Forever Mine by Carrie Noble Page A

never got fed up of each other’s
company. Maybe if we could have stayed in that bubble things would
be different now, but John’s life was different to mine and it
wasn’t long before I was forced to share him with his
family.
    ‘So, tell me
then, what are his family like? What is it like being a stepmother,
and oh yeah, a step-grandmother?’
    ‘Oh you know, these
things are never straightforward, are they?’
    I came from a
small family and was happy with that. John though, had 4 sisters,
and a close family friend called Jennifer, whom he was very close
to. He also had a son Patrick, who with his wife Cara had given
John two grandchildren, a three-year-old son, Charlie and a
one-year-old daughter, Emily. It was not what I considered ideal.
We loved each other and I wanted him to spend all his time with me.
He was worth it though. He was perfect.
    However, before I had to
undergo the horror of meeting the real life ‘Walton’s’ I first had
to deal with the ordeal of meeting the other important person in
his life. Jennifer.
    After two
months of just being with each other, John had broached the subject
of meeting the woman he loved like a sister. I knew this was
important to him so I summoned up as much enthusiasm as I could and
went along to meet Jennifer.
    Until he met
me, Jennifer had probably been the person closest to John. She had
been the person he had turned to when his second wife had left him
for a man she had met at the gym. As John struggled to cope with
the separation from Rachel, Jennifer had been there night after
night, either going to his house or listening on the phone as he
poured his heart out and confided his worst fears. There was
probably very little that Jennifer didn’t know about my
John.
    When he introduced me to
Jennifer she made all the right noises and smiled in all the right
places, but I could just tell. She didn’t like me. She was jealous
of me. Until now she had had John all to herself and now here I
was. No, I knew straight away that she was going to try to come
between us. I was going to have to do something to show John
exactly what she was like.
    Oh yes, she was clever
that one. John thought she was being kind and friendly, but I knew.
Oh yes, I knew alright. She was a two faced little madam if there
ever was one. As clever as she was though, Jennifer had not counted
on me. I was on to her and two of us could play that game, and play
that game I did. I spent the next couple of months getting closer
to her. I listened to her ‘funny stories’, I gave my sympathetic
opinions on the latest family feud or rivalry, and all the time I
was looking for little nuggets that I could store up and use when
the time was right to show John what his precious Jennifer was
really like.
    Before long, myself,
John, Jennifer and her husband Ben looked to the outside world as
the best of friends. We went on nights out together, we had dinner
a couple of times a week at each other’s houses and we sat together
at all of the tedious family gatherings we were forced to
endure.
    My act must have been
convincing because John would keep on telling me how pleased he was
that I got on with Jennifer and Ben and that he loved me all the
more because of the way that I embraced the important people in his
life.
    All this time
together confirmed what I already knew. Jennifer didn’t like me and
given half the chance she would do whatever she could to come
between us. Oh, she would be subtle about it, of that I had
absolutely no doubt. Nothing overt, nothing to suggest to John that
she didn’t like me. Just the odd comment, and then another, letting
them build. Whenever we went out she would always order something
cheap off the menu. So that’s it I thought. She is going to make me
look like some kind of gold digger. She would bide her time and
wait for John to confide the slightest doubt about our
relationship, then she would be in there. She wouldn’t waste a
minute, she would, purely out of concern for