Now or Never

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.’

She had meant it as a joke, a means of lightening the taut, uncomfortable silence surrounding her, but instead of laughing her friends were regarding her with differing degrees of incomprehension.

Alice, she recognised, simply looked shocked. Stella was frowning, and avoiding meeting her eyes, whilst Nicki …

Her mouth suddenly dry, Maggie could feel herself flinching as she searched Nicki’s stonily silent features.

‘I thought you’d be pleased for me,’ she told them. Like a child seeking adult approval, she recognised miserably as she heard the pleading note in her own voice.

‘Well, yes, of course we are. It’s just that it’s such a shock.’

That was Alice typically trying to ease things and be tactful.

‘It certainly is.’ True to form, Stella added bluntly, ‘I just can’t see you as a mother, Maggie. You’ve never seemed the type. Are you sure …?’

‘Of course she’s sure, aren’t you, Maggie?’ Nicki cut in, her voice sharply acid. ‘Maggie is always sure about what she does. At least, at the time she decides to do it she is. Of course, she doesn’t always stop to think about anything other than the moment, do you, Maggie? How pregnant exactly are you?’

‘It’s … it’s just about a month …’

‘A month?’ Nicki stopped. An expression Maggie couldn’t recognise crossed her face. ‘Four weeks! Have you any idea just how vulnerable a pregnancy is in its early stages, Maggie, especially at your age?’ They could all hear the bitterness and the fury in her voice as she warned, ‘You could quite easily wake up tomorrow morning and discover that your dreams of a baby are over!’

‘Nicki!’ Alice stopped her quickly, giving Maggie’s white set face an anxious look. The open and unexpected hostility in Nicki’s voice had shocked them all, especially Maggie, who started to protest shakily.

‘Nicki! What are you saying? What’s wrong?’

Nicki knew that she was overreacting; that she was letting the anger she felt against Kit spill over into a safer escape by venting it on Maggie, and that she should have found a kinder way of expressing her feelings. But it was too late to call back her sharp words now. And besides …

She could feel her stomach churning with a mixture of moral outrage, shock, and anger at Maggie’s blind selfishness, and, worst of all, sheer, raw jealousy, streaked with a pain she had told herself she had managed to control.

Out of the corner of her eye she registered the silent looks that Stella and Alice were exchanging, whilst Maggie looked at her as though she couldn’t believe her ears. Her red-gold curls were a wild halo around her head, her delicately boned face almost childishly flushed, the dark blue eyes that Nicki had secretly envied all the time they were growing up rounded with shock.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nicki repeated, her voice brittle. ‘Do I really have to tell you? Maggie, you are fifty-two years old! During the thirty-odd fertile years you had in which to become pregnant you chose not to do so. You weren’t into babies, you told us all—remember? I’ll bet that Dan does. He would have given anything to have a child, but you didn’t want one! Then!

‘But now things are different—apparently. Now, when you’re in a relationship with a man who is considerably younger than you are, you’ve changed your mind! I don’t want to be unkind, but, let’s be honest, statistics prove that such relationships rarely endure. I’m not saying that Oliver doesn’t love you now, we can all see that he does. But when you bring a baby into the world, if you have any forethought, any maturity, you surely want to provide it with the best emotional environment you can, and once again statistics prove that this entails a baby having two parents in its life. Yes, countless thousands of children have been brought up successfully and happily by heroically selfless and devoted single parents, but those parents often did not have a choice! You do. And not only do you have freedom of choice, Maggie, supposedly you also have wisdom and maturity as well. If you were a young girl … but you aren’t, no matter how much you might be trying to behave like one.

‘Which brings me to something else. Doesn’t the fact that nature has declared that she no longer considers you physically able to produce a child mean anything to you?’

‘What are you trying to say, Nicki?’ Maggie interrupted her with quick defensiveness. ‘That only naturally fertile women have the right to have children?’

‘Of course I’m not, but you have to admit that there’s a huge difference between a woman who is medically unable to conceive, and one who has rejected the opportunity to have children, until she is through the menopause and then decided, Oh, I’ve changed my mind. I want a baby after all. What do you think a baby is, Maggie? Some kind of status symbol? The fertility equivalent of a course of Botox and a face-lift? A way of gaining instant youth?’

‘That’s not fair,’ Maggie protested. ‘This has nothing to do with anything like that!’

‘No? I’m sorry but I don’t believe you! I think the only reason you’re having this baby is because of Oliver. Because you think …’

‘Because I think what?’ Maggie challenged her angrily. ‘Because I think that by having Oliver’s baby I’m going to keep him?’

As their glances clashed it was Nicki who looked away first. A dull flush had spread up over the smooth column of her throat. As she reached out for her wineglass her fingers trembled slightly when she picked it up, the immaculate glossy darkness of her manicure reflecting the richness of the red wine.

As she took a deep swallow Alice murmured, ‘When is the baby due, Maggie?’

‘October. Not for another eight months. They do a blood test a fortnight after … after. I was very lucky. Some women go through several unsuccessful attempts before they actually become pregnant.’

‘I’ve read about the procedure,’ Stella commented, resorting to practicality in an attempt to lower the emotional intensity level a little. ‘But what is actually involved?’

‘What is involved is that a healthy, young fertile woman is tricked into believing that her voluntarily given eggs are going to be donated to another young woman,’ Nicki told them angrily before Maggie could respond.

‘The woman whose egg I received had made no stipulation about the age of any donee,’ Maggie informed them all quietly.

‘It’s a very big step to take,’ Alice said gently.

‘I know,’ Maggie agreed, with quiet dignity. ‘That was why I was counting on having your support, and your help.’

There was a look in her eyes that made Alice ache for her.

‘Of course we’ll help you,’ she assured her.

‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t want anything to do with this,’ Nicki exclaimed, finishing her wine and putting her glass down. Beneath her immaculate make-up her face looked strained.

‘Nicki,’ Alice intervened softly, ‘I’m sure that Maggie has considered everything.’

‘Has she?’ Nicki’s voice was cynical. ‘Or is she simply following another trend? What is it exactly that you want to prove, Maggie? Or can we guess? First a young lover, and then a baby. It’s all so easy for you, isn’t it? You just decide what you want and then you go out and buy it, whether it’s a new car, a new man, or a new life!

‘Has it occurred to you to wonder how this baby is going to feel when he or she gets laughed at and taunted at school for having such an old mother? Has it even occurred to you that you might not be there when he or she most needs you, when they reach their teens?’

Alice couldn’t bear to look at either Maggie or Nicki. The silence between them was bad enough, armed with spikily dangerous emotions. Stella, she could see, was frowning, and looking as though she was about to give them both a lecture.

Desperate to avert the disaster she could see looming Alice burst out frantically, ‘I’ve got some news to tell you all as well!’

‘Don’t tell us that you’re pregnant too!’ Stella demanded, giving her a wry look. ‘Mind you somehow in your case it wouldn’t be that surprising, Alice. You’ve always had that earth mother look about you, and as we all know your Stuart is very highly sexed!’