The Kyriakis Baby. SARA WOOD

      My thanks to Maria Doumas for all her help, and to Richie and Heidi for providing me with the essential element of my research on little Lexi—my two-year-old granddaughter Hannah!

      Contents

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      PROLOGUE

      EMMA sat staring into space, her eyes huge with fear. Her solicitor would come, she told herself. He’d have the answer. He must.

      The question wouldn’t go away. It was driving her mad. Over and over again it hammered into her aching head.

      Where is my baby?

      She broke her numb silence with a whimpering moan of despair, a thin, poignant figure drawn in on herself, a woman lost in her own dark world.

      Only two weeks ago, she’d stood petrified with fear in the dock and had heard the foreman of the jury pronounce her guilty. It had all been a blur from then on. At Leyton Women’s Prison, a note had been handed to her from her brother-in-law, Leon. It had been brutal in its simplicity. ‘I have your child.’

      She’d heard nothing since. Her baby, Alexandra, had vanished off the face of the earth.

      From that moment on, life had been suspended for Emma. Perhaps she had eaten at some time—she wouldn’t know. And sleep had come only when her exhausted body could take no more of the waking hell. Even then she’d been plagued by nightmares from which she’d woken sobbing, and drenched in a cold sweat.

      That morning, preparing for visiting time, she’d noticed with sudden shock that the months of stress had etched a network of fine lines around her mouth. Furrows scoured her high forehead and a deep notch had been excavated between her brows.

      Leon had done this to her.

      In the cheap mirror she’d seen that her blonde hair was now lank instead of thick and lustrous. Emma had grimaced, had scraped the lifeless hanks back into a severe pony-tail and had fastened them carelessly with a rubber band, unconcerned that spikes of hair stuck out at all angles.

      She looked awful. So what? Who was there to see? She just didn’t care. Nothing mattered any more. How could it? Alexandra was her baby and she’d been spirited away. And she was just six months old.

      Her baby. The focus of her entire existence. Something miraculous, salvaged from a terrible marriage to Taki. Sweet, dimpled little Lexi, whose chuckles and sunny nature could make her smile despite her worries and who’d roused in her such a fierce and tender passion that she’d been shaken by its profundity.

      And now Lexi had disappeared. Sitting disconsolately at her appointed place, she took a dog-eared photo from her pocket and stared at it with empty eyes.

      Her thoughts tortured her. What happened, she wondered miserably, when a baby was abruptly parted from its mother? Would she eat? Would her child be bewildered and upset—or would anyone’s arms, anyone’s smile be acceptable? She thought of Lexi, sick from crying, and groaned.

      ‘Oh, my baby!’

      She lifted a frail hand to stifle a sob. The action made her vaguely aware that people were stirring around her, their voices rising above the normal subdued mutter that was normally adopted in the large visitors’ hall.

      Dragged from her inner torment, she lifted her head and gloomily followed the source of interest. And instantly she froze, transfixed by the man who stood in the distant doorway.

      Not her solicitor. Someone tall, dark and broad and undeniably Greek, his sharply tailored city suit and impeccable grooming quite incongruous amid the plethora of T-shirts, jogging pants and designer trainers.

      Leon. The unfeeling brute who’d abducted her baby.

      The pain in her chest intensified as a harsh protest scraped its way from her throat. He’d come to gloat! To read her the riot act, to talk about her lack of morals and his right to take Alexandra.

      Right! she seethed. What about her right to justice? Her rights of motherhood? Why had she automatically lost her rights as a human being?

      Battle-ready, Emma drew her weary body upright, her eyes glittering with anger. She’d have him arrested! He was a fool to have come…

      The thudding of her heart seemed to trip and falter as logic poured cold water on her impetuous thoughts. Leon was no fool. If he was here, it was to say something important. What could that be?

      Her fevered imagination quickly provided answers. Her baby was dead. A cot death. An accident. An unidentified sickness…

      She gasped, and somehow she was on her feet, catapulted by an unknown force that had flung her chair violently to the ground. Leon’s eyes swerved to meet hers and he recoiled in shock, as if her appearance appalled him. But Emma was way beyond personal pride.

      ‘Is she dead?’ she yelled hysterically across the vast hall.

      Aghast, he shook his head and mouthed one word. ‘No!’

      She swayed, her whole body sagging in relief. A warder roughly ordered her to sit but her knees were already giving way beneath her and if a fellow prisoner hadn’t righted her chair Emma would have collapsed in a crumpled heap onto the floor.

      Her baby was alive. Alive! ‘Thank you, God. Thank you,’ she whispered emotionally.

      She trembled all over, her knees juddering against the low metal table. Hands as shaky as a drug addict’s covered her eyes. She knew she couldn’t take much more.

      I must stay calm, she thought in panic. To be more controlled and rational. OK, maybe restraint had seldom featured