It's Now or Never
Title Page
It’s Now or Never
Carole Matthews
Copyright Page
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Headline Review
Copyright © Carole Matthews 2010
This edition published by Carole Matthews INK Ltd 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
To our lovely companions on the Inca Trail trip to Peru – including our Canadian sanity and mobile medicine cabinet, Joanne and Brian. Also to Mick the Gadget, Big Mick, Henny, Simone and our guides, Crystal and Lobo. And, as always, to Lovely Kev, who pushed me up most of it and let me have all of the sleeping bag, and came to the loo with me in the night even when he was still asleep. The Andes are flipping steep and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. With hindsight, it was a very wonderful experience. But I am never, ever camping again – and you can quote me on that.
For information and anecdotes about fishing, thanks to my uncle, David Coleman, and to top MX5 mates Craig ‘The Hat’ Hitchman and The Terrible Twosome – the fearless, the inimitable, the frequently very silly – Mr Richard Markus and Mr Owen Earl.
Thanks also to Jill and Simon at The Pudding Club, the Threeways Hotel in Mickleton for facilitating my research. Would heartily recommend one of their Pudding Club dinners – yum! A lot easier than walking the Inca Trail but, admittedly, with more calories. Just leave the diet at home. For info go to www.thepuddingclub.com.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
‘Are we really related to her?’ I nudge my sister, Lauren, in the ribs.
She looks up from the glass of champagne that she’s staring into, seemingly mesmerised by the bubbles.
‘I can hardly believe it,’ I add.
‘Me neither,’ she agrees, and tips more champagne into her mouth.
Chelsea is gliding across the dance floor in the arms of her husband while her guests smile on benignly.
It is our elder sister’s fortieth birthday party and, as always, she is a vision of loveliness. She’s wearing a floor-length Vera Wang gown in white that’s drenched in Swarovski crystals which burst into tiny rainbows whenever they catch the light. It fits like a glove, hugging every inch of her tiny frame. Her auburn curls are piled high and her head is thrown back in uncontained and joyous laughter, showing off the delicious creaminess of her throat and her perfect teeth.
Her husband Richard is tall, tanned and has the rugged-jawed looks of a classic romantic hero. He’s something fabulous in the City, is stonkingly wealthy, is kind to small furry animals, remembers to empty the bins and puts the lid down on the toilet when he’s finished too.
‘What star sign is Chelsea?’ Lauren wants to know.
‘Gemini.’
‘And that means you’re the luckiest bitch in the world, does it?’
‘I think it means you’re a good communicator with a sunny disposition.’ With a tendency to be two-faced and selfish on occasions if you believe in the stars, but I won’t tell my sister that.
Lauren tuts and throws back her drink. ‘What are we?’
‘Scorpio.’
‘And?’
‘We’re the most murdered star sign.’
Another tut. ‘Fabulous.’
This isn’t your usual fortieth birthday party. For mine – next year – I was thinking of having an At Home with a few family and friends, a readymade cake from Asda and some balloons – if I could summon up the necessary energy. Chelsea’s birthday party – like the rest of her life – is exquisite.
We’re at the Dorchester Hotel on London’s Park Lane in the main ballroom, along with about 300 other people. Already I’ve spotted Jodie Kidd, Jamie Oliver and Richard Hammond – just a few of the celebrities that our sister counts among her closest friends.
‘Where did we go wrong?’ Lauren asks, as she slides down on her pretty silver chair. She sounds a little drunk. In the same manner that Gordon Ramsay uses a little bad language. Oh – and he’s here too, somewhere.
I sigh before I answer, ‘I don’t know.’
Needless to say, Lauren and I haven’t gone down the Vera Wang route of haute couture. I have chosen vintage Next – in other words, a dress that’s at least three years old. Not even a good vintage, I feel. My sister has opted for a little number from Coast that will be owned by her credit-card company for the next year or more and, I don’t like to mention it, but there’s some of the raspberry coulis – from our bitter chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis dessert – down the front of it.
I’m Annie Ashton and my sister, Lauren Osbourne, is the one swaying slightly in her chair next to me. Lauren and I are twins. I’m the elder by five minutes and we have now both recently reached the grand old age of thirty-nine years.
Our sister Chelsea didn’t buy into the whole Life Begins at Forty thing. Her life started when she slipped effortlessly from our mother’s womb and into an existence that has, ever since, been charmed.
Lauren and I, born a scant year later, were breech twins who entered the world bottom first and, somehow, I think that set the tone.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Lauren stifles a yawn. ‘I need to go to bed.’
My sister twirls her long, dark hair languidly round a manicured finger. We have spent our entire lives fighting not to look exactly like each other. That explains my ultra-short pixie crop. Though I did stop short of dyeing it blond – mainly due to the expense rather than a submission of individuality. I’m a little softer round the middle than Lauren – something I blame on my two children, rather than my penchant for cake. Lauren looks more sporty than me – that’s because she is. Other than that, we’re two peas in a pod. Annoyingly, despite our advanced years, we still find we turn up in the same outfit to parties sometimes. This time, we took the precaution of co- ordinating our limited wardrobes well in advance by the medium of several dozen text messages. We had no intention of committing our usual fashion faux-pas at such a splendid do.
‘The night’s young,’ I remind Lauren. ‘You can’t be tired.’ The party is in full swing and the sounds of ‘It’s Raining Men’ pound out from the disco. There’s some dishy actor whose name I can’t remember from Holby City camping it up on the dance floor. The DJ is someone edgy and famous but, as I live my life under a rock, I’ve never heard of him. ‘Let’s have a boogie and see if we can bag you a celebrity boyfriend.’
‘I’ve already got a boyfriend,’ Lauren reminds me.
I look around, theatrically. ‘So where is he?’
‘That’s mean,’ my sister says.
It probably is.
To fill you in, Lauren’s boyfriend of five years was invited but couldn’t make it at the last minute. This is a regular occurrence. The small problem is that Jude Taylor has the inconvenient encumbrance of a wife and two children, which makes spontaneous socialising with his long-term girlfriend somewhat tricky. Clearly, whatever excuse he’d fabricated to be absent from the marital home on a Saturday night didn’t pass muster when push came to shove.
The reason my twin looks so toned is that she spends a lot of time in the gym pounding the treadmill out of sheer frustration.
‘I want to go back to the room,’ Lauren insists. ‘Jude said that he’d call and I’ll never be able to hear my mobile in here.’
‘That’s because we’re at the world’s most fabulous party,’ I tell her. ‘And everyone is having a great time.’
‘Everyone but us.’
She’s right. I’m also miserable due to a lack of male company. And that’s because my husband has – point blank – refused to come. Greg hates this kind of thing. He’d rather have hot needles poked in his eyes than put a suit and tie on outside of office hours. The thought of being in a room filled with beautiful people doing beautiful things would make him go cold with dread. So, instead of coming to my sister’s high-end, celebrity-loaded knees-up with enough champagne to float a ship, he’s chosen to go night fishing on the Grand Union Canal with his exceedingly dreary mate, Ray. That’s all he ever wants to do.
In twenty years of marriage, I have learned more about coarse fishing than I ever needed to. I could tell you the benefits of Dragon Barrel Pellets over Yellow Pop-Ups, if you cared to listen – or the differences between a waggler and a feeder rod. Call me sceptical, but carp, Greg frequently tells me, are very intelligent fish. I do not share my husband’s passion for fishing or his views on the tricksy carp – but that doesn’t stop him from regaling me with many tales of their wily ways.
We did have a tiny bit of a row before I left. If I remember rightly, I said something like, ‘I’m so sick of my small, dull life. This is the only excitement I’ve had in years and you’re not prepared to share it with me. You’re a selfish bastard and if you’re not coming I’m going to have a great time without you. I have to put up with all kinds of things for you and your stupid fishing, and yet you won’t compromise when it comes to my needs. Well, that’s it! I’m off.’
And Greg, I think, closed the door quietly behind him as he left. He didn’t even tell me to enjoy myself.
‘What a morose pair we are,’ Lauren says wearily. ‘Let’s clear off.’
‘Chelsea will be upset. We rarely see her these days.’
‘Our dear sister won’t even notice that we’re gone.’
Lauren’s right again. Chelsea is too busy socialising with all of her rich friends to notice if we slope away. It makes me sad that we’re not closer to her, but Chelsea now lives a crazy jet-set life, splitting her time between the UK and Dubai where her husband is for most of the year. She’s just swooped in for the party – if not on a private jet, then certainly first class.
‘Don’t drag me away, Lauren,’ I plead. ‘Let’s have some fun.’ I might just find myself a celebrity boyfriend. See what Greg would think to that.
‘I’ve got a headache coming on,’ my sister whines, and gives me her most pitiful pout.
So we head for the door – Lauren a little unsteadily.
We pass a table groaning with champagne and Lauren grabs a bottle and two glasses and we take those with us to continue the party on our own.
As we stand and wait for the lift, Lauren takes out her mobile phone. ‘Damn,’ she says. ‘I’ve missed Jude’s call.’
Quickly, she checks her voicemail and there’s a whispered message that I can just about overhear – even though Lauren tries to press her phone close enough to her ear so that she thinks I can’t.
‘Sorry, I couldn’t make it, darling,’ Jude’s smooth tones coo. ‘But you know how much I love you. I’ll speak to you as soon as I can.’
I don’t even bother checking my phone as I know that Greg won’t have bothered to call me. He wouldn’t coo sweet nothings even if he did. My husband is not a cooey sort of man. I’m more likely to get sweet FA than sweet nothings.
Lauren hangs up.
The desperation in her tired smile makes my heart want to break.
‘He said he loves me.’
I just can’t help a disbelieving tut at that. It’s out before I can stop it. If he loves Lauren so much, then where is he tonight, eh? Answer me that.
‘He does,’ she insists crisply. ‘And one day we’ll be together. You’ll see.’
‘I have to admire your optimism, sis,’ I say, as gently as I can.
Then, as we wait to be whisked away from the ball and back up to our bedroom, I marvel at how Lauren can be so optimistic despite the odds being stacked against her. I also take time to wonder where my own optimism has toddled off to.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Chelsea has very generously booked us a suite in this outrageously posh hotel for the night – and paid for it – even though we could have easily gone back to Lauren’s flat in a taxi.
The room we’re in is truly gorgeous – an understated extravagance of cream linen and dark wood – and is bigger than my entire house. We have two bathrooms, a double bed each and a lounge with four sofas in it and a television the size of a multiplex cinema. The artworks look as if they’ve been lifted straight from the walls of Tate Modern.
I want to live here. For ever.
Though it’s not yet eleven o’clock, Lauren and I are washed, brushed and ready for bed. We’re sitting up, dwarfed by our vast neighbouring beds in our jim-jams, a glass of champagne in hand.
Lauren knocks back her fizz and huffs, ‘She’s like bloody Cinderella and we’re the Ugly Sisters.’
‘Thanks.’ I don’t point out that we’re the ones who have scarpered from the ball before midnight. The Ugly Sisters were the ones who hung around till dawn having a fab time and schmoozing with the Prince, if I remember rightly.
‘You know what I mean.’
More’s the pity for us that I do know what she means.
‘So what are we going to do?’ I ask. ‘We’re both forty next year and I feel that our lives are slowly slipping away from us.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Lauren says as she swigs.
‘You can’t be happy with your situation.’
Lauren’s chin juts out. ‘It won’t always be like this.’
Unfortunately, this is a song I’ve heard before. Lauren has been with her married lover for over five years now and he’s not showing that he’s in any imminent danger of leaving his wife for my sister despite her blind optimism in the face of reality.
Lauren works for Jude Taylor at the web company he owns. That’s how they met. It’s called Happening Today and they send out funky daily missives about what’s ‘happening today’ in London and various cities round the country. Lauren is one of the sales executives who sells advertising on the site. And very good she is at it too.
Jude is as lavish with his money as he is with his love and helps Lauren pay the mortgage on her tiny flat in West Hampstead – primarily, I believe, so that she is close at hand and he can visit her whenever he wants. She has a great car too. The only thing she doesn’t have is her man’s full-time attention. Which, obviously, is the only thing that she really wants.
Much as it pains me, I have to admit that Jude Taylor is pretty hunky. He has dark and brooding looks, tousled hair and an astonishing line in trendy clothing for a guy. Almost the perfect man. Apart from the resident wife, of course. And the amount of heartache he’s caused my sister over the last five years.
‘It will all work out just fine for me,’ Lauren says as she glances surreptitiously at her phone again; I can almost feel her willing it to ring. ‘Jude and I are soulmates. We both feel it. He will leave. The timing just has to be right.’
Perhaps that’s true, but there always seems to be some sort of feeble excuse that keeps him bound to his double life – a school play that must be attended, a visit from one or other set of grandparents, a forthcoming family holiday. Always something that couldn’t possibly be postponed or disrupted. As if walking out on your wife and children isn’t going to cause enough disruption.
Still, I wish the thought of a phone call from Greg could instil such excitement in me. But then he and I have been married for over twenty years. Isn’t it normal for some of the excitement to go? We’d be in a permanent state of exhaustion if love was still a frenzy after all that time. Am I right?
It’s just that now I feel like we’ve passed from excitement, to contentment, to rut. Quite deep rut. Borderline trench, if I’m truthful.
We got out of the habit of going out when the children were young because we didn’t have the money. Now we don’t have either the money or the inclination. Or one of us doesn’t. And I don’t think that it’s me. Is this grey monotony what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life? I have to do something or I might just go stark raving mad.
‘We’ve got a year,’ I say decisively. ‘Not quite a year before we’re forty. It’s not too late for us to turn things around.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ Lauren wants to know.
‘We have to decide exactly what we want first.’
‘That’s easy for me,’ Lauren says. ‘I want my man and,’ she turns to look at me, eyes misty, ‘maybe I want a baby too, Annie.’
‘A baby?’ This is the first time she’s admitted that to me. It could be the drink talking.
‘Christ,’ she says. ‘Let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger. It could be now or never. What if I leave it too late?’
I slip out of my bed and get in next to Lauren as we used to do as youngsters. We snuggle up together. It reminds me of when we were teenagers and I get a stab of regret that we don’t get the opportunity for all-night heart-to-hearts any more.
Sometimes I wish that we didn’t lead such separate lives, that we were still as close as we used to be. But the fact that Lauren is always hanging on, waiting for precious moments should Jude suddenly become available, means that she’s impossible to pin down. She only comes to our house at the weekend if Jude is going off somewhere else with his family as she always lives in hope that he might pop by on the off-chance. Not only is he messing up Lauren’s life, but I feel he’s coming between us and I resent that too.
‘I had no idea you felt like that,’ I say gently.
‘This isn’t an ideal situation,’ Lauren sniffs tearfully, ‘but I’m making the best of it. I love him, Annie. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. And that means that I want the things that other people have. It’s the simple things that I miss the most. I want him home every night so that I can make him dinner. I want to be able to wake up with him every day. And what if I do want his child before it’s too late for me? Is that so wrong of me?’
‘Oh, sweetie.’ I put my arms round my sister while she cries. At the moment, her wish-list seems like a tall order.
‘What about you?’ she asks, when her tears are spent. ‘What do you want?’
I lean back on Lauren’s pile of feather-soft pillows and sip at my champagne. ‘I want excitement,’ I say. ‘The kids are about to fly the nest and what will I be left with?’ I can’t even vocalise the fact that I find my husband of twenty years as dull as dishwater. He’s completely happy simply to be at home, watch television, go fishing. He seems to want nothing more than that. But I do.
‘These should be the best years of our lives, but we both seem to be making such a bollocks of it.’
‘Tell me about it,’ my sister agrees.
‘I want to grab life by the throat and shake it. I’ve never been anywhere, done anything. I want to do something different and worthwhile.’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit with a defeated huff. ‘But this year, I promise myself, I’m damn well going to work on it.’
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Lauren and I are having bacon, eggs, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms, hash browns and toast when Chelsea breezes in. It seems that our late-night turn-our-lives-round decision has given us both a great appetite – for life, of course, and a mega cooked breakfast. Or maybe we’re just going down the cholesterol route as a hangover cure. Whichever way, it feels good. Lauren’s normally in such a state of high anxiety that she hardly eats, whereas I always prefer the calorie route to comfort.
‘Today is the start of the rest of our lives, Lauren,’ I expound brightly. ‘And we’re going to go all out to get what we want from it.’
‘Don’t speak so loudly,’ Lauren complains, head in hands. She’s been glued to her mobile since she opened her eyes, but still no call from Lover Boy, so she’s irritable as well as hung over.
‘Sorry.’
‘We need more vitamin C,’ she concludes, and pours herself another glass of fresh orange juice. At five quid a throw. But, thankfully, Chelsea is picking up the breakfast bill too.
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