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“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ava leaned against her desk, crossing her arms.
“Just that, well, I suppose it’s quite brave, isn’t it? Coming to a new country all alone, striking out for independence and all.” Hope put the paints down. “I suppose you could have run away when things didn’t turn out as you expected, but you didn’t. You’re sticking around. That’s brave too.” And it was. Her mother was right. She should try to be more charitable. God, she hated it when Caz was right.
“It’s not that brave,” Ava said.
“Right.”
“No,” said Ava. “I mean it, it’s not. I mean, maybe if I were leaving something to come here it would be. But I didn’t. So it’s not as brave as you might think.”
Hope sensed an undercurrent of something. “Not leaving anything? You mean you don’t know anyone back home? You don’t have a job?”
Ava startled her by laughing. “No, that’s not what I meant.” She got serious again. “I’m just being self-pitying is all.”
“Self-pitying?”
Ava looked as though she might not respond, then her shoulders lowered a little and she said: “Recently divorced.”
“Ah.” Hope felt a pang of sympathy. “I could have entered the self-pity Olympics after I got my divorce,” she said lightly. “Mind you, some days I still could.”
“It doesn’t get any better then?”
Hope shrugged. “I suppose it depends. On the circumstances. On whether kids are involved. I mean, there are a lot of factors. Was your ex-husband an asshole? Did he hurt you physically? Was there someone else involved? You know how it goes.”
Ava looked at Hope for a long minute until Hope started to realize she might have said something wrong. Then Ava obviously came to a decision.
“My ex-wife wasn’t an asshole,” Ava said. “Mostly.”
“Jesus.” Hope felt blood rush to her cheeks. “I’m an idiot, I assumed and that’s wrong. I’m sorry.”
Ava waved a hand. “It’s not important. It happens. Being straight is the norm, I get it. And Serena mostly wasn’t an asshole. Luckily, there’s no kids involved.”
Hope pulled a face. “Not messy then? Well, given your ability to get kids messy whilst doing something as clean as maths, that might be a good thing.”
“It might,” Ava said, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
“So she wasn’t an asshole mostly...” Hope said, aware that she was prying but also aware that Ava wouldn’t hesitate to stop her if she went too far. Besides, she was supposed to be playing nice, getting to know the woman better, right?
“She left me for someone else,” Ava said.
“Ouch.”
“A man.”
Hope raised an eyebrow and whistled. “Double ouch.” She sniffed. “Mind you, is that better or worse? I mean, being left for another woman is being left for competition. Being left for a man, isn’t that more like being left for something that you couldn’t provide, something you don’t have?”
“Oh, I have,” said Ava.
Her voice was loaded with meaning but it took a second for Hope to realize what she was saying, and then she was so shocked that she burst out laughing. “Uh, I’m not sure that was quite what I was talking about,” she said, when she’d recovered. “Also, what you keep in boxes under your bed is definitely none of my business.”
“No, I know what you meant,” said Ava.
Hope found that she was trying very, very hard not to think about Ava and sex toys, which proved very, very distracting. Distracting enough that she missed the first half of what Ava was saying.
“… in the end I suppose it was the sense of betrayal. Him being such a close colleague and all,” Ava said as Hope tuned back in. “What about you and Alice’s dad?”
Hope sighed. “Noah? I wish it was so simple. I mean, I suspect that there was someone else, but I don’t really know. He just came home one day and sat me down and told me he was leaving.”
“And you didn’t try to find out?” Ava asked, uncrossing her arms and putting her hands on the desk behind her.
