‘Yes, you do,’ Maggie had contradicted her firmly. ‘You just don’t realise that you do.’
And somehow or other Maggie, being Maggie, had managed to chivvy and downright bully her into taking what had then, to Nicki, seemed to be an impossibly dangerous step.
To her own surprise, what had started out as a small venture run from her own home had now become a very demanding and thankfully healthily profitable business. And what had been even more surprising had been the discovery that as the business had grown so had she; that she positively enjoyed the challenges it had brought her and that she was far more business-minded than she had ever known she could be. Or at least she had been until Joey had been born.
‘You’re pregnant. But you can’t be. You’re too old. It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting!’ had been Laura’s furious reaction when they had told her the news about Nicki’s pregnancy. ‘You’re being such a typical second wife,’ she had taunted Nicki when Kit had not been there. ‘They always rush to get pregnant. I’d hate to be in your position. Always feeling you’ve got something to prove, always knowing that someone else had been there before you. It isn’t my father who wants this baby, no matter what you say. It’s you. After all, he already has me!’
It had been just over a week after they had broken the news of her pregnancy to Laura that she had announced that she intended to leave. By then Nicki had had enough of trying to placate her. Overwhelmed with ‘morning sickness’ that lasted virtually all day, beset by anxieties about her agency, and worrying herself sick about the wisdom of her actually having a child who had not been planned, she had been in no fit state to cope with Laura as well.
The peace that had descended on the household after Laura’s departure had given Nicki a blissful taste of pure and absolute happiness, as within days of her stepdaughter going so had her morning sickness. But with that happiness had also come a bitter aftertaste of guilt, from knowing how badly Kit felt about Laura leaving. His anxiety for her had overshadowed Nicki’s pregnancy and Joey’s birth—so much so that Nicki had suffered a severe and unexpected bout of depression following the birth. Laura, predictably, had refused even to acknowledge the baby, never mind come and see him, and Joey had in fact been walking before Laura had met her new half-brother for the first time.
Nicki tensed now, collecting her thoughts as the kitchen door opened and Kit and Laura came in.
‘Where’s Joey?’ Kit asked as he looked round the kitchen.
‘In bed,’ Nicki told him sharply. ‘It’s past his bedtime and, as I told you this morning, I have work to do this evening.’
Nicki paused deliberately before reminding him, ‘You were supposed to be reading him the next chapter of his book.’
‘Oh, Dad, remember when you used to read my bedtime story?’ Laura smiled, interrupting Nicki, one hand on her father’s arm. She threw Nicki a smugly triumphant look before adding, ‘You never missed a single evening, no matter how busy you were. But of course things were different for us. With Mummy being so ill I really only had you. I expect that’s why we’re so especially close.’
As Nicki listened she could feel herself starting to grind her teeth. She itched to be able to tell Laura that she’d made her point and that there was no need for her to over-egg her bread, but if she did she knew that Laura would immediately turn to Kit for support. The last thing Nicki wanted right now was to be humiliated in front of her stepdaughter!
‘You mustn’t blame Dad for being late, Nicki,’ Laura was saying mock apologetically now. ‘It’s my fault! I wanted to have a daddy and daughter chat with him. Private stuff …’
As Laura leaned into Kit’s side Nicki tried to control the fury building up inside her. She knew that Laura was deliberately manipulating the situation, and trying to cause an argument between them.
‘I loved driving the new BMW,’ she added enthusiastically, ignoring Nicki to speak to her father. ‘And thanks for letting me have the spare set of keys, Dad. I promise I’ll check with you before I borrow it.’
Nicki had had enough.
‘Actually, Laura, I am the one you should be checking with,’ Nicki told her stepdaughter with icy rage. ‘The BMW is actually my car.’
Nicki could feel her face burning with resentment and guilt as she saw the look Kit was giving her.
* * *
Nope, she still appeared the same, Laura acknowledged derisively half an hour later as she peered at her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She had not suddenly turned back into her pony-tailed fifteen-year-old self, even if she had just given a pretty good display of that self to her stepmother.
What was it about the relationship between oneself and one’s family that somehow meant that within minutes of being with them one reverted to childhood, not to mention childish habits? Laura knew that she was not alone in experiencing this unpalatable phenomenon, just as she also knew she was not alone in being guilty of still enacting in adulthood the travails of her teenage step-parent wars!
It was a subject her generation were experts on and a powerful bonding agent. ‘Show me a person who can put their hand on their heart and honestly say that they accepted and welcomed their step-parents from the word go, and I’ll show you an alien. It is a universally accepted truth that a child in possession of two parents is not in need of a step-parent,’ one of Laura’s friends was fond of saying facetiously. But there was a certain black-humoured element of truth in her statement.
Laura wasn’t exactly proud of the way being in her stepmother’s presence made her revert with dizzying speed back to the mindset of her teenaged self, employing deliberately contentious tactics as only teenage girls knew how. It gave her no pleasure now she was back in her adult skin to recognise how quickly and effectively she had stoked the fires of Nicki’s hostility and resentment.
As a girl she had told herself that it was her duty to show Nicki to her father in her true colours, and to show Nicki herself that there was no way she or Joey could ever match, never mind usurp, the place she and her own mother held in her father’s heart.
What must it be like to always have to live with the knowledge that your husband had previously been legally committed to another woman, another family? Was there always a fear lurking on the edge of one’s awareness that one might be less loved … the lesser loved?
Laura knew that her stepmother was hardly likely to give her the answer to such questions!
And as to seeking her input, her guidance, her support on the matter that had brought Laura here, running for cover, seeking safety … A mirthless smile curled her mouth, her grey eyes shadowing.
Her hair, like her father’s, was wheat-gold and thick, just like Joey’s. She shared other similarities with her half-brother as well, she recognised, not least a tendency to be wary of anyone trying to push their way into their family life!
She had felt very sorry for her father earlier when Nicki had made that acrid comment about the BMW. Her smile gave way to a frown. Did Nicki habitually humiliate him like that? Did he always allow her to?
Resurrecting the battle between Nicki and herself had been the last thing on her mind when she had made her decision to come here; she wasn’t an insecure teenager any more, after all, terrified of losing her father as she had already done her mother, and resentful of the woman who in her eyes had been the catalyst for that loss. But listening to the way her stepmother had spoken to her father had swamped her good intentions and reawakened all her old bitterness and hostility.
A little ruefully, she reflected on the generous company car allowance she had given up when she had given up her job. With a little careful handling it would just have stretched—just—to the pretty BMW convertible she had had her eye on!
Still, with her qualifications and CV she knew she would not have too much trouble in getting another