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THE next week was a busy one. Joel had started a new project, and she became bogged down in laborious investigative work. Mac didn’t ring, but then she hadn’t expected him to. What had to be said between them was too important to be touched upon via a telephone connection, so it was better to have no contact at all.
So she lost herself in work and, to her surprise, managed to keep Mac right out of her thoughts for most of the time. Until Friday afternoon, that was, when she walked unannounced into Joel’s office, needing to see him about something, only to come to a dead stop when she saw that Lulu was sitting there with him.
‘Oh,’ she said, momentarily stumped for once, ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ and went to go away again.
Only Lulu stopped her, her lovely face alight with malicious derision. ‘If it isn’t Daddy’s lady-friend,’ she drawled. ‘Or should I say ex-lady-friend?’
‘Lulu!’ Joel’s sharp reprimand by no means compared with the sudden burn that began in the pit of Roberta’s stomach.
Yet she still managed to hang on to her self-control, her voice, when she spoke, belying the storm of prickly anger clambering right across the surface of her skin. And, other than sending Lulu a withering look, she fixed her attention exclusively on Joel.
‘I’ll come back later, Joel, when you’re not busy.’
‘No—Roberta, wait.’ Joel came to his feet, his expression tight with anger as he stayed her with a gesturing hand. ‘You deserve an apology from this ill-mannered young lady, and she is going to give it to you—aren’t you, Lulu?’ he prompted threateningly.
Lulu’s beautiful lavender-blue eyes opened wide in utter contempt. ‘No, I’m not,’ she refused. ‘And really, Uncle Joel,’ she murmured deridingly, ‘I don’t know how you can keep her working here with you now that Daddy has seen fit to throw her out!’
‘That’s enough!’ Joel rasped while Roberta turned to leave, counting very slowly to ten to stop herself from retaliating. ‘How dare you speak to Roberta like that?’ he demanded. ‘How dare you?’
‘She dares,’ Roberta heard herself say grimly, ‘because she has been allowed to believe she can dare.’ Turning, she faced the room again, her gaze as hard as tightly packed ice. ‘But I do think it’s time that someone put you right on a few pertinent points, Miss Maclaine,’ she continued coldly. ‘The main one being that your father did not throw me out of his life and never has!’
‘Liar,’ Lulu jeered. ‘I was there, remember? At the hospital when Mummy was ill? I heard him tell you to get out!’
‘What you heard,’ Roberta amended, ‘was your father wanting to remove me from the shame his daughter made him feel for her!’ And she knew as she said it—knew that that was exactly what Mac had been doing. He hadn’t been telling her to get out because he believed Lulu’s lies, but because he couldn’t stand having her listen to them!
Lulu jumped to her feet, that wildness back in her eyes. ‘He hates you!’ she hissed out malevolently. ‘He told me so!’
‘Sit down,’ Roberta commanded quietly. ‘Sit down!’ she repeated forcefully, putting a hand on the younger girl’s shoulder to push her down when she did not respond to the order.
‘Roberta—’ Joel murmured warningly.
‘Stay out of this, Joel,’ she clipped, not taking her eyes off the younger woman. ‘This is between Lulu and me. I’ve put up with the insults from her vile tongue long enough. But, more than that, I’ve finished with the lies. Finished with them—do you hear, Lulu?’ she demanded. ‘And for once in your spoiled life you’re going to listen for a change, listen to me telling you a few choice but bitter home-truths.’
‘I don’t have to sit here and listen to a single word you have to say,’ Lulu countered shakily, beginning to look a little wary of this new, coldly furious Roberta she had never seen before.
‘You do,’ Roberta assured her. ‘Because I am going to make sure you do. Your father has never so much as tried to throw me out of his life,’ she stated. ‘But,’ she went on, ‘I’ve walked out on your father because I could not stand the vileness of his bigoted family for a minute longer!’
‘You’re the liar!’ Lulu said again. ‘He threw you out! He always throws them out, because I make sure he...’
Joel’s horrified gasp brought that little truth to an abrupt end. But it came too late to save Lulu and she knew it, which was why her face went red, her eyes flashing bright blue with guilt.
‘Which makes you—what, exactly?’ Roberta asked, compounding on the error with quiet contempt in her voice. ‘Mean, Lulu. It makes you a mean, spoiled, utterly selfish child.’
‘I hate you!’ Lulu retaliated, pushing her angry face up close to Roberta’s. ‘All my family hates you! You wanted to split my parents up and—’
‘Split them up?’ Joel choked in disbelief. ‘Are you crazy, Lulu? They’ve been apart for over eight years!’
‘What I can’t understand,’ Roberta went on, as if the other two had not spoken, ‘is how anyone who has had such an amount of tender, loving care lavished on them can end up as bitter and twisted as you. But, having become what you are, Lucinda—’ she gave her her full name simply because she knew Lulu hated it, and in the quiet part of her burning brain recognised that that was her own form of maliciousness coming out ‘—I think it’s high time you took a good look at the finished product. You are, without doubt,’ she told her, ‘the most selfish-minded person it has ever been my misfortune to meet. You are so self-motivated that you don’t even care how miserable you make those around you feel, so long as they make sure that you, above all, feel loved!’
‘That’s not true!’ Lulu choked. ‘I’m not—’
‘Selfish?’ Roberta prompted. ‘In the way you constantly make your father prove his love for you by forcing him to pretend he has no private life beyond the tight family group? Mean—in the way you won’t let him find happiness his own way, without making him feel cruel and guilty? Or malicious—in the way you’ve treated me and the others before me that you’re so proud of getting rid of?’
‘Roberta...’ Joel put in pleadingly when he saw his niece’s face turn greyer with each thrust.
‘And finally, Lulu,’ she said harshly, ‘jealous—of anything or anyone who dares threaten what you see as your power over him. And all for what?’ she asked as she straightened away, her eyes pale with contempt. ‘To punish a man who, because he loves you from the bottom of his heart, put up with a marriage that was sour even before it began for ten wretched years, before he found he couldn’t stand the misery of it any more and got out. But that doesn’t interest you, does it?’ she scoffed. ‘Because to take into consideration your father’s feelings would mean that you would have to put your own aside, and you’re just too mean to try.’
‘Y-you’re only saying all this to me because you’re peeved that he’ll never marry you,’ Lulu said shakily, coming unsteadily to her feet.
