She blinked, then didn’t do anything else but sit there, staring at the two people standing staring back at her from the doorway.
Her hair was long, sun-bleached to a near whiteness, the ends so in need of professional attention that they stuck out like straw from a tied bale. And her face was tanned to the point that it had taken on the properties of old leather. She was wearing jeans, jeans so old and tatty that a tramp would turn his nose up at them, and her yellow-coloured sweatshirt looked as if it had been slept in for days.
He looked no better. His straggly red hair and beard almost obliterated his face. His clothes—an exact match to hers—hung on a body that was so tall and thin, it looked as though the slightest puff of wind would knock it over. But that was a fallacy, because that body was built of high-tensile wire, and so full of restless energy that even while he stood there so very still his eyes were alive. Green—bright green—with shock, surprise and a lot of consternation.
Her parents, Roberta thought wryly. In their fifties, yet they looked like a pair of hippy teenagers who had just hitch-hiked back from some wild rock concert. And the consternation that they were too shocked to hide was just how teenagers would feel if they walked in to find a stern parent waiting to give them a dressing-down.
They never had known how to respond to her—this child they had farmed out as much as they possibly could, and sent away to boarding-school as soon as they possibly could. This child who, because of her unusual upbringing, had grown into a coolly beautiful, very sophisticated young woman who was so many light-years away from what they were themselves that she was a stranger to them. A phenomenon they did not understand.
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‘Bobby!’ her father gasped, being the first to find his voice. ‘What are you doing here?’
Bobby. Roberta smiled and wryly shook her head. Bobby! He’d called her that when she was one year old. Called her that when she was ten. Still called her that when she was fifteen and had begged him not to, because it sounded so boyish to a girl who so desperately wanted to be a woman.
He had called her that only a couple of weeks ago, when she’d rung up in the vague hope of catching them between assignments. ‘Hi, Bobby, what do you want?’ he’d asked, making her feel as though she only called them up when she wanted something—which was grossly untrue.
‘To see you both, with a bit of luck,’ she’d therefore thrown back drily, putting him immediately on the defensive.
‘But we’re off to Africa tomorrow,’ he’d complained. ‘Barely got time to turn around. Will it wait until we get back?’
Would it wait. Not would she wait. She’d felt like a dog left at the local kennels—a fluffy white West Highland called Bobby, left to pine for the return of its owners. Had always felt a bit like that.
What was it with these two that they could never seem to see her as anything more important to them than a little pet dog? In fact she had a horrible idea that they would love a pet dog more!
Would know how to love a dog more.
God, if she couldn’t see that she had her father’s green eyes and her mother’s blonde hair, she would have wondered long ago if the hospital had mixed two babies up on the day she was born! Hell! Maybe there was a blonde-haired green-eyed twenty-five-year-old hippy running about somewhere, with a camera dangling around her neck and an unquenchable urge to study anything on four legs!
She began to laugh, the idea suddenly striking her as very funny, because it brought on another scenario, where she could see two very conservative people struggling to bring up their wayward daughter who found more pleasure in studying the mating habits of mice than wearing pretty dresses and learning to dance and play the piano.
A cuckoo in their nest.
Was she a cuckoo in the nest?
Through eyes swimming with laughter she looked at them, saw her mother’s leathery face and her father’s fuzzy red one. Then she thought about those other two fictitious parents she had just conjured up—staunch, conservative, upright members of the community.
And suddenly she wasn’t laughing. She was crying. Sobbing as though her heart would break because, whatever these two outrageous people were to her, she loved them! She loved them so very much that it didn’t matter who they were or what they were—or even if they were!
She loved them, and she wished she knew how to tell them that, because she needed their support right now. Needed to know that they loved her.
Her tears had further surprised them; she could feel that in the sudden increase in tension in the room. She rarely cried, couldn’t remember the last time she had broken down in front of them. But now she had started she couldn’t seem to stop, and as her sobbing went on and on from somewhere near by she heard the sound of shuffling feet, of plastic knocking against metal, and voices gasping in alarm. Then an arm came warmly around her shoulders, and someone else was grabbing at her hands.
Parents. One to hug her and feel secure with, and one to tell all her wretched problems to.
A bit of what Lulu Maclaine had a lot of.
‘Roberta, sweetheart—whatever is the matter?’ her mother murmured concernedly.
That seemed to do it—for the first time in her life her mother was sounding genuinely concerned for her, and it opened more floodgates, from where words came flowing out. She could barely believe she was doing it! But she told them everything.
She told them about Mac and her love for him, about his family and his love for them. She told them about Lulu’s party and what came after. She told them about Zurich and what came after that. She even told them about themselves, and what she thought of them. And it was only when the tears and the words had been drained right out of her that she realised with dawning embarrassment that they had listened to it all without offering a single word themselves.
‘I came down here to be alone—to think,’ she heard herself explain defensively, her heart heavy because she knew they didn’t know what to say to her. ‘I—I didn’t expect you to be here.’
‘Why should you?’ her mother said with grim irony. ‘We’ve never been here for you before, so why should you expect it of us now?’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Roberta said uncomfortably. ‘I meant—’