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Not to say that she was doing badly, she really wasn’t. In fact, she’d surprised herself. Now that she’d taken on the challenge of teaching younger children she was enjoying it and learning more than she’d thought possible.

But Hope seemed so natural with them and Ava didn’t think she could ever be that way.

She shouldn’t have mentioned her feelings about Alice, she recognized that now. Or perhaps she should have been more careful, more diplomatic with her words. Clearly, Hope didn’t want to hear the truth.

Which made Ava wonder if Hope wanted to hear the truth about other things.

Like about how Ava was relatively sure she’d come within about an eighth of an inch of kissing the woman.

So much for keeping her distance. Still though, she’d done well since then. She’d stayed out of physical touch and was slowly coming to the conclusion that this was probably part of her healing. Finding women attractive was natural, after all.

Hope was bent over, her backside in the air, zipping up Nathan Jackson’s jacket against the cool autumn chill of the afternoon. Ava tried not to stare and ended up almost tripping over Daniel Monroe who was looking solemn.

“What’s the problem, Daniel?” she asked.

“I was thinking, miss,” he said, face screwed up in concentration.

Ava thought she’d better tread carefully. “Ah, yes? About what?”

“You know, I don’t think I’ve had an accident for two weeks,” he said solemnly. Then he leaned in a little. “I think that’s cos of you, you know.”

“Me?” asked Ava, surprised. “I’m no magician, Daniel.”

He scoffed. “I know that. It’s just that, well, you get so upset when I have an accident and then it makes you cross so I think that maybe the wee just gets scared and runs back inside.”

Ava opened her mouth before she realized that actually, she didn’t know how to respond to that. In the end, she just said: “I see.”

“Thanks, miss,” Daniel said, jogging off toward the door. “It helps a lot now that I don’t have accidents.”

Ava bit back a smile as he went. Good to see that she was having some positive effect, unintended though it might be.

“Ready for this?” Hope said, appearing at her elbow.

Ava jumped. Hope was close enough to touch, closer than Ava had told herself she’d allow. Because she wasn’t looking for anything, she’d decided. She took two steps toward her desk. “Ready for…?”

“Staff meeting,” Hope filled in. “Remember?”

“Right,” said Ava, who had completely forgotten. “Well then, we’d best be getting on with it. Let’s go.”

By the time they got to the staff room everyone else was already seated. Ava perched on a wooden chair, and Hope sat on the arm of Amy Littleton’s armchair. Ava looked around. Five teachers, plus Lowell whenever he arrived. Hardly a huge educational establishment. Yet as far as she’d seen, every teacher was caring, patient, and kind, truly dedicated to what they did.

It was nice, she thought, to be part of such a small community. It was nice, she suddenly realized, to be part of something. To belong to something. She smiled to herself. This was what she was looking for, to belong.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Lowell said, coming through the door. “And I won’t keep you long. Is there anything anyone wants to bring up first?”

“We need more soap for the kids’ toilets,” Amy Littleton said.

“It’s on order,” Lowell replied. “Anything else?”

Everyone looked at each other and shrugged. There was nothing. They’d had a regular staff meeting just two days ago, it was Jake Lowell that had called this after school meeting.

“Right then,” Lowell said. He stood tall, raking his fingers through his thinning hair. “I’ve uh, I’ve got some news. Not good news, I’m afraid.”

“Uh, don’t say OFSTEAD’s coming again,” said Frank Meyer who taught the upper juniors, the oldest children in the school. “We’ve done our bit and we did well from how I understand it.”

“You did,” agreed Lowell. “We all did. And no, this isn’t to do with inspections. In fact, I think it’s important to stress the fact that we did very well in our inspections and what I’m about to tell you has no relevance at all to teaching standards at the school.”

Ava frowned. Something was coming, she could feel it. Something bad. She could tell from the way Lowell was standing, from the way he was struggling to put into words what he had to say. She started to feel a little sick.