Chapter Thirty
S ophie stood outside the village hall and looked at the very closed door. She really didn’t want to do this, but Jules was her friend and she couldn’t let her down.
“No,” Jules had said. “I’m definitely not telling Billy that. You know how she gets about her music.”
They’d been sitting in the pub. Sophie had had to escape the house once her dad and Gio had come home. The two of them had been at each other's throats all day. Gio, quite understandably, slightly upset that he’d spent the night in jail due to his father’s burgeoning property empire.
“Come on, you’re married to her, please?” Sophie had asked.
“Absolutely not. If you don’t want to sing, and I can see why you might not, you need to go and tell her yourself,” Jules had said adamantly.
Which was pretty fair, Sophie knew, but still, she wished she wasn’t standing here right now. She sighed, stood up straighter, and walked in.
Straight into Tilly.
“Jesus,” Sophie said, rubbing her head where it had hit Tilly’s.
“Crap, sorry,” said Tilly, rubbing her head where it had hit Sophie’s.
Sophie took a step back, unsure what to say, her stomach cramping and her skin prickling.
“Sorry,” Tilly said again. She pressed her lips together nervously. “I, uh, I was just coming in to see Billy.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Right.” Tilly swallowed audibly.
“About the singing.”
“Absolutely,” Tilly agreed.
“We can’t…”
“No.”
They stood there, facing each other, the world continuing to turn even though everything seemed so very, very still.
Then Billy pushed open the big front door. “What are you two doing in here?” she asked. It was a good twenty minutes before the choir rehearsal was supposed to start.
Tilly eyed Sophie, who nodded at her. “We, um, need to talk to you.”
Billy glared at them both. “No,” she said finally.
“No?” said Sophie.
“No,” said Billy. “Just no.”
“But—” began Tilly.
“No,” said Billy. She sighed. “I won’t have it. I know exactly what’s gone on. This is a small town. I know exactly why you’re here. And the answer is no. You’ve both made a commitment. Now stick to it. Whatever happened in your personal lives, I’m not asking you to make out on stage or anything. You’re adults, you can sing a thirty-second solo together, end of story.” She swept past them into the hall itself.
“Well,” Tilly said, watching her go.
“Quite,” agreed Sophie.
There was silence for a second until Billy began playing scales on the piano. Sophie took a breath.
“Okay,” she said reluctantly.
“Okay?” asked Tilly.
“She’s right,” Sophie said. “We’re adults, we agreed to do this, we shouldn’t let other people down because… well, because we can’t make things work between us.”
Tilly exhaled and nodded. “Alright.”
“We can sing?” asked Sophie.
“Yes,” Tilly said. “We can sing.”
Sophie checked her watch. They were so early that there was no point going in yet, but it was late enough that there was no point going anywhere else.
“Your dad’s helping us with our inquiries,” Tilly said.
“I’m well aware of that.” It was odd being close to her. Odd to feel the familiar tingling sensations in her body. But then, Sophie supposed that you didn’t just stop responding to someone, even when that person wasn’t your person anymore.
“I just meant, well, I meant that he was helping us, that’s all,” said Tilly, flushing slightly. “He’s unlikely to face any charges.”
“Right.”
Tilly exhaled again, the sound loud in the little entrance hall. “Listen, Sophie—”
Sophie held up her hands. “I know,” she said, because she did know. “I know that you were just doing your job, I know that in the end nothing terrible happened. I know that none of us are in prison and you had no choice, and we had an agreement and all the rest of it.”
“Then…” Tilly shook her head. “Alright. You get it.”
Sophie turned to her now. “The job will always come first,” she said. “I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I can be second all the time. And I can’t disappoint my family like that. They’re everything I’ve got, you have to understand that. They wouldn’t have been pleased under the best of circumstances, but now…”
“Now they’d hate you as much as they hate me,” Tilly said numbly.
Sophie had an overwhelming urge to reach out, but she kept her hands to herself. “It just wouldn’t work,” she said.
Tilly looked at her for a long minute, her nose upturned, her hair mussed by the wind, her eyes deep and blue, and Sophie longed to kiss her. But again, she kept her lips to herself. “Okay,” she said finally. “Alright.”
Sophie decided she might as well go into the hall. It would be warmer there and she was afraid that if she stayed here, she might do or say something she might regret. Whether that would be something good or bad, she really wasn’t sure.
She could feel Tilly’s eyes on her as she walked toward the door. She pushed it open, the sound of the piano coming louder, and turned at the last second. “I don’t hate you,” she said before she went inside.
And she didn’t. Not that it made a difference. But it seemed important that Tilly know that much, at least.
SHE WALKED HOME alone in the cold night, the air nipping at her nose and her whole body sad. Singing with Tilly had been… fine. They’d got the notes out. They’d managed to stand next to each other, but it had infected Sophie with a flood of sadness that she just couldn’t shake.
They could have had so much, could have been so perfect. But it hadn’t worked out. She supposed that it had been doomed from the beginning. She also supposed that having Gio around lurking behind all her previous dates might not have been the bad thing she’d always imagined.
At least that way she hadn’t had the chance to get in too deep before things ended. This way, her way, hurt. It hurt seeing Tilly. It hurt not seeing Tilly. It just hurt.
By the time she walked into the house, she just wanted to go to bed to lick her wounds, to try to sleep and forget about the world for a few precious hours.
She closed the door behind her and everything was quiet. She frowned. She’d left both her dad and Gio at home. It was strange that things were so quiet. Uncomfortable. She was just starting to panic, just starting to imagine all the things that might have gone wrong, when her father called her name.
She walked into the kitchen to find him sitting at the kitchen table. She didn’t even get the chance to speak.
“A policewoman.” It wasn’t a question. “A fucking policewoman. Are you kidding me?”
She felt a sharp pain in her chest, felt her face heat up. “Dad, it’s not—”
“Don’t you tell me that it’s not what I think. It’s exactly what I think. You’ve been sleeping around with a policewoman, with that new one, and now your chickens are coming home to roost.”
“Dad—”
He scraped his chair back and stood, knuckles on the table. “What did you tell her?”
“Nothing, dad—”
“What did you fucking tell her?” His eyes were flashing and he spat when he talked.
“Nothing!”
He took one step closer to her, his fists balled at his sides, his face red. “I swear to god, Sophie.”
“I didn’t tell her anything,” she practically screamed. “I swear to you. I didn’t. I didn’t say anything.”
“A daughter of mine going with a copper, a daughter of mine lying down with filth,” he spat. “And then we all get arrested. A bit too much of a coincidence that, isn’t it?”
She swallowed. He was getting closer. She’d never been afraid of her father. He’d never laid a finger on her. Not ever. But he was angry, angrier than she thought she’d ever seen him. “I didn’t tell her anything. There was nothing to tell.”
“Sophie.” There was a warning growl in his voice.
She did the only thing she could think of. “I didn’t tell her anything. I swear on mum.”
He stopped, took a breath, his face paling slightly. “On mum?”
“I didn’t tell her anything, dad,” she said more quietly now. “We had a… a thing. We did. I kept it from you because I knew you’d be angry. But I never talked about you, never talked about the business. Even if I did, it was all fine. We haven’t been doing anything wrong.”
He grunted.
“The raid, the arrests. That was all her, nothing to do with me.”
“You’d better be damn sure of that, girl.”
“It wasn’t. We never talked about her job, either.” Sophie swallowed. “I swear to you, dad.”
He looked older now, more worn, his skin more gray, his forehead sweaty. He lifted a hand, pointed a sharp finger at her. “You’d better—”
She interrupted him before he could give her ultimatums. “It’s over,” she said flatly.
His eyes widened slightly.
“It’s over,” she said again, more quietly. “There’s nothing between us. It’s… she’s… it’s done. I swear.”
He looked at her for a second. “It had better be.”
“It is.”
They stood in the kitchen face to face for a long minute, then he nodded. “Alright then. I’ll believe you.” He sniffed. “Best not tell Gio. He’ll lose his shit.”
Sophie nodded. “Right.”
“Go on then, off to bed with you. I don’t want to see you tonight.” He turned back to his chair, a can of beer beside it.
Sophie thought about saying something, but what was there to say? She turned and walked away, climbing the stairs slowly to her room.
She’d told the truth. It was all over. Even if it hadn’t been before, it definitely was now. Because even if there was a small, tiny chance that she and Tilly could make things work, her father would never stand for it. And she couldn’t stand to lose him.
Her heart hurt in ways she couldn’t describe, and it was a long time before she fell asleep.