Bond of Hatred(5)

Gina swam back to her, beaming all over her round face, and unlocked the car.

'Why did you speak to them?' Sarah whispered painfully.

'Because you're being absolutely stupid!' Gina said bluntly. 'If you want to keep that baby, be practical. Bite your lip and let them keep you both-----'

'I'd sooner be dead!' Sarah exclaimed.

'He's little Nicky's dad, isn't he? Why shouldn't he pay up?' Gina demanded. 'You can bet your bottom dollar that they'll pay a packet to keep all this out of the newspapers.'

'Gina-----' Sarah muttered, dismayed but not par­ticularly surprised by the older woman's calculation.

'You've got to be realistic, love,' Gina continued, not unkindly. 'You want little Nicky and I think you're crazy, but then you always were the maternal type, even as akid. So keep him and raise him and make them pay through the nose for it!'

'I don't want anything from them!'

'If you don't take their money, you'll have to live on benefit,' Gina pointed out drily. 'And the social services will pursue Damon.'

'To Greece?' A hysterical laugh was lodged like a sob in Sarah's constricted throat.

'Well, they wouldn't have much trouble tracking him down, would they?'

'I won't take anything from them,' Sarah stated tightly. 'Ever!'

'Callie would have wanted the very best for her son,' the older woman said shortly. 'And I think it's time you faced the fact that Callie knew damned fine what she was doing when she got pregnant.'

'I beg your pardon?' Sarah looked at her father's cousin in shock and reproach.

'It was no accident in my opinion. Callie wasn't that careless. She wanted that boy and' when things weren't going as she wanted them to she let herself fall pregnant/ Gina opined wryly. 'Women have been using pregnancy to trap men into marriage for centuries, love. Teenage girls are particularly fond of the method. Unfortunately your sister miscalculated.'

'I disagree.' Sarah had to struggle to hold her voice level and conceal the depth of her anger on her sister's behalf. 'Callie didn't try to trap Damon. He had already asked her to marry him, bought her an engagement ring-----'

'Talk's cheap, but where was he when the chips were down? Men!' Gina said with rich cynicism. 'He took off for Greece and she never saw him again. He never even answered her letters. Rat! I'd bury the two of them in the back garden with pleasure if it weren't for little Nicky! Mind you, it would be a sinful waste to do awaywith rat's big brother,' she sighed reflectively. 'Now, he really is gorgeous. Like Apollo the sun god...'

Unused to Gina making mythological references, Sarah stared at the other woman wide-eyed.

Gina flushed slightly as she drew up in front of her small terraced house. 'I went on holiday to Greece once and I saw this statue... Forget it, I'm being silly!'

A neighbour had sat with Nicky while they were at­tending the funeral. Sarah rushed upstairs to see him. He was fast asleep, snug in his wicker basket. She had brought him home from hospital only yesterday. As she looked down at him, just itching to hold him again, her eyes moistened. In her darkest hours of grief, she had learned to thank God for the gift of Callie's child. She felt needed again and that strengthened her.

Gina was out on the tiny landing. Her plump face was tight. 'If you take that child on, you'll never have any life of your own. Didn't you sacrifice enough for Callie?'

'What on earth are you talking about?'

'You're only twenty-four and you've got lonely old maid written all over you!' Gina looked her over in rueful despair, taking in the tightly restrained silver-blonde hair ruthlessly confined in a French pleat, the complete ab­sence of cosmetics, the conservative navy suit that had seen better days and the sensible flat shoes. 'Haven't you ever wanted a man in your life?'

Sarah uttered an embarrassed laugh. She hated it when Gina started on about men as if they were the beginning, the middle and the end of a woman's existence. She didn't attract the opposite sex. As a teenager, she had been painfully shy and studious, the class swot. As an adult, she had had neither the time nor the opportunity. Sure there had been men who'd asked her out from time to time at work, and occasionally she had accepted, only to discover that they didn't want her company, they wanted sex. And that was why they had approached her. She was plain and quiet and they had undoubtedly im-agined that she would be so grateful for the attention that she would fall into their bed on the first date with the barest minimum of effort.

She made herself recall her painfully humiliating ex­perience with the boy she had had a crush on at sixteen. He had invited her out to a disco one night and she had been electrified with delight... until she'd heard some of her classmates giggling about it in the ladies' cloakroom. He had done it for a bet. Every giggle had been a knife in her heart, every cruel word engraved on her memory for life. 'She looks like an albino.' 'And she's got no boobs at all.' 'You don't need boobs with an IQ like hers.' 'Her IQ didn't warn her that Ashley is setting her up for a bet... She's too busy following him with those big moony eyes of hers... making a real idiot of herself... I wonder how far she'll let him go when he gets her on her own?'