Page 76 of Endgame

‘Shit!’ Tim and Jack say at the same time.

‘He’s not joking,’ Jack says to Tim.

‘No, he’s not.’ Tim stands with pride in his eyes. ‘Well done, mate. Come here.’

I stand and step into Tim’s hug and double pat on my back.

‘Dads, release your daughters,’ Jack announces, doing the same. ‘We’ve hugged a lot tonight.’

‘A lot has happened,’ Tim says.

‘Can we all relax and go back to being boring now? I’ve only been in the country for ten hours.’ I hold up my beer and toast. ‘To a boring week!’

The boys cheer as they meet my bottle with theirs.

Jack is a good flatmate that week. He is quiet, tidy and buys our takeaways, even though he is insisting that he’ll start cooking when I leave. He is exactly what I need, because the week is tough. All the candidates are qualified and any one of them could do the job, which is making it difficult to give Christopher my top three. Usually, the gym on Wednesdays is a great place to clear my head, but all I can think about during my training and the class with Phillip and the boys is how I, the worst possible choice in Hugh Mason’s eyes, am going to break it to him that I want to marry – according to Dahlia – the love of his life.

‘Caleb!’ Dahlia opens her loving arms and I step into them. There was a time when hugging Dahlia was foreign and unfamiliar, but now her hugs feel safe and assuring.

‘Thanks for making time for me.’ The nerves I feel dissolve, but not completely.

‘Of course! Have you eaten? Would you like something?’ She leads the way to her kitchen.

‘No, I’m okay.’ Eat? I can barely swallow. I take a deep breath as I lean against the kitchen island and exhale. Dahlia studies me quietly for a couple of seconds.

‘Caleb, relax. We think we know why you’re here.’

Dahlia is not making things easier with her revelation. I don’t even have the element of surprise on my side.

‘You don’t know if he keeps guns in the house, do you?’

‘Don’t be silly, it’ll be fine.’

‘It may not be. Hello, Caleb.’ Hugh Mason enters the kitchen from behind me.

‘Hello, Mr Mason.’

‘Okay. We’re here. What would you like?’ He pulls a seat out for himself at the dining table.

‘Hugh…’ Dahlia warns behind me.

If he’s going in hard, I might as well join him, so I stay standing where I am and spit it out.

‘I already know I don’t deserve to be here. It’s not even luck. It’s a miracle. If you’d told the seven- to twenty-seven-year-old me that I’d be here, the sheer impossibility of it would have made it difficult to imagine, because my physical, mental and emotional beatings started early.

‘They started with my own father, continued with the people I didn’t sell drugs fast enough for and was pure sporting fun for those that simply saw and heard that I was from Toxteth. Then there were the beatings I inflicted on myself and to a certain extent still do.

‘I’m telling you this because you are the two people Ariella loves the most in the world and you need to know who I am, before I even think about us potentially making a commitment to each other. She loves and respects you both and she will ask for your opinion. So I’m not asking you for Ariella. I’m asking if you’ll have me as part of this family. It is the only way we will work, because Ariella won’t be who she is without you, and I most certainly won’t be who I am today without your influence.

‘I don’t want to take another step or make another decision without you. Dahlia, you’re the mother I never had, and Hugh,you’re the example I didn’t get the privilege to see. Ariella can make her own decisions. She will either choose to have me or not. But I want you, because we are going to need you. Will you have me if I ask her and she says yes? If your answer is no, then we won’t take any further steps, because I would never do that to her. But if you’ll have me as part of your family, then I will be asking her and seeking your blessing.’

There. Bloody hell. I feel like I’ve given them more reasons to change their locks and phone numbers than to accept me.

Dahlia silently approaches me where I stand, wraps her arms round me and holds on so tightly, I well up.

‘You’ll always be welcome in our home, Caleb.’ Hugh Mason looks at me sincerely. ‘But you’re not ready. I can’t give my blessing for you to ask Ariella.’

‘Hugh Mason!’ Dahlia turns, shocked at her husband.

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