“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 outwhy 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.”
Chapter sixty-one
Rosa kissed Imogen at the door, then narrowed her eyes inquisitively at Billy. The unspoken:‘What’s going on?’
Billy smiled, letting her fingertips drag along the small of Rosa’s back as she passed into the hallway. It was hard not to just reach out and touch without thinking. She focused on the aroma of garlic instead.
“Everything alright?” Rosa finally asked. They were all bunched in the hall by the foot of the stairs, removing coats and shoes and picking up Imogen’s dropped bag.
She smiled at Billy. “You can go through. Dinner is minutes away.”
“I’m starving,” Imogen said, as dramatically as anyone ever stated they were hungry. “Thanks for cooking, Mum.”
Rosa beamed. “I just thought you might have had a good day and want to celebrate, and equally, if things hadn’t gone so well…comfort food.”
Imogen wandered into the kitchen and nabbed a piece of cheesy garlic bread from the plate of freshly baked scrumptiousness.
“Definitely a celebration, I think,” Imogen said, pulling a chair out. She sat down and took a big bite. “I got to play with Nora Brady,” she told Rosa, chewing. “If I die now and never play again, I’ll be happy.”
Rosa busied herself by the oven, pulling on oven mitts. “I’m sure you won’t die.”
