Page 58 of Wedding Crasher

Emily scooted herself upright and automatically draped a protective arm over her middle. At least he didn’t seem angry – that had to be a start, right?

‘Why did you call, Dan?’

He shrugged and looked away for a few silent seconds, his eyes on an after-school kick-about in the distance.

‘I don’t know. I heard about the baby today from the queen of the undead.’

Emily looked at him quizzically.

‘Melanie,’ he muttered, with something that might have been a shiver.

She nodded with a heavy sigh. It had been inevitable that she’d find herself here, and she’d agonised over how she should play it. Now the moment had arrived she knew that the only option open to her was the absolute truth, but actually saying the words turned out to be really, really hard.

‘Is it mine?’

Wow. He wasn’t pulling any punches. Straight in with the million-dollar question; the question that kept her awake into the small hours and haunted her restless dreams when she finally fell asleep. She’d answered it a hundred different ways in her head and none of them had felt right.

‘I don’t know. Probably.’ She knotted her shaky fingers in her lap. ‘Yes, I think it is.’

‘Fuck.’ Dan watched the footballers again and rubbed his stubble with one hand.

‘Look, Dan …’ She wasn’t sure how to say that there was no need for him to feel obliged to play any part in his child’s life.

‘Does your husband know?’

‘No. I’ve tried to tell him, but the words won’t come out.’

‘I see.’ Dan nodded, and turned to search her eyes with his own. ‘So … what am I supposed to say now, Emily?’

This was her one chance to make the best of this for all of them. She couldn’t blow it. ‘Ithinkyou’re supposed to say that it’s best Tom never knows.’

‘Right … right.’ He stared at the ground. ‘And what if I don’t say that?’

Terror held Emily’s breath captive in her chest.

‘What if I said that I need to know for certain if it’s my baby?’

‘I’d say that you were within your rights. It’ll probably destroy my marriage and make me a single mother, but you’re within your rights.’

‘And what about thebaby’srights, Emily? To know its real dad?’

And there it was. The other question that worried her daily.

‘I don’t have all the answers, Dan.’ Her shoulders slumped in desolation. ‘Do you want to be a father right now?’

He put his head in his hands and groaned. He didn’t. Much as he liked to paint himself as the local lothario, he wanted the same thing as everyone else really. To fall in love, settle down, and then maybe think about babies. Knocking up someone else’s wife had never figured in his plans.

‘Because Tom does. Desperately. And I know he’ll be brilliant at it.’

‘So you’re saying, what? I should just walk away?’

‘Can you?’

‘I don’t know, Emily. I honestly don’t know.’

‘Of course you don’t.’ She bit her lip. ‘Sorry.’

They stared in silence at the footballers playing five-a-side across the park.

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