Without waiting for a reply, he turned to the little girl. “Your mum was so worried. Why did you leave?”
“I left a note,” she said, just as if she’d told him she liked jelly and ice cream. She showed him the pink cupcake and split what remained of it in half, handing a chunk to him. “You feed them too. They must like you.”
“How do you figure that?” Felix side-eyed one sneaky-looking bird.
“If they didn’t like you, they’d have pecked you to death by now.”
Felix huffed out a laugh. Thea hadn’t been wrong. He broke up the cake and threw the pieces for the ducks. They chuntered around both his and Ammy’s feet. When he’d finished, crumbs and icing coated his fingers. Felix looked around for a tissue or something to wipe them on.
“Lick them.”
“Sorry?”
“Your fingers,” said Ammy, breaking up the last of her own cupcake. “Just lick them. My mum says there’s a special place in heaven for people that don’t mind licking their fingers when they get covered in icing.”
Felix’s chest tugged. Thea had said the same thing to him about the sugary doughnuts in the bakery. What he wouldn’t give to go back in time. Do things differently. Not be so stern. So tricky to get on with.
“Do you not like my mummy anymore?”
Ammy’s question snapped Felix out of his reverie, and he turned his head to meet her wide eyes. “Of course I do.”
“Then why haven’t you been to see us?”
Felix hesitated, then licked his fingers.
“Lucas said you were sulking,” Ammy continued.
Damn, this was like the third degree. Ammy would make a good detective. “I’m not sulking.”
“He said you were in your office a lot more than usual. That you hadn’t played chess with him all week.”
Chess was one of his and Lucas’s guilty pleasures. Felix had taught him when he was four, and the little boy was quite the tactician. “Can you play chess?” he asked, trying to get Ammy off the subject of his sulking.
“No. But I’m great at making people happy.”
The corners of Felix’s mouth tipped up. “So is your mum. Come on. Let’s get you home to her.”
39
THEA
Thea stirred her coffee, chinking the old metal spoon on the lip of her spotty mug. She let out a long breath and closed her eyes. Ammy was safe and on her way home. When she’d received Felix’s text, her heart had almost exploded. She raced around the room, throwing in a few star jumps for good measure. She’d actually hugged the policewoman who’d arrived at her door. The detective had left now, and Josh was on his way back over the fields.
The steady hum of an engine and the sound of rubber crunching over stone reached Thea’s ears.Felix. She dropped the spoon in the sink, laid her cup on the kitchen table, and sprinted to the yard, heart in her mouth.
His shiny, white car took up so much room in the yard, but Thea was so grateful she didn’t care. She wouldn’t have judged him for driving a hot pink Hummer right now. His car could be as fancy as he liked. He’d brought her daughter home safe.
Felix turned off the engine and nodded through the glass of the windscreen at Thea with no hint of a smile. He wore his usual stern pout and a furrow on his brow. He looked behind into the back seat and said something to what she presumedwas Ammy before opening the door and coming around to let her out.
A thin breeze brushed the hair at the back of Thea’s neck, and the skin of her fingertips tingled. Prickled. Desperate to hold her daughter. To touch her. To breathe in the floral scent of her bubble bath. She stepped towards the car, about ready to burst. Felix opened the door, but instead of running to Thea, Ammy launched herself into Felix’s arms and gave him a fierce hug. The corners of his mouth ticked up a little as he lowered her to the ground, then crouched down to her level.
Thea wrapped her arms around her stomach, at a loss for what to do with them. Seeing her daughter going to someone else before her brought a hot sting of tears to her eyes. An ache in her chest. She stood still, not wanting to freak Ammy out or swamp her. There was obviously a reason she’d run away.
Ammy chewed at her lip with her teeth and twirled one finger through the ringlets that framed her face. Felix was saying something to her. Something Thea couldn’t hear, but her daughter had her large, blue eyes fixed on his face.
After a time, Ammy nodded, then, clutching the little pink bag she’d taken on her adventure, turned to Thea. She walked over, her Spiderman gumboots barely making a sound on the cobbles. When she came to a stop, Thea knelt down on the stones. Ignoring the burn at her kneecaps, she smiled and spread her arms towards her daughter.
When Ammy collapsed into them, Thea’s breath caught in her throat, and she ran her hands over her little frame, checking she was all there. Never had she been so grateful for the tangles she found in her daughter’s hair or the smell of the butter and icing that lingered around her mouth.
