Page 120 of Endgame

‘Hey, Mommy.’

‘Baby.’ Dahlia Mason throws her arms round Ariella, and immediately steps back, wide-eyed. She stops to look at me, confused, before she turns to Ariella.

‘Ariella, are you pregnant?’

A bright smile breaks across her face and confirms Dahlia’s intuition.

‘Oh!’ she says quietly, pulling her daughter back in and squeezing her.

‘As for you,’ she goes on, turning to me with a smile playing on her lips, ‘I think you know you’re in for a rough ride.’

I nod.

Zachary and Isszy are already in the kitchen with Hugh, chatting as they nibble some crisps, wine in hand.

‘Daddy!’ Ariella approaches him with open arms and I feel a deep longing for a relationship like that with mine. After initial hugs and kisses with Zachary and Isszy, I reach out my hand to shake Hugh Mason’s, who pulls me into a hug instead.

Shit. The hugs are going to be over soon.

‘MrMason, please can I have a word?’

‘Of course.’

Hugh Mason opens their sliding door and we walk into the garden.

‘Ariella is pregnant. Fifteenth week.’

His face doesn’t change.

‘Congratulations. What’s your plan?’

‘I’m working on moving back from Singapore?—’

‘So, my daughter is going to be pregnant and alone.’

‘No, I’m tied into a contract that lasts for another eighteen months but I’m planning to visit and?—’

‘Ah. It gets better. She’s going to be a single mother for onlysomeof the time.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Seemed simple enough to get her pregnant.’

‘Daddy, stop it,’ Ariella interrupts as she joins us. ‘You don’t know what’s going on here. Or maybe you do, and you’ve just forgotten. ‘

‘Ariella—’

‘No, Daddy. I love you so much but your expectations are impossible and we’re pregnant because of me, not him. I made a beautiful mistake.’

Ariella rubs her belly.

‘Aari, he’s not ready.’

‘You don’t know that. You have no idea how much we have put on the line for each other. Daddy, please embrace it. Embrace him. It may not be a shotgun and a porch, but you’re about to make the same mistake Grandpa Spence made. I’d never run off, I’m not Mommy?—’

‘Hey!’ I hear Dahlia interrupt to complain.

‘—but I’m not going to stand by and watch you embarrass and demean the father of my child either.’

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