Now or Never Read online

  ‘Still in South America, so far as we know,’ Alice replied. It was far easier to talk to her friend about her twin sons than her elder daughter. ‘Stuart was saying only the other night, he doesn’t know which is going to prove the more expensive, financing their studies, or paying for their gap year! To be honest I think he’s a little bit envious of them. I mean, in our day, “gap years” were more of a rare luxury than an accepted fact of life. Stuart went straight from university into his career. We were married two years after that and then Zoë arrived and then of course the twins.’

  ‘Mmm. I know what you mean. Richard tends to grumble that Hughie has life far easier than he did at his age, but I suspect that really he’s a little bit jealous of him. After all, he’s just about to start out in life, and he’s got everything ahead of him, whereas for most of our generation the best thing that lies ahead is early retirement and the worst the threat of redundancy!’

  Whilst Alice was wincing inwardly at the unwittingly brutal picture Stella had just drawn, Stella added wryly, ‘Unless of course you’re fortunate enough to be someone like Maggie! Richard was saying only the other day that it didn’t surprise him that she should end up with a younger man. He said that she’s always been the sort of person who challenged the status quo; a sort of minor social revolution in her own right, and at the forefront of new trends. And of course it’s true! Do you remember how she used to shock us when we were girls? How daring we thought she was, and how inside we all ached to be like her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alice conceded. ‘It hasn’t all been easy for her, though, has it? She and Dan were so much in love when they got married. I never thought that they would split up.’

  ‘Well, no, but Nicki let it slip in a moment of weakness—you know how, normally, she’s always the first to leap to Maggie’s defence—that she wasn’t totally surprised, because she knew that Dan had always wanted children. Nicki dated him first, didn’t she? And apparently he had told her then that he wanted a family. I know that Maggie has never really talked about their divorce, but she did once say to me when I asked if they were planning to have children that the business was her “baby”. With her feeling like that I suppose it’s not surprising that Dan left her!’ Stella pointed out.

  ‘Well, at least she’s happy now with Oliver,’ Alice intervened pacifically. ‘I must say that when she first told us about him, I was a bit concerned. Especially when she admitted that he was much younger than she had at first realised. But you only have to see them together to see how much he loves her.’

  ‘Alice, you are such a romantic.’ Stella laughed.

  Was it because she was just that little bit younger than the others that they always tended to treat her as though she were someone who was somehow not quite as up to speed as they were themselves? Alice wondered. There was a very fine line between affectionate indulgence, and patronising indulgence and sometimes she felt that her friends unwittingly crossed it. Or was she being over-sensitive?

  Of course they had all been to university—had those life-shaping years in common—whilst she had not.

  ‘There isn’t any point, or any need,’ Stuart had told her, at the time. ‘I’m in love with you, Alice, and I don’t want to wait three years to marry you whilst you get a degree you’re never going to use. I can think of a much better way for you to occupy your time,’ he had added, with the powerful sensuality that had originally swept her so easily off her feet. At nineteen she had been impressed and awed by such a macho attitude.

  At nearly fifty-one, though, she was beginning to feel that it was not so much sexy and sensual as domineering and selfish. Beginning to? Or had she in reality thought it for quite a long time but pushed the thought away, burying it rather than confronting it? Guiltily Alice reminded herself that Stuart was a good husband and father who worked very hard to provide them all with financial comfort and security. And who enjoyed a career that took him all over the world, whilst she stayed at home being a dutiful wife and mother…

  ‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ Alice told Stella, hastily dragging her thoughts back to the present. ‘Apparently Maggie has told Nicki that she’s got something to tell us. Wedding plans, do you think?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Stella responded forthrightly. ‘I mean, I know it’s all roses and romance now, but if you want my honest opinion it can’t last! Of course, the press has got a lot to answer for. It’s impossible to pick up a newspaper these days, even the sensible ones, without reading some hyped-up article about how our generation has still got the bit firmly between its teeth and is totally refusing to let go, and be turned out to grass gracefully as previous generations at our age would have done. The mystique we’ve managed to attach to ourselves is the most disgraceful propaganda really.’

  ‘But it is true that we have pushed back an awful lot of boundaries,’ Alice felt the need to point out.

  ‘Indeed, but although we might have convinced ourselves that we can hold back time, we still can’t actually turn it back,’ Stella told her dryly. ‘Oliver is well over a decade younger than Maggie and sooner or later that is bound to cause them problems.’

  ‘Mmm! And how are my two special boys?’

  Alice stood to one side as she watched her daughter kneel down to hug her two young sons.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to collect them until eight tomorrow evening, Ma,’ Zoë announced, not quite meeting Alice’s eyes as she informed her, ‘I’ve arranged to get together with some of the girls at the wine bar after work. If you could bathe these two for me, so that I can just put them straight to bed when I get them home, that would be great. They’ll be good company for you with Dad away, and—’

  ‘Zoë,’ Alice interrupted her. ‘I can’t have them tomorrow evening.’

  ‘What? Ma, I can’t possibly cancel now, it would make me look totally unprofessional. This isn’t a social thing, it’s more of a networking meeting, and I could make some important contacts.’

  Claiming that she was bored stuck at home with two small children whilst her husband worked a ten-hour day, Zoë had used the lever of her degree and the danger of her brain ‘rotting’ to pressure Alice into agreeing to look after her sons for her whilst Zoë worked part-time for a local estate agent.

  ‘I do understand,’ Alice tried to placate her. ‘But surely Ian could look after the boys for once. He is their father, after all.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s right, pick on Ian.’

  Alice’s heart sank as she saw the tell-tale spots of angry red colour burning in her daughter’s face.

  ‘You’ve never liked him, have you? You never wanted me to marry him. And don’t think I don’t know why. Just because he supported me. Sided with me and told you that he could see how much you favoured my brothers above me.’

  ‘Zoë, that isn’t true,’ Alice tried to protest.

  The real reason she didn’t much care for her daughter’s husband was because she felt that, far from supporting Zoë, Ian actually secretly undermined her and subtly played on her insecurities.

  Of course, there was no doubt that financially Ian was a good provider. As an investment banker he earned more than enough to keep his family in considerable comfort, which in turn meant—although Alice would never have dreamed of risking alienating her daughter even further by saying so—that if she chose to do so Zoë could quite easily have stayed at home full time with her children, as Alice herself had had to do.

  ‘Anyway, why can’t you have the boys?’ Zoë was challenging her suspiciously. ‘Dad’s away.’

  ‘It’s my regular night out with Maggie and the others and—’

  ‘Oh, of course, I should have known,’ Zoë exploded angrily, her normally pretty face contorting into an ugly mask of temper. “‘Maggie and the others,”’ she mimicked, her voice rising. ‘And, of course, they are far more important to you than William and George.’ The sheer unexpectedness of Zoë’s attack left Alice breathless. The unexpectedness of it, and the unfairness!

  ‘
Zoë, that simply isn’t true—’ she began.

  But Zoë refused to listen to her, immediately cutting her short as she burst out, ‘If you’d rather be with your precious friends than with your grandchildren, then you go right ahead!’

  ‘Zoë…’ Alice protested, but it was too late. Zoë was already scooping up her sons and heading for the door, refusing to listen to her.

  It seemed to Alice that it had always been like this between them—antagonism and misunderstanding where there should have been love and harmony. Was it all her fault, as Zoë always insisted? ‘Perhaps she feels jealous of you,’ Nicki had suggested, softening the words by adding, ‘Sometimes it happens.’

  ‘No,’ Maggie had argued. ‘I think it’s her brothers she resents, and that she blames you for their unwanted presence in her life.’

  ‘Sometimes mothers are harder on their daughters than their sons,’ had been Stella’s practical contribution.

  Alice suspected that Maggie had come closest to recognising the cause of Zoë’s behaviour. She had been six when the twins had been born, pretty, strong-willed, and perhaps a trifle spoiled, and certainly well able to articulate her angry resentment of the two babies who were taking her parents’ attention away from her.

  The adored only child of elderly parents herself, and with a far gentler nature than her assertive daughter, Alice felt that she had somehow failed Zoë, in not being able to satisfy her emotional hunger. Just as she herself had turned to Stuart for the security of his love and protection, his ability to take control of her and of her future, so she felt had Zoë turned to Ian to provide the intensity of emotion she sought.

  ‘Mum, will Laura be there when we get home?’

  One hand on the passenger door of her car, Nicki turned to look at her young son, Joey.

  He was scuffing his new school shoes in the dust, as reluctant to meet her eyes as he obviously was to go home.

  Joey was the image of his father, with Kit’s wheat-gold hair and toffee-brown eyes, and Nicki’s heart melted with love every time she looked at him.

  Melted with love, and, increasingly lately, tensed with guilt.

  ‘She might be,’ she confirmed, forcing herself to sound jolly and unconcerned. ‘After all, she is Daddy’s daughter.’

  ‘She’s grown up and I don’t like her. She’s always cross with me,’ Joey responded with the unimpeachable logic of a nine-year-old. ‘Why does she have to be with us? Why can’t she go back to her own house?’

  Nicki sighed.

  It was impossible to explain the complexities of the situation to a child of Joey’s age, and impossible too to let him see what she was really feeling. She certainly shared her son’s dislike of Laura’s presence in their home, although, of course, she could not voice it quite so openly.

  In the early days when she and Kit had first started cautiously dating, she had been at pains to show every consideration for the feelings of his teenage daughter. The tragic death of her mother after a long-drawn-out illness was bound to have traumatised her, and Nicki had recognised that fact, but, no matter how slowly and discreetly Nicki had tried to progress, Laura had flatly refused to accept that her father could possibly want any kind of relationship with Nicki, or allow her into his life.

  At one point Laura’s hostility towards her had become so great that Nicki had declared wearily to Kit that, for everyone’s sake, she felt they ought not to see one another any more.

  That time apart from Kit had been one of the worst periods of her life, and if anyone had told her then that ultimately she and Kit would be together and that she would have Joey she would have refused to believe them.

  It had been Kit who had insisted that they should marry, and that Laura would eventually come to accept the situation, and Nicki had made a mental promise to herself that she would be the most understanding, the most caring stepmother there was, if only Laura would allow her to be.

  After all, Laura was a part of Kit, and Nicki had been prepared to love her for that alone! She was also, Nicki had reminded herself determinedly, a teenager who had lost her mother at a very vulnerable time in her life. She needed and deserved to have her feelings recognised, and Nicki fully intended to do that and to assure her that there was no way she wanted to deny her mother’s role in either her life or that of Kit. And she had done her best, her very best, but Laura had simply refused to reciprocate.

  Less than four months after their marriage Laura had walked out, announcing that she was going to live with her godmother, and in the end it had been agreed that she should be allowed to do so, although Kit had told her over and over again that she must always consider the home he and Nicki shared to be her own.

  She had returned briefly between leaving school and going on to university, to spend the summer with them, but if anything her hostility and resentment towards her stepmother had been even more marked in Nicki’s opinion, and she had been relieved to see Laura go.

  That had been seven years ago. Seven years during which Laura had grown up and made her own life, only now she was back. And just thinking about her and what she had done filled Nicki with tension and seething anger.

  ‘Why? Why has she come here to us?’ she demanded angrily, pacing the kitchen floor as Kit sat and watched her. ‘It’s not even as if this has ever been her home, in any real sense! You sold your family home when we got married and the money was invested for her. We bought this house together.’

  And she had supplied the bulk of the down payment and paid the mortgage, Nicki could have added, but of course she did not.

  ‘Because we’re her family,’ Kit answered her.

  ‘No!’ Nicki denied bitterly. ‘We are not her family, Kit. She has never wanted to be a part of this family. She has never accepted me as your wife or Joey as your son. You are her family. And that’s why she’s come here. To claim you, to cause discord between us and—’

  ‘Nicki, you’re reacting over-emotionally,’ Kit protested.

  ‘Me over-emotional?’ Nicki challenged him angrily. ‘The truth is that you just don’t want to accept the facts about Laura and her behaviour. You’d rather blame anyone than her! You just won’t see what she’s doing! She’s already upset Joey. He’s the one you should really be protecting, and not her,’ she threw at Kit, tears burning her eyes. ‘He’s only a little boy and she’s an adult. Why has she come here? Has she told you yet?’

  The look on his face was its own answer.

  All Laura had said was that she had handed in her notice at work and given up the lease on her flat and that she needed to give herself a breathing space before she decided where she wanted her life to go.

  It was incomprehensible to Nicki that a young woman in her mid-twenties should behave in such an irresponsible way, and had Laura actually been her child she would have been insisting on being given some answers to some far more pertinent questions than Kit seemed disposed to ask. Not for her the slightly nervous, conciliatory attitude adopted by Alice towards her aggressively determined daughter!

  But, of course, Laura was not her child.

  ‘She’ll talk to us when she’s ready, Nicki, and until then we have to respect her privacy,’ Kit had told her firmly. ‘Right now, Laura needs our love and support just as much as Joey does, but in a different way.’

  Laura was a bone of contention between them that was never going to go away, Nicki acknowledged grimly.

  Where was Kit? Nicki wondered irritably five hours later. He knew she had work to do tonight and he had promised to be home early, but there was no sign of him.

  Angrily, she remembered the row they had had last night. An exchange of destructive hissed whispers in the darkness of their bedroom, both of them tensely aware that they might be overheard.

  The result had been an ‘atmosphere’, which had been still hanging over them like a black cloud this morning.

  Even before Laura’s arrival they had been having problems. Kit’s business as an independent insurance broker and financial adviser was
suffering badly in the current economic climate—a reflection on the general situation and not on him personally, as Nicki had already pointed out to him.

  Part of the trouble was that she was simply not the kind of woman who was prepared to spend her time propping up a male ego, even when that ego belonged to the man she loved. She had gone down that road with her first marriage and all she had got from it had been a bullying, violent husband, from whom she had been glad to escape through divorce.

  But when she had fallen in love with Kit he had been in no need of any ego massaging. He had applauded the fact that she was a successful businesswoman in her own right, just as she had admired his uncomplaining shouldering of the responsibility of caring for his terminally ill wife and his teenage daughter.

  She and Kit had originally met when he had approached her agency wanting to find a part-time housekeeper to help him with the responsibility of caring for his wife, Jennifer, and providing a home for Laura, then thirteen years old.

  There had been an immediate spark of attraction between them, which they had both equally immediately and separately chosen to ignore. After all, Kit had been a married man. And she had been still bruised from her first marriage, with a young and fragile business to nurture, and no place and even less need in her life for the emotional trauma of falling in love with a man in Kit’s position.

  The agency was to be her life, she had insisted to Maggie.

  It had been thanks to Maggie that Nicki had set up the agency in the first place. After the breakup of her first marriage and before she had met Kit, Nicki had done temping work. When the agency she had worked for had announced that it was closing down, she had been panic-stricken, knowing how much she’d needed the money she’d been earning.

  ‘So set up your own agency,’ Maggie had told her.

  ‘I can’t,’ Nicki had protested. ‘I could never run my own business. I don’t know how.’