‘You know, Robert,’ she told him over the phone when they summoned up the courage to take their relationship to the next level, ‘I think if you’re going to keep calling me mum, you should probably come pay me a visit so I can at least earn the title.’
‘Yeah that’d be great,’ he said without hesitation and she could hear it in his voice that he wasn’t just saying it to make her feel better.
‘You could stay for the weekend, how about that?’
She couldn’t wait. Rob couldn’t either. The night before the long train journey cross country, he left a text message on her phone. Marie herself couldn’t sleep, so it became a short conversation of sorts.
‘I’m excited about tomorrow. I can’t wait to take this beautiful lady in my arms,’ he said and decorated the message in a series of X’s and O’s.
‘This old girl,’ Marie replied, ‘is looking forward to that, and big fat kisses for you,’ also festooned with symbols of affection.
‘Big fat kisses for everyone LOL snog my face off by all means. I’m so happy I found you!’
She thought nothing of it. So you don’t invite your mother to snog your face off, but Marie wasn’t in that frame of mind. She hadn’t actually been his mother since day one and she didn’t see the harm. If Rob was as charming a gentleman in reality as he was online and over the phone, she could at least rest in the knowledge that the most regrettable decision of her life bore sweeter fruit than the past two decades.
Something was changing inside of her and she was fine with it. This young man who called her mum (she still called him baby) was too good to be hers and yet he wanted to be. They were more than blood, they spoke like old friends and yet they set the house on fire like the best of new…
Acquaintances-that was too formal.
Companions-that was too lived in.
Family didn’t fit the bill, but there was a closeness she couldn’t explain in words.
God, I do love him, she thought with a contented smile, and she told him so before bidding him goodnight. And as she rolled over in her bed, snuggling deep into the pillow with a pleasant sigh, one more message came through.
‘Yes to snogs!’
Oddly she didn’t see the harm in knowing, off the cuff, that she would willingly let him. She wanted him to, that beautiful boy.
4
Friday evening she was waiting for him outside the train station. At first her heart stopped. Her long lost love, the son that couldn’t be, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the little lady’s dazzling eyes and red hair, which appeared aflame with the late summer sun.
All six foot of him, with his shorn black hair and subtle five o’clock shadow, rugged and beautiful-even when she couldn’t control her widening smile, Marie was frozen to the spot.
‘Hey,’ she said shyly as he approached on confident feet. Without stopping he picked her up and spun her around, planting a kiss just between the corner of her lips and her cheek. She yelped, laughing all the while and waited to be set down before getting a real eyeful of her long lost boy.
‘You look beautiful.’
‘Look who’s talking,’ he laughed. They gazed into each other’s eyes for some time before Rob took the initiative further. ‘So what do I call you, my mum away from mum?’