Page 98

Before Ava could answer, Ag came flying into the kitchen with a bellow of delight, chasing after a fleeing Rosie who disappeared through the cat door.

“And you brought reinforcements, I see,” Hope said, with a questioning look.

“Um, I ran into Max on the way to the shops and he was panicking, Mila’s gone into labor.”

“That explains that then,” said Hope, watching as Ag tried to stick her head out of the cat flap.

“Did you talk to Alice yet?”

Hope sighed. “Not really. She didn’t seem inclined to talk about it, and I don’t want to forbid her to go or anything. So I just told her that she was free to go to her dad’s if she wanted to, that we both loved her and she was welcome anywhere.

Ava pulled a face. “Alright then, how about this? After two bags of chocolate buttons and having garnered information about the possibility of pull-ups being involved with nap time, how about we swap?”

“Swap?” Hope asked. Ava looked harried and it almost made her want to smile. The thought of logical, authoritative Ava chasing around after a wild, three year old was kind of funny.

“You put Ag down for a nap and I’ll go and have a word with Alice.”

Hope cocked her head to one side, trying to get a better view of where Ag was trying hard to get her head stuck in the cat door. She nodded. “Deal.”

Far better that Ava handle things with Alice. Hope had a feeling that her emotions would just get too much in the way for that conversation.

???

“I got you some of that juice that you like,” Ava said, putting a glass of fruit juice on the patio next to where Alice was sitting in the sun playing on her Switch.

“Wow, cool, thanks,” Alice said, beaming.

“Want to put your game away for a minute? I think we need to talk.”

Alice put the console down and nodded seriously. “I’ve been meaning to discuss something with you,” she said.

Ava bit back a smile. Alice had been a precocious six year old. She was now a very precocious almost nine year old.

“Do you really want to go and live with your dad?” Ava asked.

Alice shrugged. “Maybe. I was just thinking about it.”

“You know that no one would stop you,” Ava said. “But on the other hand, if there’s a problem, some reason that you’d rather not live here or rather live there, we should talk about it.”

Alice shrugged again. “I guess.”

Ava sat down on the patio next to her. Something was bugging Alice, she could see that. She could also see that demanding answers was going to get her nowhere. So she tried another method. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Well, I was just wondering what I should call you,” said Alice.

“After more than two years?” Ava laughed.

“I know, I call you Ms. Stanford at school and Ava at home. But then I was thinking. I mean, Amelia lets me call her Mel now. And I call mum mum, so I thought maybe there was something I could call you like that.”

“Ah,” Ava said, starting to feel out of her depth. “I see. Did you have any ideas on that front?”

Alice sniffed and looked away as though it was nothing important. “I thought maybe I could call you Mom Ava, you know, like the American kind of mum.”

Ava’s heart swelled about five times in size. She couldn’t speak over the lump in her throat.

“Unless you don’t want me to,” Alice added hurriedly. “I don’t have to.”

“No,” Ava said, voice tight. “No, I think I’d like that. As long as you wanted to. And we should probably ask mum too.”