now. She read his most astonishing paragraph twice to make sure she had understood it fully.
“If you really are pregnant, as you said, and didn’t just invent that out of whole cloth to hurt me and make the situation worse, bringing up a child is a collaborative venture, and I cannot imagine our being able to cooperate with each other now, given your attitude toward me. I doubt that you would continue with the pregnancy, in these circumstances, but if you do, I would relinquish all parental claim to the result of the pregnancy in exchange for full ownership of our London home. This would be in addition to any financial arrangements and consideration the courts would give me, and not in lieu of.” She assumed that his lawyer had helped him with the language. The idea behind it was pure Nigel, and showed her a total lack of caring and morality. He didn’t even have the decency to refer to it as a baby. Just reading it disgusted her, and she had no intention of giving him anything, let alone an extremely valuable piece of London real estate that she should be able to sell easily. The house apparently meant more to him than his own child.
The crassness of his suggestion gnawed at her all weekend. She hadn’t decided yet if she was going to keep the baby. But if she did, on Sunday night she had an idea of her own. The prospect of his giving up all parental rights showed his total lack of feeling for her and the baby, but was not entirely a bad suggestion, once you got past the heartlessness behind it. If she kept the pregnancy, buying off his parental rights would avoid years of battles over joint custody, disagreements over how to bring up the child, and visitation, and what the child would be exposed to when with him, if he ever saw it. And she was not about to sacrifice a house worth millions to him. But if she kept the baby, she would be more than willing to give up the Sussex property, which had cost her very little and she had no real use for. She didn’t intend to give weekend house parties without Nigel, and it would be an excellent trade if he’d accept it, to buy their child’s freedom from him and her own, to raise a child in peace.
She wrote him back, suggesting the Sussex property in lieu of the London house, if she continued the pregnancy, and got no immediate answer, and advised her attorney of the name of his. The more she thought about it, the more she liked his proposition. Parenting was a two-person endeavor, but not with a man like Nigel. The child, if it was ever born, would be better off without him. His value system, and morals on every front, were deplorable. In Coco’s opinion, he was a disgusting human being, if one could even call him that, after all he’d done. Knowing him, she was sure he would try to justify his actions, buying houses and chartering yachts, as a way of “improving her life” and “putting her inheritance to good use,” which she knew now had nothing to do with her. It was all about him, and he had used her to impress the friends in his social circle, and elevate his own status with them. She was just taken along for the ride, to pay the bills, which she had done willingly, because she loved him. It all seemed like a cruel joke now, and a terrible trick he had played on her for his own gain.
It took Nigel two days to respond to her email, and much to her amazement, he accepted her offer to trade the Sussex property instead of the London house for all parental rights to their child. He was smart enough to take the lesser offer when he didn’t have a winning hand. Coco thought his idea would benefit both of them, and even the baby, to keep it out of Nigel’s clutches, and she forwarded the email exchange to her attorney. He called her as soon as he got it.
“You didn’t mention that you’re pregnant,” he said in a serious voice. “That could be complicated, although the exchange that he’s suggesting would certainly simplify it. We’ll have to choose the language very carefully, to make it palatable to the court. A judge might feel that he was protecting the