Now or Never

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Have you seen anything of Nicki?’ Stella asked Maggie as she straightened up.

  Maggie’s stomach muscles cramped. Since the receipt of the poison pen letter she had heard nothing from Nicki, and, if she were honest, she wasn’t sure what she would do if she did. Logically she ought to have tackled her about the situation by now, but the reality was that she had no idea how to deal with the subject. It was a minefield of potentially lethal hidden dangers, from which their friendship could not hope to survive. She lacked the single-mindedness to give their relationship the coup de grâce that it probably now deserved, Maggie recognised. There was still somewhere deep inside her a feeling that she owed Nicki, and that somehow she had let her down. But these were not feelings that she could put into easily voiced words, especially not to Stella, whose unexpressed disapproval she could still sense.

  And neither, if she was honest, did she want to put herself in the position of being told a second time that she was overreacting.

  ‘Not really,’ she replied as casually as she could.

  Coffee had arrived for the other two, along with the tea she had ordered. No risk of her baby not having perfect health was too small for her to ignore, no sacrifice for its well being too big to make…So long as that sacrifice wasn’t Nicki?

  Marcus looked up from his newspaper as he saw the girl walking into the wine bar. She was vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t until Laura returned his tentative smile with a freezingly cool look that he recognised her as one of the pair of women he had seen drinking in the wine bar a few weeks previously.

  Well, tonight at least she was sober, he acknowledged. Sober and alone! Like him.

  Laura could feel her face threatening to burn as she refused to return Marcus’ smile.

  She had known that it wasn’t a good idea to come here on her own, but she had desperately needed to put some space between herself and Zoë. The truth was that it was now more her growing sense of responsibility towards the boys that was keeping her working for Zoë. Zoë on her own she could just about tolerate, but Zoë when Ian was around!

  She decided that she would tell her own friends to shoot her before they allowed her to degenerate into the state that Zoë got into around her husband. It both sickened and infuriated Laura to see the way that Zoë debased herself in front of him. That wasn’t love, not in Laura’s opinion, it was more a form of self-denigration…more like self-hatred!

  It had definitely not been a good idea to come in here on her own, she decided, when she had had to fend off the hopeful advances of another couple of single men who had seen her and made a beeline for her. She had lost her appetite anyway.

  As she stood up Marcus didn’t know whether to feel intrigued or infuriated by her.

  She was obviously out to attract as much male attention as she could, walking in by herself, sitting down, and then getting up again and walking out without ordering anything, all the time wearing that look of hauteur like a tragedy queen. Well, he certainly wasn’t going to allow himself to react to it! Not that she was likely to notice, not with those two other guys at the bar salivating openly over her!

  Stella checked and glanced warily over her shoulder before going into the building that housed Todd’s rented flat.

  He had telephoned her just after lunch, inviting her out to dinner. Of course, she had had to refuse, but he had come back to her saying that if she wouldn’t or couldn’t have dinner openly with him, then would she meet him at his flat?

  Initially she had refused. Initially…

  She shook back her hair as she waited for him to answer the door. It was newly cut and styled—a mere coincidence, since she had already made up her mind that she was ready for a change, and as for the new, more fashionably styled jeans she was wearing…well, she had had to buy a new pair because of the unexpected amount of weight she had lost over the last few weeks. All that running up and down those stairs after Julie, no doubt, and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she felt as interested in food as a lovestruck teenager! The jeans bought on impulse in the kind of shop she would normally never have dreamed of spending money in—chain-store clothes were far more hardwearing than ridiculously overpriced designer items—along with a white tee shirt that had done astonishing, almost miraculous things for her shape. Luckily a sudden warm spell had allowed her to wear it without the necessity of either a cardigan or her standby navy blazer!

  The door opened, and her heart bounced against her chest wall as though it had been slammed by a centre court champion.

  Like her, Todd was wearing jeans and a tee shirt, but unlike her his hair was damp and his feet were bare.

  The significance of those two small facts burned a path through her attempts to remind herself that she was (a) fifty-one and (b) married, like a light set to a trail of gunpowder. Inside her shoes, her toes curled in helpless reaction, newly painted toenails and all.

  Without a word Todd moved sideways, one hand on top of the door so that she had to walk beneath his arm to enter the flat. For the first time in her life, Stella experienced the sharply excited, sensual reaction of her own body to the scent of freshly showered male flesh. She went hot and then hotter and for a delirious, unbelievable second she was actually tempted to stand there and bury her face greedily against his body so that she could fully absorb the reality of him. The sexual rush scorching her both thrilled and appalled her.

  Without breaking eye contact with her, Todd closed the door and then leaned back against it, taking hold of her hand and drawing her to him.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this moment from the second I set eyes on you,’ he told her softly. ‘This moment and all those other moments we are going to spend exploring and enjoying one another, sexy Stella. I hope that you are as hungry for me as I am for you. Are you, Stella? Do you want me?’ he whispered huskily to her as he kissed her mouth lightly, and then looked at her, as though searching her expression for something, before smiling slightly and kissing her again and then again, each time a little more deeply.

  Somewhere at the back of her mind Stella recognised that she was in the hands, quite literally, of a very practised lover, but she refused to acknowledge just what that might mean.

  Skilfully Todd moved their bodies so that, without her knowing how he had done it, suddenly she was the one with her back against the door, his body holding her there, leaning into her so that she was immediately and intimately aware of his arousal. Even as a young couple, she and Richard had never behaved like this. They had kissed, touched, yes…but never with such open sexual intimacy, such…such dizzyingly intense desire.

  Todd’s hand was on her breast. Stella quivered. Once a long time ago, a very long time ago, Richard had told her that she had perfectly shaped breasts…

  Richard. Thinking about him was like having a bucket of cold water thrown over her, dousing the flames that Todd had so expertly been fanning.

  Suddenly she felt guilty and ashamed. If she were to become involved with Todd then she wanted it to be openly and honestly as a free woman.

  ‘No!’

  She could see from Todd’s expression that he didn’t want to believe her.

  ‘No,’ she repeated firmly. ‘I need time.’ Time to distance herself from Richard; to leave their marriage. A marriage, she decided, that had become an easy habit for both of them; something she allowed to exist simply because they had nothing they wanted to put in its place. Until now…until Todd.

  He wasn’t pleased, Stella could see that, but he didn’t make any attempt to stop her from leaving.

  She had parked her car several streets away in the town’s main car park, just in case, and she had just reached it and unlocked the driver’s door when she realised that Maggie was walking across the car park towards her.

  ‘Stella,’ she heard her exclaiming warmly. ‘I’ve just been to the twenty-four-hour store. I’ve got the most desperate craving for pickled onions of all things…’

  Maggie’s voice tailed away as she looked at Ste
lla, and saw the tell-tale soft bruising swelling her mouth. Her pregnancy hormones had enhanced her sense of smell to such an acute state that she could actually smell the male cologne scenting Stella’s clothes.

  Immediately and unassailably, Maggie knew that whoever was responsible for that scent and whoever had been kissing Stella hard enough to leave that telltale sign of his passion on her mouth, it wasn’t Richard.

  For a moment the two women looked at one another in silence, and it was Stella who looked away first.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Maggie told her quietly. ‘Take care, Stella,’ she added gently.

  Stella’s face was burning as she got into her own car, but she couldn’t bring herself to make any response.

  Thoughtfully Maggie watched her drive away. There were some truths one kept to oneself discreetly, some one gossiped about with enjoyment, and some that one simply put carefully in a very, very safe place labelled ‘forget’. What she had just unexpectedly witnessed quite definitely belonged to the latter category.

  ‘So where are we celebrating?’ Oliver asked Maggie teasingly.

  ‘Celebrating?’ Mock innocently, she affected not to know what he meant, but he refused to give in.

  Laughing, he told her, ‘You know as well as I do that it’s twelve weeks and one day today since you conceived. I’ve seen them crossed off the calendar.’

  Twelve weeks and one day. Maggie gave a small sigh of happiness as she snuggled into his arms.

  ‘We’ve done nothing but celebrate ever since we knew,’ she reminded him.

  ‘So?’ Oliver gave her back a gentle little rub of loving affection. ‘Is there a rule that says we have to limit our happiness or how many times we celebrate it?’

  ‘No…’ Maggie allowed.

  She had firmly tucked all the shock and unhappiness of Nicki’s behaviour to a safe, dusty little corner of her mind. She couldn’t understand how she could have done such a thing, but she certainly didn’t want to persecute her!

  ‘I’ve got a date for my scan,’ she told Oliver. ‘And it looks like they’re going to deliver the baby midway through October, possibly on the fifteenth as I shall be just a couple of days short of the full forty weeks then, and they don’t want to have me go into labour naturally, just in case there are complications. I wish they would let me give birth naturally though, Oliver.’

  This had been a small bone of contention between them and between Maggie and her consultant, but the latter had remained adamant. In view of Maggie’s age and the fact that this was her first child, he was not prepared to take any risks. ‘And I’m not just thinking of you, Maggie,’ he had told her. ‘A long, slow birth could have serious repercussions for the baby, and I know that that’s something neither of us would want.’

  ‘Have you any plans for today?’ Oliver asked her as he finished his breakfast.

  ‘Not really,’ Maggie replied. ‘I’m going to ring the estate agents and chivvy them along a bit. If we don’t find somewhere soon we’re going to end up knocking on doors and begging someone to sell us their house.’ She laughed. ‘And I’ve got some shopping I want to do later.’

  ‘More pickled onions?’ Oliver guessed.

  ‘No!’ Maggie denied.

  She was upstairs in the bathroom when she heard the car driving up, and by the time she got back down again it had gone.

  The letter was there, though. Lying face down in the hall, the envelope looking innocuous enough, but somehow she just knew.

  Typewritten and bearing just her name, it gave nothing away, but Maggie’s hands still trembled as she opened it.

  ‘Twelve weeks, Maggie. I didn’t think you’d make it this far! You have surprised me! Don’t get too confident though, will you? I haven’t changed my mind,’ it read.

  That was all. But it was enough…more than enough.

  Maggie tore it into shreds, her hands trembling, and then she buried it as far down as she could in the trash where it belonged.

  Now Nicki had gone too far! But, liberatingly, instead of frightening her, the letter had driven her through fear and into the cleansing freedom of anger.

  And she was angry. So very, very angry! So tempted to go straight round to Nicki and tell her what she thought of her, to punish her by warning her that Oliver wanted to report what she had done to the police. She could feel her heart jumping, frighteningly heavily. Quickly she put her hand on her body. If she was frightened then how must her poor baby feel?

  ‘It’s all right,’ she soothed softly. ‘Everything’s all right…It’s just your silly mummy getting angry.’

  Angry. At least anger was cleansing, unlike her previous emotions. Only sick, inadequate people wrote poison pen letters. She ought to feel sorry for Nicki instead of angry with her, she told herself as she began to calm down. Instead of confronting her, the best way to deal with the situation was to ignore it. Wasn’t it?

  She didn’t really want to get drawn into confrontations or arguments, Maggie recognised. She didn’t want to expose her baby to the rank bitterness she felt sure would flood from a meeting with Nicki, like pus from a wound.

  She wasn’t going to allow anything to dent the strength, the love she intended to pour into making her baby. Fiercely, she brushed away her tears. Nicki had made her choice, and now Maggie was going to make hers! If Nicki felt that giving vent to her anger at what Maggie had done was more important than her friendship, then so be it. She certainly felt that surrounding her growing baby with love and good vibes was way more important than trying to rescue a relationship already brutally sabotaged.

  But she still wasn’t going to tell Oliver about the new letter!

  Stella put down her article with a small sigh of exasperation. She was surprised that the incessant beat of the music that had drowned out every sound in the house since Julie had put it on over an hour ago had not brought the ceiling down!

  She was a patient person, or so she had always thought, but she had had enough. Standing up, she opened the sitting-room door and headed for the stairs.

  Outside the door to the flat, she took a deep breath and then knocked firmly.

  No reply. She waited, and counted to ten, and then ten again, and knocked a second time. The third time she only counted to ten once, before grasping the handle and turning it.

  The music, deafening enough downstairs, was at a painful, ear-hurting crescendo inside the small flat. There was no sign of Julie in the sitting room. Exasperatedly, Stella turned the music off and then frowned as in the blissful silence she heard a tiny, moaned whimper.

  ‘Julie!’

  She found her in the bathroom, doubled up on the floor, clutching her stomach, her face streaked with tears and her eyes full of pain and fear.

  ‘Julie! What is it? Is it the baby?’ Stella asked her as calmly as she could.

  Officially Julie still had at least a week to go, and it could of course be merely a false alarm, but as Stella watched her her whole body contorted and tensed with the unmistakable rigour of a full contraction.

  ‘Come on, Julie,’ Stella instructed her. ‘Let’s get you to the hospital.’

  ‘No,’ Julie moaned. ‘No…I can’t…Please don’t make me. It hurts…It hurts…’

  Somehow, by a mixture of coaxing, pleading, praising and downright bullying, Stella managed to get her safely downstairs and into the car. Once she was there, Stella felt as stressed and exhausted as Julie looked.

  ‘I want my mum,’ Julie sobbed as Stella got in the car beside her and turned on the engine.

  ‘I’ll ring her just as soon as we get to the hospital,’ Stella promised her soothingly.

  She wanted to ring ahead to warn them that she was bringing Julie in, but she dared not take her attention off the road to use her mobile, and she knew she couldn’t ask Julie to make the call herself.

  In the end, as luck would have it, as she pulled up outside the main entrance a porter happened to be passing with a wheelchair and she was able to persuade him to help Julie into it and
take her inside whilst she parked the car.

  By the time she had returned to the maternity wing, Julie was already on the labour ward. Going back outside to use her mobile, Stella rang the number Julie’s mother had given her, but to her dismay there was no response. She left a message, and then tried Julie’s parents’ home number which she had got from Hughie ‘just in case’. She was fully prepared to risk Julie’s father’s fury, but only the answering machine cut in.

  Hughie, predictably, had his mobile switched off, and Richard hadn’t even bothered to take his out with him. Whilst she was making her calls, a number flashed up on her screen that she immediately recognised as Todd’s, but for once she felt no answering response of feverish sexual excitement, instead mentally brushing the realisation that he was trying to reach her away as she concentrated on what right now were more important matters.

  ‘Julie?’ she asked the nurse on duty anxiously as she hurried back onto the ward.

  ‘She’s doing fine,’ the nurse told her. ‘She’s asking for you,’ she added with a smile. ‘So if you’d like to come and gown up?’

  Julie was asking for her? Stella suspected that the nurse had mistaken her for Julie’s mother, but since she was the only person who was here she felt duty bound to give Julie whatever support she could.

  It was strange how little really did change, Stella reflected ten minutes later, standing beside Julie, holding her hand, feeling her sharp little nails dig into her flesh as she stroked the damp hair off her forehead and spoke encouragingly to her.

  Giving birth was as fundamental to human civilisation now as it had always been, as awesome, as mystical, as downright blood, sweat and tears, Stella acknowledged as she praised Julie for her hard work, and told her what a clever, strong girl she was being.