Page 103 of Endgame

‘He said he’d lost me and I told him he hadn’t – but I meant as a friend.’

‘What is your obsession with being everyone’s friend? I’ve repeatedly told you that this man doesn’t want to be your friend!’

‘Lower your voice please, Caleb.’

He doesn’t. ‘No. This guy has been hovering for months!’

‘Are you going to beat up everyone that hovers, Caleb? Your fists will never rest.’

‘He locked you in his house, Ariella! He has got at least thirty kilos of pure muscle more than you and is a full head taller. Your brand of goody-goody diplomacy wasn’t going to do a damn thing if he wanted to hurt you!’

‘My brand of goody-goody diplomacydidwork. He was going to?—’

‘Oh my God. What if it didn’t? Am I going to have to kill someone for you to stop putting yourself in risky situations?’

‘I didn’t put myself in a risky situation. He’s our boss and he was my friend.’

‘Friend my arse! You know he wanted more and you let him think he had a chance.’

‘Well, at one point he did!’ I shout back. Caleb looks like I’ve just slapped him, and gears up to counter-attack.

‘Is this child even?—’

‘NO! MrCaleb! Do not say!’ MsPat shouts over him.

‘Say it,’ I seethe. ‘I dare you.’

Caleb suddenly looks unsure.

‘No! Please, MrCaleb! You will lose everything. Please! Do not say!’

‘I need some air,’ Caleb says, and goes back out of the front door.

The sigh of relief from MsPat as she falls to her knees infiltrates the silence. I feel deep shame and embarrassment settle.

‘Thank you for being there tonight, MsPat.’

‘No problem, Miss Ariella. I happy I came,’ she says sadly.

‘I’ll be moving back to London in the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow, can we talk about how I can help you secure a job before I move?’

TWENTY-SIX

CALEB

I don’t return home that night. I’m furious, and I don’t want to be around her. She knew he liked her and, instead of putting him firmly in the ‘not going to happen, ever’ zone, she kept trying to stay friends with him. It’s such bullshit. Obviously, having witnessed Jasper’s car crash, the last thing I wanted to do was control her or try to tell her what to do, but tonight was inevitable.

Ariella has a way of being evasive enough to drive anyone mad. I know. I’ve been at the other end of it. Repeatedly. Whether she is aware of it is irrelevant, and I have never been more sick and tired of her shit.

I knew he was circling, but he could be forgiven when he didn’t know about Ariella and me and we were on hold. When we finally got back together, though, he still kept coming, and Ariella let him. That bastard tried to put me on a border-hopping plane to Vietnam with enough cash to disappear, for fuck’s sake. Even the stupid meetings they had to have. I don’t care if they were talking about helping Christopher. Why did it have to be after work or on his ostentatious boat? What’s wrong with a well-lit conference room in the middle of the day? So what if time zones aren’t on our side and Christopher’s day was startingjust as ours was finishing? Christopher would have gladly made an 8a.m. video call at the healthy time of 4p.m. in Singapore. She has been leading him on, and finally, tonight, he reached the end of his tether and I reached mine.

I’d been at home reading up online on what to expect from our first scan and how Ariella’s body was going to change, because she was already two months down. Apparently, things were about to get much more exciting in month three. The last thing I expected was MsPat’s frantic call telling me that Dominic had locked Ariella in his home. I’d never been more relieved that we lived in the same community.

I ran the two miles, on the twisty, hilly roads, through golf-course-sized parks and gardens, to Dominic’s house in ten minutes flat; but seeing MsPat shaking with fear was what tipped me over the edge. My girlfriend and my baby were trapped in there by this man. We were both lucky I didn’t kill him with my bare hands.

For Ariella to then have the audacity to tell me, mid-argument, that he stood a chance was the gut punch from her that I wasn’t expecting. I was so blinded by rage that, if MsPat hadn’t been there, I would have crossed a huge line; and she was right – there would have been no coming back from it.

When I knocked on Honey’s door at two in the morning, I was a mess, and she did what I needed. She let me in, didn’t ask any questions, led me to her spare room and placed a bottle of water beside me before promising that whatever it was would be all right in the morning.

---