Now or Never

by Penny Jordan

  Marcus relaxed a little as Alice unwittingly revealed that the help she wanted for her daughter was medical and not legal. In Marcus’ experience, it wasn’t unheard of for a certain type of parent to attempt to browbeat a family doctor into protecting an adult child from the consequences of his or her addiction.

  ‘Well, yes, there are,’ he agreed. ‘But first we have to find out to what extent your daughter has a problem, and the only way we can do that is for her to come and see us.’

  ‘But she won’t do that,’ Alice told him in panic. ‘She doesn’t realise how serious things are. She…’

  Marcus sighed. Alice was practically wringing her hands as she pleaded with him to supply her with hope, answers, something—anything that would enable her to help her child, he recognised, but of course he couldn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘But in order for your daughter to receive any kind of treatment she has first to decide herself that she needs it.’

  ‘But she does need it,’ Alice interrupted him anxiously. ‘They said at the hospital…’

  ‘She may need it, but until and unless she recognises that herself we cannot do anything for her,’ Marcus told her firmly.

  ‘For one thing it would be totally unethical for us to force anyone to have medical treatment they did not want, and for another it is clinically recognised that, unless a patient accepts the fact that they have an addiction problem—whatever that addiction might be—no treatment on this earth is going to work.’

  Alice stared hopelessly at him.

  ‘You mean that Zoë has to come to you herself and say that she is—’ Alice stopped and swallowed emotionally ‘—that she has a drink problem, before you can do anything for her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marcus had to confirm. ‘I do understand how hard this must be for you,’ he said gently. ‘There is an organisation for people who…who have family members who are addicts. It provides a forum where you can talk in complete confidence about the…situation. It’s called Al Anon,’ he told her, ‘and you should be able to find the address of your nearest group in your telephone book.’

  ‘But Zoë needs help,’ Alice told him piteously. ‘She’s married, a mother with two small children…’

  Marcus sighed. He understood what Alice was trying to say.

  ‘Perhaps if you sit down with her and talk with her? Explain that you are concerned about her. Tell her that you love her and that you want to support her, but make sure she understands that she has to face up to what she is doing to herself and to those who love her. Perhaps her husband…’

  ‘Ian?’ Alice gave him a brief look. ‘She doesn’t want him to know.’

  ‘I’m sorry that I can’t be more help,’ Marcus told her, signalling discreetly that it was time for her to leave. ‘However, if your daughter should want to come in and see us here…You may find that the hospital will suggest to her that she looks at her lifestyle and perhaps she’ll acknowledge that she has a problem that needs to be addressed, but, at the end of the day, what she does or does not decide to do rests entirely with her.’

  Without being aware of having done anything Alice discovered that she was outside in the street, staring blindly in front of her.

  She could see the estate agents’ where Zoë worked—had worked, she corrected herself numbly. Her throat felt dry and her head was aching. She had some headache tablets in her bag somewhere. Perhaps if she went and had a cup of tea…What time was it? It gave her a shock to look at her watch and discover that it was lunchtime. She ought to have something to eat, even though she didn’t feel hungry. She saw a small group of people going into the wine bar and made to follow them, stopping abruptly as she remembered that it had been one of Zoë’s favourite haunts. She couldn’t go inside. What if…?

  There was a coffee shop a little further up the street, and she made her way to it like a stranger in a foreign land, painfully and anxiously, alienated from the people surrounding her, the babble of their chatter a jumble of words that meant nothing to her.

  ‘Alice…Alice!’

  Stella gave an exasperated sigh as she had to call Alice’s name a third time before her friend finally turned round and saw her.

  ‘Oh, heavens, what a day I’m having,’ Stella complained as she hurried up to where Alice was standing motionless on the pavement. ‘You wouldn’t believe the way that Julie is behaving. She took Jack round to her mother’s last night and then decided to spend the night there, if you please, without so much as a phone call to me, and then this morning…Well, if I was her mother I would have something to say to her about her manners, I can tell you, Alice. I mean, when I think of what I’ve done for her. And Richard is worse than useless. You really would think he’d be more supportive. Alice! Where are you going?’ Stella protested, thoroughly affronted, as Alice walked off in the opposite direction without a word of explanation.

  ‘Well, really!’ she muttered crossly under her breath. But she hadn’t got time to go running after Alice to demand an explanation. She had some shopping to do, and she had decided that it was time that both she and Richard lost a bit of weight and started taking more care of themselves. After all, if they were going to have an active toddler to run around after…So from now on Richard was going to accustom himself to eating much more healthily! He wouldn’t like it, of course. Like all men he hated change, almost as much as he loved her pastries and puddings. Stella’s face lit up as she anticipated making all Hughie’s favourite foods for Jack when he was older.

  She had spoken to her friend in social services again this morning and she had agreed that it would be far better for Jack to be adopted by a member of his own family rather than by strangers.

  ‘If adoption is what his mother wants,’ she had concluded.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Stella had assured her. ‘She’s said so all along!’

  Happily making plans, Stella headed for the supermarket.

  As soon as they had been given the news officially, Laura rang her father. He arrived just as the police car was driving away, swirling up the gravel in a cloud of dust in his haste. The ambulance and the fire engine had already left.

  ‘Nicki? Joey?’ he demanded, getting out of the car and hurrying towards Laura. ‘Where are they?’

  As he spoke he was looking in the direction of the house as though somehow he expected to see his wife and son come walking out of it towards him.

  ‘It’s all right, Dad,’ Laura told him gently. ‘They’ve taken them to the hospital.’

  ‘I want to see them,’ Kit announced immediately.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Laura responded. She could have travelled to the hospital in the ambulance, but she had wanted to wait for her father.

  On the other side of the gravel forecourt Oliver was comforting Maggie, rocking her in his arms, his face hollowed with shock and grief.

  Dan watched them in silence.

  Maggie had turned instinctively to him in the immediate aftermath of her shock, and as instinctively and as naturally as though they had never spent a day apart he had held her and mopped up her tears, telling her that she had done everything she could and more than anyone else could possibly have done, and she had leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed in silent misery for the woman who had been her closest friend and who had shared so much of her life.

  It had been Dan who had heard Oliver’s car approaching and who had released her, going to the other man to briefly update him, just as it had been Dan who had taken Maggie’s mobile from her and rung Oliver’s number in the first place to tell him what was happening.

  For a second they had locked glances measuring one another, and Dan had felt a sharp, savage pang as he’d recognised the challenge in the younger man’s eyes and the determination. It was his own fault that he had lost Maggie and no one else’s, he’d reminded himself as he’d watched Oliver stride past him to wrap her tightly in his arms.

  On the way to the hospital Laura had to stop off at the school to collect Zoë’s sons
. Her telephone calls both to Zoë and to Alice had remained unanswered, and although she tried to behave as naturally as she could she could tell that both of them were infected by her mood, especially George who demanded anxiously, ‘Mum’s all right, isn’t she? She’s not…she’s not poorly, is she?’ he blurted out, casting an anxious look at Kit as he did so.

  Laura’s heart went out to him as she recognised what ‘poorly’ was his own word for. Poor little boy. How many times had he been forced to witness his mother’s drunken confusion for him to know already, at his age, that her behaviour had to be cloaked in secrecy?

  ‘Everything’s all right, George,’ Laura told him as cheerfully as she could. ‘I’ll have to drop you off at the hospital, Dad,’ she told Kit, ‘and then come back after I’ve taken the boys to their grandmother’s. Zoë will still be at work.’

  When her father made no reply, Laura looked uncertainly at him. She knew how shocked he must be feeling, how unable to take in properly as yet what had happened. Just as she had felt unable to believe it when the medical team had come to the house and told her bluntly, ‘They’re both alive—just. We’re taking them to hospital, but it’s going to be touch and go, especially for the little ’un…’

  As Laura moved she heard and felt the crackle of the envelope she had picked up from the kitchen table and put in her pocket.

  It was addressed to her father, and she told him about it now in a quiet undertone.

  ‘It’s for you so I haven’t read it, naturally, but I thought…Well, I didn’t know if the police would want…’ She bit her lip, not wanting to put into words what she was thinking. The letter, quite plainly in Nicki’s handwriting, had obviously been meant to be read in the event of her death…her suicide, and at some point the police were bound to want to see it, she suspected. Even if by some miracle both Nicki and Joey survived.

  She shuddered violently, wondering what on earth could make a woman like Nicki do something so truly, unthinkably appalling. To attempt to take her own life was bad enough, but to kill the child she adored so much was truly beyond comprehension.

  They had reached the hospital. Laura stopped the car and Kit got out.

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Laura told him.

  ‘Why have we had to come here? Has there been an accident?’ William demanded eagerly, with the very young’s unawareness of the true horror of what was going on.

  ‘I’m going to take you both to your grandmother’s,’ Laura explained, without answering his question.

  ‘Laura,’ Alice exclaimed, automatically bending down to hug both her grandsons as they hurried into the house.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ Laura began, ‘but—’

  ‘We’ve been to the hospital,’ William interrupted Laura excitedly, before hurrying into the house after his brother.

  ‘You took the boys to the hospital?’ Alice paled. ‘Oh, I don’t think you should have done that, Laura! Did Zoë ring you? The doctor told me that she had to stay in overnight…’

  ‘Zoë?’ Laura looked at her in bewilderment. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

  ‘You said that you went to the hospital,’ Alice reminded her distractedly. ‘Oh, Laura, I can’t help thinking about that poor women Zoë ran into, and those children. Thank goodness none of them was hurt.’

  Laura took a deep breath.

  ‘Alice…I didn’t go to the hospital to see Zoë. In fact, I thought that she was at work. You see…’ She could hear her own voice starting to tremble. ‘I actually went to drop Dad off there. There’s been…’ She hesitated for a second. As a close friend of her stepmother, Alice was bound to find out what had happened.

  ‘I…Dad needed to be at the hospital…Something…something’s happened. And, and Nicki and, and Joey…I had to collect the boys from school otherwise I would have stayed, and I was hoping that you could have them for now. I had no idea that Zoë…’

  As she listened to her voice Alice realised that Laura knew about her daughter’s drinking. She could hear it in the way she was talking. Taking a deep breath, Alice said as calmly as she could, ‘Unfortunately Zoë had been drinking and was in no fit state to drive.’ Then she frowned, suddenly registering what Laura had said.

  ‘Laura, what do you mean? Something’s happened to Nicki and Joey?’ she demanded anxiously.

  Laura nodded.

  ‘I can’t say anything more right now, Alice…I’m sorry,’ she whispered as tears filled her eyes. ‘I have to get back to the hospital. I’m sorry about Zoë, too. Would you be able to have the boys tonight? Only I might have to stay with Dad depending on…’ Unable to stop herself, she told her in an anguished voice, ‘They said that it was going to be touch and go, especially for Joey…’

  ‘Oh, Laura!’ Suddenly she was in Alice’s arms and Alice was hugging her, holding her as Laura had so many, many times longed to have someone do, offering her the maternal comfort she had craved so desperately and rejected so fiercely from Nicki.

  ‘Nicki tried to kill herself and Joey,’ Laura told her, unable to keep the appalling facts to herself any longer. She was, she recognised distantly, still unable to believe what had happened herself, and just listening to herself say the words made her feel as though she were playing a part in a bad movie.

  ‘What?’ Alice’s face mirrored her own feelings. ‘Oh, no! Oh, Laura. I’m so sorry! Oh, Laura…I wish I could come to the hospital with you…’

  ‘No. The boys need you here,’ Laura told her, sniffing back her tears.

  Alice stood at the open door for a long time after Laura had driven away. The news she had given her had practically driven her own concerns out of her thoughts. Nicki…A cold shiver ran down Alice’s spine. Maggie had told them that there was something wrong, but stupidly, selfishly, blindly, they had refused to listen, believing that it was Maggie who had the problem…Maggie who was the problem, Alice recognised guiltily.

  Zoë was in hospital! Laura ached with pity for her two small sons, and for Alice as well. She had seen how hard it had been for the older woman to tell her what had happened.

  What was it that made a person so dependent on something that could only destroy them? Laura wondered grimly. Modern thinking was that, especially where alcohol was concerned, there was an inherited vulnerability that preordained the addiction, in the same way that some people were predisposed to suffer from certain types of disease.

  Could a person be preordained to commit suicide…infanticide? Laura ached with anguish and shock. She still could not believe that Nicki, who had always appeared so strong, so together, could have done such a thing.

  Would have done such a thing, if she and Maggie had not arrived at the house by chance. By chance, or…But no, she wasn’t going to start thinking along those lines, Laura decided firmly. If there was a governing fate that oversaw human actions, then she preferred to remain unaware of it!

  Maggie had been so brave. Laura couldn’t bear to think how she might have hurt herself and her baby, breaking that window and trying to climb into the garage, never mind the potential damage from the exhaust fumes she must have breathed in.

  Tears stung her eyes. A part of her had always envied Nicki whatever it was she had that commanded that kind of friendship, created that kind of bond.

  ‘Maggie, I do understand your feelings,’ Oliver said soberly. ‘But there really isn’t any point in your staying here now. You heard what the doctors said. Why don’t we go home and then we can ring in the morning and find out if Nicki and Joey are well enough to have visitors?’

  ‘No,’ Maggie repeated stubbornly. ‘I’m staying here with her, Oliver. She needs me here. You have to understand…’ She took a deep breath. ‘Somehow all of us have failed her, let her down. If we hadn’t, she would never…I’ve got to make it up to her, Oliver, let her know that she matters, that she’s loved…’

  ‘That’s Kit’s job,’ Oliver objected.

  ‘Yes,’ Maggie agreed. ‘But it’s ours, mine as well. Especiall
y mine!’

  ‘Maggie, if you’re going to try to take the responsibility for this on your shoulders, to blame yourself because of the baby…’

  ‘No. I’m not going to do that,’ Maggie replied firmly. ‘But I am responsible for not following up my own instincts. I knew that something was wrong, that Nicki was not truly Nicki, but I refused to follow that instinct. Look, why don’t you go home? I can ring you…’

  ‘Is that what Dan would have done?’ Oliver demanded.

  Maggie stared at him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Oliver apologised immediately. ‘It’s just that, seeing him there…’

  ‘He had called round to see Nicki,’ Maggie told him quietly. ‘They go back a long way. You have nothing to fear from Dan, Oliver,’ she insisted. ‘Dan and what we once shared together is a very important part of my life, my past…but it is in the past, whereas you and our baby are the most important part of my present and my future.’

  ‘Oh, Maggie,’ Oliver exclaimed gruffly, reaching for her and kissing her fiercely.

  ‘Go home,’ Maggie repeated. ‘I promise you, I’ll be fine…And besides, if anything should happen—which it won’t because it’s far too soon yet—I’m certainly in the right place,’ she reminded him.

  Alice was still standing in front of the open door ten minutes later when Stuart drove up.

  As he got out of the car she studied him. He looked older, tired, smaller in some way.

  She waited for him to reach her before she said, ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all day.’

  ‘Have you? Must have had the damned mobile switched off,’ he responded tersely.

  ‘No, you didn’t, Stuart,’ Alice told him quietly. ‘I couldn’t reach you because your mobile is now inoperative. Why didn’t you tell me that you’d lost your job?’

  20

  Stuart stared at her. This was his worst nightmare come true, Alice finding out before he was in a position to tell her that there was nothing to worry about and that he had found himself another job, a better job. Not the crap job he had managed to get by crawling on his belly from acquaintance to acquaintance, calling in favours until someone had reluctantly given him work. And what work. Flying for a newly set up cut-price delivery service, working inhumanly long shifts, on next to no pay, flying clapped-out planes, as well as doing his own paperwork and acting as a bloody delivery boy, with a dozen or more hungry newly qualified youngsters snapping at his heels, waiting for him to fall.