Page 99 of Kiss Me at Christmas
“Don’t change the subject.”
“It seems like a strange thing for a child to aspire to. Surely you must have wanted to be an astronaut or a firefighter before a solicitor?”
He sighed, chuckling. “Not if you grew up with parents who avidly watchedL.A. Law,Hill Street Blues, andCagney and Lacey,” he said.
“Wouldn’t that have made you want to join the police?”
“No way! In all of those shows, the people who had the power to make the bad guys go away were the lawyers. Plus, they got to wear nice suits and talk fast.Although I hadn’t realized that practicing law in England meant I’d have to wear a wig.”
She laughed.
“So that’s why you wanted to go to America, you didn’t want to ruin your hair.”
“It’s great hair.”
She could feel him smiling and reached up to run her fingers through his great hair.
“What about you? Did you always want to be a teacher?”
“Always. I mean, of course I wanted to be a pop star and a member of a famous dance troupe and a fashion designer, but mostly I wanted to be a teacher. I had a couple of amazing teachers at primary school and obviously there was Miss Honey fromMatilda.”
“Obviously,” James parroted. “Who is Miss Honey?”
She sat up.
“Seriously? You never readMatilda? We might have to break up.”
Her phone rang from where she’d left it in the kitchen and she stiffened, her contented drowsiness evaporating.Everything’s okay, you just talked to Maisy a couple of hours ago, it’s fine, it’s fine. Even Cornell wouldn’t call you at this hour, would he?
“Do you need to get that?” James asked. “I can see you freaking out a little bit.”
She bit her lip. Alarm bells were clanging in her head.
“It’s just, it’s so late…”
“Answer it.” He gave her hand a squeeze.
She bounced off the sofa and dashed to the kitchen in time for the ringing to stop and a notification to pop up.Missed Call: Tess Armitage.
Oh god!Her heart hammered as she hit redial.
“Tess, is everything all right?”
On the other end of the phone, Tess’s voice quivered as she swallowed a sob. “Billy and Sid have gone.” Her voice broke. “They’ve run away.”
Harriet felt light-headed. She gripped the worktop with her free hand.Not again. Please not again.James had muted the TV and joined her in the kitchen, concern etched on his face. Harriet put the phone on speaker and took a breath, swallowing down her panic.
“Tell me what happened,” she said calmly. Her hands shook.
A shuddering sigh on the other end of the phone. “Arthur had heart bypass surgery a few weeks back.”
“Oh my god!”
“He’s fine. We didn’t tell anyone because we worried that if social services found out, they’d take the boys into respite care while Arthur recovered, but at our age, we knew there was a chance that we might not get them back. Billy didn’t want to take the risk, and neither did we.”
“Oh, Tess.”
“We made it work. Billy did the school runs so that I could look after Arthur. We just wanted to keep the boys with us until Billy turned eighteen. They’ve had such upheaval in their lives.”
