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Hope shook her head.

“Didn’t you need to know for the divorce?” pushed Ava. “Hell, didn’t you need to know for your own sanity?”

Hope took a breath and let it out slowly. “Maybe,” she said. “But Alice didn’t need to know. And in the end, that was more important.”

Ava looked at her for a moment, then gave a short nod. “Alice is important to you, isn’t she?”

“She’s my daughter, of course she is.”

The bell rang and Ava suddenly stood up straight, the nerves back. Hope smiled at her. “It’s going to be fine.”

THE CLASSROOM FELT larger when it was quiet, with all the kids gone home. Hope pulled out her purse and considered what she was going to do.

The inspection had gone fine, just like everyone had said it would. The kids had been happily painting insect parts when the inspectors arrived and all had been chatty and communicative. Ava had shown full control of the classroom and the inspectors had been smiling as they left.

And Hope thought that maybe she and Ava had made some kind of connection. Maybe this was a cause for celebration. Maybe Caz had been right and she should try harder. So she smiled as she closed the closet door.

“It went pretty well,” she said.

Ava nodded. She was sorting through her lesson plans for the following week. Amy Littleton had been helping her square away some ideas.

“So, um…” Hope started. Her mouth got dry. Maybe this was a mistake. No, come on, it was nothing. It wasn’t like she was asking the woman on a date or anything. “Er, do you fancy a drink?”

“What?” Ava said, eyes snapping straight up to look Hope in the face.

Hope felt color rise to her cheeks. “I just meant as a celebration, that’s all. Just a quick one. My mum’s taken Alice home. We could stop in at the pub. I, uh…” She trailed off.

Ava looked back down at her papers. “I don’t think so,” she said.

Fuck.

There went that connection she’d thought they were building. “Oh,” said Hope. “Alright then.”

She hitched her bag over her shoulder and walked to the classroom door. She should have known better. She’d had Ava pegged as a bitch and one moment of weakness in a conversation didn’t change that, did it?

“Hope?”

She turned back.

“Thank you,” Ava said. “For today. Thanks.”

And suddenly Hope wasn’t quite as angry as she had been. Alright, she wasn’t not angry. But she wasn’t thinking of pushing her hosepipe through Ava’s letterbox either, so that was an improvement. Maybe.

Chapter Thirteen

Alice was dancing around the kitchen wearing angel wings from last year’s nativity play and her football shorts. Hope pulled a piece of spaghetti out of the pot and examined it closely.

“Do you think that angels might wear, oh, I don’t know, white dresses and the like?” she asked Alice, deciding the pasta was about ready. “Rather than a football strip, I mean.”

“Mu-um,” Alice said, and Hope could almost hear her eyes rolling. “It’s the twenty-first century. Angels can wear anything they like and even boys are angels so some of them wear football shorts.”

“Right,” said Hope, in solid agreement, suddenly realizing that Alice wasn’t going to be small forever. One day she’d be a teenager and the eye-rolling would start for real and Hope wasn’t entirely sure she was prepared for that.

“I’m not sure that dancing in the kitchen is a good idea,” said Caz, coming in from the garden. “But I like the look. Good to know that even Man U supporters get to go to heaven.”

“Everyone gets to go to heaven,” Alice said definitively. “As long as they want to. They have to have, um, consent?” She said the word uncertainly.

“They have to give consent,” said Hope, hearing Ava’s voice in the word. “Did Ms. Stanford tell you that?”