by Penny Jordan
She felt bitterly ashamed afterwards, wrenching herself out of his arms and standing there on the pavement trembling with shock and sick despair.
It would have been bad enough if he had merely been married, but the fact that his wife was so desperately ill of course made her feel even more shamed and distraught.
She told him she never wanted to see him again…could not afford to see him again, but he pleaded with her for Laura’s sake not to walk out of their lives.
Reluctantly she gave in, on the strict understanding that what had happened between them was never repeated.
Kit gave her his word that it would not be, and after that they were both meticulous about never knowingly being alone together.
At the back of both their minds but never actually admitted was the knowledge that ultimately they would have their chance to be together. But Nicki was determined not to taint either their own future or Kit’s memories by allowing either of them to give in to their feelings while Jennifer was still alive. And she fully intended to stick to that vow!
As winter gave way to spring that first year, and spring to summer, Jennifer’s health waxed and waned with the seasons. Her heart condition, initially caused by a severe bout of childhood rheumatic fever, had worsened after Laura’s birth and was now chronic and fatal. All the doctors could do was buy her time, brief respites, when she was well enough to return home for a pathetically few days.
Without wanting to, Nicki became drawn into their family circle. Mrs Fulton could not always be there, and Jennifer did not like strangers around her. She was very ill at that stage, with Kit her carer rather than her lover. Sometimes Nicki felt almost as though Jennifer sensed how she herself felt about Kit. She once said to her during her last summer that she hoped that Kit would remarry and be happy and that she didn’t want Laura to grow up without someone to mother her.
Nicki said nothing, but that weekend for the first time she admitted to Maggie just how she felt. Predictably, Maggie hugged her fiercely and cried with her. Afterwards, again typically, she announced that she had arranged for them both to go on holiday together, a luxurious continental spa where they could let their hair down and be spoilt.
It was only later that Nicki realised that at the time Maggie’s own marriage was in trouble and that Dan was having an affair!
The next winter she reluctantly agreed to spend Christmas Day with Laura and Kit, for Laura’s sake. Jennifer was back in hospital, her condition deteriorating. She and Kit, she remembered, behaved towards one another like two awkward strangers, so much so that at one point Laura asked her in private if she didn’t like her father!
The strain began to take its toll on her. She lost weight, and grew irritable and snappy, under the burden of her feelings of guilt and longing, but still she and Kit stuck rigidly to their agreement.
That spring Jennifer rallied—for the last time, the doctors warned Kit, and when he told Nicki in weary exhaustion of their verdict, she sensed the relief he wasn’t voicing. Instinctively she knew it was not for his own sake, and certainly not for hers, but purely in every sense for Jennifer, who had suffered so much and for so long, and for Laura too who had spent virtually all her life watching her mother die. But as though he felt he had to punish them both—him for his feelings and her for sensing them—he immediately become angry and almost hostile towards her.
Unbearably hurt that he should be pushing her away just when she most wanted to be there for him, she turned to Maggie, for comfort. ‘He feels guilty,’ Maggie told her, confirming her own feelings. ‘Let him go through this in his own way, Nicki,’ she advised her gently. ‘I know how much you want to be there for him, but perhaps in his eyes this is something he has to do alone for Jennifer and for their shared past.’
Their shared love, Maggie meant, Nicki knew that, and suddenly she was afraid that somehow Jennifer’s death might take Kit away from her.
She stayed away from the house and from him, even distancing herself a little from Laura, and she would have continued to do so if Mrs Fulton hadn’t had to give up her job to nurse her own sick mother.
It was Kit’s wish that Jennifer should be allowed to die peacefully at home in her own bed, as she always said she wanted to do, but a sudden crisis meant that she had to be taken into hospital.
Nicki heard the desperation in Kit’s voice when he telephoned her to ask her if she could possibly help him. The hospital agreed that Jennifer could return home for her final few days once her breathing was back to normal, and Kit naturally wanted to stay at the hospital with her, but because of her emergency admission there were domestic chores to do at the house.
Initially Nicki intended to find him a temporary substitute for Mrs Fulton, but no one was available, and in the end she went up to the house herself, using the key Kit had given her to let herself in.
Even the air inside the house felt heavy with grief and pain, and Nicki was instinctively affected by it. She felt for Jennifer as a woman. The last time she had seen her, Jennifer had shocked her by telling her that she was tired of her fight and that she longed for it to be over.
‘I need to be allowed to die, Nicki,’ she had said quietly. ‘And Kit and most of all Laura need to be allowed to live. This shadowy half world which is neither living nor dying, which all three of us are currently condemned to, is benefiting no one. It’s time for it to end.’
Nicki was upstairs, just finishing remaking the bed in the guest room, which Kit had taken to using leaving the main bedroom free for Jennifer, when Kit returned home. He had come upstairs before she realised he was there, standing in the open doorway and simply looking at her.
‘Jennifer?’ she demanded anxiously.
‘The crisis is over for now, but…’ He paused and then said bleakly, ‘She’s coming home tomorrow. She’s always said she wanted to die here in her own bed.’
The look in his eyes tore her apart. Unable to stop herself, she went to him, intending only to offer him human comfort. She lifted her hand to touch his face, she remembered, and her palm was wet with his tears.
‘Nicki!’ He said her name in an explosive sound of raw agony, and then he reached for her, pulling her into his arms and kissing her with such furious need that she was not able to deny him, sensing that he was being driven by something that went way beyond mere sexual desire, and that it involved somehow a far more complex need; a form of grieving and losing himself and his pain that made her heart ache for him and for Jennifer herself.
Quite when that furious need to expiate his pain had turned to desire for her, she didn’t know. All she could remember was suddenly realising that something had changed; that they were kissing and touching as lovers.
‘Kit, no!’ she forced herself to protest at one point, even though her body was already screaming for his possession, but Kit overruled her, begging her thickly, ‘Nicki, don’t deny me. Not now…I need you so badly…Please, please, Nicki.’ And her will-power evaporated, burned away by desire.
All the months of denying themselves as well as Kit’s pain and anguish, his guilt and despair at Jennifer’s long decline, were exorcised in what followed. It was desire, need, hunger stripped down to its most basic components; rawly sexual, intensely tender, deeply emotional, the kind of intimacy that touched the soul and burned away inhibitions and conventions.
Afterwards Nicki felt both euphoric and shocked—the guilt came later when her body finally recovered from its satiated satisfaction.
For almost a week Jennifer lingered on the edge of death, brought home by Kit as he had always promised her he would do, and when Nicki finally managed to find the courage to visit Kit was distant and cold towards her.
She sensed instinctively that he felt guilty about what had happened and that he blamed her for it, even though he had been the instigator of their passion. His behaviour towards her fuelled her own resentment at being seduced into an act of betrayal she had begun to hate herself for committing. She hated knowing that their first time together h
ad happened in such a way, and she came close to hating Kit for making it happen like that.
That it was the one and only occasion on which they were lovers until they were officially able to declare themselves as a dating couple made no difference; Nicki felt that she would carry the guilt of what had happened with her for ever.
Had Kit been prepared to talk about it, had they been able to find a way of exonerating themselves and allowing themselves to make a human mistake, things might have been different, but Nicki knew that secretly, despite their love for one another, both of them still felt uncomfortable about what they had done.
Initially, when both he and Laura withdrew from her, she thought it a natural consequence of Jennifer’s death and she respected their need to grieve together as father and daughter. It was the school holidays and Kit took Laura away. Days, weeks, months went by without any contact from him, whilst Nicki waited patiently.
‘Just give him time, Nicki,’ Maggie counselled her consolingly, and that was exactly what she did.
On the day of her birthday in October, she received a simple bouquet of creamy white roses with a note attached to them in Kit’s handwriting.
‘Thank you—for being you,’ was all it said, and she spent the whole day torn between elation and despair, wondering where he was and when—if—she was going to see him.
He telephoned her that evening to say that he had intended to be home to surprise her and take her out for dinner, but that Laura was not well enough for them to make the trip back.
Perhaps that was when she should have realised, guessed what was to lie ahead, but she hadn’t done. Why should she? She and Laura had always had such a good relationship, it had never even occurred to her that Laura would turn against her, begin to hate her…do everything within her considerable power to break up their relationship!
And now at last she knew why.
She felt sick remembering what Laura had said to her and even sicker remembering what she and Kit had done.
‘Where are you going?’
Maggie smiled ruefully at Oliver as she picked her car keys up off her desk.
‘To see Nicki.’ When she saw his expression she shook her head. ‘I can’t just leave things, Oliver. She’s my best friend. We’ve been through so much together. I have to…’
‘Placate her?’ Oliver suggested.
Maggie shook her head. ‘No!’ she denied firmly. ‘But if my friendship is as important to her as hers is to me we must be able to find a way to compromise, surely?’
‘And if you can’t?’
‘Don’t say that,’ she pleaded with him.
Nicki stared at the cold cup of tea on the table in front of her. She had no recollection of having made it. Joey had gone to school, having been picked up by another boy’s mother.
Nicki had no idea where Laura was, and she cared even less, she told herself savagely. And as for Kit! A bitter little smile twisted her mouth. Kit, lucky, lucky Kit, was away on business. She stiffened as she heard someone knocking on her kitchen door. Whoever it was, she didn’t want to see them. She did not want to see anyone. Could not bear to see anyone. But the handle was turning and the door was opening and she could hear Maggie’s voice calling out, ‘Nicki. It’s only me, Maggie…’
Maggie had been rehearsing what she was going to say all the way to Nicki’s, but her hesitantly prepared words, along with her wariness, disappeared the moment she saw Nicki’s white, tear-blotched face.
‘Nicki! What’s happened? What’s wrong?’
Helplessly Nicki closed her eyes. Of course! Of course, it would have to be Maggie who found her like this. Why was it that whenever there was a crisis in her life Maggie always seemed to be there to witness it?
Maggie had been there the day Carl had beaten her so badly that she could hardly crawl, never mind walk; she had been there when Nicki had made the gut-wrenching decision not to see Kit again; and she was here now!
Pointless to try to deny that anything was wrong. Maggie knew her too well. They went back too far. Instead she closed her eyes and said carefully, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Across the table they looked at one another.
Pulling out a chair, Maggie sat down opposite her and told her wryly, ‘Tell me something I don’t already know, Nicki, you never want to talk about it. I’ve never known anyone as determined to button her stiff upper lip as you.’
‘And I’ve never known anyone as persistently determined to push a person to their limits as you,’ Nicki retorted. In her own voice she could hear the echoes of so many similar confrontations. It irritated her to be forced to acknowledge how easily they both slipped into their childhood roles with one another.
She could see herself now. Eight years old, on her own in a corner of the playground of the new school her parents’ house move had resulted in her attending, trying to escape from the bullies tormenting her and to hold back her tears of fear and shame.
Of course it had been Maggie who had come over to her, surreptitiously offering her a handkerchief whilst she poured scorn on the feared bullies, denouncing them as ‘stupid’.
A sense of déjà vu filled her as, out of the corner of her eye now, she watched while Maggie reached in her bag and, without a word, produced a small pack of tissues, pushing them across the table to her.
‘Is it Laura?’ she guessed. ‘You mustn’t let her upset you. Wretched girl. You let people bully you too easily, Nicki, and Laura has always been a troublemaker.’
‘A troublemaker!’ Nicki tipped back her head and blinked fiercely, trying to contain her tears. ‘Is she? Or is it me who simply attracts trouble? Arguments? Discord?’
Fiercely she blew her nose.
‘I thought I’d got the whole victim bit out of my system during the counselling I had after Carl, but just recently I’m beginning to wonder; to question whether I bring it on myself, whether it’s something in me…’
Getting up, she started to pace the kitchen floor as Maggie looked on in concern.
‘You are not responsible for other people’s failings, Nicki. Laura is paranoid with jealousy of your relationship with her father; we all know that. In her eyes you’ve taken her mother’s place and—’
‘No!’ Nicki interrupted Maggie sharply, turning round to face her. ‘In Laura’s eyes, what I am guilty of is not taking her mother’s place but inciting her father to betray her mother and their marriage. I found that out this morning.’ Looking away from Maggie, Nicki told her in a muffled voice, ‘And the worst of it is that she’s right. Oh, God, Maggie, if I could rerun my life and wipe out that day! However much Laura hates me for what happened, it can’t be as much as I hate myself!’
‘Nicki, what are you talking about?’ Maggie asked in bewilderment.
Agitatedly Nicki shook her head and then crossed her arms defensively over her body. She looked, Maggie recognised, very much as she had done the day Maggie had walked upstairs into the main bedroom of the house Nicki had shared with Carl to find her friend crouching in the corner of the bedroom, rocking herself back and forth, blood trickling from her cut face.
Now there was no blood, but the look of dark despair in Nicki’s eyes was very much the same.
Putting her own feelings on hold, Maggie went over to her, firmly guiding her back to the table and pushing her gently into her chair.
‘Tell me what’s happened, Nicki,’ Maggie demanded, adding, ‘and before you say anything, just let me tell you that I am not leaving here until you do.’
‘It’s a long story.’
Nicki tried to sound dismissive, but Maggie ignored her, insisting, ‘I’ve got plenty of time.’
Plenty of time. Time had been their enemy then, her and Kit’s, Nicki reflected grimly. Their enemy and Jennifer’s too. Abruptly her face crumpled.
‘You know that Kit and I…that I fell in love with him while Jennifer was still alive,’ she reminded Maggie abruptly.
‘Of course I do,’ Maggie acknowledged. ‘And I know t
oo how determined you both were, but most especially you, Nicki, to keep your relationship to a platonic and totally non-sexual friendship. After all, we spent long enough having heart-to-hearts about it. I truly admired you for that decision. We could all see how much the strain of what was happening was affecting you. I have to admit that I don’t think I could have done what you did.’
‘You told me that I would be better off finding someone else—a man who was free to love me.’
‘I liked Kit, we all did, but I just didn’t want to see you wasting your life waiting for a man whose freedom—’
‘Could only come at the price of his wife’s death?’ Nicki supplied for her, white-faced.
Immediately Maggie shook her head.
‘That was not what I was going to say,’ she denied firmly. ‘What I was going to say was that you, being you, would sacrifice yourself and your own happiness for Kit and to his marriage.’
‘Kit and I did agree that there couldn’t be anything physical between us while Jennifer was still alive.’ Nicki shivered. ‘That sounds calculating now, as though I was waiting for her to die, but it wasn’t like that…I didn’t want to…to do something—anything—I would later regret, to intrude on her marriage or her right to Kit’s love…’
‘I know,’ Maggie assured her softly. ‘I thought you were a saint.’
‘A saint!’ Biting her lip, Nicki got up and started pacing the kitchen again. ‘Oh, no! I was anything but. I did the most awful, appalling thing, Maggie. I was guilty of the most dreadful kind of betrayal, of Jennifer, of Kit and Laura, and our love, but most of all of myself. I don’t think that Kit has ever forgiven me for it and I know that I have never and can never forgive myself. It’s there with me every single day. Every time I look at Kit…every time I look at Joey. Most of the time I can deal with it, live with it, but sometimes…You have no idea what it’s like living with that kind of guilt on your conscience. Sometimes I think I wish that Kit and I had never met…that our love is flawed, wrong…’