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“No, I’m a school receptionist,” Hope said.
“But it’s ages until school starts again.”
“It’s no more than a week and a bit,” said Caz. “So you can wait that long. How about a bit of a sing along?”
“Give me a minute,” said Hope. “Let me find the way out of here. Once we’re on the motorway then we can sing.” She checked her rear-view mirror and pulled out onto the road.
“So when we get home I’m going to feed Rosie and then we’re going to watch telly, right mum?”
Hope felt rather than saw Caz give her a look, so she was careful to keep her face and voice neutral. “Actually, your dad’s coming to pick you up, did you forget?”
“Didn’t forget,” Alice said, face darkening. “But what about watching telly, you said I could.”
Hope took a breath. “How about I tell daddy that you can watch telly?”
Alice brightened again. “Yeah, that sounds good. Or maybe daddy can stay at our house and watch telly with us.”
Caz reached out and patted Hope on her knee. “Your dad’s got his own house now, love,” she said.
Not to mention his own girlfriend, added Hope mentally. She cleared her throat. “Oh look, there’s a sign for the motorway. Shall we get that sing-song started? Who wants to go first?”
“Me, me,” Alice cried, and began a noisy rendition of Nelly the Elephant.
Hope pulled the car into the slow lane of the motorway and found herself smiling. Okay, so she might not have planned life this way, but was it so bad? Her daughter and her mother were both making elephant noises and maybe things weren’t perfect, but they could certainly be worse.
Chapter Three
The house was better than Ava had expected. Not that she’d expected much of anything, to be honest. This whole teacher exchange program had been a blessing sent from heaven, but it hadn’t exactly been well-planned, just well-timed.
But she was now the proud temporary owner of a charming little cottage at the end of a row of charming little cottages in a charming little town called Whitebridge. Ask her to point the place out on a map and the closest she’d probably get was London, but she’d work on the geography later.
She was just rinsing out a coffee cup at the kitchen sink when she saw movement in the garden. She pushed her glasses up on top of her head and squinted, seeing a very large, fat cat jump surprisingly nimbly up onto the garden fence.
Ava growled. The thing had better stay out of her yard. See? She was feeling proprietorial already.
So what if she’d been jet-lagged as all get out for the last three days? So what if climbing out of bed in the morning seemed like a chore? So what if suddenly the loss of Quinn was seeming like a gaping hole in her life that might be harder to fill than she’d expected?
It had taken leaving to realize that Quinn just might have been the one holding her together.
But she wasn’t to be beaten.
The sun was shining, she’d dragged herself out of bed, and she was going to explore Whitebridge. She’d be damned if she was going to spend the next week in bed until school started. Apart from anything else, she needed food in the house. And toilet paper.
She stepped out of the front door and took a deep, clean breath, and found that actually, she was feeling slightly better.
Her mood continued to improve as she followed the leasing agent’s hastily scrawled directions into town.
Whitebridge was a small place, but cute and seemingly well provided for. As she reached the main street she could see a small cafe, a library, a police station and pub. Ah, her heart jumped just a little, and a book store.
She grinned and decided to treat herself before getting any real shopping done.
As she got closer she could read the sign, The Queens of Crime, and her smile got even wider. If there was one genre that was going to keep her busy and cheer her up, it was a good, bloody murder. The shop bell dinged as she walked inside.
“Morning, help you?” said a voice.
“Sorry, I…” Ava looked around trying to locate whoever was speaking.
“Right here,” said a woman with bright blue hair, popping up from behind a cash desk. “Help you with something?”
