What she couldn’t imagine was Maggie failing to own up. Maggie wasn’t like that. Or was she? Was this trivial accident the cause of her tears the other evening? Bea sat down in the chair at the desk with a bump. Was the open-hearted, vulnerable, feisty girl she had taken into her heart a reality? If not, then why should Bea worry about the girl’s future? Silence grew around her. The light faded fast down here, though it couldn’t be very late. She looked about her, with an uncomfortable feeling that something was amiss. The chair she was sitting on, for instance. Maggie was tall, as tall as Bea, yet as Bea sat in the chair, her knees were pressed to the underside of the desk. Which meant that someone had recently been sitting at this desk who was shorter than Maggie, and who had raised the seat to compensate for her loss of inches. Had someone else been using this office? This room was something of a battleground, as Ianthe coveted it for herself, saying they were uncomfortably crowded in the main office.
