Lost Love (standard:romance, 2404 words)
Author: Ian Hobson	Added: Feb 17 2010	Views/Reads: 3437/2138	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A story inspired by a sixties pop song. I'll let you guess which one and who sang it. Some strong language.

Lost Love 

©2010 Ian Hobson 

I was late for my shift for the third time in as many weeks, and I'd
probably get fired; but it was a shit job anyway, so I didn't really 
care.  Before crossing the street I waited for a bus and a police car 
to pass, then weaved my way between the remaining vehicles.  A car horn 
sounded angrily but I ignored it. 

It was late afternoon, though still very warm, and the city thronged
with people, many of them tourists with bulging wallets and expensive 
looking cameras; the city's pickpockets would no doubt be reaping a 
rewarding harvest.  As I turned into Main Street, where most of the 
grandest hotels were situated, there was a commotion of some kind up 
ahead.  Were it not for heavy traffic I might have skirted left around 
the gathering that was blocking my way, but I knew well enough how to 
slip through a crowd.  Though soon I was part of that crowd, straining 
to see over the tallest of them and to identify the cause of the 
obvious excitement. 

'Here she comes!'  At this impromptu announcement, the crowd surged
forward but was held in check by two lines of blazer-wearing hotel 
heavies.  A gleaming limousine had pulled up opposite the hotel 
entrance and one of the blazers was hurrying to open the rear door as 
cameras clicked and whirred, some of them held by paparazzi. 

'Who is she?' I asked one of the onlookers. 

'Madeline Dumont.  She's in the new Giorgio Caprioli film, and big in
Hollywood too.'  The man pushed a little closer to the front of the 
mass of adoring fans, and I slipped into the space he had vacated.  
Madeline Dumont: I vaguely recognised the name, but I had never been a 
movie-goer. 

A pair of long, bronzed legs, feet and high heels, swung out over the
paving, followed by an immaculately dressed and slender figure, topped 
with an impossibly large hat that shaded the face of its owner.  As the 
female stood waiting, a middle-aged man in an expensive-looking suit 
followed, and she took his arm, before the two of them strode 
purposefully towards the hotel entrance. 

'Madeline!' One of the paparazzi, crouching low, had slipped through the
cordon of blazers and managed a couple of shots before being 
unceremoniously dragged out of the couple's way.  As they were 
momentarily delayed, the young woman raised her head in answer to a 
call from a fan standing a couple of paces to my left.  But as the 
woman's head turned, her eyes met mine... and it was as though time 
stood still. 

*** 

Madra lay sleeping.  I liked to watch her sleep, and to listen to the
steady rhythm of her breathing. 

Like me, she had a made up story: her mother had been an actress, and
her father a very important American who drove a Ferrari and lived in 
an enormous mansion with lots of servants, but both parents had drowned 
when the American's yacht sank in a storm.  My story was similar: my 
parents had been rich, but both had been killed in a car crash. 

In truth we were just street urchins, orphans, unloved and unwanted. 
And though we wished that we could be like the children we sometimes 
saw being ferried around in expensive looking auto-mobiles, we knew 
that that was the way things were; there were haves, and have-nots. 

We lived amongst the have-nots, and had done for as long as we could
remember - especially so, since our escape from the orphanage three 
years before.  Though, luckily, I had just found us a place of our own: 
a half-demolished wartime air-raid shelter behind the old railway 
station. 

Madra stirred and then her eyes opened.  'Renaldo.'  She spoke my name
and then stretched, cat-like, before giving me a smile.  She was 
perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, and although I was not much older 


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