Chapter 60
Chapter sixty
Imogen waved goodbye to new friends and fell into step with Billy as they crossed the car park to the little sports car.
“So, pizza?” Imogen asked over the roof of the car. “I was thinking—”
“Actually, I spoke to Rosa and she’s cooked your favourite, so I said I’d bring you home, and she invited me to eat with you, so you can fill us both in on your day.”
“Oh…I guess that’s fine.” Imogen pulled the door open and climbed in. “I like Mum’s cooking.”
“Why did you want to get pizza then?” Billy asked once she was settled in her own seat.
Imogen shrugged in that way teenagers do. “I suppose I just wanted to have more time with you. I don’t usually see you on weekdays.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Billy said, twisting the key and starting the engine.
“C’est la vie, right?” Imogen smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes like it usually would.
“I know you want us to be more like a family. We get that, and we’re trying to make more moments where we can all spend time together. Like now—it’ll be nice to eat together.”
“Yeah, but then you go home and I won’t see you until Saturday night, and then I’ve got football on Sunday again, and I dunno…
I guess it just feels like the older I get and the more stuff I get to experience, the less I see of you and Mum, and if we all lived together, then that wouldn’t matter so much because I’d see you both at breakfast or after school. ”
“I’m sorry it’s not as simple as that. It wasn’t what we planned for.”
“I know…can’t help what happened,” Imogen said quietly, then she added, “Not that I really know what happened.”
“Is that your subtle way of asking for more information?” Billy indicated and spun the wheel so they could take the turn.
“Maybe.”
“Okay. You know you can ask and tell me and your mum anything, right?”
“Yeah but…I don’t want to upset you by bringing up something that might be painful.”
Billy smiled. “You know, I am proud of you all the time, but every now and then you say or do something and I think to myself how Rosa did a great job raising you when I wasn’t capable.”
“What does that even mean, though?”
“Your mum and I were not much older than you when we met. I knew I was gay, but she dated boys.” They both pulled a face and laughed.
“And then one night we got talking about how the boy she was dating was a bit shit, and I admitted that if she was into girls, I’d definitely ask her out, and somehow that turned into her asking what kissing girls was like and before I knew it—”
“You were showing her?” Imogen laughed.
“Yeah, and she dumped that idiot boy and we started dating. We fell in love over one summer, and that was it for me, and her.”
“So what happened next?”
“We went to college together, and then when that ended, we got jobs and moved in together—a poky little flat in Bath Street, but it was ours. We talked about the future we wanted, and both agreed, we wanted you.”
“Me?”
“Well, a kid—we wanted that, whatever you turned out to be, boy or girl. We wanted our family, and so we got married and we had you.” They stopped at the lights and Billy turned slightly, holding Imogen’s gaze. “We loved you more than anything.”
“But not enough to stay together?”
“Oh, sweetheart, it wasn’t because of you.” Billy looked ahead as the lights flicked to green. “Mental health can hit anyone, at any time, and it hit me.”
They were just around the corner from Rosa’s place. Home.
“I lost my job. Was made redundant, and finding another one became harder. We were running out of money, and we had bills to pay and you to feed. Your mum had to go back to work earlier than we’d planned and it all piled on top of me.
I felt like I’d failed you both.” She pulled up outside the house.
“I wasn’t the person I am today. I didn’t know how to talk about it, or work through it.
I just shut down, and your mum didn’t know how to deal with that—why would she? ”
A beam of light shone as the front door opened and Rosa stood in the doorway.
“She did everything she could to help, but I needed professional people, and in the end, she had to make a choice—you or us—and she made the right choice.”
Imogen turned and looked at Rosa in the doorway, the slight frown on her face, worry lines forming as she tried to work out why they were both still sitting in the car. She turned back, studying Billy’s face as Billy watched Rosa.
“You still love her, though, don’t you?”
Billy continued to look at Rosa. “Till the day I die.” Then she turned to Imogen. “Come on, before she changes her mind and shuts the door.”
“She won’t…she loves you too.”