Kitabı oku: «Now or Never», sayfa 3
As Nicki listened she could feel herself starting to grind her teeth. She itched to be able to tell Laura that she’d made her point and that there was no need for her to over-egg her bread, but if she did she knew that Laura would immediately turn to Kit for support. The last thing Nicki wanted right now was to be humiliated in front of her stepdaughter!
‘You mustn’t blame Dad for being late, Nicki,’ Laura was saying mock apologetically now. ‘It’s my fault! I wanted to have a daddy and daughter chat with him. Private stuff …’
As Laura leaned into Kit’s side Nicki tried to control the fury building up inside her. She knew that Laura was deliberately manipulating the situation, and trying to cause an argument between them.
‘I loved driving the new BMW,’ she added enthusiastically, ignoring Nicki to speak to her father. ‘And thanks for letting me have the spare set of keys, Dad. I promise I’ll check with you before I borrow it.’
Nicki had had enough.
‘Actually, Laura, I am the one you should be checking with,’ Nicki told her stepdaughter with icy rage. ‘The BMW is actually my car.’
Nicki could feel her face burning with resentment and guilt as she saw the look Kit was giving her.
* * *
Nope, she still appeared the same, Laura acknowledged derisively half an hour later as she peered at her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She had not suddenly turned back into her pony-tailed fifteen-year-old self, even if she had just given a pretty good display of that self to her stepmother.
What was it about the relationship between oneself and one’s family that somehow meant that within minutes of being with them one reverted to childhood, not to mention childish habits? Laura knew that she was not alone in experiencing this unpalatable phenomenon, just as she also knew she was not alone in being guilty of still enacting in adulthood the travails of her teenage step-parent wars!
It was a subject her generation were experts on and a powerful bonding agent. ‘Show me a person who can put their hand on their heart and honestly say that they accepted and welcomed their step-parents from the word go, and I’ll show you an alien. It is a universally accepted truth that a child in possession of two parents is not in need of a step-parent,’ one of Laura’s friends was fond of saying facetiously. But there was a certain black-humoured element of truth in her statement.
Laura wasn’t exactly proud of the way being in her stepmother’s presence made her revert with dizzying speed back to the mindset of her teenaged self, employing deliberately contentious tactics as only teenage girls knew how. It gave her no pleasure now she was back in her adult skin to recognise how quickly and effectively she had stoked the fires of Nicki’s hostility and resentment.
As a girl she had told herself that it was her duty to show Nicki to her father in her true colours, and to show Nicki herself that there was no way she or Joey could ever match, never mind usurp, the place she and her own mother held in her father’s heart.
What must it be like to always have to live with the knowledge that your husband had previously been legally committed to another woman, another family? Was there always a fear lurking on the edge of one’s awareness that one might be less loved … the lesser loved?
Laura knew that her stepmother was hardly likely to give her the answer to such questions!
And as to seeking her input, her guidance, her support on the matter that had brought Laura here, running for cover, seeking safety … A mirthless smile curled her mouth, her grey eyes shadowing.
Her hair, like her father’s, was wheat-gold and thick, just like Joey’s. She shared other similarities with her half-brother as well, she recognised, not least a tendency to be wary of anyone trying to push their way into their family life!
She had felt very sorry for her father earlier when Nicki had made that acrid comment about the BMW. Her smile gave way to a frown. Did Nicki habitually humiliate him like that? Did he always allow her to?
Resurrecting the battle between Nicki and herself had been the last thing on her mind when she had made her decision to come here; she wasn’t an insecure teenager any more, after all, terrified of losing her father as she had already done her mother, and resentful of the woman who in her eyes had been the catalyst for that loss. But listening to the way her stepmother had spoken to her father had swamped her good intentions and reawakened all her old bitterness and hostility.
A little ruefully, she reflected on the generous company car allowance she had given up when she had given up her job. With a little careful handling it would just have stretched—just—to the pretty BMW convertible she had had her eye on!
Still, with her qualifications and CV she knew she would not have too much trouble in getting another job, but not yet … not until … Instinctively she reached into her bag for her mobile, and then grimaced. She had handed it in along with her notice. Much better that way. After all, her mobile, like her job, would be easy enough to replace.
Even so, she couldn’t resist working out just how long it would be before he realised what she had done … Quickly she calculated. He was still away and not due back for another couple of days, and … Stop it! she warned herself, quickly clamping down on the thought and on the sudden give-away surge of her heartbeat.
‘Was that really necessary?’ Kit asked Nicki grimly when he walked into their bedroom, having finished reading Joey his belated bedtime story.
‘Was what really necessary?’ Nicki asked him defiantly, but of course she knew what he meant.
‘That dig about the car,’ Kit told her. ‘You were the one who insisted that I should drive it.’
‘That you should drive it, yes,’ Nicki agreed. ‘But there is no way I am prepared to have Laura driving it.’
‘Nicki!’
The very way he said her name was a weary sigh. Ridiculously, Nicki could feel tears pricking the backs of her eyes. She was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake, and not a teenager!
‘Oh, Nicki … this is crazy,’ she heard Kit saying in a much warmer voice as he walked over to where she was standing, brushing her already neatly glossy nut-brown bob. Standing behind her, he wrapped his arms around her, nuzzling the exposed curve of her throat. Immediately Nicki stiffened and tried to pull away.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Kit demanded.
In the mirror their glances met. Nicki looked away first.
‘I’m tired of having to cope with Laura. You know how I feel about her living here, Kit. About the way she’s upsetting Joey.’
She shivered as she saw how Kit was looking at her, his voice tense as he told her, ‘This isn’t just about Laura, is it, Nicki? This goes back to before Laura’s arrival.’ He paused. ‘Look, if it’s because …’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Nicki denied, jerking frantically away from him. ‘Just like you didn’t want to talk about it when … All I want is for you to leave me alone.’
She could feel the emotions surging up inside her with frightening force. Pain; guilt; the horrible tormenting, debilitating fear that robbed her of the ability to think or function properly, and with it the full force of her anger against Kit, and against life itself.
‘Nicki …’
She could hear the anxiety in his voice, but she felt too isolated and distant from him to want to respond to it. It was safer feeling like this, she recognised. Safer and easier. Let him turn to his precious daughter if he wanted someone to sympathise with him. She no doubt would fully endorse his feelings—his behaviour!
‘Look, Nicki, what happened happened to both of us.’
Nicki gave him a bitter look.
‘Oh, really? You can say that now, Kit, but at the time, according to you, it was my problem … my decision.’
‘Your decision, yes. But …’
They both tensed as Laura knocked on their bedroom door and called out, ‘Dad, are you in there? Can I have a word?’
‘You’d better go,’ Nicki told him fiercely, and rejectingly. ‘Laura needs you!’
‘No Hughie? I thought you said he was coming home today?’
Accepting her husband’s perfunctory kiss on her cheek, Stella nodded. ‘I did and he has. He’s gone round to see Julie,’ she told Richard wryly. ‘He seemed to be a bit on edge before he left, and he’s lost weight.’
‘Students always do,’ Richard pointed out equably, ‘and I shouldn’t worry too much about Julie. To be honest I rather got the impression that things had cooled off somewhat between them.’
‘I’m not worried,’ Stella denied. ‘But it has occurred to me that Hughie might have given us that impression deliberately, because he knows it’s what we want to hear. He’s an intelligent boy, after all. I mean, it’s like I was saying to Alice earlier. It’s not that I don’t like Julie, I do. I just want them both to be sensible and look beyond the here and now, the immediacy of the moment, and think about the future. Hughie is far too young to even think of tying himself down to a steady relationship. Apart from anything else, with him away at university and Julie here, it just isn’t practical!’
As she spoke Stella suddenly heard Maggie’s voice from their own teenage years, teasing her. ‘Oh, Stella! Miss Practicality, that’s what I think we should call you!’
Funny the things one remembered … and why. At the time she had found nothing wrong in Maggie’s comment, even preening herself a little for it, telling herself that she had more common sense than the other three put together, and that without her to put an end to some of their more outrageous exploits and sometimes too silly attitude towards life they would have been in a sorry mess indeed. They needed her to remind them of what was what—to stop them behaving foolishly. Yes, she had prided herself on her role within the quartet—the sensible one, the cool, non-flirtatious one whom boys knew better than to approach with too-familiar overtures. The one whom, in fact, the male sex tended to treat more as a pal and an honorary member of their own sex that they could confide in, rather than a mysterious and exciting object of desire and lust. And she had continued to pride herself on it, feeling both empowered and ever so slightly superior to the other three because of her foresight, her ability to rationalise and plan, her sheer sensibleness.
But just lately …
‘Are you in this evening or out?’
Although Stella no longer had any paid employment, having given up her social services job after Hughie’s birth, over the years she had been co-opted onto the committees of a variety of voluntary organisations, starting with the Parent-Teachers Association of Hughie’s junior school, and picking up along the way a position on the Board of Governors for his senior school, an appointment as a local JP, and three local charity organisations, all responsibilities on which she had thrived, with which she dealt with her famed efficiency, and which kept her just as busy as Richard since his promotion to Chief Clerk of the Local County Council.
‘In but I’m out tomorrow,’ she told him pragmatically. ‘Dinner with Maggie and the others. Apparently Maggie has something she wants to tell us!’
Richard shook his head. He was a hard-working, honest, but unimaginative man who found it hard to get to grips with the emotional intensity of the bond the four women shared. For a start they were all so very different. Alice, the quiet, gentle, stay-at-home mother; Nicki, the glossy, immaculate businesswoman; his own Stella with her formidable efficiency and practicality, and who—thank the Lord!—had never and would never exhibit any of the passionate intensity that was so much a part of Maggie’s vibrant personality. But that was women for you. And Richard, one of the last of a dying race of a certain type of man, was quite happy to openly admit that, so far as he was concerned, the female sex was a complete enigma!
‘So why couldn’t Maggie tell you whatever this news is before tomorrow night?’ Richard asked.
‘You know Maggie,’ Stella responded wryly. ‘Typically, Alice is convinced that she’s going to announce that she and Oliver are planning to get married.’ She gave a small exasperated shrug. ‘I hope she’s wrong. You’d think after what she went through when she and Dan split up that Maggie would be very wary about inviting any more emotional pain—and that’s what she’s going to get ultimately, because, no matter what he feels about her now, sooner or later Oliver is going to want a younger woman.’
‘Mmm. I always thought that was a rum business—Maggie and Dan splitting up. I mean, you never saw them apart. Whenever we went out together, they were always all over one another.’
‘Well, according to Nicki, Dan wanted children and Maggie didn’t, so—’
‘I thought they split up because Dan had that affair,’ Richard interrupted her, looking confused.
‘Well, yes, they did, but we always knew that there had to be a reason why he had the affair. I mean, Dan just wasn’t that kind of man.’
‘He was a damn good-looking chap,’ Richard mused.
‘Very good-looking,’ Stella agreed ruefully.
All of them had at one time or another been a little bit in love with Dan, even her, although she had kept her feelings determinedly to herself, firmly lecturing herself against being foolish.
People might nowadays describe her approvingly as a striking looking and confident woman, but in her youth she had quite definitely been plain. Yes, she had had regular features, healthy, clear skin, and good teeth, but what they had added up to had always fallen short of the head-turning male-attention-getting looks the other three had in their different ways possessed.
Not that she had minded. Prettiness had been in her opinion, then, a dangerously two-edged sword, in that it encouraged her sex to rely on it and, if they were weak and silly enough, to trade on it. Not that any of her friends had ever been guilty of that!
At the time she had calmly accepted her position in the foursome as the plain one, the sensible one, without resentment; it was only recently that she had begun to look back and feel resentful, to feel that somehow she had been cheated of the right to something—a certain femininity and sensuality—that the others had openly enjoyed.
Deep down inside she knew that these feelings were somehow connected to the very obvious air of sexual and emotional happiness that surrounded Maggie. Somehow it disturbed her; made her feel that she was less of a woman than the others, especially in the sexual sense. And yet that was ridiculous, surely, because she had never once experienced those kinds of feelings when they had been young. In fact, it had been her friendship with Richard that she had prized most in their marriage, the interests they had in common—which had never included a desire to spend hours in bed indulging in sexual Olympics. If anything she had actually pitied Alice for having such an obviously highly sexed husband as Stuart, just as she had pitied Maggie when Dan had had his affair, and Nicki when she had fallen so passionately in love with Kit.
So why was she now feeling that somehow she had missed out?
And more importantly why was she wasting time brooding on it? She had always been a doer not a dweller, dealing in realities and practicalities rather than the vagueness of emotions.
Her only womanly vanity was her hair. When she was a girl it had been long and lustrous, and for years she had worn it in a neat chignon. Just recently, though, for some reason she had decided to have it cut, and she still wasn’t totally used to the unfamiliar feel of it on her face, even though everyone had been extremely complimentary about it. Her good teeth and good skin had accompanied her into middle age, and she was now, according to her hair stylist, an extremely handsome woman.
No one would ever describe Maggie as ‘handsome’.
No, Maggie was stunning. Sexy … vibrant … fun. The thought lingered in her head with a slightly bitter mental aftertaste.
Although Nicki had never said so, it must have been hard for her when Dan had ended their relationship and started dating Maggie.
‘He went off to the States, didn’t he, after the divorce?’ Richard commented, breaking into her thoughts.
‘Yes.’
Stella gave Richard’s downbent head an exasperated look as he spoke to her without looking up from his paper. His bald patch was growing larger, she noticed absently.
‘I hope that Hughie doesn’t come in too late. I didn’t get a chance to ask him how he’s liking his course,’ she commented, relieved to have a reason to dismiss her unwanted and discomforting thoughts.
‘Well, he’s got a long slog in front of him, especially if he goes on to take a PhD as he plans,’ Richard reminded her.
‘What the devil’s going on?’
The acerbic note in the voice of the head of the clinic caused the security officer to wince a little.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we felt we ought to call you out. Just to be on the safe side. It’s Ms Lacey.’
‘Charlene Lacey?’ Graham Vereham frowned.
‘Yes,’ the security officer confirmed. ‘We found her in your secretary’s office, going through some files.’
Graham Vereham sighed heavily.
Working in the field he did, he was used to emotional traumas, and at first he had simply assumed that Charlene’s distress was caused by the fact that they had been unable to help her to conceive, compounded by the breakdown of her relationship under the stress of the situation, but then she had started coming to the clinic and complaining bizarrely that they had stolen her ‘babies’.
Since Charlene had been the recipient of another woman’s eggs, rather than a donor of her own, her claims had absolutely no basis in reality. They had tried to help her, he had even personally recommended a psychiatric colleague for her to consult, but all to no avail. Charlene had continued to haunt the clinic, making her outrageous claims.
By rights they should send for the police and have the matter dealt with by them, but they were in a very sensitive business, and the last thing he wanted was any kind of adverse press. He would have to talk to her himself.
‘Where is she?’ he asked the security officer wearily.
‘In your secretary’s office, sir.’
3
‘So come on, then, what’s this exciting news?’ Stella demanded, once they were all sitting down and their drinks and food had been ordered.
‘Not yet. You’re going to have to wait,’ Maggie teased them mischievously.
‘I don’t want to spoil your surprise—’ Alice laughed ‘—but I think I may know what it is.’
When they all looked at her, she gave Maggie a semi-apologetic smile.
‘Zoë saw you and Oliver in the estate agents. She said you were asking about some of their properties.’
Much to Alice’s relief, her daughter had rung her with this news earlier in the day, their row of the previous afternoon apparently forgotten.
‘You’re planning to move house?’ Nicki gave Maggie a wry look. She was still feeling bruised from her row with Kit, and Maggie’s obvious euphoria was jarring on her slightly.
She loved Maggie, of course she did, but sometimes … Sometimes it seemed to Nicki that life wasn’t always as fair to her as it was to her closest friend. Caught up in the excitement of her new love affair, Maggie hadn’t even noticed the problems that she had been having!
‘Is that it?’ Nicki couldn’t resist demanding acerbically. ‘Honestly, Maggie, you …’
‘Well, no, as a matter of fact it isn’t,’ Maggie defended herself. ‘Yes, we are looking for a new house. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. Well, it’s a part of it … the result of it, so to speak, though, and not the cause.’
She was glowing with happiness, positively bubbling over with it, Nicki recognised enviously, and it was perhaps no wonder that the group of business-suited men at the adjacent table were watching her in admiration.
Nicki’s head was aching with tension. Laura had disappeared shortly after lunch, announcing that she was going for a walk. She had still not returned when Nicki had come out and of course Kit had been concerned.
‘She’s an adult, Kit,’ Nicki had told him angrily. ‘If it was Joey who was missing I could understand your concern, but, of course, you would never be as concerned for Joey as you are for Laura, would you?’
‘That’s not fair, and it isn’t true either!’ Kit had exploded.
You’d have thought after the trauma of her first marriage that she would deserve to have some happiness in her second, Nicki reflected angrily, and she had thought that she did have until …
Stop it, she warned herself. The feelings of despair and panic that she was suffering were indications of a lack of ability to be in control of herself and her life of which she felt ashamed. But she couldn’t help the way she felt; couldn’t help agonising over Joey and what would happen to him if she weren’t there to love and take care of him. He wouldn’t be able to rely on his father. Kit, after all, had other responsibilities … more important responsibilities … Kit had Laura to worry about …
‘Nicki, is something wrong?’ she could hear Maggie asking with concern.
‘Laura has come home and she’s moved in with them,’ Alice replied for her.
‘Oh, Nicki, no. When did that happen? And why?’
Brusquely Nicki gave them an abbreviated outline of what had happened.
‘Laura hasn’t said why she’s here—at least not to me, and if she’s discussed it with Kit, he isn’t saying. All I do know is that she felt she needed to “take time out and reassess where she’s going”. It’s so ridiculous!’
They could all hear the frustration and anger in her voice.
‘She’s twenty-six, after all, and more than old enough to already know where she wants to go, but of course Kit can’t see that! She knows exactly how to press all the right buttons and make him feel guilty, about his precious little girl and the stepmother he inflicted on her, and of course she’s loving every second of it! Poor Joey can’t understand what’s happening and why his father suddenly doesn’t want to be bothered with him any more. Why he’d rather spend time with his daughter. She even had the gall last night to suggest that Kit was working too hard, and to drag up the fact that when she was younger Kit had talked about selling up here and going to live in Italy! She claimed it had been his cherished dream! And of course she was making it all too clear that Joey and I were the reasons he hadn’t been able to follow it!
‘Naturally, all this is music to Kit’s ears, and he’s revelling in having an adoring daughter to sympathise with him—instead of a nagging wife who doesn’t,’ she finished bitterly.
She could see that the others were watching her with varying degrees of compassion, but, predictably, it was Maggie who reached across the table and took hold of her hand.
‘Don’t let her get you down,’ she counselled her gently. ‘And try not to blame Kit too much. He’s a man, after all, and as we all know even the best of them can be emotional cowards.’
‘Oh, spare me the homily, Maggie!’ Nicki snapped. ‘Just because you’re deep in the throes of a fantasy romance, that doesn’t make you an expert on human relationships, you know!’
Nicki knew that she was being unfair, but the words of apology she wanted to give were somehow stuck in her throat.
She tensed as Maggie squeezed her hand before releasing it, whilst Alice burst into animated chatter, exclaiming, ‘Stella, you haven’t told us how Hughie is doing. Is he enjoying his course?’
‘Mmm … he says so,’ Stella replied cautiously. ‘But … you know what boys are like.’ She gave a small shrug, but there was a little frown of anxiety between her brows. Something was worrying Hughie, she could tell, no matter how heroically he pretended that it wasn’t.
Nicki’s outburst had somehow cast a shadow over the evening that echoed her own inner feelings. The friendship between them all, which had trundled along so comfortably for so long, suddenly seemed to be showing signs of fracture and stress strains, of not being what it had once been. Alice’s desire to please, Maggie’s euphoria, Nicki’s outburst—tonight all of them had irritated her.
The relationship between them that had always been so supportive suddenly felt constrictive, restrictive. It compelled each of them to play a preordained role, and somehow Stella wasn’t sure she wanted to play her designated part any more. It was all right for the others—rather like certain members of the local am-dram group she helped to manage, her friends had chosen the plum roles for themselves, leaving her to play the part no one else wanted!
The thought of them all not sharing their close friendship was unthinkable, and yet wasn’t there a secret, dangerous allure to it—to the thought of being free to write her own role, to finally be that person she had recently come to feel she had always been denied the chance to be?
‘Tell us a bit more about this house move you’re planning, Maggie,’ Alice was demanding predictably pacifically. She hated arguments and upset, and felt very sorry for Nicki. ‘I thought that Oliver loved the apartment?’
‘Well, yes, he does,’ Maggie acknowledged. ‘But …’
‘But you’ve finally convinced him that your clothes need a proper home,’ Nicki interjected dryly, wanting to make amends for her show of bad temper.
All of them, including Maggie, laughed. Her weakness for designer clothes had always been the subject of good-natured teasing between them.
‘Well, you’re sort of on the right track,’ Maggie agreed. ‘Although it isn’t my clothes we are going to need the extra space for. In fact …’
‘Zoë said something about you wanting a property with some land attached to it,’ Alice offered.
‘Oh, no.’ Stella groaned, stifling her own inner critical voice to follow Nicki’s lead. ‘Don’t tell us, Maggie. You’ve got the “must eat organic, back to the land and grow your own” bug. Well, let me tell you, if you are thinking of dragging us into it, you can definitely count me out! I know you and your wild ideas …’
‘Yes,’ Alice chimed in. ‘Like the time when you enrolled us all in the local theatre group, and we all ended up having to dress up as men!’
‘It wasn’t my fault they were doing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and they were short of male actors.’ Maggie defended herself indignantly.
‘And then there were the salsa classes,’ Alice reminded her.
Maggie grinned. ‘They were fun. Especially that weekend we spent in Barcelona!’
‘Oh, yeah! Terrific fun,’ Nicki agreed drolly, rolling her eyes. ‘I have particularly happy memories of having to prise that ardent Spaniard off you, the one who said—’
‘Yes, yes, don’t remind me,’ Maggie pleaded, covering her eyes, her face suddenly deep pink.
Alice looked round the table in fond happiness. For all that Nicki and Stella tended to tease Maggie, she did have a way of lifting everyone’s spirits and injecting adventure and laughter into their lives.
‘Come on, then,’ Nicki demanded, determinedly putting her own problems to one side and entering into the spirit of things. ‘Stop keeping us in suspense. What exactly is this good news you’ve got for us?’
They were all looking at her. Maggie felt her heart give a funny little thump, almost as though the baby knew just how important this moment was; how important these women were going to be in its life. Her closest friends and supporters, the women who had shared her life’s sadnesses and joys with her, its failures and triumphs; the honorary family, she would be gifting to her child; three women who between them had enough experience to see any baby safely on its way to adulthood even if she, its mother, did not.
It would be a relief to unburden herself to them, to tell them how wobbly and uncertain she felt, to tell them how much she needed their support.
Maggie took a deep breath and looked round the table, at Stella who was so sanely calm and well balanced, Alice so maternal and protectively loving, Nicki who had her own problems, Maggie knew, but who out of all of them would surely understand her feelings. Joey after all had been born when Nicki had been in her early forties …
‘I’m pregnant,’ she told them shakily. ‘Oliver and I are going to have a baby.’
The silence that had seized her audience made Maggie smile.
‘I’m impressed,’ she laughed. ‘You’re speechless. I …’
‘No! It isn’t possible! You can’t be!’ White-faced, Nicki had pushed back her chair and was standing up. ‘You can’t be!’
Maggie’s smile wavered as they all looked at Nicki. Her face was suddenly as pale as Nicki’s, but where anger burned hotly in Nicki’s eyes, in Maggie’s the other two could quite plainly see the sheen of shocked tears.
Helplessly Alice watched them both, struggling with her own shock and discomfort. Both Maggie’s disclosure and Nicki’s announcement had left her lost for words, and she guessed from Stella’s stiff expression that she felt the same.
‘You can’t be pregnant,’ Nicki was continuing. ‘You’ve been through the menopause, we all know that and—’
‘I’ve had special treatment … special help!’ Maggie interrupted her. ‘And … And it’s because of the baby that we need to move house.’
She was very obviously and very visibly distressed, Alice recognised.
‘Nicki, please,’ Maggie heard herself begging shakily. This was the last reaction she had been expecting and she was trembling with the shock of it.
She could hear herself gabbling the words a little as she hurried to fill the uncomfortable silence left by Nicki’s refusal to respond to her. ‘The apartment wouldn’t be suitable. I think I knew just how much having a baby meant to Oliver when he agreed to give the apartment up.’
