Page 133 of Endgame

‘That’s disappointing. You did propose to her last night.’

The shock on Caleb’s face is hilarious.

‘Jasper has been my friend much longer than he has been yours, Caleb. That’s why I know that we’re running on financial fumes. I also know providing for us is extremely important to you.’ I stroke my belly. ‘But I have access to an uncomfortably large amount because Jasper has been playing with my salary for years. Let’s use it to build the life we want.’

‘What do you mean by uncomfortably large?’

‘We can keep the flat. Jack will have to find a flatmate or pay enough to cover the mortgage and other bits to stay, though. In addition to that, if you say yes, tomorrow we can be completely debt free. We’ll have a little bit left to invest in your business if we’re careful.’

Caleb is already shaking his head.

‘You can rebuild the studio and do what you need to provide for us, while I go on Lara’s ethically dicey adventure with her. Let me clear these debts. We’re going to have so many things to stress about in the future, I’d really like for this not to be one of them. Please.’

‘I really don’t deserve you.’

When Caleb crushes me against him for a kiss and our daughter kicks in protest, he feels it. The look on his face confirms what I already know. The rest of my life is going to revolve around this man and our family.

EPILOGUE

‘And where are you sneaking off to?’

‘We’re going to get ice cream,’ Elsie says, looking suspiciously innocent. I know my daughter. At sixteen, she looks like Ariella, fights like Honey and has absorbed just enough of Lara’s personality.

‘It’s Christmas Day. Nothing is open.’ I narrow my eyes at my child.

‘The corner shop is. It’s only a few minutes away.’

‘Why is he going?’ I point accusingly at Raife, Jasper’s son, who is standing next to her with his coat on. His twin brother, Axel, disappeared with his girlfriend back to Jasper’s home across the street straight after eating the feast Ariella and Lara’s catering company had delivered. This year, a two-Michelin-star chef had created, run the food lab and trained the kitchen team to prepare the Christmas Day menu for their deliveries. Just over seven hundred households ordered exactly what we have just eaten, automatically sponsoring just over two thousand free meals for shelters across London.

‘Caleb, let them go.’ Ariella smiles sympathetically at her daughter as she gets up from the couch.

‘Actually, no, Caleb, continue. This is good.’ Hugh chuckles, biting into a mince pie as he watches from the armchair.

‘That’s your fourth, baby. No more for you,’ Dahlia says, wiping the grin from his face. ‘Oh! Did you two see that Dominic is leading the polls to be the next POTUS?’

Ariella and I smile at each other. Of course we knew. He’d called Ariella to beg her not to speak to any journalists. Before she could respond, I took the phone from my wife, told him he was lucky she was taking his phone call and hung up. We never would, but he can wrestle with the uncertainty. Melissa hasn’t been so lucky. She’s still on the run, or so we think. No one has heard from her since she sent us matching Hermès luggage for our wedding. We dropped it off at the shelter’s charity shop.

‘Daddy, can I go and get ice cream with them too?’ our youngest daughter asks from my lap. Her little seven-year-old arms are round my neck, with her head on my chest.

‘Yes, good idea, Gracie.’

‘I have ice cream in the freezer for you, Gracie.’ Ariella extends her arm out and Gracie bounces her cute curly-haired head over to her mother.

‘What’s wrong with the ice cream in the freezer?’ I ask Elsie.

‘I don’t want Milky Pops, Dad.’

‘Caleb, if anything was going on, all one of them would have to do is cross the road to the other when we go out to dinner or we’re working late,’ Jasper says from the dining table.

‘Yeah, Dad.’ Elsie smirks.

‘They do that anyway,’ our son Spence adds as his hologram lowers his arm to pull his younger brother up the side of a building on the gaming wall.

‘Uh-huh,’ Josh confirms as his hologram makes it to the top. ‘Grandpa!’ he calls.

‘I see them,’ Hugh Mason says, picking off the enemy holograms one by one with disturbing precision.

‘Thanks, Grandpa!’ they both say as they carry on infiltrating the building.

---