…“The yellow dress really heightens your eyes,” she says with a wry smile across her lips.

“You say the sweetest things, but you do realise this is a ceremonial robe wire by my father, and his father before him, and so on, and on until we have seventeen generations worth in total, eighteen if you count the little tadpole that was growing in your belly,” he says with whimsical jest as he places a sweaty hand against her belly.

“I-I-I, I not pregnant,” she stammers with a nervous twitch running across her top lip.

“Why? Because you believe you’ve had it exorcised from within your womb?”

“W-W-What? H-How c-could you say s-such a thing?”

“Carol told me everything Sonya, she told me how you came to her, she told me of the secrets your entrusted her to keep for you, and she told me of the journey you two ventured upon, to that cold place that steals the lies from the mouths of mothers. So cease your lies and be true to the only man who’s stood by you when no one else would. Cease the riddles and bathe in the honesty our child deserved…”