Now or Never

by Penny Jordan

  Trembling, Alice switched off her mobile. Had Stuart been sacked? Had Stuart been sacked and not said anything at all to her about it!

  Fear and panic filled her. Without knowing she was doing so, she rocked to and fro in her seat, like a needy child.

  She was on her own, confronting a situation she had no idea how to deal with, and with no way of getting in touch with Stuart.

  She could of course ignore Zoë and ring Ian. She reached again for her mobile and then stopped.

  Hadn’t one of her complaints been that she was never allowed to be responsible, never treated as though she was capable of being responsible?

  Getting out of the car, she took a deep breath and started to walk back towards the hospital.

  Laura had dropped the boys off at their morning playgroup, and had three hours to fill before she needed to pick them up again.

  Her conversation with her father, and Nicki, were very much on her mind. She had an impulsive urge to go and see her stepmother, to try to talk to her. She started to frown.

  Before she started her car Maggie read the letter again.

  The clumsy letters were no less stomach-churning for being so mismatched and stuck onto the paper at odd angles, much as a child might have done.

  ‘You are going to die and so is your baby. You have no right to live. You are a thief and a murderess.’

  She knew the words off by heart—the letter was printed indelibly inside her head. She knew that Oliver wouldn’t want her to do what she was doing, but she had to.

  Before she could change her mind she started her car.

  She didn’t care what the ‘evidence’ might say, and whilst she respected and understood how Oliver might feel, he did not, could not know of that inner voice, that inner person prompting, insisting that she made one last attempt to reach out to Nicki! It was as though the baby itself were urging her to do so, as though he or she were somehow offering Nicki a depth of love and compassion that Maggie knew she herself had been on the verge of withdrawing. That knowledge shamed her a little. She and Nicki went back so very many years, after all.

  ‘It was just that I wanted to put you first,’ she whispered to her baby. ‘But if you want me to do it…’

  A firm little kick answered her soft promise.

  Maggie knew there were those who would say she was being over-emotional and reacting accordingly, that it was simply not possible for the life growing inside her to communicate with her in the way she somehow felt he or she was doing. Perhaps not, but that wasn’t going to change Maggie’s mind—or her decision!

  Maggie had no wish to be confrontational with Nicki, to accuse, bully or threaten her in any way. But she knew she had to speak with her again.

  It was as though a sense, a something, a someone deep down inside herself, were insisting to her that it wasn’t merely an issue of their friendship being in jeopardy, but Nicki herself! That same inner urgency was pushing her to go and see Nicki, despite the fact that she had already decided that their friendship was over, ended by Nicki herself. There was a debt between them that, for whatever reason, Maggie had woken up this morning knowing she must honour, and with that knowing had also come a sense of freedom and strength, so strong that she felt able to overlook the cruelty of the letters she had been sent, in order to repay that debt. A debt of knowing, and of times past. A debt of love!

  Draycotte Manor was his! He had signed the final legal documents that had transferred the house and the land into his ownership, and Dan still didn’t know whether he was quite sane.

  He frowned as he stepped out of his solicitor’s office into the bright sunshine. It was on his conscience that he had perhaps been a little hard on Nicki when he had last spoken to her. It wouldn’t hurt to drive over to her place and offer an apology, explain that he had spoken in the heat of the moment—and out of the intensity of his love for Maggie, he acknowledged as he unlocked his car.

  Getting Joey into the car had proved harder than Nicki had expected and taken up precious time. She had been terrified that he might wake up, but to her relief he didn’t.

  Her mouth trembled as she automatically reached out to fasten the seat belt around him and then stopped. He wouldn’t need it where he was going; neither of them were ever going to need any kind of restraints ever again.

  The men working on the automatic gates had told her that they couldn’t finish the job until the following week, but that didn’t matter now.

  Before getting in the car herself, she checked that everything was in order. The garage door was closed and locked, and the windows were closed. The house doors were locked too.

  She took a deep breath, got into the car, and then switched on the engine.

  It was difficult holding Joey in her arms with the steering wheel in the way but she managed to do it.

  She wasn’t sure how long it was going to take…Not long, she hoped. She could smell the fumes already…She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to Joey’s forehead.

  19

  ‘I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about,’ Julie told Stella angrily. ‘Why shouldn’t I stay at my mother’s if I want to?’

  ‘All Jack’s things are here,’ Stella reminded her. ‘His bottles, the steriliser…’

  ‘Mum has bought one, and she says that the teats on his bottle aren’t the right kind. She says that’s why he’s getting wind.’

  Stella stared at her, shocked by the sullen, openly hostile edge to Julie’s voice.

  ‘You were supposed to take Jack to be weighed this morning,’ she reminded Julie, rallying.

  ‘Mum took him,’ Julie told her. ‘He’s put on two pounds. Dad can’t believe how well he’s doing.’

  ‘Your father has seen Jack?’ Stella couldn’t conceal either her chagrin or her disbelief.

  ‘He came home early. Mum says she’s got a photograph of Dad when he was a baby and that Jack is the spitting image of him.’

  Stella stared at her.

  ‘Jack looks like Hughie,’ she reminded her curtly, but Julie was ignoring her, turning away from her, lifting Jack out of his pram and deliberately refusing to make eye contact with Stella.

  ‘I’ve got to go out shopping,’ Stella told Julie as affably as she could. ‘Is there anything you need?’

  Shaking her head, Julie walked away from her.

  Maggie frowned as she approached the roundabout and saw that the exit she needed to take was closed and that diversion signs were posted offering a much longer way round.

  She hesitated, gnawing at her bottom lip. She had an appointment with the hospital later, only a routine check-up but she didn’t want to miss it. Perhaps she ought to put off going to see Nicki until later? The baby gave her a very firm kick. ‘Okay,’ she agreed ruefully. ‘That’s fine, if that’s what you want.’

  She checked her driving mirror as she swung her car back onto the roundabout and did a full circle to bring her back to the posted diversion.

  The sight of Nicki’s new semi-installed security gates made Maggie frown a little. They lived in a market town that had a very low incidence of crime, and where virtually everyone knew everyone else, and where the issue of privacy was one that came more frequently into people’s conversation than that of security.

  There was no sign of Nicki’s car parked on the gravel in its normal spot, but still Maggie stopped her own car and switched off the engine, getting out.

  Nicki was a keen gardener, and the small bed at the front of the house, flanking the front door, was always filled with deliciously scented plants, but today it was not their scent Maggie could smell as she walked across the gravel, but the far more ominous odour of car exhaust fumes.

  From the very start of her pregnancy Maggie had developed a nauseous reaction to exhaust emissions, becoming extra sensitive to their smell, and she lifted her hand to her nose in a gesture of discomfort as she looked round.

  And then she saw it, creeping with stealthy, deathly intent from beneath the closed garage door
, a pall of odorous grey-coloured mist.

  Her heart lurched and banged against her ribs, her body suddenly freezing cold, her legs refusing to carry her. Immediately, instantly, without knowing how or why, she knew. In the same heartbeat as she offered up a prayer for Nicki, she offered another of thanks that she had listened to that oh, so faint whisper of instinct. And then somehow she was moving, running clumsily towards the garage, shouting Nicki’s name as she tried to open the locked door, banging frantically. When the door refused to open, she ran desperately to the house, trying all the doors, but not really surprised to discover that they were locked.

  Frustrated again, she ran round the side of the garage, where she knew there was a side door and a window.

  The door was locked, but through the window she could see Nicki’s car, and in it…There was no time to call for help, no time to waste at all. Reaching for the first thing she could find—a piece of stone lying on the ground—Maggie picked it up and hurled it with all her might at the window.

  The sound of it shattering made her sob with relief, but she knew she needed to get inside the garage. Blindly she tore at the broken glass, desperate to remove enough of it to allow her to climb inside, ignoring the cuts on her hands and the blood running from them. Somehow she would have to find a way to breathe through the noxious fumes; somehow she would have to find a way to manoeuvre her pregnant body safely through the broken aperture, somehow…

  She was leaning into the window, half choking on the fumes as she tried to lever herself upwards, when Laura drew up, bringing her car to a skidding halt as she saw the smoke.

  ‘Maggie!’ Laura protested in shock, running to her side and dragging her back from the window.

  ‘Nicki’s in there, in the car…’ Maggie sobbed ‘…and Joey’s with her. She’s locked all the doors.’

  ‘I’ve got my keys,’ Laura told her. ‘Get back from the smoke, Maggie.’

  ‘I can’t just leave her, I have to get to her!’ She continued to struggle to get back to the window, and it took all of Laura’s strength to drag her away.

  ‘Ring the emergency services,’ Laura instructed her as she ran for the door.

  Her hand was trembling as she fitted her key into the garage door. It was Nicki who had provided her with her set of keys, her mouth tight with bitterness and dislike as she’d done so.

  Laura coughed, choking on the powerful fumes as she pushed the door open. She could barely see Nicki’s car for the exhaust.

  She could hear Maggie on the phone, explaining to the emergency services what was happening.

  Frantically she hurried into the garage, fighting against the choking, lung-burning taste of the fumes, her heart hammering with adrenalin and fear.

  Through the smoke she could see the still figure of her stepmother inside the car, her eyes closed, her arms wrapped protectively around Joey who was lying against her.

  The first thing Dan saw as he turned into the drive was the two cars, the second was Maggie, her face streaked with smoke, and tears, her clothes covered in bloodstains as she turned round without seeing him and ran into the open garage from which he could see fumes pouring.

  Getting out of his car, he followed her, ignoring the shocked look on her face as Maggie saw him run round to the rear of the car and yank the pipe from the exhaust.

  ‘Dan, the car’s locked,’ Maggie cried as he turned to face her. ‘Nicki’s inside it with Joey.’

  ‘Have you rung the emergency services?’ he demanded tersely.

  Maggie nodded.

  He could see now that there were two of them, Maggie and a younger woman, her face grimly set as she tugged futilely on the locked car door.

  ‘Get back outside, both of you,’ he instructed them, adding firmly, ‘Maggie, you shouldn’t be in here inhaling these fumes.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Laura demanded.

  ‘Try and break the rear window,’ he told her curtly.

  ‘The rear window?’ Laura protested.

  Dan gave her a brief look. ‘If I break the windscreen it could set off the air bags. Now get Maggie out of here.’

  Instinctively obeying him, Laura went to Maggie’s side and started to guide her outside. They both paused as they heard the sound of breaking glass, turning to look back. Maggie pulled against Laura’s constraining grip, but Laura refused to let her go.

  If, as she feared, it was already too late to save Nicki and Joey, then Maggie should not be the one to make that discovery.

  To her relief Laura could hear the sound of sirens, heralding the arrival of the emergency vehicles.

  Her mind in overdrive, she acknowledged that she really ought to ring her father. Maggie was shuddering silently at her side, the bulge of her belly and its promise of new life as grotesque in its way as the brilliance and warmth of the sunshine, given what was lying behind them.

  Tears burned Laura’s eyes. Nicki, her stepmother, whose love she had never acknowledged or accepted. Joey, her half-brother, whom she had barely started to get to know. Her life would be painfully diminished without them.

  Gravel spurted under the tyres of the ambulance as it pulled into the drive. The fire engine was behind it, and Laura could hear the authority and activity of the men as they moved into action.

  Someone, a uniformed police officer, had somehow materialised at her side and was suggesting quietly that she and Maggie should go inside.

  Numbly Laura took hold of Maggie’s arm and drew her towards the house.

  ‘It might be an idea to put the kettle on and make some tea, love,’ the police officer was suggesting gently, whilst one of the ambulance crew was heading for them, giving Maggie a professional look.

  ‘It’s okay, I’ll take over here,’ she told Laura.

  ‘She got here first and I think she’s inhaled a lot of the fumes,’ Laura told her in a staccato voice. ‘She broke a window, to try to get in…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Laura heard the nurse saying gently. ‘You have a good cry…’

  Cry? She was crying? Laura lifted her hand to her face, surprised to discover that it was wet.

  ‘Nicki, my stepmother, and my brother Joey…’

  ‘The men are breaking into the car now,’ the nurse told her, ‘but I don’t…’ The look in her eyes confirmed Laura’s own fears.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you upstairs,’ she was urging Maggie.

  ‘I can’t,’ Maggie protested. ‘I’ve got to go, I should be at the hospital for my antenatal class…’

  ‘They’ll understand why you can’t make it.’ The nurse was soothing her. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up a bit and then I can check on junior although, from the looks of this—’ she smiled as she reached out and touched the bump in Maggie’s belly where a small bulge was protruding ‘—it looks like he or she is pretty much okay.’

  How was it possible to laugh at such a time? Laura wondered. But she was laughing, sharing the moment of relief and joy with Maggie and the nurse as all three of them smiled down at the small kicking foot.

  Once Joey must have done something similar, a small bump carefully protected inside his mother’s womb. How could a woman take her own child’s life when she had gone through so much to give him that life? Any woman, but most especially a woman like Nicki, who had always revered everything that lived, refusing to even allow Laura as a girl to so much as kill a fly?

  Dan watched as the emergency services lifted the inert bodies of Nicki and her son from the car. The silence in the garage was as thick and heavy as the exhaust fumes had been.

  ‘Mrs Palmer. Please sit down.’

  Alice gave the doctor a slightly uncomfortable look as she sat down opposite him. She had made the appointment on impulse after leaving the hospital, having been told by the doctor there that Zoë would have to stay in overnight to ensure that she was not suffering from concussion.

  They had told her at the surgery that the new doctor had a spare appointment that she could take if she wished. She had hesitated
uncertainly, and then accepted the appointment, but now she was not so sure she had done the right thing.

  The doctor at the hospital had been too busy to answer the questions she had wanted to ask, nor had she felt able to unburden herself to him and discuss her fears.

  Marcus smiled at his patient and checked her notes. There was nothing on them to suggest why she might have come to see him. He could see, though, that she was very anxious and agitated.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about my daughter,’ Alice burst out. ‘There was an accident this morning. She’s in hospital.’

  Patiently Marcus waited, listening carefully to the jumbled sentences.

  ‘The thing is, you see,’ Alice told him, taking a deep breath, ‘she…The hospital…She’d been drinking.’

  Marcus frowned. If she had come here to ask him to intercede in some way on her daughter’s behalf…

  ‘I knew that she sometimes drank too much. I feel so guilty,’ Alice confessed. ‘If I had done something earlier…But I…I just tried to pretend that it wasn’t happening. They said at the hospital that it was a miracle that no one was killed. The woman in the other car was taking four children to school.’ Without knowing she had done so, Alice had started to cry, slow, seeping tears of anguish and shame that rolled gently down her face.

  ‘The policeman said that they had been able to smell the drink on her breath at the scene of the accident. It wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning and she was drunk!’

  In her voice Marcus could hear all the bewilderment, anguish and shame of a middle-class mother who had probably never drunk anything more than the occasional Christmas sherry and celebration champagne.

  ‘She wouldn’t let the authorities send for Ian, her husband, so they got in touch with me instead. I could see what they thought of her…and of me. She was sick whilst I was there, and…and abusive to the doctor and the policeman.’ Biting her lip, Alice raised her head and looked imploringly at him. ‘I don’t know what to do…how to help her. There must be things, treatments…’