The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [21]
‘But if she slept with you on a one-night stand she probably slept with twenty others! The child could be anyone's daughter, anyone's!’ I swept my hand around the restaurant to demonstrate mass culpability. A hush fell. I had a pretty captive audience.
‘Come on,’ he muttered, getting up, ‘let's go.’
‘Don't you see? It could be any number of men in Oxford,’ I persisted, seizing his hand and pulling him back down again. He resumed his seat tentatively. ‘Or even back in Sheffield! She doesn't exactly give precise dates, does she?’
‘But what if it's not?’ he hissed, leaning over the table towards me. ‘What if she's mine?’
Mine. That word pierced me. His eyes were wide: in my face.
‘DNA,’ I said suddenly. ‘That'll settle it. Let her come, Ant. Let – let Felicity, or someone who knows about that sort of thing at the University, sort it out. Bring it on, I say.’
He looked startled for a moment. Then nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, you're right. Of course. And Felicity would know someone. Know the right people.’
You bet she would. Someone in her department would help. At the back of my mind I also knew that this mother-and-daughter team would have worked that out too; would know that we'd do that. Which meant they had to be fairly sure of themselves. I caught my breath. I knew Ant was thinking it too. And if Felicity gave us the news, then everyone would know – Mum, Tim, Caro… my chest tightened. My family. Another child? At Sunday lunch – oh, by the way, Ant has a child.
‘Or – or perhaps someone we don't know could do it,’ I said quickly. Ten minutes ago I was meeting my husband for a bowl of soup. Now we were deciding who would or wouldn't tell us about his illegitimate offspring.
I looked at the letter. I wanted to burn it. Pretend it had never happened. Rewind my life to ten minutes ago. We sat in silence, our bowls of minestrone, which Carlos had gingerly placed in front of us before legging it, cooling undisturbed.
‘You're right,’ Ant said at length. ‘It's probably a mistake.’
‘Of course it's a mistake!’ I seized his collaboration swiftly. ‘God, Ant, why hasn't she contacted you before? Why now?’
‘But, Evie, if it turns out… if… you know, Stacey is my daughter—’
Stacey! I took a slug of wine at the very name. It went all down my chin. As I seized my paper napkin and mopped furiously, my neighbour's liver-spotted hand crept out to reclaim, what was, after all, his glass of Chianti.
‘I mean, if she is,’ Ant went on, anguished, ‘then obviously… obviously I'll have to acknowledge her. It's only right.’
‘Of course,’ I said brightly, screwing the paper napkin in my lap into a tight ball. I began to shred it into a million pieces. ‘Of course, my darling, we both will. Both… acknowledge her.’
I cycled home in turmoil, my mind racing. Oh, it was preposterous. Preposterous. It couldn't be true. Just couldn't. I pedalled numbly, realizing vaguely I had to be careful because I was in shock. Had to watch the traffic. It was as if I'd used up all my powers of persuasion, my energy, in rubbishing the very idea to Ant, and now I felt like a wrung-out dishcloth, clinging to the handlebars, my feet, somehow going round and round, I knew not how, as I cycled through the city centre, mouth dry with fear.
As I turned left into Jericho, I passed a friend's house in Worcester Place: Shona, a lovely Irish girl, married to a medic, who'd been horrified to read, a few months ago, that children conceived by anonymous sperm donation now had the right to discover who their fathers were. Years ago at medical school, her husband, Mike – along with countless others – had been quick to donate to what was universally known as the wank bank, in return for a few quid to buy a round in the Students' Union.
‘Mike donated so much bloody sperm he could populate an entire village!’ Shona shrieked, waving The Times at me when I'd popped round for a coffee. ‘Who knows how many little Mike Turners there are out there, and now they can all beat a path to my door. Every time I open it there'll be another one on the doorstep!’
When I'd got home, Ant