Now or Never

‘He’s how old?’ Nicki had demanded in disbelief when Maggie had finally, at Oliver’s insistence, told her friends about him.

She had to admit that once they had got over their shock her friends had been very supportive.

As she remembered that conversation a small secret smile curved Maggie’s mouth. They had teased her a little, asking her if it was true what was said about the sex between an older woman and a younger man, and mock primly she had refused to either encourage or answer them.

They had laughed at her, of course, and she had laughed with them, knowing, as Nicki had openly told her, that the air of suppressed sensuality that surrounded her told its own story.

‘You positively glow with it,’ Nicki had remarked ruefully.

‘You were the same when you first met Kit!’ Maggie had reminded her friend.

Suddenly Maggie longed to be able to talk to her friends. She, Nicki, Alice and Stella had been friends since their schooldays and their regular once-a-month evening out together to share a meal, a bottle of wine and their hopes and fears was so sacrosanct that only births and deaths had been allowed to interrupt them.

Oliver had nicknamed them ‘The Club’ or sometimes ‘The Coven’, claiming that between the four of them they had both the talents and the power to make magic, and that she, his wonderful, wise, wicked Maggie, was the witchiest of all of them.

The girls, her friends, Maggie knew, would understand all the things she had not been able to bring herself to admit to them before. All those feelings and fears she had experienced when, soon after her fortieth birthday, her doctor had had to explain that the cause of the health problems she had been suffering was the onset of a premature menopause. Nothing had prepared Maggie for the realisation that nature was closing certain doors against her; that shockingly an era of her life she had somehow believed would last for ever was over; or for the despair and anguish that realisation had so unexpectedly and uncontrollably brought her.

At the time she had been too overwhelmed by her own feelings to admit them to anyone. But she could admit to them now just how awesomely miraculous it was for her that, because of Oliver, she had found a way to halt nature in its tracks. To snatch from its closing, grinding jaws that which it was relentlessly taking from her.

Motherhood. She had told herself when she and Dan had split up that it just wasn’t meant to be for her, and she had believed truly that she had accepted that situation. It had taken Oliver to show her just how much she had lied to herself. And how very much a part of her still ached for that fulfilment. Why had she never realised until it had been all but too late just how important, how elemental, how essential such an experience would be to her?

Silently Oliver watched her. Why couldn’t she accept that the difference in their ages meant nothing to him; that he loved her as she was and for what she was?

He truly believed that in spirit Maggie was far younger than he was himself; she had the enthusiasm for life of a young girl and a rare kind of physical beauty that would never age.

He had always been drawn to older women. He liked their emotional maturity; he felt at ease with them.

Maggie’s achievements filled him with pride for her; he loved being able to claim her as his partner and he knew she was going to be a wonderful mother.

Oliver loved children. And he loved even more knowing that Maggie was going to have his child … their child.

So she was over fifty. What did that mean? Nothing as far as he was concerned! The specialist at the clinic had agreed with him that Maggie was in perfect health; he had even offered the information that had Maggie not experienced an early menopause she could have become pregnant naturally and that it was not unusual for women of her age to do so.

‘Maggie,’ he begged her now. ‘Please don’t make age an issue between us.’

‘I’m old enough to be your mother, never mind this baby’s!’ Maggie couldn’t help reminding him.

‘And I’m old enough to know that you are my love, the love of my life,’ Oliver told her softly.

Cupping her face in his hands, he added, ‘I have waited for you a long time, Maggie. You are everything to me. You and our baby.’

The tenderness with which he kissed her made Maggie’s throat ache with emotion.

She had loved Dan passionately, too passionately and too intensely perhaps, but it was Oliver who had shown her just what a generous gift love could be.

Here in the shared darkness of the bed as he drew her down against his side there was no age gap between them; here they were equals, partners, lovers.

2

‘Alice, it’s Nicki. I’m just ringing to check that you’re still okay for tomorrow night?’

Tucking the telephone receiver into her shoulder, Alice Palmer deftly retrieved the small toy the elder of her two small grandsons was trying to push into the ear of the younger.

‘Yes. I’m fine. Do you want me to ring Stella to make sure she’s still going?’ she volunteered.

‘If you would.’

‘I expect you’ve already spoken to Maggie?’

‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

It was an accepted fact amongst the four of them that Maggie and Nicki shared an extra-special closeness, so Alice frowned as she registered the unexpected constraint in Nicki’s voice.

‘Nothing’s wrong, is it? Maggie’s okay, isn’t she?’ she asked in concern. ‘I mean, everything’s all right with her and Oliver?’

‘Oh, yes, they’re still totally besotted with one another,’ Nicki Young answered her wryly. Alice laughed.

‘Stella was saying the other day that it’s not so much that Maggie is behaving as though she’s still a young girl that makes her feel old, as the fact that she can actually get away with it!’

‘Well, I dare say a good helping of the right kind of genes, a size eight figure, and the kind of glow a woman gets from regular helpings of orgasmic sex have something to do with it, although in all fairness Maggie has always looked young.’

‘Mmm … well, you’re looking pretty good yourself,’ Alice told Nicki, adding ruefully, ‘I am at least ten pounds overweight, and Zoë refuses to believe that I could ever possibly have had a twenty-four inch waist. Actually what she said was, “Mother, are you sure you aren’t losing your memory along with your waistline?”

‘Being slightly plump suits you, Alice,’ Nicki offered comfortingly. ‘It makes you look …’

‘Grandmotherly?’ Alice supplied dryly. On the other end of the line she could hear Nicki laughing.

‘I’ve got to forewarn you that Maggie has some news … something she wants to tell us when we are all together. Whatever it is, she’s obviously very excited about it.’

There was a note in her voice that Alice couldn’t identify. Nicki had always been the calmest of all of them, careful both with her opinions and her emotions. Unlike Maggie, who was always so wildly passionate about everything.

‘Perhaps she and Oliver have decided to get married,’ Alice suggested, hopefully.

‘I don’t know. She said that there was no point in me asking her any questions because she wasn’t going to say another word until we’re all together. Which reminds me, I’ve booked us into that new place that’s just opened in the high street.’

‘You mean where the wet fish shop used to be? Honestly!’ Alice protested. ‘Since the new supermarkets opened on the outskirts of town, nearly all the old local shops have closed down and the high street now is virtually one long chain of coffee shops and restaurants.’

‘Mmm. I know, but since the motorway turned the town into an up-market dormitory area for the city, eating out has become the new trendy thing to do. Not that I should be complaining. The demand for extra staff has meant that we’ve been so busy at the agency that I’m going to have to take on someone new full-time to deal with the increase in business.’

‘I wish you’d tell me how you manage to do it,’ Alice said half ruefully, and half enviously. ‘You’re running your own business, being a full-time mother to a nine-year-old, and a wife. Which reminds me, Stuart said he bumped into Kit at the golf club the other day, and Kit said something about Laura giving up her job in the city and coming home to live with you.’

There was a brief pause before Nicki responded with telling feeling, ‘Don’t remind me! I can’t wait for our get-together and the chance to let off steam! Look, I’d better go, I’ve got to collect Joey from school in fifteen minutes.’

‘Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow night, then.’

As she rang off Alice reflected sympathetically on the situation that existed between Nicki and Laura, her husband Kit’s daughter from his first marriage.

Ten years ago when Kit and Nicki had married, Laura had been sixteen and still at school. Right from the start Laura had made it plain that she did not want her father to remarry, and no amount of olive-branch offering on Nicki’s part had softened her attitude.

‘Grandma, biscuit … biscuit!’

‘Biscuit—please.’ Alice automatically corrected George as she went to get him and his younger brother William some of the homemade biscuits she made especially for them.

They were adorable little boys, who reminded her very much of her own twin sons at the same age, and she loved them to bits, but there was no getting away from the fact that, after a full day of looking after them, she was more than glad to hand them back to their mother, her daughter Zoë.

Thinking of Zoë caused her forehead to wrinkle in an unhappy frown. Like her, Zoë had married young. Too young? Alice was increasingly feeling that that was what she herself had done.

Zoë wasn’t going to be pleased with the news Alice had to tell her. And what about Stuart? He wasn’t going to be very happy about her plans, was he? He had never encouraged or wanted her to be independent or to strike out on her own, and she knew that he was not going to understand, never mind approve of, the need that was motivating her now. She was going to have to be very strong, very single-minded if she was to be successful in reaching her longed-for goal, she knew that. But she knew too that her friends would support her. After all, they had always supported one another, been there for one another. She was looking forward to the excitement of breaking her news to them as much as she was dreading revealing it to her husband and daughter.

Quickly she went to check on her grandsons before going to telephone the fourth member of their quartet.

‘Stella, it’s Alice,’ she announced when Stella answered her call. ‘Do you still want me to pick you up tomorrow night?’

‘Could you? The only problem is that I don’t want to get back late. Hughie’s coming home from university today—just for a couple of days. Apparently there’s a break in lectures he can take advantage of. He says he has run out of clean clothes, but I’m not falling for that one. No doubt the real reason he wants to come home is to see Julie.’

The energetic sound of Stella Wilson’s voice reflected her personality, Alice thought. An almost frighteningly well-organised, no-nonsense person, she ran the lives of her husband and her son with streamlined efficiency. There was no agonising from Stella about a creeping band of weight transforming her body from that of a young woman to an older one; no soul-searching, or insecurities; no doubting or dithering; no hint, in fact, of any of the doubts and anxieties that so beset her, Alice recognised ruefully. But then Stella was one of those women who suited middle age.

The plainest of their foursome when they had been girls, Stella had grown from a girl whose looks, brisk manner and sensible, practical outlook on life had meant that she’d often been left in the background into a woman whose forthright manner and confidence in her own beliefs meant that she was now recognised as a valuable asset of the many committees she sat on and by those whose causes she championed. There was no sentimentality about Stella; she was not flirtatious or playful, and could when offended retreat into an awesomely dignified silence, but she was tremendously loyal and could always be relied on to offer straightforward advice and practical help. When it came to problem-solving Stella had no equal, and she was dearly loved by all of them.

‘Julie’s a great girl,’ she pronounced. ‘But she’s still at school, and Hughie has only just turned nineteen. I’m having to bite on my tongue not to sound like an over-anxious mother, but the last thing either of them need right now is an intense, emotional, long-distance relationship when they should be concentrating on their studies. I haven’t forgotten all the problems you went through with Zoë, when she was so determined to marry Ian that she threatened to drop out of university.’

Alice bit her lip. Stella never meant to be tactless, it was just that sometimes she forgot that others had less robust sensitivities than she possessed herself.

‘Zoë doesn’t know how lucky she is,’ Stella was continuing affectionately. ‘If anyone was born to be a wife and mother, it was you, Alice. How are the twins, by the way?’

‘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.