Penny Jordan - Now or Never

He was getting annoyed, Alice recognised silently, registering all the tell-tale signs.

Her heart sank, but she was not going to back down.

‘No, we can’t leave it, I’m afraid, Stuart. It’s too important for that. I … I’ve enrolled for an Open University degree course.’

‘What?’

He was, Alice noticed, staring at her blankly, as though he hadn’t properly taken in what she had said.

‘I thought you said it was something important,’ he challenged her. ‘For God’s sake, Alice! Don’t you ever listen to anything I say? I’ve just told you that I’m up to my eyes in it at work and you’re prattling on about some blasted college course.’

Alice could feel her stomach muscles clenching, but not this time with tension. She very seldom got angry, it just wasn’t in her nature, but right now …

‘You don’t mind, then?’ she asked him quietly.

‘Mind?’ He gave a brief, almost contemptuous shrug. ‘I don’t really see the point, but it’s your choice.’

‘Yes,’ Alice agreed even more quietly. ‘It is.’

Changing the subject, she questioned, ‘You said you could be away for a few days?’

‘Yes.’ Stuart had turned away from her and was reshuffling his papers. His voice sounded muffled and strained.

‘It’s the way things are these days, Alice. It’s something to do with a new policy decision. Even you must surely be aware of the changes the aviation industry is undergoing? The pressures on it? I mean, you do read something in the papers, don’t you, other than the women’s pages? God knows we get enough of them, judging by the bill.’

Alice stared at his white-shirt-covered back, the words of rebuttal and anger log-jamming in her throat in their furious need to be heard, but protectively she held them back.

Stuart was normally a calm, logical man—his job meant that he had to be—but just occasionally he could explode into undeserved and lacerating verbal criticism that was as unprovoked as it was unfair. Backing him into a corner or demanding an apology only resulted in him retreating into an iron-hard sulk, from which she would patiently have to coax him and right now … Right now she simply did not feel like doing any such thing!

‘You’ll never guess what happened this evening,’ she said calmly instead, going to fill the kettle. ‘Maggie told us that she’s pregnant. She gave us all a shock, especially Nicki.’

Alice tensed as Stuart came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling the side of her neck.

‘You never change, do you, Alice?’ he told her as he bit sensually into her skin, oblivious to her rigid tension. ‘We could be invaded by green men from outer space and you would still be more concerned about your own little life.’

Alice could hear the familiar note of mockery in his voice. It seemed to her sometimes that Stuart had spent most of their married lives mocking her or putting her down in one way or another.

‘Come on,’ Stuart demanded. ‘Let’s go to bed. I’ve missed you.’

Just for a second Alice was tempted to refuse, to pull away from him, but he was already taking hold of her hand and tugging her towards the hall door. To challenge him to dare to mock her again! But typically she stopped herself.

And, after all, what was the point in deliberately creating a difficult mood between them? Didn’t it make more sense to give in, to keep him happy? Wasn’t that what her mother had always taught her by example? As she had taught Zoë. That men were people who needed to be pandered to and coaxed, pampered and protected. That either they or their love or both simply weren’t strong enough to bear reality …

‘You prefer the twins, you always favour them!’ How often had Zoë accused her of that? Had she ‘favoured’ them or had she in reality done them anything but a favour?

The others considered her to be a perfect mother, a role model, but what was a ‘perfect’ mother?

‘Where did you eat?’ Stuart was asking her.

‘The new wine bar. The food’s Italian,’ Alice replied.

As Stuart kissed her he smiled. ‘And you didn’t have garlic! Good girl!’

Good girl! Alice could feel her jaw tensing and her body chilling. But Stuart was as oblivious to the signals her body was sending out as he was to the fact that he was patronising her, Alice recognised.

‘No, leave the light on. Please,’ Oliver demanded softly as Maggie swung her legs out of their bed and at the same time reached out to dim her bedside lamp.

It had been Dan who had encouraged her to sleep naked, but, despite the praise Oliver heaped on her body and their lovemaking, she was still self-consciously uncomfortable about him seeing her unclothed in a way she had not been with Dan. Because she was older than Oliver and her body was no longer that of a young girl?

‘I’m only going to the bathroom,’ she told him.

‘Why is it that you always want to hide yourself from me, Maggie?’ Oliver asked her quietly. ‘I love looking at your body. I love looking at you.’

He watched as she veiled her expression from him, dropping her lashes. She had so many small endearing habits that entranced him. She called herself old, but she wasn’t. Her body was slender but softly curved, her skin creamily pale—as a redhead, she had told him ruefully, she had never been able to sunbathe successfully. The natural curves of her body aroused him in a way that shrunk, dieted-down, or unnaturally enhanced supposedly ‘perfect’ female figures never could.

When they had first become lovers he had tried to persuade her to wear soft loose clothes—and no underwear. Although she had tried to hide it, he had seen from her expression that he had shocked her. A little grimly, he had reflected then that at least there was something that she had not experienced with her ex-husband. His request had not been motivated by anything demeaning or controlling, but simply by his overwhelming feelings of love for her. Just to watch her move, just to see her lift her hand and grab at her wild curls—a habit she had—and to see her body move naturally and sensually flooded him with appreciation and desire. And now knowing that her body was holding and nurturing their child added a dimension to those feelings, to his love, that ran so deep and so powerfully that it went way beyond anything he had ever imagined he might experience.

In the bathroom Maggie looked silently into the mirror as Oliver’s reflection joined her own. Standing behind her, he wrapped his arms around her, bending his head to breathe in the scent of her skin.

‘I love you, Maggie,’ he murmured to her as he turned her round and kissed her. A slow, gentle, gifting kiss that melted away her hesitation.

‘I love you too,’ she answered, and meant it. How could she not love him? She closed her eyes as he stroked her skin. His hands cupped her breasts, his mouth caressing her throat. Desire ran through her veins, hot, heavy, drugging. In the mirror she could see her breasts swelling and lifting, her nipples taut. This pregnancy would change her body for ever. In about eight months a baby would be suckling greedily on the nipples Oliver was now gently plucking. The thought made her tremble with awe and excitement.

Here, protected by Oliver’s love and desire, she could ignore the outside world, but she knew that Nicki wouldn’t be the only person to criticise her.

There had been an increasingly antagonistic reaction to pregnancies like hers in the press over recent months, a passionately attacked and defended debate on the moral implications of such situations.

The irony of what she was doing was not lost on Maggie. As a girl, her generation had made full use of the contraceptive pill to prevent and delay pregnancy, thus interfering with the cycle of nature. And now that same generation was interfering with nature once again, only this time …