Page 95 of New Dreams for the Village Nurse
‘It would have been weird as hell but we could have figured it out.’
‘Can’t we figure it out now?’
‘I don’t know – you’re pushing again. Like I keep telling you, I need time. I don’t know how I feel about any of it yet. And it’s not only this – the trial is coming up and that’s going to complicate things all over again. I’d hoped to have you there with me when I went through all that?—’
‘I will be! I want to be!’
‘But how can you be? For a start, you must know Mila’s family, and they’re related to?—’
‘I swear I’ve never met Ashton. I’ve never met half of them – it’s a massive family and they’re not all close.’
‘How can I believe you when you’ve lied to me before? And if they’re not that close, why is Mila so hell-bent on getting him off the charge?’
‘I didn’t lie. I kept it from you, yes, but?—’
‘It’s the same as lying, so don’t try to make a fool of me all over again with technicalities. You knew it was huge and you knew it mattered and you didn’t tell me. Now you’re saying youdon’t know this guy, and I want to believe you, but surely you can see why I’d have a hard time with that.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make a fool of you. But I swear it’s true this time. I’ve never met him, not even once. Mila kept me at a distance from a lot of that side of her family because…’ He shrugged.
‘Because they were all bad people?’
‘Of course they’re not all bad. But I suppose some of them are less than saintly.’
‘Less than saintly?’ Ottilie threw her hands into the air, her voice rising. ‘I’d call beating someone to death a lot less than saintly!’
‘Sorry…’ Heath flushed. ‘I didn’t mean to make light of—I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I know you didn’t, but that only proves to me what I already knew. You don’t really understand how it is. How can you when it’s never happened to you? You think I’m overreacting.’
‘I don’t!’
‘If you didn’t then you wouldn’t have said what you just said. You wouldn’t have turned up here thinking flowers would fix everything. You wouldn’t have asked your gran to come and plead your case.’
‘I never—Gran came over?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You can’t fix this. You can’t change Mila’s family ties. I’m sure you regret the way this has all played out, but you can’t change that now either. Please, I feel like a stuck record because I have to keep saying this, but I need time, and that’s the only thing that can maybe fix this. And I can’t even promise that – I won’t promise that because then it puts me under pressure to make a decision, and that’s not fair.’
‘What about me? Is it fair to make me wait for your decision, not knowing how long that might be?’
‘Yes,’ Ottilie said simply. ‘I think it is. You made this problem.’
‘I didn’t!’
She frowned and whatever words had been about to follow were never uttered.
‘If you love me,’ she began slowly, still not even certain that he did because he’d never said so, ‘then you’ll at least give me this. If you think I’m worth it then you’ll wait.’
‘But…I feel like you’ll have time to think and then decide I’m not worth it.’
‘If that happens then it was probably going to come to that one day anyway. You know how I feel about you, but things are more complicated than that now, and I don’t feel like you get it at all.’
‘Then tell me! Explain it to me and I’ll try.’
‘I shouldn’t have to. I’ve told you it matters and that ought to be enough. I can’t explain it to you, even if I wanted to, because it’s impossible to explain to anyone what it’s like to lose someone you love that much, especially in those circumstances. Only someone who’s been through it can understand.’
‘So it’s not my fault.’
‘No, perhaps it’s not, but it’s not my fault either.’
