Page 82 of Endgame

‘No, you’re not,’ I say to stop her, resigned.

‘Caleb?’ she questions, confused.

‘If I have to disappear, you can’t come,’ I explain calmly to her.

I watch Ariella’s face crumple.

‘For how long?’ She turns to Dominic, desperate for answers.

‘I don’t know, until this blows over.’ Dominic sounds unconvinced.

‘That could take months.’

‘He has to come now, Ariella,’ Dominic repeats.

Ariella throws herself at me and pulls me into a kiss. ‘Don’t go too far, please,’ she begs. ‘Will you let me know when you’re safe?’

‘He can’t. He has to stay moving and stay gone,’ Dominic explains sadly.

‘Iwillfind you,’ she cries, and she pulls me in to kiss and hold me. I inhale the centre of my universe and try to bury this feeling deep in my memory.

‘Come on, Caleb,’ Dominic urges for the last time before I walk out of the door. Ariella starts to follow us, but the hefty man Dominic turned up with blocks her way. ‘I’ll look after him,’ Dominic says to Ariella, then follows me out of the front door.

All I can think about as I sit immobile next to Dominic in the back of his car is Ariella’s fear and panic-stricken face. ‘Iwillfind you.’ Her last words to me replay in my mind as I try to hold on to our last kiss, mixed with both our tears. I try to keep my emotions buried.

‘Hopefully, this will blow over soon,’ Dominic says quietly, looking out of the window at the night lights as we speed to the east of the city.

‘Do you honestly think taking off is the best option here? Surely this will make me look more guilty?’

‘Have you ever been in a Singaporean prison?’ he asks, incredulously. ‘And that’s if you’re lucky. The maximum penalty for murder here is death. You were the last to see her and the bloody clothes don’t help.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Good job you were at Ariella’s and not yours. You’d be in custody by now.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Kevin. I was with him when he got the call.’

‘Why are you helping me?’

‘You know why.’ He has the decency not to meet my eyes. After a pause, I accept my fate and decide to help him out.

‘You can’t make her choose you,’ I tell him.

‘That’s not what this is.’

‘It doesn’t hurt you though, does it?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ he admits.

It kills me to let Ariella go. She has become the sun my existence revolves around and living without her seems impossible to fathom. Dominic moves his gaze back out of the window. We are silent for the rest of the journey, until we pull into an airfield, where another car and a plane are waiting. Two men move towards the car as we come to a stop.

‘We’re here.’ Dominic opens the door and steps out into the night. I do the same.

‘Is it ready?’ Dominic asks briskly.

‘Yes, sir.’ One of the men hands him a black rucksack.

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