mother’s gaze and the questions lurking therein.
Despite despair and bone-tiredness leaching the strength from my bones, I strove to remain upbeat. ‘I can’t afford not to go to work. And I’m fine, Mum.’ The I promise I usually tagged on to the reassurance stuck in my throat. I couldn’t promise anything. Because I wasn’t fine.
I hadn’t thought it possible to be this far from fine when I blinked back tears as Neo Xenakis’s lift hurled me down to the ground floor after that unforgettable night.
I’d been wrong.
That cloying sense of unworthiness, germinated after my father’s desertion and watered by doubts and hopelessness, had trebled overnight, and the enormity of what I’d done both before and after meeting Neo Xenakis had thrown me into a state of raw despair. One that’d grown exponentially with the final notice from our landlord a week ago.
We were on a countdown clock to homelessness.
I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell my mother yet.
But I’d been doing a lot of evading lately.
In between sporadic temping I’d ignored the flulike symptoms leaching my energy, initially attributing my delayed period to the condition. Even after a second period was a no-show, I’d refused to believe that fate would be so brutal. That the unthinkable could truly happen.
Then had come the bracing, inevitable acceptance that I wasn’t the victim of lingering flu, or a stomach bug that only attacked in the morning, but that, yes, I was capable of conceiving immaculately.
Shock.
Disbelief.
A brief spurt of searing anger at Neo Xenakis and his lies.
Followed by that ever-present tug of despair. That feeling of unworthiness. That cruel little reminder that my own blueprint was flawed.
But even while despair lodged a heavy stone in my chest there also came a quiet, even more bewildering…elation. Even though I was twenty-five, working jobs that paid a pittance and on the brink of homelessness with a mother who’d promised me, when I finally broke down and begged her to seek help, to combat her growing gambling addiction but had since regressed—as evidenced by the online betting pages I’d spotted on her phone yesterday.
That crushing list of failings was what had overwhelmed me last night. Made me pretend to be asleep when my mother entered the bedroom we shared.
Elation should be the farthest emotion on my reality spectrum.
A hysterical thought flitted across my mind. Perhaps I should have taken a gamble on myself. I’d be wildly wealthy and down one less problem by now. Because, despite all the odds against it, I’d fallen pregnant with Neo Xenakis’s baby after one utterly misguided folly.
A baby…
Sweet heaven…
I can’t father children…
The lie had dripped so smoothly, so convincingly from his lips. And I’d believed him. Had even hurt for him. When all he’d been doing was cruelly toying with my emotions.
Had he seen my feverish desire to stay anchored, connected, for just a little while, and viciously exploited it as some sort of payback? Did the man I’d given myself to, in an act I suspected had involved more than just the physical, bear traits of the father who’d so callously rejected me…?
‘Sadie, dear, are you sure you’re all right? You’ve gone as white as a ghost.’
I swallowed the encroaching nausea and a bubble of lurking panic, thankful that my mother hadn’t noticed that on top of my pseudo-flu I was also plagued by bouts of vomiting.
‘I’m not sick, Mum. Really,’ I said, infusing as much warmth into my voice as possible.
‘Okay, well…if you’re sure. I’m going back to bed. Have a good day at work.’
She left the kitchen after sliding a comforting hand down my back. Absurdly, the gesture made my eyes prickle.
I blinked the tears away, forced myself to revisit the subject that filled me with equal parts anger and dread: relaying the news to Neo.
His last tersely worded warning before tossing me out of his penthouse still lingered, two months on. And I believed he’d meant what he’d said.
Then, of course.
But in light of this life-changing news…
I wouldn’t know until I tried. Again.
My initial attempts to contact Neo had met a brick wall, with a few snooty receptionists even threatening to block my number if I kept trying to reach their illustrious boss. Apparently Neo had issued word that I was persona non grata.
Initially aggrieved by the realisation, I’d stopped trying to reach him for all of three days, before accepting that this reality wasn’t going to go away.
Neo needed to learn of his child’s existence sooner rather than later. And answer a few pointed questions in the process…
Since returning to his building and risking arrest or worse was out of the question, I ventured onto social media—only to discover that the Xenakis family were embroiled in the kind of publicity that drove the tabloids wild.
Apparently, in the last few weeks, Neo’s older brother Axios had returned from a brief trip abroad with his young wife in tow. A wife whose previous absence had been highly conspicuous, fuelling all kinds of scandalous speculation.
Now, not only had the young Mrs Xenakis returned from her mysterious absence without explanation, she’d apparently given birth while she was away. The reunited family had asked for privacy, but already several shots of a baby boy, Andreos Xenakis, had been leaked to the media. He was a gorgeous baby, who bore all the strong characteristics of possessing the Xenakis DNA.
How was Neo taking the news? And, the more important question, how would he take my news?
It was only eight o’clock. My temp job didn’t start until ten. That gave me a little time to attempt to reach Neo again.
Distaste at the thought of stalking him online lingered as I powered up my laptop. The first headline I found made my stomach drop.
Xenakis Aeronautics Soars to New Heights in the Far East.
Exhaling shakily, I read the article, calming down when I saw it focused mostly on Axios Xenakis and his spearheading of the airline conglomerate’s global expansion. Neo would be taking over the European arm of the company, starting with relocating to Athens with immediate effect.
The article was two weeks old. Which meant Neo might now be even further out of reach.
Suppressing the strong bite of despondency, I scribbled down the numbers of the Athens office, shut down the laptop and rushed to the bathroom just in time to heave.
A quick shower and a judiciously nibbled slice of dry toast later, I picked up my bag and headed for the door—only to pause when my mother called out.
‘Oh, Sadie, when you can, do you think you can buy me some data for my phone? I seem to have run out.’
Desolation deadened my feet. The urge to tell her that I was barely holding it together emotionally and financially, never mind providing a conduit for her addiction, tripped on the edge of my tongue. But I was woefully ill-equipped for a replay of the inevitable tears and depression that had dogged Martha Preston’s life since her husband’s cruel desertion. As much as I wanted to dish out tough love, I could barely hold myself together, and nor could I afford to lose another job because I was late.
Vowing to tackle the subject again that evening, I shut the door behind me.
The morning trundled