Suki took a breath and started back up. At the top, she came face to face with the woman who’d given birth to her. She stared at her. Claire Milo was shorter than her, and dainty of build. She had an air of energy and purpose about her. She was wearing a peacock-blue satin dressing gown. Her hair was cut in a shoulder-length bob and expertly coloured a subtle pale blonde. Her face . . . she had a kind face. Big almond-shaped periwinkle-blue eyes that twinkled with warmth. That was a surprise. She was smiling now, looking expectantly at Suki, not having a damned clue who she was.

‘Taken a wrong turn?’ asked Claire. ‘If you’re looking for Donna, her office is down there on the left.’

‘I’m not looking for Donna,’ Suki managed to get out. ‘I’m looking for you.’

‘Me? You’re new, aren’t you? What can I do for you?’ Claire was half-smiling, half-frowning.

‘You can tell me why you threw me away,’ said Suki.

Claire’s smile froze on her face.

Suki felt it all blow up in her head then, erupting like lava. ‘Don’t you get it yet? Can’t you see the similarity?’

Claire was staring at her as if she was mad.

‘What sort of mother does that to her child?’ demanded Suki. ‘Tell me, you bitch. Because I would really like to know.’

Claire’s eyes widened. Then her mouth clamped shut – and she slammed the door closed in Suki’s face.

82

82

‘You’re what?’ asked Shauna.

‘Pregnant,’ said Aysha.

They were in Shauna’s beautifully appointed and recently refurbished kitchen that looked out over the long driveway to the gates and the road beyond. As Aysha said it, Shauna sat down on one of the button-backed cream leather bar stools, all the wind knocked out of her.

Damn.

Of all the possible futures she had envisaged for her only daughter, getting banged up and dropping that waster Joey Minghella’s kid was the one she had feared the most. She’d tried to get her daughter mingling with a better class of people. She’d imagined Aysha marrying a lawyer maybe. A doctor. Even a surgeon. That would be one in the eye for the girls at the tennis club. But this?

‘Is it Joey’s?’ she asked, numb with shock. She wished Josh was here. But Josh was still over in the States, making money. Bloody Josh. But maybe it wasn’t Joey’s.

‘Of course it’s Joey’s,’ said Aysha, taking the other bar stool and going red in the face. ‘How can you ask me that?’

‘Sorry,’ said Shauna sarkily. ‘It’s just that I hoped it could be someone else, that’s all. The postman or the milkman. The dustman would be an improvement on Joey fucking Minghella.’

Aysha sat down and looked across the bar top at her mother. ‘Don’t be like that. I love him, Mum.’