Now or Never. PENNY JORDAN

was very obviously and very visibly distressed, Alice recognised.

      ‘Nicki, please,’ Maggie heard herself begging shakily. This was the last reaction she had been expecting and she was trembling with the shock of it.

      She could hear herself gabbling the words a little as she hurried to fill the uncomfortable silence left by Nicki’s refusal to respond to her. ‘The apartment wouldn’t be suitable. I think I knew just how much having a baby meant to Oliver when he agreed to give the apartment up.’

      She had meant it as a joke, a means of lightening the taut, uncomfortable silence surrounding her, but instead of laughing her friends were regarding her with differing degrees of incomprehension.

      Alice, she recognised, simply looked shocked. Stella was frowning, and avoiding meeting her eyes, whilst Nicki …

      Her mouth suddenly dry, Maggie could feel herself flinching as she searched Nicki’s stonily silent features.

      ‘I thought you’d be pleased for me,’ she told them. Like a child seeking adult approval, she recognised miserably as she heard the pleading note in her own voice.

      ‘Well, yes, of course we are. It’s just that it’s such a shock.’

      That was Alice typically trying to ease things and be tactful.

      ‘It certainly is.’ True to form, Stella added bluntly, ‘I just can’t see you as a mother, Maggie. You’ve never seemed the type. Are you sure …?’

      ‘Of course she’s sure, aren’t you, Maggie?’ Nicki cut in, her voice sharply acid. ‘Maggie is always sure about what she does. At least, at the time she decides to do it she is. Of course, she doesn’t always stop to think about anything other than the moment, do you, Maggie? How pregnant exactly are you?’

      ‘It’s … it’s just about a month …’

      ‘A month?’ Nicki stopped. An expression Maggie couldn’t recognise crossed her face. ‘Four weeks! Have you any idea just how vulnerable a pregnancy is in its early stages, Maggie, especially at your age?’ They could all hear the bitterness and the fury in her voice as she warned, ‘You could quite easily wake up tomorrow morning and discover that your dreams of a baby are over!’

      ‘Nicki!’ Alice stopped her quickly, giving Maggie’s white set face an anxious look. The open and unexpected hostility in Nicki’s voice had shocked them all, especially Maggie, who started to protest shakily.

      ‘Nicki! What are you saying? What’s wrong?’

      Nicki knew that she was overreacting; that she was letting the anger she felt against Kit spill over into a safer escape by venting it on Maggie, and that she should have found a kinder way of expressing her feelings. But it was too late to call back her sharp words now. And besides …

      She could feel her stomach churning with a mixture of moral outrage, shock, and anger at Maggie’s blind selfishness, and, worst of all, sheer, raw jealousy, streaked with a pain she had told herself she had managed to control.

      Out of the corner of her eye she registered the silent looks that Stella and Alice were exchanging, whilst Maggie looked at her as though she couldn’t believe her ears. Her red-gold curls were a wild halo around her head, her delicately boned face almost childishly flushed, the dark blue eyes that Nicki had secretly envied all the time they were growing up rounded with shock.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ Nicki repeated, her voice brittle. ‘Do I really have to tell you? Maggie, you are fifty-two years old! During the thirty-odd fertile years you had in which to become pregnant you chose not to do so. You weren’t into babies, you told us all—remember? I’ll bet that Dan does. He would have given anything to have a child, but you didn’t want one! Then!

      ‘But now things are different—apparently. Now, when you’re in a relationship with a man who is considerably younger than you are, you’ve changed your mind! I don’t want to be unkind, but, let’s be honest, statistics prove that such relationships rarely endure. I’m not saying that Oliver doesn’t love you now, we can all see that he does. But when you bring a baby into the world, if you have any forethought, any maturity, you surely want to provide it with the best emotional environment you can, and once again statistics prove that this entails a baby having two parents in its life. Yes, countless thousands of children have been brought up successfully and happily by heroically selfless and devoted single parents, but those parents often did not have a choice! You do. And not only do you have freedom of choice, Maggie, supposedly you also have wisdom and maturity as well. If you were a young girl … but you aren’t, no matter how much you might be trying to behave like one.

      ‘Which brings me to something else. Doesn’t the fact that nature has declared that she no longer considers you physically able to produce a child mean anything to you?’

      ‘What are you trying to say, Nicki?’ Maggie interrupted her with quick defensiveness. ‘That only naturally fertile women have the right to have children?’

      ‘Of course I’m not, but you have to admit that there’s a huge difference between a woman who is medically unable to conceive, and one who has rejected the opportunity to have children, until she is through the menopause and then decided, Oh, I’ve changed my mind. I want a baby after all. What do you think a baby is, Maggie? Some kind of status symbol? The fertility equivalent of a course of Botox and a face-lift? A way of gaining instant youth?’

      ‘That’s not fair,’ Maggie protested. ‘This has nothing to do with anything like that!’

      ‘No? I’m sorry but I don’t believe you! I think the only reason you’re having this baby is because of Oliver. Because you think …’

      ‘Because I think what?’ Maggie challenged her angrily. ‘Because I think that by having Oliver’s baby I’m going to keep him?’

      As their glances clashed it was Nicki who looked away first. A dull flush had spread up over the smooth column of her throat. As she reached out for her wineglass her fingers trembled slightly when she picked it up, the immaculate glossy darkness of her manicure reflecting the richness of the red wine.

      As she took a deep swallow Alice murmured, ‘When is the baby due, Maggie?’

      ‘October. Not for another eight months. They do a blood test a fortnight after … after. I was very lucky. Some women go through several unsuccessful attempts before they actually become pregnant.’

      ‘I’ve read about the procedure,’ Stella commented, resorting to practicality in an attempt to lower the emotional intensity level a little. ‘But what is actually involved?’

      ‘What is involved is that a healthy, young fertile woman is tricked into believing that her voluntarily given eggs are going to be donated to another young woman,’ Nicki told them angrily before Maggie could respond.

      ‘The woman whose egg I received had made no stipulation about the age of any donee,’ Maggie informed them all quietly.

      ‘It’s a very big step to take,’ Alice said gently.

      ‘I know,’ Maggie agreed, with quiet dignity. ‘That was why I was counting on having your support, and your help.’

      There was a look in her eyes that made Alice ache for her.

      ‘Of course we’ll help you,’ she assured her.

      ‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t want anything to do with this,’ Nicki exclaimed, finishing her wine and putting her glass down. Beneath her immaculate make-up her face looked strained.

      ‘Nicki,’ Alice intervened softly, ‘I’m sure that Maggie has considered everything.’

      ‘Has she?’ Nicki’s voice was cynical. ‘Or is she simply following another trend? What is it exactly that you want to prove, Maggie? Or can we guess? First a young lover, and then a baby. It’s all so easy for you, isn’t it? You just decide what you want and then you go out and buy it, whether it’s a new car, a new man, or a