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“So you could change it then?” Alice said, turning her attention back to her mother. “If you wanted to.”

“I suppose,” said Hope carefully. “But I don’t think I really want to. Do you?”

Alice pursed her lips in thought, then shook her head. “No, not really. I quite like Alice. And I’ve just learned to spell it properly even though it sounds like an S sound and there’s no S.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“But you won’t just change it without telling me?” Alice asked.

“No,” said Hope. “Absolutely not. No changing names without informing the other person first.”

“Good,” Alice said, picking up a stuffed meerkat. “Do you want to know how I know what my name is?”

“Um, yes, I suppose,” said Hope, eyeing the price of the meerkat and hoping that Alice wasn’t getting too attached to it.

“It’s on the label in the back of my jumper,” Alice said easily, putting the toy down and skipping off to the other side of the shop where a video of a baby elephant was playing.

“She’s too smart for her own good, that one,” said Caz.

“Mmm, I wonder who she gets that from,” said Hope.

Her mother laughed. “You. You were exactly the same at her age. All knowing and all seeing.”

Hope looked over at her daughter, all of six years old and thoroughly entranced by the video she was watching. Sometimes she didn’t seem real, like she was a figment of Hope’s imagination and one day she’d wake up and find that she didn’t have a child at all.

“Hope?”

“Mmm?”

“You did it again.”

Hope turned back to her mother. “Did what again?”

“Sort of… grimaced I suppose. Pulled a face anyway. When she mentioned her dad.”

Hope sighed. “So?”

“So, all knowing and all seeing, remember?” Caz said gently. “However you might feel about Noah, he is her dad, and she’s small still. You can’t let your feelings infect hers. You know that.”

Another sigh as Hope turned back to her daughter. “Yeah, I know. I do know. It’s hard sometimes is all.”

“Of course it is, I of all people understand that. Just be careful, that’s all.” Caz raised her voice a little. “Anyone want to go and see the penguins?”

Alice immediately tore her eyes away from the video. “I do, gran,” she shouted in glee, running up to take her grandmother’s hand. Hope trailed the two of them out of the shop.

It wasn’t like she’d intended to end up like her mother. Not that Caz was a terrible role model. In fact, Caz was the strongest and best woman that Hope knew. But life had somehow conspired to turn Hope into a mini-Caz and sometimes she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten here.

Her own father had been out of the picture for as long as Hope could remember. It had always just been her and her mum. And she’d always sworn that if she had kids of her own they’d have a whole family, one like everyone else at school had.

Then Noah had come along, with his chocolatey-dark eyes and his easy smile and she’d fallen for him so fast she hadn’t known what was happening. When she looked back on those days it seemed like it was always summer, like the sun was always shining. Mind you, she suspected that the sun always shone for Noah no matter what time of year it was, that was just the kind of guy he was.

Alice hadn’t exactly been planned. But Noah’s eyes had shone so brightly when she’d told him, and her mum’s lip had trembled and she’d turned away before Hope could see the tears of happiness, and then she’d heard that little heartbeat on that stupid machine and she’d fallen in love all over again.

Not that she regretted Alice one bit. Quite the opposite. Alice was by far the best thing she’d ever accomplished.

No, the part that she regretted was the part where she’d assumed that Noah was around for the long haul.

That part she really could have done without.