I stifled a smile. That was—what?—all of five years since she’d been old enough to waddle into one of Miss Mimi’s classes. I turned back to the computer screen, which now seemed to be winking into life. ‘All I can say is that I hope I’m as good as you one day.’
Lucy gave me a doubtful look, but I didn’t take offence. To the kid, I must have looked as ancient and creaky as the computer on the desk.
‘O-kay,’ I muttered as I scanned the handful of folder icons on the desktop and decided that the one titled ‘School’ was the most likely candidate. I clicked on it and began reading lists of file names.
Hmm. Nothing like ‘register’ or ‘students’. This was probably the result of letting a seventeen-year-old set up your computer system. In the end I just started opening random folders and ended up finding something in one labelled ‘Girls’ that looked as if it might be a database.
‘Okay,’ I told Mimi. ‘I’ve found the list of phone numbers. All we’ve got to do now is work out who’s coming to what class this morning.’ I started rummaging through the directory again, looking for a class list.
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Miss Mimi said, not missing a beat. ‘Next is Grade 2 Ballet, so that’s Lucinda Henderson, Megan Tremont, Freya Barry—’
‘Hold on!’ I said quickly. ‘Who was that first one again?’
‘Lucinda … Henderson.’
‘Okay …’ I clicked back to the database and hunted down the list. ‘Got her!’ I read the number out to Miss Mimi, who was standing by the office phone. ‘Give me the next name and I’ll call from my mobile.’
And that’s the way we worked through the list for the next forty-five minutes. When we’d made the final call, I pushed the chair back from the desk and rubbed the back of my neck. Lucy was cross-legged on the floor in a tiny space that only an eight-year-old could have sat down in and Miss Mimi was over the other side of the room, humming as she pottered around her piles of clutter.
I checked my watch. ‘Shouldn’t someone have come to pick you up by now?’ I asked Lucy.
Lucy looked back at me with large eyes and nodded. ‘I’ve only been living with my dad since October. He says he’s still getting used to my timetable.’
I frowned. ‘Is he often late?’
Lucy shook her head. She seemed happy to be talking, so I kept going. ‘Were you living with your mum before that?’ I asked, hoping I wasn’t venturing on to a sore subject.
She nodded. ‘She’s very good at her job and she’s got to go and work in America for a year, so I had to move to Elmhurst and live with my dad. Mummy said it was okay because Granny and Grandpa live nearby in case he messes up.’
Nice. I assumed it hadn’t been an amicable split, then.
‘You weren’t living here before that?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘No. We lived in London when I was very little but then Mummy and Daddy got divorced and I went to live in Edinburgh with Mummy. She had an important job there too.’
‘That must have been difficult—living so far away from your dad.’
‘He came to visit sometimes and I’d come back for school holidays,’ she said, ‘but Daddy had to work in the daytime so I’d go to Granny and Grandpa’s a lot.’
Poor kid, I thought. Sounds as if she hardly knew the man, although I had to concede that may not have been his fault. However, since he hadn’t bothered to turn up for his daughter on time I wasn’t feeling very inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I held out my hand. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go and see if anyone’s looking for you.’
Lucy’s thin fingers slid into mine and I helped her to her feet. All three of us made our way back to the hall, but it was as cold and empty as it had been when we’d left it. Lucy’s eyes began to fill.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, squeezing her hand gently. ‘He can’t be too far away. ‘
I tried phoning her dad once more and I was just listening to it clicking into voicemail when there was a loud pounding on the outside doors, the sound of two heavy and rather determined fists coming down again and again.
‘Lucy? Lu-ceeee!’
I ran, pushing through the swinging doors that led to the vestibule and then to the main doors, where I found the heavy bolts that slid across the top of the doors and the one that went down into the floor drawn. I released them as fast as I could and came face to face with a rather wild-looking man.
‘Where’s my daughter?’ he half-yelled. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’
And then he stopped and stared at me. ‘Flip?’ he said, his face completely transformed with shock.
I heard a rushing sound in my ears. ‘Tom?’ I croaked back.
Tom? Tom Boyd? For some reason I really hadn’t expected to bump into him back in Elmhurst. I don’t know why but I’d imagined him in a swanky Thames-side apartment, living the champagne lifestyle with a beautiful and elegant wife by his side.
I waited for the smile full of mischievous energy, the one he’d always worn as long as he’d been awake or not in double history, but his mouth remained open and then he closed it again and it became a thin, grim line.
I was having the weirdest sensation. On one hand, this man in front of me did actually look as if it could be Tom Boyd, twenty years older. The nose was still long with that little bump in the middle, the eyes the colour of freshly-peeled conkers, and even though there were speckles of grey at his temples and he wore it shorter than he’d used to, he still had the same wavy, dark hair.
But that was where the similarities ended.
The Tom Boyd I’d known had been the joker of the pack, the cool guy that all the guys had wanted to hang with and all the girls had wanted to kiss. And many of them had got their chance. Tom had been ringleader and rebel, the one most likely to get a ticking-off from Miss Mimi and the one most likely to climb the kitchen roof at the back of the hall, just because someone had dared him to.
This man didn’t look anything like that Tom.
But it had to be. Because he’d called me ‘Flip’. No one else had ever used that nickname for me, before or since.
At the time I hadn’t even been sure I’d liked it. I didn’t like the word; it sounded silly and juvenile. But I’d liked the way Tom had said it, with a twinkle in his eye and a dare on the tip of his tongue. It had reminded me of the glamorous actresses of Ginger Rogers’ era, who’d played women with nicknames like ‘Teddy’ or ‘Nan’: sassy and sexy and not afraid of anything, especially the man they had wrapped around their little finger.
‘What … what are you doing here?’ he stammered.
I stepped back and allowed him access. ‘It’s a long story. I moved back and …’ I trailed off, not really wanting to share my life story. It wasn’t really relevant and it would be better if I just got straight to the point. I cleared my throat and started again. ‘The long and the short of it is there’s a problem with the electrics and we’ve had to cancel classes this morning. Lucy’s fine,’ I added quickly. ‘I’ve been dialling your mobile but it’s been going straight to voicemail.’
He dug into his pocket, pulled out his phone and stared at it in confusion. ‘Didn’t hear the stupid thing. Had it on silent for something last night and forgot to turn the ringer on again.’ He turned and gave me a quizzical look. ‘We’ve cancelled the classes?’
‘I