‘Very good-looking,’ Stella agreed ruefully.
All of them had at one time or another been a little bit in love with Dan, even her, although she had kept her feelings determinedly to herself, firmly lecturing herself against being foolish.
People might nowadays describe her approvingly as a striking looking and confident woman, but in her youth she had quite definitely been plain. Yes, she had had regular features, healthy, clear skin, and good teeth, but what they had added up to had always fallen short of the head-turning male-attention-getting looks the other three had in their different ways possessed.
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