Now or Never

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.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Maggie had contradicted her firmly. ‘You just don’t realise that you do.’

And somehow or other Maggie, being Maggie, had managed to chivvy and downright bully her into taking what had then, to Nicki, seemed to be an impossibly dangerous step.

To her own surprise, what had started out as a small venture run from her own home had now become a very demanding and thankfully healthily profitable business. And what had been even more surprising had been the discovery that as the business had grown so had she; that she positively enjoyed the challenges it had brought her and that she was far more business-minded than she had ever known she could be. Or at least she had been until Joey had been born.

‘You’re pregnant. But you can’t be. You’re too old. It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting!’ had been Laura’s furious reaction when they had told her the news about Nicki’s pregnancy. ‘You’re being such a typical second wife,’ she had taunted Nicki when Kit had not been there. ‘They always rush to get pregnant. I’d hate to be in your position. Always feeling you’ve got something to prove, always knowing that someone else had been there before you. It isn’t my father who wants this baby, no matter what you say. It’s you. After all, he already has me!’

It had been just over a week after they had broken the news of her pregnancy to Laura that she had announced that she intended to leave. By then Nicki had had enough of trying to placate her. Overwhelmed with ‘morning sickness’ that lasted virtually all day, beset by anxieties about her agency, and worrying herself sick about the wisdom of her actually having a child who had not been planned, she had been in no fit state to cope with Laura as well.

The peace that had descended on the household after Laura’s departure had given Nicki a blissful taste of pure and absolute happiness, as within days of her stepdaughter going so had her morning sickness. But with that happiness had also come a bitter aftertaste of guilt, from knowing how badly Kit felt about Laura leaving. His anxiety for her had overshadowed Nicki’s pregnancy and Joey’s birth—so much so that Nicki had suffered a severe and unexpected bout of depression following the birth. Laura, predictably, had refused even to acknowledge the baby, never mind come and see him, and Joey had in fact been walking before Laura had met her new half-brother for the first time.

Nicki tensed now, collecting her thoughts as the kitchen door opened and Kit and Laura came in.

‘Where’s Joey?’ Kit asked as he looked round the kitchen.

‘In bed,’ Nicki told him sharply. ‘It’s past his bedtime and, as I told you this morning, I have work to do this evening.’

Nicki paused deliberately before reminding him, ‘You were supposed to be reading him the next chapter of his book.’

‘Oh, Dad, remember when you used to read my bedtime story?’ Laura smiled, interrupting Nicki, one hand on her father’s arm. She threw Nicki a smugly triumphant look before adding, ‘You never missed a single evening, no matter how busy you were. But of course things were different for us. With Mummy being so ill I really only had you. I expect that’s why we’re so especially close.’

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.