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evidence, he knew in his gut that the child was his. Sarah had never cared about money, and she had always been the least manipulative woman he had ever known. He believed her when she said that she had tried to contact him, and he was shaken by the thought of her doing her utmost to bring up a child on her own when she had been just a child herself.
    The fact was that he had messed up and he would have to pay the price. And it was going to be a very steep price.

CHAPTER TWO
    S ARAH was at the kitchen sink, finishing the last of the washing up, when the doorbell went.
    The house she rented was not in a particularly terrific part of East London, but it was affordable, public transport was reasonably convenient, and the neighbours were nice. You couldn’t have everything.
    Before the doorbell could buzz again and risk waking Oliver, who had only just been settled after a marathon run of demands for more and more books to be read to him until finally he drifted off to sleep, Sarah wiped her hands on a dishcloth and half ran to the front door.
    At not yet seven-thirty she was in some faded tracksuit bottoms and a baggy tee shirt. It was her usual garb on a weekend because she couldn’t afford to go out. Twice a month she would try and have some friends over, cook them something, but continually counting pennies took a lot of the fun out of entertaining.
    She had spent the past two days caught up in trying to find herself some replacement shift work. The cleaning company that had hired her had been appalled to find that she had walked out on a job without a backward glance, and she had been sacked on the spot.
    Her heart hadn’t been in the search, however. She’d been too busy thinking about Raoul and tirelessly replayingtheir unexpected encounter in her head. She’d spent hours trying to analyse what he had said and telling herself that it had all happened for the best. She’d looked at Oliver and all she’d seen was Raoul’s dark hair and bitter chocolate eyes, and the smooth, healthy olive skin that would go a shade darker as he got older. He was a clone of his father.
    If Raoul saw him there would be no doubt, but she still hadn’t heard from him, and her disappointment had deepened with every passing hour.
    On top of that, she couldn’t make her mind up what she should tell her parents. Should they know that Raoul was Oliver’s father and was back on the scene? Or would they worry? She had confessed that she had had her heart broken, and she wasn’t convinced that they had ever really believed it to have been fully pieced together again. How would they react if they knew that the guy who’d broken her heart was back in her life? She was an only child, and they were super-protective. She imagined them racing up to London wielding rolling pins and threatening retribution.
    She pulled open the door, her mind wandering feverishly over old ground, and stepped back in confusion at the sight of Raoul standing in front of her.
    ‘May I come in, Sarah?’
    ‘I … I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you said that you were going to phone …’
    She was without make-up, and no longer in a uniform designed to keep all hint of femininity at bay, and Raoul’s dark eyes narrowed as he took in the creamy satin smoothness of her skin, the brightness of her green eyes in her heart-shaped face and the curves of her familiar body underneath her tee shirt and track pants.
    He recognised the tee shirt, although it was heavilyfaded now, its rock group logo almost obliterated. Just looking at it took him back in time to lying on the bed in the small room in Africa, with the mosquito net tethered as best they could manage under the mattress, watching and burning for her as she slowly stripped the tee shirt over her head to reveal her full, round breasts.
    Raoul had planned on phoning. He had spent the past two days thinking, and had realised that the best way forward would be to view the situation in the same way he would view any