It’s strange, but now that this has happened I find I can no longer imagine getting back together with Patrick. Something has changed. He never proposed to me. We never even talked about it. He’d already had the big white wedding with Colleen. I spent ages looking through their huge leather-bound rectangle of a photo album, staring at Colleen and her big white poufy-sleeved dress, wondering what she would have thought of me.

One morning when we were lying in bed, Patrick said, out of the blue, “I’m keeping you forever.”

And that was all I needed. That was my romantic proposal and engagement ring and wedding ceremony and honeymoon all in one. As far as I was concerned, we were married from that moment.

But obviously not as far as Patrick was concerned.

Ellen is the sort of woman who makes a man feel the urge to go down on one knee and propose, whereas I am not.

When I walked over to them at that picnic table, I felt like some sort of hideous half-human creature. I could smell my own ugliness.

I accept it. It’s fine. They will be forever on the inside, and I will forever be on the outside.

But I’ll make sure they always know I’m still there, looking in, peering through the glass, tapping on the window. I will never go away.

“She’ll never go away,” said Patrick. “If you marry me, you’ll have to accept that she’s part of the package. My son. My mum. My dad. My brother. My stalker.”

“Yes,” said Ellen. “I understand.”

“I hope it’s a girl,” said Patrick. “The baby. I hope it’s a little girl. I’d love a beautiful little girl. Would you like a little baby girl?”

“Sure,” said Ellen.

Patrick wasn’t drunk, but his words were softening around the edges. They were sitting on the balcony of their hotel room, and he was drinking the rest of the champagne.

It appeared they were engaged. Ellen was wearing the ring on her left hand. It kept catching her eye. She had said yes.

Patrick was thrilled about the baby. Ecstatic, even. When the news of her pregnancy had finally sunk in, he’d pulled her into his arms and held her like she was something precious. “A baby,” he murmured. “Bloody hell. Who cares about anything else? We’re having a baby.”

Everything was perfect, except that Saskia’s face seemed to be permanently floating on the peripheral of Ellen’s vision, like the shocking memory of a bad car accident: the crunch of metal, the flinging back of the head. She kept replaying that moment when Saskia walked toward them: the wide, friendly smile, the eyes made blank by her dark sunglasses.

Ellen’s righteous fury had abated, and now she felt strangely spent, empty of feeling, as though she really had been in some sort of traumatic accident.

“It’s weird, but I didn’t feel as angry as I usually do when Saskia turned up today,” said Patrick. “I just felt this calmness. A sort of acceptance.”

So her posthypnotic suggestion had worked a treat. Ellen felt both professional pride and professional guilt. She said nothing. Her back ached. She wriggled around in her chair, trying to get comfortable, and fiddled with the ring.

“Is it too tight?” asked Patrick, watching her. “We can change the size.”

“It’s perfect,” said Ellen. “I’m just not used to wearing rings.”

Patrick emptied the rest of the champagne into his glass and settled back into his chair, stretching his legs out and entwining his toes around the bars of the balcony fence.

“Yes. A beautiful blond-haired little girl who looks just like you,” he said happily, looking out at the moonlit night.

“Except I don’t have blond hair.” Ellen laughed.

“Of course you don’t.” Patrick rolled his eyes at his own stupidity and reached out to lightly touch his hand against Ellen’s hair. “I think I was imagining her looking like Jack.”

Ellen thought of the photo she’d seen at his parents’ place of Colleen sitting on the hospital bed holding Jack. Her hair, she remembered, was long, wavy and very blond.

When they got back to Sydney, they told all and sundry about the engagement, and just their closest friends and family about the—shhhh—pregnancy.

People seemed surprisingly happy for them. They got tears in their eyes. They sent flowers and cards. They turned up with bottles of champagne and flamboyant hugs.

“Why do you find it surprising?” asked Patrick.

“I don’t know,” said Ellen. “I guess I didn’t think anyone would care that much, at our age.”

“They’re just happy to hear some good news for a change,” said Patrick. “People love happy endings.”

For some reason Ellen didn’t really like all the fuss and good cheer. She preferred to be the observer rather than the focus of everyone’s attention. All the questions—“When are you due?” “When will the wedding be?” “Where will you live?”—made her jittery, because they hadn’t worked out the answers yet. Also, it worried her that she would somehow let people down now.

There hadn’t been any tears in her mother’s violet eyes when she heard about the engagement, just a lift of her eyebrows before she quickly swept on her most gracious persona, the one where she appeared to channel the queen, and completely seduced Patrick with her well-mannered charm—“I really couldn’t be more thrilled”—and a check for five thousand dollars.

Privately she said to Ellen, “He doesn’t need to marry you just because you’re pregnant! You’ve known the man for all of five minutes!”