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“Ready.”
“Alright, put your hands down by your sides and close your eyes and your mouth,” Amelia instructed. “This stuff might be toxic.”
“Might be?” squeaked Jules.
“Only a small might,” Cass said. “All you need to do is stand there and turn when we tell you to turn, alright? It won’t hurt a bit.”
“Probably,” added Amelia.
“Probably?” Jules said, shivering a bit and not at all sure she wanted to be involved in this now that it came down to it.
“I told you, keep your mouth closed,” said Amelia. “This might be toxic.”
“Might be,” echoed Cass.
Jules screwed her eyes and mouth tight closed and surrendered to whatever was about to happen. Sometimes she really, really wished that she thought a little harder before agreeing to things.
Chapter Seven
Going into the village shop seemed a bit like climbing Everest. For a ridiculously long amount of time, Billie had been seriously considering other ways to accomplish eating. But she didn’t have a car, couldn’t afford an Uber, and the supermarket on the outskirts was just too far away. She’d attempted ketchup sandwiches the night before which had gone exactly as expected. So here she was.
She took a deep breath before going inside. Maybe Sylv had retired. Maybe a nice, anonymous family had taken over the shop and would have no idea who she was.
But the shape behind the till was the familiar one and Sylv gave her a wave as she walked in. Billie forced herself to smile a little and then hurried to collect her groceries, throwing things into her basket willy-nilly until she had enough sustenance to last the week.
Then it was one final hurdle. With a sigh, she lugged her basket over to the till, finding to her surprise that she had to stand in line.
“Hello there,” Ava said when she caught sight of Billie. She waved a package of pre-packed sandwiches. “My guilty lunch break,” she said. “Someone forgot to buy bread yesterday.”
“Well, look who it is,” said Sylv. “I’d heard you were back around, what brings you all the way back here then? Heard you were in London and all.”
Billie opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again because she really didn’t know what to say. She needed an answer for that question, people were sure to ask, weren’t they? It wasn’t that Sylv was being nasty, just nosy, and, well, if there was one thing about living in a village that everyone knew it was that everyone knew everything.
“Come now, Sylv,” said Ava, picking up her sandwich as Sylv started to scan Billie’s groceries. “If you can’t go home then where can you go?”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Sylv. “Mind you, there’s enough young people that make a break for it from here as soon as they can.”
“And look how many stay,” pointed out Ava, neatly steering Sylv in the direction she wanted the conversation to go. “We’re lucky that way, there’s still jobs here, still young families. I couldn’t imagine living in a place where it was only us old people.”
“Old yourself,” chuckled Sylv. “There’s life in this old dog yet. That’ll be twenty nine pounds and eleven pence,” she added to Billie who dug the money out of her pocket.
“Well then, we’ll be seeing you,” Ava said, as Billie shoved the rest of her groceries into her bag.
Billie found herself being swept back out onto the street along with Ava, having said nothing other than a quick ‘thank you’ to Sylv.
“Um, thanks,” she muttered as her feet hit pavement.
“No need to thank me, Sylv’s lovely but she doesn’t need to know all the dirty details, does she?” Ava’s smile was kind. “So, you grew up around here, I take it?”
Billie nodded.
“It can’t be easy to come back then.” Ava looked up at the blue sky. “I suppose to some it might seem like admitting defeat, like a sign of failure.” She looked back down at Billie with sympathetic eyes. “Mind you, to those of us with half a brain it’ll seem like what it is, a sign of someone that needs a bit of love and tenderness. That’s the reason most of us go home, isn’t it? For comfort?”
Billie let out a breath. “Or because we’ve got no choice.”
“Oh, there’s always choices,” said Ava, smiling again. “They might be undesirable ones, of course, but they’re there.”
Billie shrugged.
