Baby of Shame (16 page)

‘Y
OU
see? I told you Dr
Paniotis
would be pleased with your progress.’

Nurse Thompson’s voice was a mix of reassurance and satisfaction.

Rhianna
smiled faintly. Overhead she could hear the thud-thud-thud of the helicopter carrying the doctor back to the mainland. She knew she should be as pleased as Nurse Thompson expected her to be. Her strength was coming back, she felt better, fitter,
her
drug dosages were declining all the time.

But depression filled her. It had done so all night, all morning—a dull, pressing heaviness that not even Nicky’s cheerfulness could assuage. She knew what had caused it.

Alexis. Alexis Petrakis.

Still distrusting of her, still thinking the worst of her.
Still wanting to prove that she was as bad as he so obviously wanted her to be…

Still unfit to be his son’s mother.

She tried to summon anger, the anger that had fuelled her resistance to him all this time, but it would not come.

Instead, she found she simply wanted to cry.

‘Now, a nice cup of tea for you, and then we can get you dressed.’

Nurse Thompson’s brisk cheer grated this morning.
Rhianna
nodded dully. She had not got up yet, had waited for the doctor to complete his examination. Karen had whisked Nicky off, and Alexis was apparently immersed in his office, had been since early morning. She had not set eyes on him.

Murmuring a listless thank you, she took the cup of tea that Nurse Thompson was handing to her. As she sipped, she heard footsteps and muffled voices outside her door. There was some scuffling and giggling, and then a very loud, rapid knocking.

Nurse Thompson walked across to the bedroom door and opened it.

A huge bouquet of flowers advanced into the room.

‘Goodness me!’ exclaimed the nurse. ‘Walking flowers?
Whatever next!’

Gleeful childish laughter sounded from behind the bouquet.

‘It’s me! It’s me!’ Nicky cried out, and lowered the flowers sufficiently to show his face. ‘Mummy, Mummy—these are for you! Daddy said!’

He marched up to the bed and deposited a mass of flowers, swathed in cellophane and ribbons, on
Rhianna’s
lap.

Her eyes went from the flowers to her son’s grinning face, and then to the tall shape standing in the doorway.

‘Do you like them, Mummy? Do you? They came in the helicopter! All the way from the city! Daddy said!’

‘They’re beautiful,’ she told him. Her emotions were a confused tangle, knotting
themselves
around her. ‘Thank you.’ She reached to kiss him.

‘They’re from me
and
Daddy,’ Nicky informed her.

‘The card is from me.’

Alexis’s voice from the doorway was low-pitched, yet it seemed to do something strange to
Rhianna’s
insides. Her eyes slipped to the card tucked into the binding ribbon. She picked it up and opened it.

Please forgive me. Alexis.

She stared, disbelievingly. Then her gaze flew to him.

He started to walk towards her. His eyes were holding hers, and in them, she saw—even more disbelievingly—was an expression that she had never thought to see in his eyes.

Contrition.

He came and stood by the end of the bed. She stared at him,
then
her gaze was diverted.
Stavros
was entering with an armful of flat boxes. Nurse Thompson hurried to help him deposit them on a hastily drawn up chair.

‘Mummy!
Mummy! There are
more
presents! Lots more! Can I help you open them? Please, please?’

Nicky was bouncing with excitement.

Her emotions were still churning like a concrete mixer, but she could not refuse her son. She nodded, and immediately he fell upon the topmost box, yanking off the lid. As he did so, his little face fell.

‘It’s just clothes,’ he said disgustedly.

‘Your mother will like them,’ said Alexis. His eyes moved to
Rhianna
. ‘At least, I hope you will.’

Again there was that speaking look in his eyes, and again
Rhianna
just gazed at him.

Nicky was pulling out carefully folded garments interlined with tissue paper. They had clearly come from an expensive shop.

‘I’ll just pop these into water,’ announced Nurse Thompson, and relieved
Rhianna
of the bouquet, disappearing with
Stavros
out into the hall.

Rhianna
was left with Nicky and his father, and a lot of clothes-boxes.

And a lot of clothes.

Beautiful clothes.
Beach clothes in vibrant
colours
—casually styled but, she could see immediately, beautifully and expensively made. The kind of beach clothes the women in Alexis’s world wore. A universe away from the charity shop cast-offs that her wardrobe consisted of.

She stared, bemused, as Nicky riffled through the boxes, dumping clothes haphazardly on the bed. Alexis watched, with half an amused eye on Nicky and with half a quite different eye on
Rhianna
.

‘Do you like them?’ he asked. ‘Karen told me your size, and I had a stylist select them and flew them in. But if they are not to your taste they can be changed for others.’

‘I can’t accept them.’

Her voice was blunt.

He frowned.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Why do you think?’ she retorted tightly.

A little hand was tugging at her hand.

‘Mummy, don’t you like them?’

Nicky’s voice sounded anxious. Alexis interceded smoothly.

‘Your mother thinks I should not give her clothes. I think that’s silly, don’t you? I think daddies should give mummies clothes and presents and things. Don’t you?’

Leave Nicky out of this!
Rhianna
wanted to shout. But it was too late. Nicky was nodding vigorously.

‘I like this one best,’ he said, and picked up a royal blue top with a beautiful appliqué design on it. ‘I like blue,’ he said wistfully.

‘Do you? Hmm…I wonder…’

Suddenly Alexis was stooping down, lifting up another two boxes. These were not tastefully decorated with stylish logos. They were boldly patterned with animal shapes.

‘Have a look in here,’ said Alexis.

Nicky ripped off the lid.

‘These are for me!’ he announced breathlessly, and he held up a shorts and T-shirt outfit in his size, the shorts bright blue and the top blue and white striped, with a sailing boat on it. Then he dived into the box to discover the rest folded beneath.

‘We’ve
both
got new clothes!’ he said, eyes shining, to
Rhianna
.

‘Holiday clothes,’ said Alexis.
‘For while you are here on holiday.’

Oh, cunning,
thought
Rhianna
bitterly. Nicky was already pulling off his faded charity-shop T-shirt and yanking the expensive new one over his head. Alexis helped him, and then helped him change into the matching shorts.

‘Very smart,’ he said approvingly.

Nicky’s eyes shone.

‘These are the
best
clothes I’ve ever had!’ he announced. ‘Do I look smart, Mummy? Daddy says I do.’

‘Very smart,’ she agreed, fighting to hide her emotions from him. ‘Why not go and show Karen?’

She could be cunning too, she thought sourly.

He hared off, and when he was gone
Rhianna
turned on Alexis.

‘What is this?’ she demanded.
‘Another test?’
Her voice was scathing, vicious. ‘Well, you can take these clothes and—’

Alexis’s hand flew up.

‘No!’ Then, in a milder tone, he said, ‘I bought them for you because—because I thought you would like them.’

‘I don’t want clothes from you! I don’t want anything from you!’

Her voice had risen in pitch,
colour
flaring along her cheeks.

Something shifted in his face.
Fleetingly.
Swiftly masked.

Then, without invitation, he sat himself down on the bed. Instantly she shifted her legs sideways. It was a huge double bed, but she could feel the weight of his mass depressing the mattress.

She could not understand why, but it felt, acutely, a very intimate gesture. Alexis Petrakis.
Sitting on her bed.

She felt her breath catch, her stomach jitter.

‘Please—do not flinch away from me.’ There was
a tightness
in his voice. He took a swift breath. ‘
Rhianna
, listen to me—for just a few
moments, that
is all. I should never have said what I did last night. But believe this of me: I was
not,
you have my word, seeking to test you again. I was thinking of Nicky, that was all.
Nothing more.
But there is no rush to make decisions of any kind. Nicky is only just getting used to the changes in his life. Let him do so at his own pace. And
you
do so at yours.’

He got to his feet.

‘I will call Nurse Thompson for you. Please take the clothes,
Rhianna
. They are a gesture—nothing more. Besides—’ his mouth twisted ‘—I think Nicky will be upset if you do not wear them. It will make him feel awkward about wearing the ones he has got. And he needed new clothes,
Rhianna
—even you must admit that!’

He picked up a sundress, half hidden under a pair of culottes. It was a creamy blonde
colour
, with tiny shoestring straps.

‘This matches your hair,’ he said softly.

He looked down at her.

Rhianna
felt her heart begin to quicken. The way he was looking at her…almost smiling, not quite, but holding her eyes, just holding them…

Then he released her.

He replaced the sundress. When he spoke again his voice was very different.

‘Are you happy if I take Nicky swimming now? The helicopter also delivered some pool toys for him, which I am sure he will enjoy.’

She swallowed. ‘You don’t have to ask me,’ she said. She felt a swirling inside her, a confusion of emotion. ‘He adores going swimming with you.’

‘It is a pleasure for me too,’ he answered. There was an emotion in his voice she would have been deaf not to hear. ‘And I thank God that with him, at least, I do not seem to have made mistakes. But with you…’ His eyes were dark and depthless, and she felt a strange disturbing pull inside her. ‘With you I have made too many mistakes. I don’t want to make a single one more.’ There was
an intensity
about the way he was looking at her. ‘Believe me.’

He took his leave and she went on sitting there, confusion lacing and unlacing through her. She tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Alexis Petrakis being
nice
to her?

Apologising
to her?

Asking her to believe him…

She lay back, bemused.
Confused.

Can I trust him? This time can I really trust him?

The question tormented her.

Because she could find no answer.

And yet it seemed, over the next days, that he was answering her question all the time.

He was being so
nice
to her—so incredibly nice.

It was as if he were a different person.

The person he was with Nicky.

Smiling, open, spontaneous.

At first it made her feel awkward, gauche,
tense
. She found she kept looking out for the mask to slip, for the real Alexis Petrakis to break out again.

But it never did.

It was as if the foul, ugly words he had thrown at her had never been voiced. As if he had never accused her of any of the crimes he had laid at her feet.

And slowly, day by day, she found the words growing dimmer, fading away. Because how could she keep in her head the litany of his harsh and unjust accusations when he was behaving to her as if she were a different person from the one he had condemned as an unfit mother? When day after day he did nothing but treat her with kid gloves, drawing her in, making her part of the relationship he was building, stronger and more secure with every passing hour, with Nicky?

And so little by little she found that she was doing something she had never thought possible. She was coming to trust him.
To feel—safe—with him.

It was easiest still, she acknowledged,
to do
so in Nicky’s company. Whether they were eating together, or out on the water in the dinghy or the motor boat, or in the pool, or on the beach, or seated at the table on the terrace playing board games and cards—Nicky ecstatic when he won, disgusted when he lost—or reading to him in bed when he was drifting off to sleep, another busy, happy day behind him. Easiest to find herself catching Alexis’s eye in amusement at some remark that brought a smile to grown-up lips, or at the intense pleasure Nicky took in his games and play, or, most moving to
Rhianna
of all, when he would spontaneously show affection to Alexis, the father who had only just come into his life but who seemed surely to have been there for ever.

Yet even when Nicky wasn’t there she still felt increasingly at ease with Alexis—this new, different Alexis. Sometimes disbelief caught her, making her wonder whether this was really true—that all the hostility had stopped, all the distrust had dissolved away. Sometimes she thought she ought to think about it—think how extraordinary it was that Alexis had moved so far from where he had started with her, throwing a catalogue of crimes at her head with his vicious words.

But how could she think of that, remember that, when Alexis was smiling at her, laughing with her, relaxed and easy under the warm Aegean sun?

Being so nice to her.

But even as she succumbed to this new, different Alexis, she knew that there was one thing she must
not
succumb to.

Alexis himself.