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CHAPTER ONE

‘ADOPTION?’ Claire repeated in disers?’

Standing there, white-faced and shaking in the shabby sitting room of her equally shabby little flat, Claire stared at her aunt as if she had just turned into a real live she-devil In truth, she was having trouble believing that any of this was really happening In the last few tragic weeks it felt as if her whole life had been wrenched out from under her

Now this, she thought wretchedly ‘I a to pretend you never said that, Aunt Laura,’ she said, cuddling the sleeping baby just that little bit closer as if trying to shield her fro proposed here

‘No, you’re not,’ her aunt countered sternly ‘You’re going to listen tothis if I believed you were coping?’

‘I arily insisted

Wearing a pin-neat chic little two-piece grey suit and with her perfectly roomed blonde hair, Laura Cavell only needed to send her coldly fastidious eyes on a brief scan of their surroundings to completely denounce that declaration

The place was in a mess, every available space cluttered with all the usual baby paraphernalia—the floor, the chairs, the unit tops in the attached tiny kitchen It was only October but the notoriously unpredictable British weather was already wintry Yet what s fro blocked off behind a clothes-horse laden et baby clothes The washing had to be dried so it now she could no longer afford to use the laundrette in the high street So the ere steaing condensation

Claire herself looked no better, her once outstandingly pretty face ravaged by too hts caused by a baby who only see her

‘I only asked you for help withlike a stray cat that had dared to beg at a queen’s front door

‘And sometimes people have to be cruel to be kind,’ her aunt replied with a cold little shrug of her elegant shoulders ‘If that means I have to use ruthlessto do here, then so be it’

Which, Claire presu to part with a single penny But then, Aunt Laura had never been known for her charity

‘Melanie isn’t even your child, Claire!’

‘But she is rily flashed back ‘How can you want to have her taken away fro heart that had known too rief over the last half year

Her aunt winced—but her stance didn’t alter ‘Your half-sister,’ she corrected her ‘You don’t even knoho her father is,’ she added, her red-painted lanced down at the dark-haired, olive-skinned baby cradled in Claire’s arms

‘What difference is that supposed toin affront at the rude re with a Spanish waiter—so what? she wanted to shout At least she’d still been able to attract a h with Claire’s father! ‘Melanie is still my flesh and blood, and I a to bite back the angry reminder that her aunt was supposed to be their flesh and blood also!

Not that it had ever shown Claire’s mother had always said that Aunt Laura had no heart to speak of She was hard, she was tough, and the fact that she held down a very iest merchant banks meant that she was also totally dedicated to her career

The moment that Claire had dared to ask for help, shefor a solution that would put an end to what sheof years of hassle So, to a woe and the prospect of her own children for the sake of that career, telling her own niece to give her sister away came easy to Aunt Laura

Claire felt sick to her stomach

‘You’re only twenty-one years old, dalio you were still a student Now you’ve dropped out of university but you have no job,’ she listed ‘No means whatsoever to support yourself, never mind a small baby! And now you tell me you can’t even afford to pay the rent on this awful place!’

‘I will find a job soon enough, I’m certain of it,’ Claire stated proudly

‘A job doing what?’ she was instantly challenged ‘Waiting at tables like that—child’s father did? Cleaning floors? Skivvying for others when you could be doing what your oing to look after Melanie while you do scrub floors?’ her aunt pushed on reood baby-minder, Claire,’ she warned ‘Your h to bury her’

The derision in that final rehts! I hts!’ she cried ‘Surely the State will help me!’

‘Of course,’ her aunt agreed ‘But only as one when the State was prepared to pay up without e self-help these days—which is just another way of telling you to go away and get on with it,’ she derided ‘And Melanie has rights too, you know; you see to thank you for bringing her up in poverty when she could be living with the kind of people who could give her everything?’

With the sheer brutality of her aunt’s words scoring deep grooves into her already lacerated soul, Claire reeled away in an agony ofconfusion