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“You’ll get used to it. I didn’t grow up here, but Whitebridge has grown on me, it’s not a bad little place.”
Probably because no one knows who you are, Billie wanted to say but didn’t. She just nodded as Ava looped her arm through hers.
“Come on, let’s get you some coffee and I’ll tell you all the gossip,” said Ava.
And Billie let herself be borne away by the one person in town who didn’t know a thing about her.
Chapter Five
Jules had fully expected old Mrs. Lawton to be her new piano teacher. After all, there were only so many teachers in town. This had led to some slight anxiety due to the fact that Jules had not been the most attentive member of Mrs. Lawton’s Whitebridge Primary music lessons.
In fact, after an incident involving a piece of chalk and Kevin McKnight’s earhole, she’d been asked to leave the regular Wednesday morning music lessons and instead had spent her time on the quiet reading carpet seething with anger. Kevin McKnight had put the chalk into his own ear, but he was so afraid of his mother that he’d blamed Jules, something that still struck her as terrifically unfair.
It was only when she popped into the small shop on the main street and heard Sylv, the rotund shopkeeper, gossiping that she realized that Mrs. Lawton had, in fact, retired. A feeling of relief filled her stomach.
“She could barely play the hymns for assembly,” Sylv had said. “It was about time. She’s going to move in with her sister, so I’ve heard.”
Jules, who had little time for either Mrs. Lawton or her sister now she knew they couldn’t help with her plan, inquired just who was going to play hymns at assembly then.
“Oh God,” Sylv had said, turning bright red. “You know, I never thought to ask?”
For Sylv, who proudly considered herself a font of knowledge on the local community, this was akin to Jen, the cook at the pub, forgetting to put sausage in the Toad in the Hole.
“Still,” Sylv had said, brightening up a little and handing Jules her change. “It’ll probably be on the website, won’t it?”
All of which had led to Jules walking down Lorimer Street at half past four on a Thursday afternoon.
The weather was pleasant and sunny and the leaves hadn’t started to turn yet, and she was in a good mood. Mostly because she was getting her plan of action started. She hadn’t felt like this in years. She hadn’t had a plan for anything in years.
She’d sort of fallen into the life that she had now, not that she was complaining. Granddad had given them the house, and thanks to his scheming it was all paid off. She’d started off with a Saturday job behind the bar at the pub, which had turned into a more or less full time job once she’d left school.
There hadn’t been many other opportunities. Or perhaps there had been and she’d ignored them. She liked living here, she liked being around her friends and her sister and the pub. Alright, so she wasn’t a doctor or a lawyer, but frankly, her spotty school attendance probably would have meant that she’d cut off the wrong leg or send the wrong bloke to prison even if she did qualify.
But this, this was a plan. She’d believed her mother’s prophecy, which was what she called it in her head, from the first moment she’d come home and Amelia had told her that mum was gone. It had always lurked in the back of her head, and now here it was, finally coming to the front, finally coming true.
She whistled as she walked up to the neat little cottage with its sweet front door. Maybe she and Alea could live in a place like this, she thought. After they got married and got real jobs, of course.
She knocked firmly on the door and took a step back to wait. Whoever this Ms. Brooke was, she’d done pretty well for herself, Jules thought, looking over the tidy flowerbeds. A housewife, probably, with a rich husband, someone who commuted to the city and did something in a suit.
Which was why when the door opened to reveal a buxom woman with long dark hair and flashing dark eyes and a figure that was enough to make a monk choke on his ale, Jules took another step back and almost tripped over her feet.
“Yes?” the woman said.
Jules had to clear her throat before she could get the words out. “Ms. Brooke?”
“Mmm? Can I help you?” The woman frowned and looked around a little, peering around Jules as though expecting someone else.
“Uh, you do teach piano, right?” Jules asked, recovering herself nicely.
“Yes.” The woman bent over a little. “You can come out, you know, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Jules turned around just in case there was someone hiding behind her, then turned back puzzled. There was no one there.
“Oh, um, I’m sorry,” the woman said, blushing a deep red that went all the way down to her cleavage. “Some of my students are quite shy. They are small though, so…”
“Are you calling me big?” asked Jules.
“No, uh, God, no, but… Are you Julia?”
