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Hadley scratched her nose, her fingers drifted to lay against Florence's thigh and Florence's heart beat a tattoo, her pulse quickened, her core melted, and she was a millisecond away from breaking her own rules and searching for Hadley's lips with her own, wanting the instant demands of her body met.

But then there was the crash, loud and cracking, echoing in the silent night.

Then the screams came.

And both she and Hadley were moving before they could think about what could have happened.

Chapter Twenty Six

Hadley ushered the twins into the waiting room. Both were still in pajamas, and both clung to blankets around their shoulders. Florence had already gone through the swing doors with Henry and all she could do was wait.

Wait and re-run the pictures through her head.

Henry lying there on the ground, screaming and clutching at his arm.

The window flapping open above him.

The pale, wide-eyed look on Florence's face.

Her stomach wouldn't settle and her hands were shaking and she knew that something bad had happened. Very bad.

“Will Henry be okay?”

She looked down into Emily's little face and tried to smile. “He's gonna be fine,” she said. Which was almost certainly true. She had enough first aid to know what a break looked like, and Florence was far better trained and had definitely said it was a broken arm.

Whether or not she'd be okay was another question.

The waiting room was pretty empty and she corralled a few chairs together to make impromptu beds for the twins. Charlie was uncharacteristically quiet, so she bundled them both together and began telling them stories.

It took a while, but eventually the lateness of the hour caught up with them both, and they fell asleep twined together and Hadley covered them with a blanket.

“Are they okay?” Florence had come back through the swing doors.

Hadley nodded. “A little freaked out, but fine. Henry?”

“The arm's broken, they're pretty sure, they're doing an x-ray right now.”

Hadley nodded again, then looked at the floor and cleared her throat. “Um, Florence?”

Florence sat down next to her. “Yes. I know what you're about to say and yes, we don't have any option. We've got to call the parents.”

It was only now that Hadley really realized that they'd been building paper castles all summer. The money going missing, the extra job, Henry's obvious behavior problems. She'd thought that they could fix everything, that in the course of one summer they could make the world perfect again.

The truth was that they'd been deceiving everyone, themselves included.

“We should have called them before,” she said now. “When the money went missing.”

“We should have,” Florence said, and she was still pale. “I don't know why we didn't. I don't know why I didn't insist. I guess I just... I didn't think things through. Hiding things from our employer, hiding things from the parents of the children we're supposed to be caring for, it was stupid.”

“And now someone's hurt,” Hadley said.

“Which is debatably our fault,” finished Florence. She let out a breath and Hadley wanted to hold her hand, but she didn't, even though the twins were asleep.

“This is going to be a tough phone call to make.”

“It needs to be made though,” Florence said.

She looked.... different. No, not different, more the same, more like the old Florence. There was something in her bearing, the way she was sitting up straight, the way her hair was sleeked back and formal, the way her glasses were straight.