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‘What happened?’ Ivy asked, leaving the trolley and approaching the pair.
Anita shook her head, clearly incapable of words.
‘Is it Tommy?’ Ivy asked, fear curling her stomach at the thought of something happening to Anita’s two-year-old boy.
‘No, no. Nothing like that,’ Mrs Tenby explained quickly.
‘We lost Morrison,’ Anita said through sobs. ‘He’s had to withdraw his funding.’
‘No!’ Ivy exclaimed.
‘He’s devastated but he lost one of his biggest clients and now can’t afford to donate to the afterschool programme,’ Anita explained as Ivy’s heart sank. That was terrible news. Mr Morrison had been the biggest donor to the library’s afterschool club.
‘All the children we’ve promised places to…’
‘They’ll have nowhere to go,’ Ivy finished, realising why Anita was so devastated.
‘Oh, it’s so silly. I don’t know why I’m crying,’ Anita said, waving her hands in front of her eyes. ‘It’s not his fault. And all the parents knew the places were conditional on funding. But the children were so excited, and it’s such a shock. Especially having just secured the library association’s agreement to match our donations.’
They’d been so close to meeting their target, but with Mr Morrison withdrawing nearly one hundred thousand pounds in donations, and government funding going elsewhere, they wouldn’t be able to get the money they needed to get the afterschool club off the ground. It was something all three women had invested a lot of time, energy and belief into, each of them knowing how desperately needed this was for the local community.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ Anita said miserably.
‘There will be a way,’ Ivy said, forcing a determination she didn’t feel into her words.
‘How?’ Anita asked hopelessly.
‘How much? For you to come to Italy.’
‘I’ll think of something.’ Ivy said, feeling torn.
The afterschool club was a vital resource for local families who worked multiple jobs that couldn’t fit around school hours, let alone afford childcare. If there had been an afterschool club when she and Jamie were younger, he might have stayed away from vices that had turned to addictions. They might have had somewhere warm, bright, creative and full of art and people to go to, instead of a cold flat with no food in the fridge and a mother who wasn’t home.
Ivy had been sixteen when her mother had first gone away. It was just a holiday, two weeks with her new boyfriend, and of course Ivy was old enough to look after her younger brother. Six months later, her mother was off again, only this time she didn’t come back for a month. The next time had been even longer and Ivy couldn’t let anyone know. Not school, not friends…because social services would come and they’d take Jamie away and she couldn’t let that happen. She had to protect him.
There were some government services that were scarier and more dangerous than helpful, but the library wasn’t one of them. And it twisted her heart to be so close yet so far from what was such an important part of the local community. She felt Mrs Tenby’s intense glare warning her not to make promises she couldn’t keep. But that was the thing. Ivy kept her promises. Every single time. Whatever it had taken. Because she’d been let down too badly by a mother whose promises had always been empty.
Antonio’s question whispered inside her mind again, and no matter how hard she tried to force it down, it returned to her on a loop.
She bit her lip, returning to the stacks to shelve the returns on autopilot. Could she? Could she ask him for more money? Was she shameless enough to do it?
Not for herself. She could never have asked for herself. But this wasn’t for her. It was for the library, the community, the parents who wouldn’t have to choose between their job or their child. Thoughts crowded her brain and a wave of exhaustion overcame her. She’d already done a lot in one day, between the court visit, Antonio and now this. Her eyes began to ache.
Take things step by step and if you need a break, take that too, she told herself.
And promptly ignored it. She returned books to their shelves quicker and quicker as her mind turned over. She could ask him for the money—just for what they needed. It was less than he’d paid her to marry him. Although she baulked at the idea of extracting money from him, he’d offered it to her, hadn’t he?
Yet she’d told him that there was nothing he could do, no amount he could pay her.
She pressed her teeth together, trying to ground herself, as she thought through how it would go. How she would, of course, be confirming every worst thought he had about her being a money-grabber. Because she’d seen it in his eyes when he’d offered her the money. The expectation that she was simply out for what she could get.
Ivy swallowed the feeling of nausea welling from deep within. She reminded herself of the good that she had done for Jamie with the money. The rehab centre that had turned him around and the flat they’d had—the home—even if it had just been for a few short years, it had been enough security to get him started on a new life path. She could do the same again. Use Antonio’s money to help others. The determination, the plan forming in her mind soothed her jaded heartbeat and jagged breathing. It had worked before—it could work again.
Mrs Tenby might have refused her a holiday request so soon after starting, but if it would help them secure the funding they needed, surely that would be different?
All she’d have to do was ask Antonio for the money.
She was returning the trolley to the desk when she had a horrible thought. What if he’d already found a way to circumvent Judge Carmondy’s requirements? What if he didn’t need her to go to Italy any more? Suddenly the plans she’d begun to make in her head disappeared like the end of a road and she mentally screeched to a halt. Panic broke out in a cold sweat at the back of her neck.