For what? Being born?
She felt a surge of anger, a sudden white-hot flare of feeling, because it wasn’t her fault that Fiona had decided to go the sperm donor route and have another baby. Juliet shouldn’t blame her for their mother’s choices, but she had no idea how to make her feel otherwise. How did you reconcile with someone who resented your very existence?
Lucy fell asleep some time towards ten; she’d heard Juliet come in and the sound of her bedroom door closing, but she didn’t move from her bed. She just wriggled out of her bra,peeled back the duvet, and snuggled down, content to let the world slip away.
She woke up to the shocking reality of bright sunshine pouring through the window, her cheek stuck to her pillow by drool, and the clock on the bedside table glaring at her accusingly. It was four minutes past eight.
She bolted upright as if she’d been electrocuted, then scrabbled for some clothes. There was a terrible taste in her mouth and she could feel her hair sticking up in about eight different directions. Talk about a bad hair day.
A bad everything day, she decided when she clattered downstairs and grabbed a banana from the bowl on the kitchen table. Both Juliet and the dogs were gone. Lucy grimaced at her reflection in the hall mirror; she’d pulled her hair into a messy bun and grabbed the first clothes she’d found, which had been her lemon skirt, an aqua top, and the purple tights that had seemed to offend Juliet. Not the most coordinated of outfits, and Alex Kincaid would probably have something to say about it, but for once in her life she was past caring.
She was late enough that pupils and their parents were already heading up to the school in a steady stream, so Lucy joined the harried mothers pushing strollers or checking their phones or both. A few gave her distracted smiles, and as she turned up the little lane, someone waist-high reached for her hand.
“Morning, Miss Bagshaw.”
Lucy blinked down at Eva, the little girl who had scraped her knee the day before.
“Hello, Eva,” she said, and squeezed her hand lightly. “How’s the knee?”
“Mummy gave me a plaster.” She pointed to a garishly colored Band-Aid with a picture of a cartoon character.
“That looks like an awesome Band-Aid,” Lucy said, and Eva giggled.
“She said you had a funny accent,” Eva’s mother said with a little laugh. She looked like Eva, with an elfin face and wispy blond hair. “You’re American.”
“Actually, I was born in England, but I know I don’t sound like I was. And I thought you guys were the ones with the funny accents.”
Eva’s mother laughed, and Lucy smiled, her heart lifting. It didn’t take much to get her to start hoping again.
“We don’t get many Americans around here,” Eva’s mother said, and stuck out her hand. “I’m Andrea.”
“Hi,” Lucy said, and shook her hand. “Lucy Bagshaw.” She remembered what Eva had said about not having a dad, and wondered if she’d ever get to know Andrea well enough to hear her story.
They chatted all the way into school, and her bad mood had cleared away with the clouds by the time she arrived in the office. Maggie pressed a mug of tea in her hand and gave her a wink. “I told Mr. Kincaid you were in the loo when he asked where you were.”
Lucy grinned back. “You’re a saint, Maggie Bains.”
“I just don’t want you to get fired on your second day,” Maggie replied with an answering smile.
Lucy took a much-needed sip of tea and sat down in front of the computer. The children were coming into the office with the morning registers; Maggie had explained yesterday that two children from every classroom brought the morning registers to be logged into the computer.
Now Lucy took them with a smile for each of the children, from the too-cool-for-school Year Sixes to the brand-new kindergarten—or Reception, as they called it in England—pupils, only four years old, who held out the registers with wide eyes and trembling hands.
Around her the school was humming to life; Maggie had set the photocopier whirring away, and teachers were dashing in and out of the staff room with piles of papers and mugs of tea. A hassled-looking mum brought in a late Year Four and then gossiped with Maggie across the opened glass partition for the better part of half an hour.
Lucy hunted and pecked her way through the registers, logging each present, absent, or tardy with painstaking slowness. She knew her way around a computer when it came to design and graphic art, but spreadsheets were her nemesis and she always seemed to be leaping to the next box before she’d filled one in completely.
Alex, thankfully, had not left his office, although Lucy had discovered that if she leaned forward in her seat and craned her neck, she could see him at his desk through the window of his office that overlooked the front hall. Not that she would do that.
The still-hassled but more cheerful-looking mum had left and Maggie had bustled back to the photocopier, taking out a stack of parent letters before glancing over at Lucy.
“Are you still on the morning register?”
“Sorry, I’m a bit slow with these spreadsheets.”
“I don’t suppose it really matters. There’s not too much to do, is there?” As if to prove her wrong, the phone rang and Maggie snatched it up with a cheery, “Good morning, Hartley-by-the-Sea Village Primary.” She paused for a moment, her forehead wrinkling in a frown, and then launched into a lengthy description of the current issues with the school’s boiler. Lucy turned back to her computer screen.
She’d just gotten to Year Three when she stilled, her gaze trained on the middle of the year’s register.Kincaid, Poppy.
