whilst driving to the school and dropping Gina off, the seeds of unease had blossomed into full-blown panic, and she called in to the office, for the first time ever, with a phoney excuse about getting in late because of a blinding headache.
The slightest mention of Riccardo and they would be buzzing with curiosity. Honestly, it wasn’t as though her circumstances had changed! She was still a hardworking mum with an eight-year-old daughter. How could scandal have wrapped itself around her so completely when, technically speaking, things were pretty much the same, give or take the sudden appearance of a wealthy Italian? Admittedly with looks to die for and a surprising flair for the role of martyr…