Two

Ava

At the end of the day I came out of school and walked round to the side road we’d agreed on earlier and there he was, waiting for us. Mum’s new man, the comfortably-off sender of red roses who’d fallen for her after a haircut and wanted to meet her kids. The potential weirdo/con artist/stalker/paedophile/axe murderer.

Well. We’d see. If he messed with me or my little sister, he might not live to regret it.

And after all, it really could just be love.

I knew which car was his because Mum hopped out and waved at me, like this was all great fun, like we were about to go off somewhere thrilling instead of to a hotel in Kingston for tea. She had a nice new dress on, a blue one that she must have picked out to match her eyes.

She got back into the car and I made a point of not hurrying to join them.

He drove a Jag. My mum was dating a man who drove a black Jag, and one that looked like it had been lovingly cleaned and polished. And probably not by him.

Was he for real? A middle-aged businessman who drove a Jag, dating my mother? It just didn’t add up. You’d expect someone like that to have the kind of wife who did lots of Pilates to stay in shape and wore frilly aprons to bake cupcakes. Or the ex-wife might be like that, and he’d have moved on to someone younger and showier in leopard-print.

But would he really have fallen for a single mother-of-two, who cut people’s hair for up to twelve hours a day to pay rent on a too-small flat? Not likely. Cupid was pretty selective when it came to shooting those arrows. OK, I’d never fallen in love myself, but I knew that much.

Mum wasn’t exactly past it, and I didn’t begrudge her the chance of happiness… after all, she’d been married to Dad, she deserved a break. But this? There had to be a catch.

What was really infuriating was that normally Mum would have agreed with me. But since Mark had come on the scene she’d turned into someone I couldn’t quite reach. She kept saying things like, ‘Let’s just wait and see how it all turns out, shall we?’ But I’d seen her forgiving Dad, taking him back, fighting him, being sad when he left again. As I might have said to her if we’d actually talked about it, she didn’t have the greatest track record.

And would Mark really have looked her up just because she’d given him a trim years ago? That story didn’t seem any more likely now than it had done when Mum first came out with it. There had to be more to it. None of it added up.

I got into the back of the car next to Ellie, who gave me a tight little smile. She was giving off a weird, intense vibe – a mixture of excitement and nerves, but too much of both. That was Ellie for you. My mum always said she was sensitive. Other people had been known to say she’s not all there.