Chapter 16
Ottilie had known there was something wrong, but they’d mumbled excuses that hadn’t been agreed beforehand and so didn’t match up at all, and then hurried away with Louisa, woken and grumpy and bundled into the car.
‘I’ll put her to bed,’ Zoe said as they walked into a lamplit kitchen, greeted by an oblivious Grizzle who danced and panted around their legs begging for their attention. ‘You and your dad need to talk.’
She wondered, for a moment, if Billie might argue.
But she didn’t. Instead, she settled at the table, patting Grizzle absently as he chose her lap to rest his head on.
It was always Billie, Zoe reflected as she scooped Louisa out of the car seat.
It was a strange thought, perhaps, but it came to her anyway.
What would Grizzle do if she left? Nobody would be able to explain it to him, and he’d be so sad, the thought of it made Zoe sad now.
Alex could reason it out, and for Zoe, in many ways it would make her life easier, but poor Griz…
Louisa took far too long to settle. It was hardly surprising as her routine had been interrupted enough as it was without them taking her from Ottilie’s almost as soon as she’d dropped off to sleep.
Zoe tried to be patient, but she could hear the voices downstairs without being able to make out any of the words, and she desperately wanted to know what was going on.
More than that, she desperately wanted to help.
She wanted to arbitrate, to support where it was needed, to offer a different way if she thought it might do some good.
But as she rocked Louisa to sleep, Billie’s fiery words came back to her.
She wasn’t family, even though she’d tried to be and sometimes they all said she was.
She’d hoped to be something to Billie – not to replace her mum, never that, but to be someone Billie might trust and turn to for advice in the same way she might have turned to her mum if she’d still been alive.
Those words had stung more than Zoe had wanted to let them, though she had to admit that Billie had a point.
She didn’t understand their dynamic because she hadn’t been there to witness all the years that had formed it.
The sounds of conversation from the floor below rose and fell, and sometimes it was silent for minutes. Zoe could hear them moving around the kitchen, taps running and earthenware clinking. She supposed Alex was making them drinks.
Eventually, Louisa’s eyes drooped and she gave up the fight to stay awake.
Zoe laid her gently in her cot and took a moment to admire how beautiful she’d become.
Not her granddaughter – not anything to her at all, really – but there was a pang of regret for the notion that Billie might leave and take Louisa with her.
Alex would miss her terribly, but so would Zoe.
Hilltop Farm would feel empty for a long time, and Zoe wondered how on earth they’d bring it back to life.
Should she back down on her resolution not to try for a baby?
Would that make things better, or was it a hastily thought-out fix that might backfire on them?
She realised then that it had been quiet for a few minutes. Checking on Louisa one last time to make sure all was as it should be, she turned off the light and went downstairs.
‘I didn’t know if you wanted a cup of tea, but I made one anyway,’ Billie said. ‘It might be cold now, sorry.’
Zoe went to the table and put her hands around the mug. ‘It’s warm enough. Thanks, Billie.’ She sat down and looked at them both, waiting and wondering if someone would fill her in. When nobody volunteered, she came right out and asked the question. ‘Have you sorted it?’
‘Depends on what it is,’ Alex said. ‘I don’t think even we’ve worked that out yet.’
Zoe sipped at her tea. It was cold, but she wasn’t about to interrupt them by going to warm it. ‘Have you come to any kind of understanding about anything? You both had plenty to say outside the village hall.’
Alex’s mouth became a hard line. Perhaps Zoe sounded like a disapproving schoolmistress, and she might not have been family, but she lived with them, and she needed to know what the situation was.
There was no way to do this than to be straight, and, after all, not being straight and honest had got them into this mess in the first place as far as she could see.
Zoe got up with a deep exhale. ‘Do you want me to leave you to it? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do – someone please tell me. Is it better, more helpful if I’m here or if I let you speak without me?’
‘Of course it’s better if you’re here,’ Alex said. ‘We’ve never wanted to leave you out of anything – you live here with us; you’re part of the family now. I don’t know where you’re getting the idea we’re trying to cut you out.’
‘Because,’ Zoe began carefully, ‘as Billie rightly pointed out, technically I’m not family.’
‘I’m sorry about—’ Billie began.
Zoe cut her off. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to say sorry. I’m not offended… not now I’ve had time to think about it, though I’ll admit I was hurt at the time. But there’s no point in pretending it’s not true. I’m like family, I hope. I wanted to think that was the same, but it’s not.’
Billie didn’t try to correct her, but Zoe could see by her expression that she regretted the way it had come out. ‘I mean, you know I think so much of you, and you’ve been so amazing and good for us all and…’
‘It’s OK,’ Zoe said. ‘You’ve been good for me too.
Nobody’s debating that. And I’m sorry if I sound like I’m interfering or stating the obvious, but I have to say it because I can’t see how either of you are going to start a proper conversation otherwise, and let’s face it, you need one.
You need to talk to one another, even if you think the other isn’t going to like what you say.
How are any of us going to know what to do otherwise? ’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ Billie folded her arms and rested them on the table.
‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t like the play, that’s all.
It’s old-fashioned and offensive, but yeah, I get what you said, the people round here are from a different generation and that stuff doesn’t bother them.
It makes them laugh. Well that’s great for them; I just didn’t want to watch it. And that’s all.’
‘It’s not though, is it?’ Alex said. ‘Because you didn’t stop at complaining about the panto. Those things you said must have come from somewhere. Zoe said before she thinks you’re bored living in Thimblebury. Is that true?’
Billie threw an accusing glance at Zoe and then turned back to her dad, her expression closed again. ‘So you’ve already been talking about me? You’ve already made up your mind what I’m thinking without even asking me?’
‘No!’ Alex let out a long breath, turning his gaze to the heavens as if for divine inspiration.
And then he looked back at Billie, visibly gathering himself to say the right thing.
‘Yes. We’ve discussed you, but only because we were worried that you weren’t getting what you needed from living here but you didn’t want to tell us because…
we were right, weren’t we? And you were right to think I’d be sad hearing from you that it isn’t working out as I’d hoped it would.
It looked like a fresh start to me, but I should have realised that I was only seeing things from my point of view; I was only looking for a solution for what my life was missing and not yours because I didn’t understand, or maybe I couldn’t see what that was. ’
‘But,’ Zoe interjected, ‘if you don’t tell your dad what your life is missing, how could he know?’
‘I don’t know that I could even see what that was back when we moved here,’ Billie said. ‘Don’t forget, I was pregnant and… well, it was all I could think about.’
Zoe recalled how damaged and uncertain Billie had been back then.
She hadn’t wanted motherhood – it had been thrust upon her, and she might have taken to it like a natural if Louisa’s father hadn’t died.
There was no way any of them could know because he had, but from what Billie had said to Zoe since Louisa’s birth – even very recently – Zoe suspected Billie would have been a far happier woman had she been able to have that life.
Perhaps Alex hadn’t been able to see it, not only because Billie hadn’t told him, but because he was busy dealing with losses of his own and he’d been guided by them.
He’d lost his wife, and that kind of grief could be a blinding thing.
With all that going on, it was no wonder they’d struggled to communicate.
Since Zoe had got to know her better, she’d seen that Billie wasn’t a natural communicator, and she wasn’t free with her emotions.
She kept things bottled up, perhaps believing it made her stronger, but when the dam broke, it tended to be all the more violent for the pressure that had built behind it.
This moment felt like that. Billie would let go any minute now, and things would be said that would change everything.
There was another thing Billie didn’t do – not without extreme provocation. She rarely cried, so Zoe almost dropped her mug when Billie’s face screwed up and she started to sob.
‘I’m sorry, Dad! I’m so sorry!’
Alex leaped from his chair and pulled her into a hug. ‘Hey, hey…’ he murmured as he stroked her hair. ‘Bill… there’s no need…’
‘I don’t want to hurt you…’ Billie said, her words muffled as she buried her face in his chest. ‘I never want to do that.’
‘You haven’t; you never could.’