Slave to Love

So maybe it wasn’t surprising that, when it had come to choosing her own career, she’d gone for something about as far away from scholarly or artistic as she could get. She’d had enough of introvert people, and wanted to become a member of the real world. Where people interacted with each other on all levels. Where life was experienced at first hand—not through the second-hand media of books or an artist’s palette or the lens of a camera. So she’d chosen business studies and joined the biggest company she could find once she’d graduated. Yet...

She frowned to herself. There had to be more of her family in her than she’d ever really considered before. Because, until Mac, and despite all the opportunities placed her way to be different, she had held herself aloof from most of them—treading warily instead of jumping into life with both feet as she had been so determined to do. Because restraint bred restraint—on an emotional level anyway, she acknowledged.

It had taken Mac and his dynamic personality to show her how to overthrow that restraint. And, even then, she had only ever done it for him.

The waiting-room door flew open. Roberta glanced up to find Lulu standing there, looking beautifully tragic with her jet-black hair tumbling in disarray about her slender shoulders. But it was her lovely blue eyes that held Roberta’s attention. They had gone slightly wild with shock.

‘Lulu!’ Roberta gasped out in alarm. ‘What’s happened?’

‘She’s just come out of surgery! She looked awful! Tubes and bottles hanging all over the place! Daddy sent me in here while he finds out what he can. But...’ She burst into tears.

‘Oh, Lulu!’ Roberta cried softly, jumping to her feet to take the poor girl in her arms.

It was a mark of just how badly Lulu was affected that she let Roberta hold her. She was trembling violently, the shock of seeing her mother like that having knocked her for six.

‘Did they say why it had taken them so long?’ she asked gently.

The silken dark head nodded against her shoulder. ‘An ovarian cyst, wh-whatever that is,’ she choked. ‘It b-burst, and the p-poison w-went everywhere!’ On another sob, the child shuddered at the horror of it. ‘Th-they say she must have been feeling unwell for ages f-for it to get that bad. But she never so much as hinted at it! That’s all your fault!’

Suddenly her head snapped up, and she gave Roberta a violent push, sending her staggering backwards while her blue eyes followed her with murder in them again.

‘You!’ she sliced at Roberta, before she’d even grasped hold of the first accusation. ‘Turning up at my birthday party and flaunting your affair with Daddy!’

Flaunting! Roberta stared at her in stunned disbelief. ‘Lulu,’ she murmured soothingly, ‘I would never—’

‘You did—you did!’ Lulu all but shrieked, not allowing Roberta to finish. ‘You made Mummy so miserable that she didn’t tell anyone she was feeling ill! Then y-you stalked out when Daddy wouldn’t play up to you, and he s-snapped at everyone all weekend—including Mummy! He didn’t even give her a lift back to London as he was supposed to do because he was too eager to get back to you!’ The enmity in her eyes almost sliced Roberta in two. ‘Th-then, when she did try to tell him she was ill, he’d gone chasing off to Zurich after you! I hate you!’ she cried. ‘How can you live with yourself, coming between a man and his wife as you do?’

White-faced and trembling at the onslaught, Roberta blinked in astonishment at the last accusation. ‘But your parents are no longer man and wife,’ she said gently.

‘Maybe not now,’ Lulu conceded. ‘But they will be again soon, if only you would go away!’

Roberta shook her head. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ she said, accepting that shock was making the girl hysterical, even while she also accepted that the hatred coming from Lulu was real.

‘Don’t I?’ Staring at her through hot, glinting eyes, Lulu’s mouth turned down into an ugly sneer. ‘They still sleep together, you know,’ she announced. ‘Every time Daddy comes to the house he goes to bed with Mummy.’

No. Roberta was not going to believe that. And neither was she going to argue with someone who was so obviously out of control. But the idea that Lulu could actually conjure up such an intimate scenario made her feel slightly sick, and she lowered her head so that Lulu wouldn’t see her reaction on her face.

But she did see it, and completely misinterpreted it. ‘Appals you, does it?’ she taunted. ‘The idea of my father going from your bed to hers? Well, what do you think it does to her? Why do you think she’s always calling him up at that little love-nest he has set up for you—and why do you think he always comes running back to her? Because they still love each other, that’s why,’ she answered her own question. ‘And one day they will get married again, whether you’re still on the scene or not!’

‘I think that’s enough,’ Roberta said quietly, lifting her white face to look coldly at the other girl. ‘I accept that you’re upset, and I accept that you’re in shock. But if your father heard you talking like this he would be the appalled one.’

Lulu’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think I’m lying,’ she said. ‘But I’m not. How can you stay with a man like that?’

‘I know you’re lying,’ Roberta corrected. ‘I know your father has too much respect both for me and your mother to treat us as disgracefully as that. Don’t you think,’ she then suggested quietly, ‘that you would be better putting all your energy into praying that your mother gets well, instead of using it up hating me?’

The younger girl blanched, the remark hitting home. But it didn’t alter the depth of antipathy she was feeling towards Roberta. ‘I’ll get rid of you, out of our lives, if it’s the very last thing I do!’ she vowed.

Just then the door behind her opened and Mac walked in. On another flash of dark hostility, Lulu spun to face him, then threw herself, sobbing, into his arms. ‘Oh, Daddy!’ she sobbed. ‘She’s been saying the most horrible things to me! She says she hopes Mummy dies, and that when you marry her she’ll make sure I never see you again!’

It was the raging of a deranged mind, and Roberta looked sadly at Mac, expecting him to acknowledge it, if only in a look. But as the moment stretched, with only Lulu’s wretched sobbing to break the si

lence, an ice-cold sense of dread began to take her over.

No, she told herself with growing dismay. He couldn’t possibly believe what Lulu had said.

‘Send her away, Daddy!’ Lulu sobbed. ‘She hates me. Please send her away!’

Mac looked at Roberta over the top of Lulu’s head. Tight-lipped and hard-eyed, he said, ‘You’d better go.’