Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [119]
‘Don’t you dare call me that. If I am one, you are one too. I have not said a word against you to Isabel and if you care about her at all you will do the same. You will achieve nothing by it except hurt.’
‘I would never hurt Isabel but couldn’t care less about you. And as for lover boy, I wish I could get on the next plane and tear him scrawny limb from limb.’
‘What good would that achieve?’
‘None, but I would enjoy doing it.’
All this time no names had been mentioned. I was almost one hundred percent certain he’d guessed it was Alex but…
‘No wonder you knew so much about his love life. You were his love life.’
Okay, he’d guessed.
‘Wait till I tell my mother about this. She always said it would end badly.’
‘Yeah, the ultimate in self-fulfilling prophecies.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Meaning that she did everything she could to break us up. She had a hand firmly in this marriage breakdown and if you can’t see that…Anyway, the one positive to come out of this is that I won’t have to spend any time with her from now on.’
‘Whatever…I want paternity testing done as soon as possible. And I am going to start divorce proceedings tomorrow and I’m going for custody of Isabel.’
‘That’s just stupid. You’re away half the time. Who are you going to leave her with - the maid? In a foreign country where she knows no-one?’
‘I’ll sort something out. I don’t want her staying there to be corrupted by you.’
‘You were the one that started this, Tony,’ I said wearily. ‘He offered me love when I was getting none from you.’
‘Love, is that what you call it?’
‘I’m too tired to argue with you any more tonight. No doubt I’ll hear from your lawyers soon enough.’
The venom in his tone had said it all. He’d found out what it was like to be on the other side in an adulterous marriage and he didn’t like it one little bit. I knew he loved his daughter, but more than that he wanted to wound me and knew the best way he could do that was by going for custody of her. I could only hope the courts would see reason and, because there were no innocent parties in this breakup, decide the best place for Isabel was with me. Whatever the case I knew there would be a nasty fight ahead.
What a miserable night I had. My rational self went AWOL and I lay awake for hours imagining increasingly fanciful scenarios: Tony’s lawyer would get up in court and tell the packed courtroom that I’d had sex with half a dozen different guys and was unfit to be a mother, or, even worse, that Tony would organise an abduction of Isabel and I would arrive at preschool one afternoon to find her gone. Even when I did fall asleep I had a terrible nightmare that I found the bed full of blood and a little dead baby between my legs.
Mum took one look at me the next morning and said, ‘What happened to you? There is no way you can go to work like that. You look absolutely dreadful.’
‘Tony and I had a huge fight and now he’s threatening to go after custody of Isabel.’
‘I thought I heard you arguing. So it sounds like you are definitely going through with the divorce then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even with the new baby? Did you finally tell him?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he react to that?’
I couldn’t explain it to Mum then. I didn’t have the energy. ‘Can we talk about it later?’ is all I said, ‘I really need to sleep right now. Would you mind taking Issy to preschool for me?’
I rang in sick to work. It wasn’t a good look for a new employee but they seemed understanding enough - being noticeably pregnant helped, I think. But before I went back to bed I thought I’d better warn Alex. He was driving to work and spoke to me on hands-free.