Harriet looked down at her hands.
‘And the baby came, a boy, no problems, until he was about six months old. Then he was diagnosed with a blood disorder and both Veronica and I were tested to establish our blood groups et cetera. That’s when it emerged—’ Damien stared out to sea for a long moment ‘—that I wasn’t the baby’s father.’
Harriet gasped.
‘As you say,’ he commented with some irony. ‘At least that was my first reaction. Of course, after that, things got...much more animated. Accusations running thick and fast, along the lines of Had she always been unfaithful? Coming from me, that one,’ he said. ‘To be answered along the lines of Who wouldn’t be unfaithful to someone as cold and bloody-minded as me? Hang on.’
He retrieved his mobile from his pocket, glanced at it and switched it off.
‘So, as you can imagine, it was a shambles.’
‘Yes,’ Harriet breathed.
‘It became even more so,’ he said after a time.
‘How?’
‘It turned out she couldn’t be sure who the father was but she’d reasoned I was the best bet, financially, anyway.’
Harriet put her hands to her face. ‘She was...was she...?’
‘She was promiscuous,’ he said. ‘That’s probably a polite way of putting it. Of course I’d known I wasn’t the first but it might be hard for you to imagine what it feels like to know you’ve been in a line of men even after the wedding, not to mention having some other man’s child palmed off on you.’
‘I’m surprised she kept the baby.’
‘So was I,’ he agreed, ‘but I think she saw it as some kind of a hold over me if things got really tough between us. In the normal course of events, we may never have discovered he wasn’t mine.’
‘What happened to him?’
Damien stared out to sea. ‘I made Veronica find out who the father was and these days, with DNA testing—’ he shrugged ‘—you can do it and there’s no way it can be denied. So I divorced her.’ He stopped rather abruptly.
‘Did you...did you have any kind of affection for the baby, when you thought he was yours?’
He frowned. ‘I don’t know if I had some premonition but no, not a lot. But I don’t know if it was simply that I’m just not good with babies. Actually, I felt more for the poor kid when I found out he wasn’t mine. And I’ve set up a trust for him and made sure that at least he’ll know who his father is. I also paid for the procedures and treatment he needed and of course Veronica got a generous settlement. End of story.’
He got up and walked to the edge of the headland, staring out to sea with his hands pushed into his pockets and the breeze blowing his tie around.
‘Of course not the end of the story,’ he said over his shoulder and came back to sit down beside her.
‘I didn’t think it was,’ Harriet said quietly, ‘but—’
‘Look,’ he interrupted, ‘if you’re going to tell me it’s highly unlikely it could ever happen for me like that again, you’re right. The odds against it are enormous. I know that—intellectually. That doesn’t mean to say I can make myself believe it in my heart. That doesn’t mean to say I can bury all my cynicism, all my—’ he broke off and shrugged ‘—disbelief that I could have been taken for such a flat.’