“I can only tell you that I’ve been under a lot of stress. That’s my excuse for my behaviour.”

“Unexpected pregnancy is bound to—”

“There is no baby, Tom.”

He felt sick. “You had an abortion?”

“No. There never was a baby. When you wanted to break up with me I was hurt, so I pretended I was pregnant.”

Tom’s knuckles whitened around the phone. Could it be true?

“Really?” He struggled to keep the exultation from his tone. “Honestly, Judy, there’s no baby?”

“No. And I don’t know why I acted that way. We were never serious and never in love. I regret the whole thing.”

Her voice was flat, almost mechanical. Tom instantly decided he believed her about the baby, and need not placate her anymore.

“I hope we can part as friends.”

“I very much doubt that,” he said coolly. “I found out you were my father’s mistress. You deceived my mother, and myself.”

There was a pause, but when Judy answered, she did not sound concerned.

“I loved your father, which accounts for all my actions. I don’t believe your mother ever did. And you resemble him physically. I was trying to recapture a great love with a man I thought was dead.”

At the time, this phrasing didn’t strike Tom’s ear.

“My parents were married,” he responded. “Their feelings for each other were none of your concern. And my mother is his widow. That is all you need to know.”

A laugh. “That’s what you think.”

She hung up.

Tom’s eyebrows lifted. Weird—but Judy had always been a little weird. He smiled, then laid back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Dear God. It was over. It was over, and he was free! A wave of bliss washed over him; a life with a proper family, a wife who loved him, who wanted to have his children; a wife he could love . . . it was possible now, everything was possible!

He dialled his mother’s number from memory.

“Sophie Montfort.”

“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” he said. “But I have some very good news.”

It was time.

Pierre Massot regarded himself in the mirror with approval. He had recovered, in barely a week, sufficiently. The worst part had been on his slow journey home; that was when he had added the basic weight he needed for health. Now, with the pliant Judy Dean providing him whatever he needed—clothes, toiletries, a great deal of excellent food—he looked respectable. His hair was trimmed, his teeth white. The scars were hidden under a beautifully cut Dior suit. And sex with her, daily, multiple times, had offered adequate exercise.

He would not go to a doctor. Nobody knew his body like he did; nobody controlled it. The quack would recommend therapy. He did not need therapy. That was for fat, weak Westerners.

He needed revenge.