Boyfriend TroublesBilly had now met and befriended all of his business colleagues – and three of them were men. One was Simon Cho, whom Ally had met in the park on their first day in Hidden Springs. The second was Peter Winterly but I discounted him at once: he and Adele are so sweetly romantic whenever I see them together that there was no way I was going to let Ally break them up. That left Christoff Colby, someone I’d not really noticed before. On the Saturday, Billy invited him over. He reset. Three times. Then he arrived but said he’d have to leave before he’d even walked through the gate. The next time, I sent Ally out to the street to waylay him as soon as he got out of the car.
A paparazzo was lurking hopefully. Really, I’d have thought ‘Alison Flower seen talking to a man’ was very, very old news by now.
Ally chatted with Christoff, discovered that he worked in business (obviously Billy doesn’t talk about his colleagues at home) and asked his star sign. She also discovered that he too was married. And then I spotted the kelp-related conversational options. After Jon, I really didn’t want another merchild. And so Christoff went home yet again.
Simon it was, then. Billy invited him round and, as soon as he arrived, he voluntarily walked over to the garden to chat to Ally. A promising start.
Since it was the weekend, keeping the rest of the family out of the way might be a little tricky. I made sure they were all busy, then told Ally to invite Simon into the house. They were just moving on from friendly to romantic interactions when Billy appeared in the hall. Oh dear
.
But it was fine. He walked straight past them, unconcerned. He even seemed amused by Ally’s latest choice of lover.
Maybe he was pleased that she’d picked someone with good taste in hats. Then he went upstairs to chat to Bluebell, leaving Simon looking slightly disconcerted.
Ally went back to her interrupted flirting. She’d just got as far as the first kiss when I spotted Billy coming downstairs again
.
Surely there would be trouble this time. Chatting was one thing; kissing was quite another.
Wow! He really is tolerant.
As Ally led Simon into the bedroom…
…Billy went off to discuss art with Lotus.
Oh! Is this why Billy was amused?
Was Simon’s inability to negotiate the sock gap the subject of office gossip?
As usual, pregnant Ally found Billy completely irresistible…
…and he always managed to take his socks off at the right moment.
After a quiet couple of days, the Flowers had a very busy evening. First, Ally went into labour. Then, as soon as she and Billy had left for the hospital, Tiger Lily aged up to toddler.
Herb Robert entered the world a couple of hours later.
His father was not in attendance – maybe he was still trying to explain his temporary aberration to Alisha. (Not to mention their relationship changes: from husband and wife to best friends and then to not-married partners in the space of a few hours – I sometimes wish the relationship transmogrifier had more settings.)
Immediately afterwards, Lotus had her young adult birthday.
Her school collection was the most impressive yet, mostly because she went on so many field trips.
Her place in the household didn’t stay vacant for long. Early the following morning, Zinnia retrieved one of Sage’s potions from the storage chest.
Unlike Oleander, Dandelion was keen to try it.
He and Zinnia were already BFFs. Now they realised that they were madly attracted to each other.
It was probably as well that the school bus arrived just then: despite their relaxed lifestyle, I’m not sure her parents would have approved of Zinnia standing around in her bedroom, wearing only her undies and snogging a boy they’d never seen before.
The Education Authority hadn’t yet caught up with Dan’s existence and so he had the day off school. He and Zinnia are really well suited – he’s also a bot fan (and has really nice traits in general, unlike a lot of IFs). He spent most of the day in unconvincing robot form, learning to cook…
…playing games and getting to know those members of the family who weren’t at school.
He and Zinnia were going to be such a sweet couple at Prom.
Or not – I suddenly noticed that Dan’s age bar was full. Once Zinnia was home from school, they made the most of the very short time they did have together: by evening, they were going steady.
Then Dandelion grew up.
Weirdly, his eyebrows as a young adult are blond. They were purple, like his hair, while he was still a teen. I thought of dyeing them to match but eventually settled for disguising them with glasses.
He said a restrained goodbye to the girlfriend he was now too old to kiss, got out his phone and called the estate agent…
…while Zinnia finished her homework. The sooner she was on the honour roll, the better.
