‘Are you? Excellent! Well then, I’d better make it a superchallenging hunt.’ Trudy glanced at Rachel. ‘Everything under control here, Rachel, with all the –’

She gestured sorrowfully at the paperwork, of which she knew nothing.

‘All under control,’ said Rachel. She was doing her best to help keep Trudy in a job because she didn’t see why the children of St Angela’s shouldn’t have a school principal from fairyland.

‘Lovely, lovely! I’ll leave you to it!’ said Trudy, and she wandered off into her office, pulling the door shut behind her, presumably so she could scatter fairy dust over her keyboard, as she certainly didn’t do too much else on her computer.

‘My goodness, she’s a different kettle of fish from Sister Veronica-Mary!’ said Lucy quietly.

Rachel snorted in appreciation. She remembered Sister Veronica-Mary, who had been principal from 1965 through to 1980, very well.

There was a knock, and Rachel looked up to see the tall imposing shadow of a man through the frosted glass panel of her office, before his head appeared enquiringly around the door.

Him. She flinched, as if at the sight of a furry black spider, not a perfectly plain-looking man. (Actually, Rachel had heard other women call him ‘gorgeous’ which she found preposterous.)

‘Excuse me, ah, Mrs Crowley.’

He could never get far enough away from his schoolboy self to call her Rachel like the rest of the staff. Their eyes met and as usual his slid away first to rest somewhere above her head.

Lies in his eyes, thought Rachel, as she did virtually every time she saw him, as if it were an incantation or prayer. Lies in his eyes.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ said Connor Whitby. ‘I just wondered if I could pick up those tennis camp forms.’

‘There’s something that Whitby boy isn’t telling us,’ Sergeant Rodney Bellach had said all those years ago when he still had a head full of startlingly curly black hair. ‘That kid has got lies in his eyes.’

Rodney Bellach was retired now. As bald as a bandicoot. He called every year on Janie’s birthday and he liked to tell Rachel about his latest ailments. Someone else who got old while Janie stayed seventeen.

Rachel handed over the tennis camp forms and Connor’s eyes fell on Tess.

‘Tess O’Leary!’ His face was transformed so that he looked for a moment like the boy in Janie’s photo album.

Tess looked up, her face wary. She didn’t seem to recognise Connor at all.

‘Connor!’ He tapped his broad chest. ‘Connor Whitby!’

‘Oh, Connor, of course. It’s so nice to . . .’ Tess half-rose and then found herself trapped by her mother’s wheelchair.

‘Don’t get up, don’t get up,’ said Connor. He went to kiss Tess on the cheek just as she was starting to sit down again, so that his lips met her earlobe.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Tess. She didn’t seem especially pleased to see Connor.

‘I work here,’ he said.

‘As an accountant?’

‘No, no, I had a career change a few years back. I’m the PE teacher.’

‘You are?’ she said. ‘Well, that’s . . .’ Her voice drifted, and she finally said, ‘. . . nice.’

Connor cleared his throat. ‘Well, anyway, it’s very good to see you.’ He glanced at Liam, went to speak and then changed his mind and held up the sheaf of tennis forms. ‘Thanks for this, Mrs Crowley.’

‘My pleasure, Connor,’ said Rachel coldly.

Lucy turned to her daughter as soon as Connor left. ‘Who was that?’

‘Just someone I used to know. Years ago.’

‘I don’t think I remember him. Was he a boyfriend?’

‘Mum,’ Tess gestured at Rachel and the paperwork in front of her.

‘Sorry!’ Lucy smiled guiltily, while Liam looked up at the ceiling, stretched out his legs and yawned.

Rachel saw that the grandmother, mother and grandson all had identical full upper lips. It was like a trick. Those bee-stung lips made them more beautiful than they actually were.

She was suddenly inexplicably furious with all three of them.

‘Well, if you could just sign the “allergies and medications” sections here,’ she said to Tess, jabbing at the form with her fingertip. ‘No, not there. Here. Then we’ll be done and dusted.’

Tess had her keys in the ignition to drive them home from the school when her mobile rang. She lifted it from the console to check who was calling.

When she saw the name on the screen, she held up the phone for her mother to see.

Her mother squinted at the phone and sat back with a shrug. ‘Well I had to tell him. I promised him I’d always keep him up to date with what was going on in your life.’

‘You promised him that when I was ten!’ said Tess. She held the phone up, trying to decide whether to answer it or let it go to voicemail.

‘Is it Dad?’ asked Liam from the back seat.

‘It’s my Dad,’ said Tess. She’d have to talk to him sometime. It might as well be now. She took a breath and pressed the answer button. ‘Hi Dad.’

There was a pause. There was always a pause.

‘Hello love,’ said her father.

‘How are you?’ asked Tess in the hearty tone of voice she reserved for her father. When had they last spoken? It must have been Christmas Day.

‘I’m great,’ said her father dolefully.

Another pause.

‘I’m actually in the car with –’ began Tess, at the same time as her father said, ‘Your mother told me –’

They both stopped. It was always excruciating. No matter how hard she tried she could never seem to synchronise her conversations with her father. Even when they were face to face they never achieved a natural rhythm. Would their relationship have been less awkward if he and her mother had stayed together? She’d always wondered.

Her father cleared his throat. ‘Your mother mentioned you were having a spot of . . . trouble.’

Pause.

‘Thanks Dad,’ said Tess at the same time as her father said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

Tess could see her mother rolling her eyes and she turned away slightly towards the car window, as if to protect her poor hopeless father from her mother’s scorn.

‘If there’s anything I can do,’ said her father. ‘Just . . . you know, call.’