Page 60 of A Christmas Wish for the Village Midwife

‘It’s a shame your dad couldn’t come,’ she said, pushing the thoughts from her mind.

‘He could have come. I don’t know why he’s going to that meeting.’

‘He didn’t want to let them down at the last minute. He’d already committed to the meeting, and this was the only date we could do for this trip.’

‘I suppose so,’ Billie said, finally accepting defeat and taking Louisa’s hat from her. ‘But it was his idea we should do all this stuff for Louisa’s first Christmas, and then he doesn’t come.’

‘There’ll be other things. This is nice anyway, isn’t it? Just us girls. Sometimes it’s good to have the men out of the way so we can talk about them.’

‘You don’t want to talk to me about Dad, do you? Because I don’t think I want to know.’

‘No, fair enough,’ Zoe said with a laugh. ‘But we can chat about things when he’s missing in a way we might not when he’s around. Like things that are bothering us and we don’t want him to worry about.’

‘Nothing’s bothering me.’

‘Well that’s good then.’

‘Is this about that Spain business again? What Dad was going on about a couple of weeks ago? Is that why you’ve got me here?’

‘Of course not! This for Louisa – you know that! If I wanted to get you to open up about something that big, I wouldn’t bring you to a boat full of children waiting to meet Santa, would I?’

‘I miss Spain, but it’s not that deep. I know I can’t live there now. Doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish I could.’

‘Wouldn’t it be full of memories for you?’

‘Yeah, but that’s not always bad.’

‘You can visit more next year, if you like. We’ll do what we can to help.’

‘I don’t want your money. I’m going to get a job as soon as Louisa is older.’

‘I meant making it easier to go rather than money. I don’t know what you would need, but whatever it is, we’ll help… only if you need it, of course. I don’t mean to patronise you.’

‘You’re not, but I don’t need anything. I’m twenty-four now – I should be doing this stuff myself.’

‘Your dad had you so young I forget you’re older than I think. Sorry, I know.’

Billie was silent for a moment.

‘Actually,’ she said after a gap, ‘I’m sorry. I get you’re trying to help. It’s not your fault you don’t know how things were before you came. If you did, you’d understand that me and Dad… well, it can be complicated.’

‘I want to understand.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it, though. I just want him to stop babying me. I know he feels like he has to take care of me, but sometimes I can’t breathe with it. We lost Mum, and then I lost Luis, and those times were so hard, but Dad can’t fix any of that, even though he thinks he can. I don’t want him to. I never did. I only want to deal with things in my own way, and I want to get my life moving again, like it was when I started to see Luis…’

She paused, as if wondering whether to reveal some significant truth, and it was so heavy that, to Zoe, it seemed to last for hours.

‘We were going to get married, you know.’

Zoe stared at her. ‘I had no idea! Your dad never⁠—’

‘He didn’t know,’ Billie said. ‘Nobody knew. We said we would, but we were waiting for the time to be right. It wasn’t like a big fancy proposal or anything – we just knew we would be together forever, and we said we would get married as soon as we could afford it. We were going to do it quietly, and then we were going to tell our parents because we knew they would try to talk us out of it. They’d say we were too young, but we weren’t because it doesn’t matter how young you are if you know it’s right, and we did, both of us. And I felt like my life was getting started. I wasn’t a kid any more, and I was in love, and it was going to be amazing. And then he died, and it all stopped. I get what Dad was trying to do for me, but he doesn’t understand that he’s making it worse, not better. He’s wrapping me up so tight it feels as if I’m suffocating.’

Billie took another loaded breath and turned to Zoe. ‘Don’t tell him I said this. It would hurt his feelings.’

Zoe ignored the fact that she would have thought Billie and Luis too young to get married, just as Alex would have done. It didn’t matter now, and it would hardly help. ‘I won’t tell him,’ she said, ‘but you need to. If this is how you feel, then you should say something. How is he supposed to know what you need otherwise? He thinks he’s doing right by you, and he’d be gutted to know that it’s making things worse.’

‘I will. I just have to work up to it.’