‘I’ll go find her,’ I shout.
I head for the young adult section to find Amber hiding behind the armchair. ‘Is my dad here?’
‘You told him you’d been held hostage,’ I hiss.
She nods. ‘I had to get him down from that tree. My father doesn’t respond to most of my texts.’
I roll my eyes and take out my phone to message Alice. I quickly tap out:
Come now. He’s in the bookshop.
‘Let’s go see him,’ I say to Amber. ‘You can tell him what you’ve been up to.’
She groans. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘Amber – you have to explain.’
We walk over to the counter, and Ben glares at Amber. ‘What is going on? I thought you’d been taken hostage?’
Amber grins. ‘I had to get you here quick.’
He runs a hand through his brown hair and casts her a bewildered look.
‘Amber, you better explain,’ I say, seeing Alice enter the bookshop out of the corner of my eye.
‘Dad, I did something bad.’
Ben lets out a loud groan. ‘Oh, God, Amber, what have you done now?’
‘I put a message in Mum’s balloon.’
‘A message? What sort of message?’
She’s about to answer when Alice interrupts. ‘It was one of the nicest messages I have ever read. I am Alice by the way.’
Ben stares in amazement at Alice. She looks amazing. Her brown, glossy hair hangs in loose curls, and she’s wearing a yellow dress and sandals.
Amber grins. ‘I said that my dad needs a girlfriend.’
He looks at Amber. ‘You wrote that?’
She nods. ‘I told whoever found the balloon to contact me. Don’t worry, I told them you were miserable a lot of the time, but also that you like Monopoly, coffee and you have three kids.’
His face softens, and he turns to Alice. ‘Did you find this message?’
She smiles. ‘I did. Are you Ben?’
He nods. ‘Yes, I am, Alice.’
I watch Alice’s smile get even bigger. ‘Well, Ben, I would love to beat you at Monopoly.’
‘Is this a challenge?’ he asks with a wry smile.
Amber grins at me and gives me the thumbs up. The same warm feeling I experienced after seeing Mr Ellis reading Barbara Plum’s cookery book and Juliet walking out hugging Miguel’s book rushes back to me.
40
Oliver wanted to go out for dinner when I got home. He resorted to sneaky tricks to get me to agree. It’s worrying how he knows I have a traitorous body. We had one passionate kiss on the sofa and the words ‘Okay, let’s go out to eat’ flew out of my mouth.
