Ruth seemed as excited and as nervous as a young girl, Bobbie reflected. The years seemed to have dropped away from her, giving Bobbie a sudden and illuminating awareness of how she must have looked when she and her grandfather had first met. She thought she could even see in Ruth’s animated expression a similarity to her own mother.
The passengers from the incoming flight were already starting to file through into the arrivals hall as Ruth rushed Bobbie towards the barrier, her grip on Bobbie’s hand as she tugged her along so tight that Bobbie knew exactly how tense and anxious she was.
Automatically Bobbie studied the travel-weary passengers and then her eyes widened in disbelieving shock as she recognised four of them. What were her parents, her grandfather and sister doing here? She turned instinctively to Ruth for an explanation but Ruth was in no fit st
ate to listen to her, never mind answer her, Bobbie recognised. Ruth’s whole concentration was fixed on the tall, grey-haired, broad-shouldered man outstripping the walking pace of the rest of his family. As he reached the barrier he held out his arms, exclaiming emotionally, ‘Ruth...my little Ruthie...’
‘Grant...’ Bobbie heard Ruth cry out with something suspiciously like a sob in her voice as she flung herself into Bobbie’s grandfather’s open arms.
Open-mouthed, Bobbie watched them embracing with all the fervour and lack of self-consciousness of two teenagers, holding one another, touching one another’s faces as if they each couldn’t quite believe the other was real, as they shared laughter and tears and low-voiced husky endearments, totally oblivious to family members and the curious and sentimentally sympathetic onlookers they were attracting.
As she watched them, Bobbie felt her own eyes smart with tears. This was how love should be. Not... She bit hard on her lip, reminding herself fiercely that Luke did not love her, while her grandfather...
‘Oh, Grant, you haven’t changed at all,’ she heard Ruth saying emotionally.
‘No, nor have you,’ Grant returned softly as he cupped Ruth’s face and studied each feature. ‘You still look exactly like the girl I remember....’
‘Oh, Grant,’ Ruth protested shakily. ‘I’m not that girl any longer. I’m—’
‘You’re the woman I love,’ Grant interrupted her firmly. ‘The woman I’ve always loved and always will love. The woman I’m too damned afraid to kiss properly here in public just in case I disgrace myself and embarrass her.’
‘Oh, Grant,’ Ruth breathed, her face suffused with colour.
‘Well, it’s the truth,’ Grant told her unashamedly. ‘It’s been a hell of a long time, Ruthie, and there’s never been anyone for me but you....’
‘I still can’t quite believe that this is really happening. That it’s not just a dream,’ Ruth told him tremulously. ‘When Olivia said that Bobbie’s grandfather was on the telephone and wanted to speak with me, I had no idea—’
‘You’ll never know how scared I was that you would just hang up on me,’ Grant interrupted her softly. ‘But once Sam had ’fessed up and told us what she and Bobbie were planning, I just knew we had to stop her and warn her.’
‘I recognised your voice straight. away,’ Ruth offered shyly, ‘but I still couldn’t believe...’
‘We’ve wasted so many years already. I don’t want to waste the ones that are left. I can’t afford to,’ Grant told her humorously. ‘I’m not a young man any more.’
‘You are to me,’ Ruth returned softly. She still couldn’t take it all in. The shock of being asked to speak with Bobbie’s grandfather and then discovering that he was Grant, her Grant—plus the other revelations that had followed that initial phone call—still hadn’t entirely faded. She might have stuck to her promise to Grant not to say a word to Bobbie about what had happened or the imminent arrival of her family all the way to the airport but that hadn’t stopped her from just aching to talk to Bobbie about him...about all of them, but most especially about Grant and, of course, about their child... her daughter, Bobbie and Samantha’s mother.
She couldn’t quite believe how wonderful Grant looked, tall and straight-backed, his hair silver. It was still thick and gleaming with health while his eyes were just as full as ever of warmth. And his smell...his touch...his kiss... She felt like a young girl again, only more so...because this time... Only, in reality, she wasn’t a young girl and there were other factors, other people, involved in their relationship now, especially...
She looked with nervous longing beyond Grant to the stunningly beautiful, still red-haired woman who stood surrounded by her husband and daughters and yet at the same time slightly aloof from them.
Ruth bit her lip.
They had spoken on the phone, exchanged tears and explanations, but even so...
‘Sarah Jane,” she called out gently and then a little uncertainly held out her arms.
‘Ruth...Mama...’
‘Oh, my darling girl,’ Ruth cried, closing her eyes on the tears burning them as she held her grown-up daughter in her arms, the daughter whom she had last held when she was only hours, days, old but who she could have sworn still had that same sweetly precious scent she had had as a baby...a scent Ruth knew she would have recognised anywhere out of a thousand, a hundred thousand, women.
And she had called her Mama. Not the American ‘Mom’ showing that that was how she thought of her or even that she had thought of her. Not that Ruth needed any confirmation of that, not after what Grant and Sarah Jane herself had told her in their transatlantic telephone conversations.
‘Oh, my darling, darling girl,’ Ruth whispered. ‘How could you ever think I didn’t want you...didn’t love you.’ She cupped Sarah Jane’s face and looked deep into her eyes, telling her emotionally, ‘There hasn’t been a day when I haven’t thought about you...or a night when I haven’t said a prayer for your happiness and well-being... or when I haven’t missed you and cried for you. Every birthday...every anniversary, I wondered and yearned to know you, thought about you and tried to send you a mental message of love. The only reason... the only reason I gave you up was because I genuinely believed that I was doing the best thing for you....’
Standing three feet away watching them, Bobbie felt her own eyes prick with tears. Her father, who was standing between her and Samantha, touched Bobbie lightly on the arm and said quietly, ‘Come on, let’s give them a few minutes together on their own and besides—’
‘Besides, I want to know what’s going on,’ Bobbie interrupted him plaintively. ‘Ruth wouldn’t tell me a thing.’
‘Your grandfather asked her not to,’ her father informed her, adding dryly, ‘I guess he thinks that between the two of you, you and Sam have done enough meddling and caused enough potential harm.’
Bobbie hung her head a little as she heard the note of censure in her father’s voice.
‘Okay,’ her father agreed. ‘Sam and I will fill you in on what’s been happening, but let me go grab a cup of coffee first.’
‘We’ll wait here,’ Samantha said as she fell into step beside her twin and they both followed their father across the concourse. ‘And you,’ she told Bobbie wickedly, ‘can explain to me just how you came to be incommunicado for so long.’
‘Later, Sam,’ Bobbie hissed, shooting her a warning look, her feelings, her love for Luke and his misconception about her, his lack of love for her, were things she could only discuss with her twin and even then...
She frowned as she realised that for the first time in her life she was experiencing something she didn’t want to automatically share with Sam. Something that was so personal that she... Now wasn’t the time to start thinking about Luke or last night....
‘I still haven’t a clue about what’s been happening,’ Bobbie reminded her father as he returned with the coffee.
‘Well, I think we’re all still in somewhat of a state of shock,’ her father began, ‘especially your mother and your grandfather. Seems like we got it wrong all along. Ruth never did want to give up her baby. She felt forced to do so because she knew that her father would never allow her to keep it—he didn’t even know she was pregnant. Her mother had guessed and sent her on an extended visit to some distant relatives on her own side of the family, which was why your mother was born in the North-East.’
‘Yes, and Grandmother never really stopped loving Grandpa at all,’ Samantha chimed in. ‘She was told by her father that he was already married with a young child, and because of that, she felt that she had to give him up. It was only after she had sent him away that she found out she was pregnant herself, but she says that even if she had known before, it wouldn’t have made any difference because in those days people just didn’t divorce the way they do now, and anyway, she could never have lived with herself knowing she had broken up another woman’s marriage and deprived her child of its father.’
‘Sam, let’s s
tart at the beginning,’ her father intervened, seeing Bobbie’s confusion.
‘That was the beginning,’ Samantha protested. ‘Mom’s beginning anyway. Oh...okay,’ she relented when she saw the look her father and sister were giving her, ‘have it your own way.’
‘When I realised that you were in Cheshire,’ her father told Bobbie, ‘I guessed what the pair of you were most likely up to. I know, of course, how you both feel about your mom, but I was concerned that you might act just a mite too hotheaded and get yourselves into a situation that... Well, in the end I decided I owed it to your grandfather to tell him what was going on.’
‘Yes, and then Grandpa came around making a big fuss and insisting that I give him your number in Cheshire.’ Samantha scowled. ‘I told him I couldn’t do that, but you know how he can be.’
Stephen Miller picked up the story again. ‘Your grandfather rang Queensmead, Sam having gotten the number from Olivia’s answering machine and when she had rung there to try to contact you, Olivia answered the phone and told him that you had already left. She asked him how your mom was and told him how anxious you were about her. It was while they were chatting that your grandfather heard her say, “Oh, Ruth...it’s Bobbie’s grandfather on the phone enquiring for her, but she’s already left.”’
‘Yes, and that was when Grandpa decided—’
‘Thank you, Sam, I’m the one telling the story now, remember?’ their father warned his daughter dryly as Samantha subsided back into her seat, having given Bobbie a speaking look.
‘Well, when your grandfather realised that Ruth was in the same room as Olivia, he decided to do what he says is one of the scariest things he’s ever done. He decided that rather than wait until he could get hold of you and talk some sense into you, now that he knew what Sam had in mind for you to do, he owed it to Ruth to at least warn her about what was likely to happen.’
‘I’d already decided not to confront her,’ Bobbie apprised her father uneasily, giving Samantha an apologetic look as she admitted, ‘I just couldn’t do it, Sam. I...I liked her too much and...and it just wouldn’t have felt right even though...’ She shook her head. ‘I just couldn’t do it.’