Motherlove by Thorne Moore Page B

lovely.’ Another twitch. Roz’s old East-End accent, usually smoothed to the faintest nasal twang, reasserted itself. ‘A bit posh, innit?’
    Kelly laughed. ‘Mum, it’s Rog and Mandy. I don’t suppose they’ve grown horns or anything.’
    Roz smiled, nervously. She had lived comfortably with Roger and Mandy Padstow when they had been tepee-dwelling activists, dividing their commitments between Gaia, Wicca, road planning, and the ever-niggling internal politics of the commune, but here in Dorset she felt inadequate, all her old insecurities bubbling up again.
    Kelly had no such qualms. People were people to her, wherever they lived, however they dressed or spoke. To her, Roger and Mandy would always be the couple with whom she grew up, models of easy confidence and kindly authority, with quirks that she could handle.
    There had, of course, been no official leader in the commune, but Roger and Mandy had been the most articulate and rational of them all, the ones best at dealing with authority, perhaps because, whatever their radical views, they preserved the social confidence of their educated middle-class origins.
    Raised in the commune, Kelly had no instinctive yearning for nuclear family structures. She had no grandparents, but she did have Roger and Mandy, and she imagined that grandparents must fulfil a similar role; wise people who could advise and support, and take over in crises. Except that grandparents would be much older. The Padstows’ two children had been Kelly’s commune siblings. It had probably been the children, Kelly thought, lacking any cynicism, that had led them to quit the commune a couple of years after she and Roz had moved out with Luke Sheldon. Now Mandy wrote books on life/work/health balance and Roger ran an IT company and together they farmed (organically) this estate in Dorset and produced (or their workforce produced) expensive brands of yoghurt and wild boar pâté.
    They’d always kept in touch with Roz and Kelly. Not so much with others from the commune, who saw the Padstows as traitors to the cause – whatever it was. Roz had always been too needy for their approval to question the changes, but she did feel intimidated by their worldly success. Kelly was neither intimidated nor impressed, nor resentful. The Padstows were friends, in the commune or here in their six-bedroom semi-mansion in Hardy country, where their activism had transmogrified into buying the Guardian and donating to Oxfam.
    Kelly steered the battered Astra down the drive, listening to the pop and rattle of the semi-detached exhaust as they rolled into the broad gravel between the house proper and the converted barns. She parked up between a Range Rover and a sleek black saloon with tinted glass. Roz’s fingers were twitching at her skirt again, but Kelly was unfazed. She jumped out of the Astra, hoisting up the door to make it shut, just as Mandy and Roger appeared on the steps.
    â€˜Hiya!’ Kelly waved happily, then hopped round to the passenger door to release her mother. ‘Don’t try to open it, Mum. I need to do it from this side.’
    â€˜Here, let me help.’ Roger eased the door open with her. He crouched on the gravel, looking in at Roz. ‘How’s my dreamer?’
    â€˜Roger! It’s really great to see you,’ Roz said. The bone-rattling journey from Pembrokeshire had not been pleasant for her, but Kelly could see her relax at the sight of the man she had always trusted.
    â€˜Let’s get you out then.’ He smiled at Roz, still smiling as he looked up at Kelly, though she could see the alarm in his eyes. Roz was looking a thousand times better than she had a couple of months ago, but a hundred times worse than she had looked the last time Roger had seen her, a couple of years earlier.
    â€˜Kelly.’ Mandy had joined them and hugged her, before reaching out to hug Roz too as she emerged from the car. ‘Roz.