And Ondine Marr — his assistant, and then rather more than his assistant — who sent flowers to my flat eleven days after the decree with a card that said: Some women are chosen.
What none of them knew was that four days before that divorce became final, I sat on the edge of a bath and looked at a test.
So I went quiet. Not to punish him. To keep my daughter out of that family for as long as I possibly could.
“I’ll come,” I said.
“You’ll actually come?”
“Of course.”
“Try not to embarrass yourself.”
I looked at the band round my daughter’s ankle.
***BABY GIRL HALLIDAY.***
My name. Not his.
“I won’t.”
He chuckled. “Still pretending you’ve got something to be proud of?”
And I said: “I’ve got proof.”
And the line went completely silent.
“Proof of what?”
“Send me the address.”
What was in the folder.
On the chair next to that bed was a leather folder my grandmother’s solicitor had given me in the September.
Bank statements. Emails. Two signed affidavits. All of it showing that Ondine Marr had moved money out of an account connected to the inheritance my grandmother left me.
And underneath all of it, a court-certified report, obtained in the August on my solicitor’s advice, from a sample taken before my daughter was born.
