Hilda cleared her throat, looking down at the floor as she shrugged. “I don’t know. She just asked me to ask you to speak to her if you came to drop Sasha off today. We weren’t even sure you’d come after… you know…” she said.

‘You know’. Yes, I knew exactly what this would be about. They’d seen the papers, and I was now about to be judged on it and my choice of profession. I suppressed my groan and nodded. “Sure, I have time quickly before class.” I didn’t actually have much time to spare, but I’d have to make time. I followed Hilda to the back of the room again, seeing Sasha still playing with her friend.

Cindy looked up as I approached. She didn’t smile. Her eyes were tight, as were her lips which were pressed into a thin line. “Oh, Miss Bancroft, I’d like a word in the office,” she stated, waving her hand towards her poky little cubicle in the corner that constituted an office just because it had a desk and a telephone.

The casual use of my title when she usually called me Emma alerted me to the fact this was going to be worse than I first thought.

AS I STEPPED OUT OF THE NURSERY with a crying Sasha in my arms, I felt like giving up. Sasha was screaming and screaming that she didn’t want to go and that she wanted to play with Scarlet.

Thankfully, my talk with Cindy, the stuck-up nursery manager, had lasted a fairly long time, so the paparazzi were gone by the time I made my exit with my wailing child. As Sasha was in full-blown tantrum mode at being unceremoniously booted out of her nursery, I winced as her flailing arm hit me in the face. Carrying a screaming, tantrum-throwing, almost-two-year-old was practically impossible, so I sat down on the nearest bench and pinned her on my lap, letting her get out all her frustrations.

I had no idea how to explain to her that she wasn’t welcome at the nursery anymore because her mother was a dirty whore who danced for drunken men for money. Cindy had made out that Sasha no longer being welcome there was all to do with the photographers and reporters, and that it was a ‘safety thing’ and she needed to think of Sasha’s welfare along with the other eleven children who attended. But deep down, I knew it was more a prejudice thing against me and my job. The way she’d looked down her nose at me, and frowned distastefully when I’d perched on the edge of her desk, made that perfectly clear.

“Sasha, please calm down and stop this,” I whispered, smoothing her hair away from her face and trying to wipe her tears. “Come on, you can come back another day and play with Scarlet.” Lie. That was a total lie. She wasn’t welcome back at all, apparently. “Sasha, come on. Please don’t make this any harder for me, please?” I begged, closing my eyes and pressing my face into her hair as I fought tears and a tantrum of my own.

“Scar…” Sasha sobbed.

A lump formed in my throat as she finally stopped struggling. “You can play with Scarlet another time.” I’d have to find some way of keeping that promise. Maybe I could somehow find Scarlet’s mother’s number and invite her over for coffee or something – so long as she didn’t think I was a dirty, gold-digging tramp, too. I kissed her forehead softly, wiping her tears from her face as she looked up at me with those big, blue eyes I loved to death. “How about we go to the park or something now for a little while?” I offered.

I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone. In fact, all I wanted to do was bury this whole day deep into my subconscious and block it out, pretending it never happened. The dirty, waste-of-space feeling washing over me was almost too much to bear. All I wanted to do was go to bed with a whole litre of ice cream and watch old movies while I wallowed in self-pity. But, being a mother, I wasn’t afforded that luxury. Instead, I had to plaster on a happy face and pretend my heart wasn’t breaking as I took my toddler to the park to ease her disappointment.

AFTER TWO HOURS IN THE PARK, I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer because it was almost lunchtime. I needed to go home. The awkward thing about that was I wasn’t exactly sure where Carson lived. I knew the street name and the area, so it was just a matter of working out which tube lines I needed to go on to get there. After help from the train ticket guy, we finally worked it out, and I broke into my last ten pound note to buy a travel card.

On the third train changeover, Sasha started yawning and her eyes started to droop. Fortunately, someone gave up their seat for us, so I hoisted her onto my lap and she was asleep before we even passed the next stop. That was good in one way, because I could stop pretending I was fine and wasn’t ready to burst into tears at any second, but it was bad in another way because now I would have to carry her all the way home to Carson’s place.

Luckily for me, Carson’s house was easy to find on the beautiful and exclusive street. By the time I arrived outside the house and typed in the passcode for the gate he’d made me memorise, sweat was running down my back, and my arms ached from carrying the sleeping little girl for so long. I was gasping for a drink, a shower and a long sit down – but what I wanted the most was a huge, ginormous bar of chocolate to drown my sorrows in.

As I walked in the front door and closed it quietly behind me, Carson poked his head around the hallway. His eyes widened when he saw me, and he came strutting toward me with a worried expression on his face.

“Why are you back here so early?” Carson asked, frowning in confusion. “Is everything okay, what’s happened?”

I sighed and walked into the lounge, carefully setting Sasha down onto the sofa so she could continue with her nap. “The university crèche won’t take Sasha anymore. Apparently, there is too much attention surrounding her, and they don’t want it to upset or unsettle her or the other children. They said that with the press following me and her around, they can’t guarantee her safety or the safety of others, and it would be unethical to allow me to leave Sasha there with them for the foreseeable future. They’ve suggested I make alternative arrangements,” I muttered, stalking into the kitchen and yanking open the fridge, looking for some comfort food.