She pushed open the door and flicked on the lights, the soft white walls giving off a warm ambience as opposed to the grey Samantha had opted for next door. Lily raced in behind her and started poking her head through the open doors.
‘It’s just like Noah’s!’
‘Yes.’ Sophia smiled at her, then turned to Jack, her lips softening a little and doing something weird to his chest.
‘Are you sure—?’
‘Where am I sleeping, Sphea?’ Lily bustled up to them, interrupting his impulsive need to check she was truly all right with this.
‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ Sophia offered out her hand and Lily grinned at her, her obvious affection for this woman who’d only been in their lives a week chiming with his own. ‘While Daddy makes his important call to Ms Archer...’
‘Yes, right, I’ll get on with it.’ His voice sounded gruff, his chest too full to breathe properly. He smiled to hide it, but he wasn’t so sure he’d succeeded, not if the questioning look Sophia sent over Lily’s head was anything to go by.
‘Okay?’ she mouthed.
He nodded quickly and turned away, pulling his mobile from his jacket and dialling Ms Archer. Ever efficient, she answered promptly and he was done in five. It took him another five to compose himself enough to join the two women who had put him in this alien position. Their chatter was incessant and he only had to follow it to find them in the open-plan kitchen-cum-diner-cum-living area.
Sophia was warming something on the hob while Lily sat on a stool at the breakfast bar which separated the kitchen from the rest of the space.
‘I’ve had one request for a fully loaded hot chocolate,’ she said, looking at him over her shoulder. ‘What can I get you?’
He slipped onto the barstool next to his daughter. ‘What’s a fully loaded hot chocolate?’
‘It’s topped with marshmallows and cream, Daddy.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘You fancy one too?’
He could hear the surprise in Sophia’s voice and laughed. ‘Why not?’
She shook her head. ‘You’re full of surprises, Jack McGregor.’
‘What? Can’t a grown man indulge once in a while?’
That high colour was back in her face and this time he knew it was the thoughts at play in her head, thoughts that he’d triggered by the double meaning of indulge. She gave him a small smile and went back to stirring the milk in the pan. Next to him Lily was sifting through what looked to be mail.
‘Hey, don’t be so nosy, kiddo.’
‘I’m just looking.’
‘That’s precisely my point.’
‘It’s okay,’ Sophia said. ‘It’s just the junk mail I didn’t have time to go through at work. It’s mainly brochures and stuff. Sometimes there’s some interesting—’
‘Wow! Look at this, Daddy!’ Lily had a brochure spread out before her, her eyes like saucers as she pointed one of her small fingers at what looked like a giant bubble. ‘You can stay in one of these and look at the stars all night!’
He grinned. ‘Looks like fancy camping to me.’
‘But look at the sky, Daddy. Does it really look like that or have they just done something with a computer to make it all...fancy?’
‘That’s the lights of aurora.’
‘Aurora?’
‘Aurora borealis, the northern lights.’
‘Bore what? It looks like magic.’ She lifted the brochure and turned it this way and that, her eyes wide, fascinated. ‘Magic in the sky.’