So it happened that now, as she swanned into London to save the day, she didn’t actually know her nephew, or even her sister, or what their lives were like, or what they might be struggling with. Yet here she was, trying to do the best she could, wanting it to work out, to somehow magic a happy ending out of a situation that felt awkward and desperate and sad.

Here they were, she acknowledged, dealing with yet another of Zac’s misdemeanours—he’d had three in the last week and a half—although this time his behaviour seemed to have veered into alarming felony territory.

“Whether Zac is aware of the severity of his behaviour is of no concern to me,” the headmaster stated with asperity, all pretence of sympathy well and truly vanished. He straightened in his chair, everything about him bristling and indignant. “He has had three warnings, and as of today, he is no longer a pupil at this institution.”

Well. There wasn’t much she could say to that, was there? Laurel glanced again at Zac, who let out a bored sigh, as if this were all so very tedious, so his artfully-gelled shaggy blond fringe blew upwards. She gritted her teeth, telling herself not to be irritated by his behaviour, as he undoubtedly wanted her to be. She’d had her patience tested far too much in the last ten days, and she felt it fraying thread by fragile thread. Her initial desire to create some sort of happy reunion with her nephew had fizzled into merely surviving the encounter, and now, sitting in this stuffy office, she just longed to go home.

She wanted nothing more than to return to the cosy safety of her little terraced cottage in York, her small circle of friends, her lovable grey cat, Mistral. Cups of tea with her elderly neighbour Helen, an evening of Netflix, with Jane Austen adaptions featuring heavily, and dreams of the perfect man to sustain her—Gilbert Blythe with a dash of Mr Darcy, because she knew he was out there, somewhere. He’d be tall and dark and brooding, slightly mysterious but with a hidden gentleness that only she could see. All right, maybe not quite like that, but he’d be a hero, her hero, a knight in shining armour, and the boy next door all rolled into one.

That old life felt very far away as the headmaster cleared his throat, waiting for Laurel to make the next move. Unfortunately, she had no idea what it was. Would Abby have fought this? Would she have threatened the headmaster with litigation, or at least a sternly-worded letter to the board of governors? Or would she have made Zac apologise and pay for the damage?

Laurel had no clue. She hadn’t had a proper conversation with her sister in well over five years, and in any case, she had little experience of managing children. She was thirty-six, single, and childless; her only experience of kids was avoiding the stroppy ones in the supermarket.