ANGELCAKE

Chapter 52 - Blood in the House

With Sidney in the kitchen wailing (and bleeding) Valentina phoned Docteur Blanchard's office, but he was out for the day. (In actuality, he had had enough of the fiasco surrounding the troubled Spanish girl and didn't want to speak to her again.) Valentina put a towel around Sidney and took her to the hospital emergency. She was nervous because Sidney was not legally an adult and worried about the implications. For her part, Sidney could barely stand up, but refused to go in for fear of her parents finding out when she realised she would have to give her name and address. Valentina had to scold her and demand she go in, explaining well enough to her that even her parents' anger wasn't worth dying from blood loss or septicaemia. The poor girl was in a lot of pain, but was alert enough to give them the false name and address she had already prepared when she had still planned to go to the clinic with Valentina. Possibly because she was haemorrhaging, they didn't ask too many questions and treated her without delay. It did take hours to get a room, but they said Sidney would recover. She had to stay overnight and Valentina went up with her and bought her a muffin and a milky drink from the hospital cafeteria (more than she could afford).

Sidney explained in a slow, weak voice that soon after she and Valentina had met for the first time, Jerremee had turned up begging her forgiveness for not answering her calls. He swore on his children's graves that he had no idea that she was pregnant, or indeed that anything was wrong at all – despite the numerous voice messages and texts she had left. The reason: His wicked twin brother had his phone. Additionally he assured her that it hadn't been him that she had heard Valentina speak with, but his twin. He claimed that his evil twin had always hated and been excessively jealous of him, no matter how much he had kindly tried to reconcile their relationship, as any decent and loving brother would. He claimed in fact, that apart from all the other injuries his twin had dealt him over the years due, the worst humiliation he had suffered had been when his brother and Valentina had slept together behind his back – sadly he had caught them one day. 'He hoped and prayed he could count on Sidney not to betray him in such a way. Although he was trying his best, it was so very difficult for him to trust anyone after he had been abused so much.'

He insisted that he couldn't live without her. Loving her as he did, he wanted to keep the baby and to get married as soon as possible, telling her to go and put a deposit on any dress she wanted and to book the hall and everything: 'the best of everything, whatever would make her happy'. However there was just a small catch that he had just had to pay out an enormous settlement to his ex wife (he had done it for Sidney to get the woman out of his life and clear the way for them) so he was "maxed out" for that month. 'He would have put it on his credit cards of course, if Valentina hadn't maxed them out on frivolities without his consent. Luckily he had a few hundred thousand pounds from investments coming through in a couple weeks to tide him –or rather them– over until his big deal of the century broke in a few months. He told her to go ahead and put deposits on everything and that he would pay the balances as soon as he cleared the cheques coming in and, would of course reimburse the money as soon as he saw her the next time. In fact, he would be giving her a fair bit extra on top, just because she had been such a dear in putting up with the trying situation and in acting as his "banker" – what a woman! In fact it was about time he put her on a nice monthly allowance, being that she was officially his woman and carrying his child.'

With a satisfied, saccharin, simper, he topped it all off by claimed that he was also ordering her an American Express card with no limit, 'just as a test to see if she would cheat him and max-it-out' as Valentina and the other ones supposedly had. Sidney was too inexperienced to view the cringeworthy declaration with the mixture of red-light-reservation and insult that Valentina had had when the very same story was put to her about his planned gift/test of her integrity/reward for 'acting as his banker' (he obviously liked the sound of that phrase!) in relation to the previous girlfriend, who had supposedly unlawfully used his cards and maxed-him-out for the month. So the 17 year old was suitably impressed.