A Model Mother

Chapter 4

When the ‘phone rang Rose hesitated. Ever since Lloyd’s photo had appeared in Pink! She had dreaded picking it up and hearing Miles or his lawyer or another reporter. She really resented the fact that she was allowing the situation to get to her. But suddenly she thought that if she didn’t like who was on the other end she could just hang up and with a spurt of courage she grabbed the receiver from its stand and mustered a “Hello” in as humourless and assertive a voice as she could manage.A familiar female voice that she couldn’t quite place, responded hesitantly.

“Hello, is that Rose?”

Rose racked her brains trying to put a name to the voice, but in vain, and with great reluctance assented that it was she.

“Rose, this is Helen. Miles’s Mother.”

There was a pause, as if Helen knew that Rose would need a few seconds to absorb who it was, which indeed she did. She took a sharp breath and felt her heart start to thud; she wondered if this was the start of the thin end, the first throw of the dice in trying to get Lloyd from her. She tried to steady herself; after all, she had liked Helen, had trusted her; but then she had trusted Miles too.

As her mind somersaulted through the endless speculations as to Helen’s motives for calling her, Helen herself continued to talk. Rose remembered now the woman’s calm and reassuring voice and how much she had been drawn to her down to earth common sense and sensitivity.

“I’m really sorry to call out of the blue but I don’t have an email address for you and I thought that if I wrote to you that I might….” She paused again,”…well that I might lose the courage to call you at all. I saw the picture of Lloyd in Pink! and realised at once that he…….that he’s my grandson.”

Rose heard a tiny falter in Helen’s voice and realised how hard she was finding it to call. Immediately she relaxed; she knew now that Helen had called for personal reasons, unrelated to Miles. This was a call from a woman who was desperate to see her grandson.Rose interrupted.

“Helen, you don’t need to apologise, I’m so glad you found the courage to call me. I often think of the times we spent together last year, I enjoyed your company.”

This time there was a much longer pause and Rose realised that Helen was struggling to keep her composure. In danger of losing her own, she tried to move the conversation on.

“Does Miles know you are calling me?”

“No, he doesn’t. I think he would probably be very angry with me if he found out. Look, Rose, I don’t know what happened between you and Miles, Miles has never, ever spoken of it and I’m not interested into prying into what happened. But I would so love to meet Lloyd and see you again. I am prepared to meet you anywhere you like, with any conditions attached, but if you can’t do it then I guess I will sort of understand.”

Helen’s voice had tailed off at the end of this speech, very forlornly and Rose felt her heart tug at her. She imagined how she would feel in Helen’s place and she made a quick decision.

“Helen, I’m happy for you and LLoyd to meet. It would be better for Lloyd if you came here so that he feels most comfortable and at ease. But I’m worried that you may be spotted coming in to the flat by some reporter or photographer, so we may have to think of a way of getting you in incognito. Also, look, this isn’t easy to say and I trust you completely to do what’s best for Lloyd, but I really would prefer that nobody else knows about you visiting, including Miles.”

Perked up by the thought of seeing Lloyd, and this with the blessing of Rose, Helen promised immediately that the visits would be confidential to themselves, even though at the back of her mind she knew that if Miles found out there would be one heck of a row between them. The pull of seeing her grandson was just too strong to resist and  she started to think about how she could slip into the flat without being seen.