Cam is making his way around the entire floor, opening office doors and calling my name. He sees me as he backs out of the office next to Len’s.

“Kitten, I’m so fucking sorry. She set me up. She fucking set me up and I fell for...”

Len hits him so hard, I see stars. He turns around to me and says, while shaking his hand, “Get him the fuck out before Marley gets back and does some real damage.”

He walks past me into his office, and I’m amazed Cam is still standing, and once again wiping blood from his lip.

“I deserved that,” he says quietly, his eyes locked on mine.

“Yes, you did,” I reply. “Wait there while I fetch my bag.”

* * *

We drive the ten minutes it takes to get to the apartment in silence. I want to be calm and I want to be reasonable when I hear what he has to say. That’s the plan anyway.

We stand in opposite corners of the lift on the ride up and I let him take my hand in his while we take the ten or so steps to the apartment door. There are four apartments on the top floor, one in each corner. Each of them a penthouse with a roof terrace.

As soon as we step inside and the door closes he pulls me to him.

“It was the wrong thing to do. You needed me. I should’ve been with you. Come in here and sit down. I need to tell you what happened.”

I follow him to the kitchen and sit on a stool. I watch him as he pulls a bottle of wine and a beer from the fridge. He pours wine into a glass and sets it in front of me. His eyes haven’t met mine since we left Len’s office, and I have this horrible panicky feeling in the pit of my belly and my chest for some reason. I don’t know if it’s being caused by the fact that I’m trying so hard to remain calm or because I’m expecting him to tell me something I don’t want to hear.

He drinks his beer, draining the bottle in a few swallows, then reaches up into the cupboard where he keeps his bourbon and pours himself one of those into a whisky tumbler over some ice.

He leans back against the sink, crosses one leg in front of the other and finally looks at me.

“The baby was absolutely fine when I got there this morning. The doctor had just seen him and he was fine, temperature normal. Then he asked if he could speak to me on my own.” He takes a swallow of his drink, the ice clinking as he tilts the glass. “Have you eaten, Kitten? You look terrible. You’ve got no colour in your cheeks.”

I give a small laugh and wrap my arms around myself, suddenly feeling cold. It’s a warm June day outside and the air con has clicked on in the apartment.

“Just tell me what you have to tell me, Cam.” He frowns as he looks at me. He really has no idea how much I’m hurting right now. He rakes his hand through his hair, then over his beard. It’s something he does when he’s stressed or trying to think.

“You’ve every right to be angry, but please believe me when I tell you I’m sorry. I should’ve been with you today. You should’ve been my priority.”

I shake my head. “No, Cam, Harry should’ve been your priority. You were worried. I totally get that and do not have a problem with you being with your son. What hurts is you spending time with her, not being available when I called you because you were out walking in the sun with her.”

He frowns and shakes his head. “I wasn’t out walking with her, I took the baby out for a walk to get away from her.” He moves towards me and leans forward on the other side of the kitchen bench. “I didn’t tell you this because I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, but I asked the nurse who looks after the baby if she could find out how Tamara got pregnant. Whatever you might believe, I have never had unprotected sex with her and it’s frustrated the fuck out of me trying to work out how it happened.”

“And did you?” I asked, wondering where this is going.

He nods. “When I had to go in the wank room at the fertility clinic, I asked them how long sperm usually live for once you shoot your bolt.” I raise my eyebrows at this.

“And?”

“Inside a woman, three to five days, out in the open, a couple of hours.”

“Right… And?”

“Well, then the nurse, you know, Wendy, the funny one? She tells me a story about how her mate got pregnant on purpose by using a syringe to suck spunk out of a condom her boyfriend had left in the bathroom bin and injecting it up into herself.”

I suddenly feel hot and my heart begins to race. I know my mouth is hanging open as I shake my head. “She didn’t... I mean, where did you… What did you do with the condom the last time… It was in Ibiza wasn’t it?”

He nods. “Yeah, the thieving fucker robbed me, took my wallet and my watch. And, it turns out, she took the fucking condom with her, too.” I close my eyes for a few seconds while I try and push the horrible anger down inside me. God, I want to punch that bitch’s face in right now. “And it wasn’t the first time. Wendy, the nurse, has become really pally with her the last few weeks. I did a bit of research, found out she was a bit behind on her mortgage and needed a new car so I helped her out on that score. Just a little bit.”

“You bribed the nurse?” Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“No,” he stands up straight, “I just sort of persuaded her.”

“With a new car and some cash to pay off her debts?”

“No,” he replies indignantly, “I got her a better car than she had but it wasn’t new, and I didn’t give her any cash. I paid what she owed on her mortgage straight into her mortgage account.”

“Cam, it’s the same thing. At the end of the day, you bribed her.” He lets out a long sigh.

“This is exactly the reason I didn’t tell you. Considering who your dad is, you’re so straight sometimes, Kitten.”

I shake my head at him. “What if she’d gone to her boss? You could’ve lost custody of Harry? You have to think about that kind of thing now, Cam. You have to be a little bit more responsible.”

His face falls and his mouth hangs open as he struggles for a reply. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“Yeah, well, not thinking is what you seem to do best lately.” He tilts his head slightly while he considers my reply, and then as he usually does when he’s wrong and I’m right, he ignores my comment.

“Anyway, Tamara told her that she had been trying to get pregnant for years. Every time I threw a condom in the bin, she would go into the bathroom and either take it with her or cut the end off, turn it inside out and push it up inside herself. She succeeded once before, but miscarried just a few weeks later.” I’m stunned. I just keep shaking my head, unable to think of anything to say until a thought pops into my head.

“So your spunks not so super then? If it took her all that time to get pregnant.” He rolls his eyes like a teenage girl.

“Kitten, there’s fuck all wrong with my spunk. She didn’t get pregnant because she’s an anorexic junky. She’d been off the gear for a while when she finally got pregnant with Harry; that’s why it worked.” I was still shaking my head.

“So what happened then, this morning. Did you confront her?”

He shakes his head. “Not yet. I took Harry for a walk to calm myself down and to call you, but then I realised I’d left my phone behind, except I hadn’t, that scheming bitch had taken it and hid it; that’s why I was so late calling you.” He’s quiet for a few seconds. “I need to tell you, I want to go for full custody of Harry.”

“Cam, you can’t take her baby away from her. She loves him. She’d be devastated.” I don’t like the woman and she is a complete psycho, but I would never be so cruel as to take her baby away from her. I know what it’s like to have that and then to have it all taken away.

“When she finds out I know what she did, she’s gonna flip, and I don’t trust her around the baby. They’re talking about letting her out the weekend that we have him here, or maybe even sooner.”

I shrug. “Well, if she’s clean and all her results are coming back clear… I don’t like her, Cam, but you can’t take her baby away from her for no reason, and you can’t keep her locked up.” I can see a nerve twitch in his jaw and I know he’s pissed off with my reply, but unless Harry’s in danger, I can’t justify what he plans to do.