could recognize. Blue protruding eyes, wide, round and staring. Both of them had half their crumbling teeth missing.
The female one was pointing at them. The two airport workers nodded and began to wheel them over to John and Naomi. Then they stopped right in front of them.
John and Naomi stared down, unsure for some moments quite what was going on. Naomi looked in horror at their pitiful faces. The faces of people in their late eighties, perhaps even older. The male had a few white wisps of hair either side of his skull. The female was completely bald.
The female looked up and gave a pitiful smile that almost broke Naomi’s heart. Then the male did the same.
‘Hello, Mummy. Hello, Daddy,’ Luke said. His voice was thin and young, like the voice of the child he still was.
Phoebe smiled, a little sheepishly. She looked at each of her parents in turn. ‘You said we could come home, any time, that we would always be welcome.’
Naomi knelt, weeping. She hugged Phoebe, then Luke. ‘Of course, my darlings. There’s nothing your daddy and I would love more. Of course it’s still true. Welcome home!’
John looked at the two men who were standing behind the wheelchairs. ‘Do they have any luggage?’
One shook his head. ‘No, no luggage. Just those little bags.’
‘We don’t need much,’ Phoebe said. ‘We won’t be staying for long.’
‘Why? Where are you going?’ Naomi asked, faltering, through her tears.
She glimpsed John’s tight, ashen face. And in the stark silence that followed, fighting back more tears, she understood.
