Thank you for all reviews, chapters might take a little longer now while I get thinks sorted in my head and everything (plus I have boring schoolwork to do, grr! At least I have the Cure to listen to.. well anyway, on with the story)
Tara was frozen from shock. Howard hovered awkwardly over the sofa, half sitting, half standing, while Naboo moved to Tara's side and took her hand. Vince was sat deliberately facing away from the woman.
Tara shook her head a little. 'You're… no. No. You can't be.'
She then looked at Vince. He nodded curtly, and spoke ina low voice, trying to keep his temper at the unexpected intrusion under control. 'S'true.'
She gripped Naboo's hand tightly. 'What are you doing here?'
'Well, I… I came to see Vince, but… you're here…I never thought… I didn't even know where to look for you.'
As Howard wondered whether that many ellipses in one sentence could be grammatically correct, Vince jumped up. 'So what? We don't wanna see ya alright?! We've been fine, twenty one years, we've got along just fine without you! We don't want you here, so get out!'
He stood glaring at her. Tara, ignoring him, asked her mother why she wanted to find Vince.
'I always wanted to come back, to find you, both of you. The reason its taken so long is that I didn't want to drag my life, all the danger, into yours and mess things up for you. I thought you'd have a better life without me. And now… now things are better. And I wanted to find both of you, but I couldn't find you anywhere. You live here with Vince?'
'I'm visiting. I live in a van.' Her mother raised her eyebrows. 'Its better than it sounds.'
Vince decided that he'd had enough, that Tara could see their mother if she wanted to, but he certainly didn't. 'I'm off.' He said, grabbing a jacket from the hook and running downstairs.
'Vince, I-' started his mother, but she was cut off as the front door slammed.
'Leave him' said Howard and Tara together. 'He just needs some time to cool off.'
They stood awkwardly for a moment, none sure of what to say until Tara spoke again. 'Um, this is Howard, Bollo and Naboo.' She nodded to each of them in turn. 'This is.. um….' She looked down in disbelief. 'You know what, I don't even know… Vince always just called you mum and I don't even know your name… I'm sorry, I gotta...'
She hurried into Naboo's room, followed by the shaman after he'd instructed their visitor to stay in the flat.
Tara lay on her back on the bed, looking as though someone had thrown about five conflicting emotions into a blender, turned it on and thrown the result at her face. He sat next to her on the bed, lifting her head into his lap and stroking her hair as they talked.
'God, that just…. It came out of nowhere, y'know? I'm just not ready for that, especially not now. I'd hoped that this week would be special, just about me and you, and now she's turned up, its gonna ruin things. And she should've known that, y'know? Well ok, perhaps not known, but she should've been aware that we were together, and that this weekend was supposed to be special, she should've recognised me first of all, and she should've… been my mum.' She finished sadly, looking down.
Naboo reached for her hand and kissed it. 'This week can still be special,' he assured her. 'And I know she's been away for all this time and that must've been hard, but she's here now, and she can still be your mum if you let her. You can still have all that 'normal life' stuff if you want it.'
'Normal life? I have a boyfriend whose a shaman and keeps a DJing gorilla as a familiar, a brother whose practically a woman and has a deep sea transsexual merman in love with his best friend. But I wouldn't change a thing. C'ept maybe making my arse a little better.' She finished thoughtfully.
'You've gotta stop saying that, you have a great arse.'
'You have to say that, you're my boyfriend.'
'Not all boyfriends would say that' he reasoned.
'Like who?'
He scrunched up his face in the way she loved so much. 'Hitler?'
'I suppose. He wouldn't like an arse unless it had blonde hair and blue eyes. Actually, a blonde arse with blue eyes would actually be… quite weird.'
He laughed a little with her, then slid down to lie next to her, gazing up at the ceiling in thought.
'What's up?'
'I was thinking about 'boyfriend''
'You have a boyfriend?' She gasped in mock horror.
He smirked. 'His names Trevor and he lives in Wales breeding antelope, but that's not important. I dunno, its just, 'boyfriend' sounds so…'
'High school?' she offered
'Well, yeah.'
'I know, I thought we're a bit too old to be boyfriend and girlfriend as well, you especially, but what else can we say? 'Partner' is more our age I suppose, but its always sounded kinda gay to me, don't you think? Like 'oh this is Jackie and her partner Karen'…'
'Hmm. Well, I'm me and you're you, and that's all that really matters.' He said.
'Well put sir.' She said pompously, and kissed him. 'I need to go' she said, sitting up a little.
'What? Why?'
'Because. That's what I do if things get too much, and I need to clear my head, I go out in the van. Running away when there's a problem. And when I get back, the problems usually gone.' She stayed on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
'So why aren't you going?'
'Because. I always sorta accepted it about her, y'know, that it was just me and Vince, and that was usually fine. But now and again, I would wonder about her, and it's the part of me that wondered that's keeping me here.'
'If you need to go and sort your head out, you should.'
She reluctantly agreed with him, knowing that even though she did still partly want to talk to her mother, she was feeling so confused at the moment that it probably wouldn't help anything.
As soon as Tara got inside the van though, she realised that before she went anywhere, she needed to talk to Vince. Glad that he took his mobile phone everywhere with him, she rang him to find out where he was. Seven minutes later, she found him sat on a nearby park bench, looking unhappy. She hated seeing Vince unhappy, because he was usually so lively and cheerful that if he was ever down, it meant that something had really gotten to him.
'Hey.' She said, sitting next to him on the bench, unsure of what to say next. He spoke first, however.
'Is she still there?'
'Yeah. She was when I left anyway.' He didn't reply. 'You feeling as torn as I am?'
He looked at her, blue eyes peering out from beneath a black fringe.
She explained. 'I mean, you're right, she turns up out of nowhere after twenty one years and expects to just pick up from where she left off, but… on the other hand, she is our mum. Haven't you wondered.. I mean, the way you talked about her in Paris….'
'That was looking back, and… its what you wanted to hear, right?'
'So it wasn't true?'
'No, it was, but that was only some of the time. Seeing her again like that just brought back all the bad stuff.'
'What bad stuff?'
He sighed. 'When she left us that night, it- it wasn't the first time. She used to do it quite a lot, get us- well, it was mostly before you were born so it was just me, but.. we'd get up in the middle of the night, run out and I'd have to stay somewhere while she lead them, whoever they were, away. Sometimes we'd have to move town and everything. It didn't happen a lot, but it was often enough. She'd always come back though, except for that last time.'
Tara wiped a silent tear from her cheek. It wasn't from self-pity, but from sorrow for her brother. She'd avoided all of that mess, and had lead a happy childhood with Vince and Bryan, but he'd had to go through all that, for the first eight years of his life.
She knew that she had nothing to say that would make things better, so instead she shuffled closer to him and squeezed his hand. 'What are we gonna do about her?'
'Its like you said, innit? She's turned up out of nowhere, but she is our mum.'
'We're gonna give her a chance then?'
'I guess.'
They walked back to the flat to find that their mother, whose name was Vienne, had left the flat, leaving a message with Howard that she would be back tomorrow if that was ok.
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