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Ava was sitting at her desk, glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Not a problem.”
Hope looked around. “Where’s Alice?”
Now Ava frowned. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?” asked Hope, heart starting to pound hard in her chest.
“Knew that her father came for her.”
Hope squashed down the panic and the fear and the anger and yanked her phone out of her bag, her hand shaking so much she had trouble pressing Noah’s icon. She held her breath while the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Noah? Where’s Alice? Is she with you?”
There was the sound of a groan that made Hope’s stomach clench. “Yes, yes,” Noah said. “I meant to call you, I honestly did.”
“You could have been anyone,” said Hope, releasing some of the panic.
“But I’m not,” Noah said. “I’m sorry. I came to pick her up at yours and Caz said that you were running late so I thought I’d catch you at the school and then you were out and Alice was there. But I should have called. I meant to, I just got so caught up in Alice telling me about her day. You know what a chatterbox she is when she gets off school.”
Hope took a big breath. A big, calming breath. “You need to let me know if you pick Alice up.”
“I will, I will, I swear,” Noah said. “And I’m driving, I’ve got to go.”
He hung up and Hope’s legs started to feel shaky so she leaned against a tiny desk, almost toppling it over.
“Is everything alright?” Ava asked.
“He could have been anyone,” said Hope.
“But he wasn’t,” shrugged Ava.
“Not the point. He could have been.”
Ava pushed her glasses up on top of her hair and for once lust wasn’t the first thought that Hope had.
“I hope you’re not implying that I’d let a child go with a stranger,” Ava said.
“Isn’t that what you did?”
“He came to the classroom,” said Ava. “The second Alice saw him, she shouted ‘daddy’ and flung herself at him. They’re almost mirror images of each other. Obviously it was her father.”
Hope closed her eyes, trying to center herself. Ava didn’t understand, perhaps couldn’t understand, that feeling of looking at the space your child was supposed to occupy only to find it empty. That echoing, gut-churning, scream of pure terror that wanted to rip itself from her mouth.
“You can’t just let him take her.”
Ava stood up now, seeing that Hope was not in good shape. “Alice is fine,” she said. “But you’re obviously not. Are you sure this has nothing to do with your feelings about your ex-husband, your protectiveness over Alice?”
“This has everything to do with the fact that you let someone take my daughter from your classroom,” said Hope.
She could feel Ava take a breath, feel the oxygen soak out of the room.
And for the very first time she considered the fact that whilst she might be attracted to Ava, Ava might not be the right person for her. Not if she couldn’t understand this, not if she couldn’t fit into a life that had not just Hope but also Alice in it, even if it was for a short time.
“You’re right.”
Hope was adrenaline-pumped, ready to defend herself and her anger. So those two words rather took the wind out of her sails. “What?”
