I hurried to the restaurant, my heart full of hope.

Will she smile at me today? I wondered. Ask me how my day was? Comment on my haircut?

She was sitting in the corner, reading. She didn’t look at me.

“You’re late,” she said as she turned a page. “Again.”

Eszter Molnar is a former teacher who lives by the windswept British seaside with her partner and two children. She has been published in one of the UK’s biggest subscription magazines for children. By day, she cleans up after preschoolers, by night she writes picture books and Middle Grade fiction.