Chapter 3

The door slammed shut behind him.

I sat back down at the desk and logged into the documentary work email I hadn't touched in four years.

In the inbox, Natalie James's tenth invitation letter, sent three days ago, was still waiting.

It was the small hours of the morning when Raymond finally came back, Charlotte trailing behind him.

His eyes wouldn't meet mine. "The baby's stable for now, but the doctor says she needs to avoid any emotional stress. She needs more company."

"So... so I brought her back here."

The moment she stepped inside, Charlotte looked at me all timid, as if we'd never met before.

"Rosamund, can we talk?"

I stayed on the couch, not in the mood to deal with either of them.

She came straight to the point. "I want to have the baby, and I want Raymond to take legal responsibility as the father."

"You can go on being the one he loves most."

Raymond's face changed. He cut her off at once.

"Charlotte, I won't have you humiliating Rosamund like this. Apologize to her, now."

The words were barely out before Charlotte burst into tears. "I'm the one who's pregnant. I'm the one who got hidden away. What did I say that's wrong?"

Raymond shoved her suitcase off to the side. "I'll handle the child. You have no right to humiliate her."

Then he turned back to me and laid out another plan.

Once we were back in the country, he'd get Charlotte settled with a place to live and arrangements for the birth, and after that he'd take me to look at apartments.

From the inner lining of the suitcase, he pulled out a floor-plan booklet.

Every page was crammed with his notes.

The kitchen counter, lowered five centimeters to match my height.

The editing room facing north, so sunlight wouldn't wash out the screen.

No heavy curtains in the bedroom, because I liked waking to the light.

A whole wall left clear in the entryway for my equipment.

Raymond turned the pages for me one by one, his eyes red.

"Rosamund, every city we passed through, I looked up what the housing cost there."

"I never once forgot I was supposed to give you a home."

His shaking voice landed somewhere deep in my chest.

But right then Charlotte produced her wedding banquet contract and her prenatal checkup booklet.

"The baby needs to be registered at birth. It needs a father out in the open."

"I'm not going to accept living in some other apartment, waiting for you to drop by now and then."

Whatever softness had been left in me went cold for good.

So this was it. Charlotte got the child and the title.

And I got an apartment fitted perfectly to the way I lived.

Both were his love. Both were his selfishness.

He wanted to slot the two of us into the life he'd already mapped out.

Seeing how cold my face had gone, Raymond fell into a full panic.

He offered me the entire cut of the first ninety-eight videos, and all the savings he'd set aside to buy the apartment on top of that.

"Rosamund, as long as we don't break up, all the money can be yours."

I answered flatly. "What I need isn't a bigger share of the money."

"What I needed was for you to admit, before the betrayal ever happened, that I had a right to know and a right to choose."

At that exact moment, Natalie called. I put her on speaker.

"The resident director slot on The River Running North just opened up. Do you still want in?"

"You've been overseas these past few years, but you've kept doing remote work for the team the whole time, footage verification, foreign-language interviews, rough cuts."

"Everyone on the team knows your skills never lapsed for a second."

"Report in the day after tomorrow, afternoon. Closed shoot, four months."

"If you're in, I'll email you the destination in a bit."

Raymond heard the words "director position" and assumed the project was here in the country.

His whole face lit up. He said quickly, "Rosamund, say yes, please. Once we're back I can go on set with you."

I gave my answer into the phone, clearly.

"The slot's mine. I don't need until the day after tomorrow. I can be there tomorrow."