TWENTY THREE: La shit la hit the fan

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Once the medical team confirmed that mother and son were doing well, they were moved to the private ward. While Yolanda bathed, the nanny Marion had hired looked after the baby. When she came out, she opened her suitcase and chose carefully, dressed, then sat at the mirror and applied her makeup with the precision she had always brought to her appearance.

Within the hour, her social media pages were flooded with pictures. Her and the baby, both dressed immaculately, the ward behind them looking more like a hotel suite than a hospital room. The comments and reactions poured in. It was the room that caught the most attention from her circle — the baby was adorable, but the setting was aspirational, and that was the language they all spoke.

Marion texted to say he was on his way with a surprise.

She set the phone down and let herself imagine what it would be. Whatever it was, it would surpass everything before it. She closed her eyes and smiled.

The door opened.

The woman who walked in carried a cold stillness around her like weather. Tall, elegant, composed. Yolanda recognised her before she had fully crossed the threshold.

The corners of her mouth lifted.

‘Hello, Fiona.’

She had never met the woman in person but she had done her research. She had once changed Marion’s screensaver from Fiona’s face to her own and felt nothing doing it.

‘Yolanda.’

‘What are you doing here? Did you lose your way? Or did you come to congratulate us? From everything I have heard about you, I would not have thought generosity was your strength.’

Fiona offered a small smile with eyes that held nothing warm in them. ‘That is why you should not take to heart everything you hear from third parties. Though I will say everything you have heard about me is probably accurate.’

Yolanda held her gaze steadily.

‘What do you want?’

Fiona said nothing. She turned to the nurse holding the baby. The nurse walked over and placed the infant in her arms without hesitation.

‘Hey!’ Yolanda was on her feet. ‘What do you think you are doing?’

The nurse who had been warm and attentive towards her for weeks looked at her with undisguised contempt.

Fiona looked down at the baby in her arms and something in her face broke open quietly. ‘Hey, Sepo. Mom is here to take you home.’

Yolanda laughed. Then she stopped laughing. She threw off the bedding and moved to take the baby back but the nurse stepped in front of her and pushed her back. She stumbled. The bed caught her.

She got back to her feet, her eyes locked on both women. ‘Give me back my baby.’

Fiona’s cold eyes met hers without wavering. ‘Did my husband not tell you?’

A short, disbelieving laugh escaped Yolanda’s mouth. The ex-wife had lost her mind. ‘Fiona, I feel for you. Truly. Marion left you after years together and is with me now, but that is not my fault or the baby’s. I gave him what you could not. An heir. Now give me back my son and leave your madness at the door.’

Marion walked in.

Yolanda exhaled. She straightened her shoulders and let a slow, triumphant look settle across her face as she moved towards him.

‘Babe, thank God.’ She reached him and pressed herself against his chest, acting spoiled and entitled ‘Your ex-wife and that nurse were trying to take our son. Get.the guards to bear them for me.’

She felt him take hold of her shoulders. He pushed her away from him and stepped back.

‘Babe?’

He looked at her the way one looks at a stranger on the street.

‘I do not think I have made proper introductions.’ His voice was entirely even. ‘Yolanda, meet my wife Fiona. Honey, this is Yolanda. Our surrogate.’

The word landed like something thrown from a great height.

Yolanda looked from his face to Fiona’s to his again. Marion crossed the room and placed his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Fiona leaned into him naturally, the way people do when they have been doing it for years.

Yolanda shook her head slowly.

Surrogate. She had not been a surrogate. She had loved him. She had chosen this.

‘What is happening,’ she said, more to herself than to either of them. ‘What is going on?’

Marion turned to his wife. ‘Hun, Dr. Ngoma is waiting in his office. Go with the nurse and take Sepo. I will be five minutes.’

‘Do not take too long,’ Fiona said. He brushed his lips to her temple.

‘Nurse Steph, take care of my treasures.’

‘Of course, boss,’ the nurse replied and followed Fiona out of the room.

Yolanda watched them go. Her feet were on the floor but she could not feel them. Her hands found the lapels of her dress and gripped. When the door closed she turned to Marion and her mouth opened and closed without producing sound.

He looked at her without expression.

‘You have something to say.’

‘What is happening?’ she whispered. She took a step back from him. ‘You just introduced her as your wife.’

‘Because she is.’

‘No. You told me the two of you were divorced.’

‘Says who?’

‘You told me. You said — you lied — ‘

‘I did not lie to you, Yolanda. I told you what you wanted to hear.’

‘Then what about me?’ Her voice broke upward. She thrust the ringed finger towards him. ‘You promised to marry me. We are engaged.’

‘Consider the ring compensation.’

‘You bastard.’ She flew at him with her hand raised. He caught her wrist midair.

‘Did you truly believe I would leave my wife for someone like you?’ He said it without heat, which made it worse. ‘If Fiona had not wanted a child of her own so desperately, I would not have given you a second glance. The day I married her I meant every word of those vows. Every single word.’

‘You love me. You told me you loved me.’

Marion smiled. It did not reach anything behind his eyes.

The day he had met Sofia he had only been back in the country a couple of months. When he told Fiona, she had said it would not be long before Sofia started parading women in front of him. A few weeks later, just as Fiona had predicted, Yolanda appeared. There was no question what the intention was.

What Sofia and her friends had not known was that the couple had already seen them coming. Even Fiona’s encounter with Sofia had been deliberate. Fiona had done her research on Yolanda and was certain that for the right price and the right setting, the woman would sell herself willingly. Marion had found the plan distasteful. He had gone along with it anyway. He had played the besotted man, let himself be drawn in, and kept Yolanda occupied and out of the country while he and Fiona worked quietly. He had hinted constantly at wanting to be a father. And exactly as Fiona had predicted, Yolanda had fallen pregnant.

He had hated every moment of it. But the look on Fiona’s face when she had held the baby twenty minutes ago had made it worth every one of those moments.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Yolanda’s voice cracked across his thoughts.

He looked at her with mild boredom.

‘I will not let you take my son. I will have both of you charged with kidnapping.’

‘You are welcome to try. Though I am curious how you intend to pursue a custody case from prison.’ He paused. ‘And what judge would grant custody of a helpless infant to a woman with a homicide charge and an attempted filicide on her record?’

Her mouth opened. Closed. ‘What are you talking about?’

He held out his tablet.

She took it. Pressed play.

Her own voice filled the room. She heard herself. The conversation with Sofia’s father. The instruction. The cold and exact detail of what she had asked for.

She stumbled backwards. The tablet nearly left her hands. She hit cancel but the recording kept going. She threw it to the floor.

‘You tapped my phone,’ she said, her voice barely functioning.

‘As we speak the police have their copy. And your social media post this morning made it very straightforward for them to find you.’ He let that settle. ‘Sofia’s father and Davies have already been taken in. They named you immediately.’

‘What do you want from me?’ she said finally.

‘There it is.’ He reached into his jacket and produced an envelope. ‘You are going to sign this. You will relinquish all parental rights to Sepo.’

She tore the envelope open and read. With each line she shook her head more rapidly. ‘No. No. He is mine. I gave birth to him. You cannot do this.’

‘Do you love him?’

She looked up.

‘We both know the answer,’ he said. ‘Just as you know that to you, Sepo is no different from a limitless bank card. You are not capable of giving him what he needs. I am not saying that to be cruel. I am saying it because it is true and you know it.’

His bodyguard stepped forward and placed a second envelope in her hands.

‘Because you made my wife’s dream possible, I will give you enough to hire a competent lawyer for what comes next. Everything else I gave you during our time together is yours to keep.’

Yolanda laughed bitterly. Tears ran down her face unchecked. ‘Go to hell, Marion.’

‘Not before you sign.’

‘And if I refuse?’

He walked towards her slowly, his eyes narrowing. She held her ground. He stopped close enough that she had to look up at him.

‘When I asked you to sign, that was courtesy. With or without your signature, Fiona and I are leaving with our son.’ His voice dropped to something quiet and final. He reached out and touched her cheek. The touch was cold where it had once been warm. ‘From today, you do not know me, my wife, or my son. We are strangers. If you come near Sepo or near Fiona, prison will be the least of your concerns. And you know I do not make empty threats.’

‘I am not afraid of you. I will take my chances.’

He scoffed softly and moved to the door. ‘The offer is valid for five seconds.’

When he was gone, the bodyguard holdout the papers for jee.

Yolanda snatched them back. ‘Get me a pen.’

She signed across every dotted line without reading further.

The guard took the papers and left.

The door closed.

She stood alone in the middle of the room for a moment. Then her legs gave out and she sank to the floor. She pressed her face into her hands and the sobs that came were not the careful, manufactured tears she had perfected over years. These were something else entirely. Deep and ugly and real.

She wept on the cold hospital floor with no audience and no purpose and nothing left to calculate.

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© Ponda