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By the time she was at the front door she was sobbing, her hand shaking too much to get the key in the door, making so much noise that eventually the door opened and Amelia was standing there.
“Jules, what…?”
She pulled her inside, wrapped her up in strong arms and held her as Jules cried and cried, soothing her and stroking her hair.
“What’s going on?” Cass said, stumbling down the stairs.
“Not a clue,” said Am. She lifted Jules’s chin. “Jules, love, come on, what’s happened?”
It was all Jules could do to stutter out Billie’s name. And when she did, Amelia wrapped her back up into that warm, tight hug and held her close.
“Bloody Billie Brooke,” Amelia said through gritted teeth. “I’ll kill her.”
Chapter Thirty One
The wind was blowing cold and Billie cupped her hands around her mug of coffee as the playground roared around her.
“Learned your lesson about the coffee, I see,” said a voice.
Billie looked up to see Ava smiling at her, the smile falling from her face as she saw Billie.
“What’s wrong? You look terrible, dear.”
“Summer cold,” Billie said, the first excuse she could think of.
“It’s not summer,” pointed out Ava.
Billie said nothing to this. She was content in her misery. This had to happen. She’d had break ups before, well one break up, and she knew that the pain had to come before the healing. It was just so fresh, so new at the moment that she couldn’t touch it.
“There’s no requirement to talk about it,” said Ava, leaning on the low wall next to Billie. “But if you do want to talk about it, then I’m here.”
Billie nodded and half-smiled in what she hoped looked like thanks. She didn’t want to talk to Ava about it. Or anyone, for that matter. She wanted to get through it, move on with her life. Which would be fine if she could forget Jules’s face for more than a second.
Ava’s perfume was floral and tickled at Jules’s nose, not letting her forget that the teacher was standing there beside her.
“Lorimer Danver, what are you doing?” Ava said, voice raised but not shouting.
A small boy with a comically large stomach screeched to a halt by her feet. “Um, chasing, miss?”
“Chasing?” Ava asked, eyes narrowed.
Little Lorimer sighed. “I took the football,” he said, pulling the dirty ball out from under his coat. “I’ll go and give it back and say sorry.”
“Good boy,” Ava said.
Lorimer trotted off to return the ball and Ava sighed.
“You know, sometimes it’s best to admit your mistakes and apologize. Just be honest about things. We teach the kids that all the time, but I think that we forget that lesson quite easily as we grow up.”
Billie took a sip of her coffee. “Maybe because it’s too simplistic, because admissions and apologies don’t make up for broken people, hurt feelings, they’re just words that wash over people.”
“Maybe,” allowed Ava. “Or maybe they’re the first step in healing something. Maybe they’re things that need to be said because walking around with them in your head does no good at all.”
“And letting them out might do even more damage.”
“That depends entirely on how they’re said, I should imagine,” Ava said. “They say that the truth hurts, and perhaps it does, but it doesn’t have to wound, that shouldn’t be the intention. If you say what you need to say in the spirit of love, of compassion, of mutual healing and relationship building, then those words can be the foundation of something.”
Billie pressed her lips together. She was in no mood for this.
