Not for the first time she wished that her daughter weren’t quite so interested in adult relationships. It was hard to explain some of the complexities to a ten-year-old, but from a very small child Clara had been fascinated by people and why they behaved the way they did.
She had been hardly more than a baby when her father had left, and took having divorced parents in her stride, but Nell really wanted to give her the example of a loving relationship, so that she could see that it was possible for adults to live together and be happy. That was the main reason why she had let Thea talk her into making an effort to meet men again, but so far her blind dates had not been a success, to say the least.
There had been Neil, who had, according to his own confession, thrived on a double life, Nick with the appalling table manners, Paul who had talked about himself all evening, and Lawrie, the latest disaster, who had spent the entire date describing his red sports car, apparently believing that it would be enough to make any woman fall at his feet. Thea had assured her that tonight would be different, but Nell wasn’t convinced.
‘I never really had boyfriends even when I was young,’ she told Clara now. ‘I married your father when I was twenty-one and before that there was only—’
She stopped. Somehow she had ended up back at P.J. It was uncanny the way all her thoughts seemed to lead back to him, in spite of the fact that she had decided so utterly and definitely that she absolutely was not, no way, going to think about him anymore.
‘Oh, look at that puppy,’ she said quickly as a scatty Labrador with huge paws and an eager expression gambolled along the pavement towards them, towing its owner in its wake.
‘Ah-h-h … cute …’ Clara cooed and let the puppy slurp at her fingers, quivering in ecstasy at all the attention, but the moment it had been dragged on its way she fixed a beady look on her mother, who had just begun to hope that she had been successfully distracted.
‘Only who?’
‘Only who what?’ Nell prevaricated. Clara was a darling, but sometimes she could be just a little too perceptive and persistent for comfort.
‘You said you’d only had one boyfriend before Dad,’ Clara reminded her.
‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ she said as carelessly as she could. ‘Just a boy I knew at school.’
‘What was his name?’
‘P.J.,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘What, like in pyjamas?’ said Clara, unimpressed.
‘Yes.’ Nell was conscious of a slightly defensive tinge to her voice. She had thought of P.J. as P.J. for so long that the initials no longer seemed odd to her.
‘Why was he called that?’
‘His real name was Peter John Smith,’ she explained. ‘He used to say that using his initials was the only way he could make himself sound interesting.’
Clara looked puzzled. ‘Was he really boring, then?’
‘No, he wasn’t boring.’ Nell couldn’t help smiling as she shook her head. P.J. had been a lot of things, but never boring.
His image rose before her, long and lanky, with that humorous, beaky face and eyes that were blue and very alert. P.J. would never have made it as a model, that was for sure, but he had been kind and clever and funny, and everybody had liked him.
‘He was … nice,’ she told Clara. ‘He was very easy to talk to. We had good fun together.’
The other girls had mooned over the better-looking boys in the year above, but P.J. had been much more fun. And it wasn’t as if he had been exactly ugly. He had had a stubborn jaw and laughing eyes and an unexpected, slightly lopsided smile that would suddenly make him seem much more attractive than he actually was.
Without meaning to, Nell sighed. If only she couldn’t remember him quite so vividly.
‘What happened?’ asked Clara. ‘Did you have a fight?’
‘No.’ Nell hesitated. It was hard to explain what had happened when she couldn’t even explain it to herself now. ‘We’d been going out since I was sixteen and he was seventeen. We’d been away to different universities and … well, I suppose we’d started to grow apart.’
They had been so young, too, she thought. She had been just twenty-one, and desperate to get married and have a family, while P.J. had wanted to wait. It had begun to seem as if they were just staying together out of force of habit.
‘And then I met your father …’
She trailed off, remembering how glamorous Simon had seemed at the time. A few years older, he had had all the swagger and sophistication that P.J. had lacked, while she had been too naive to realise that kindness was worth so much more than sophistication, or that good looks and self-confidence counted for little compared to someone you could rely on absolutely.
Like P.J., in fact.
‘Your dad swept me off my feet,’ she told Clara.
And he had. Simon had promised her everything she had ever wanted … and then spent the next eight years crushing her bright hopes one by one.
Clara swung her bag thoughtfully. ‘Do you wish you’d married P.J. instead of Dad?’
‘Of course not.’ Nell stopped dead in the middle of the pavement, and gave her daughter a hug. ‘If I hadn’t married Dad, I wouldn’t have you. How could I possibly be sorry about that?’
She couldn’t let Clara think that she ever regretted the choice she had made. Her marriage to Simon hadn’t been a success, but they had had Clara, and she was worth everything.
‘It’s all a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t think P.J. even remembers me now.’
Somehow it was a depressing thought. Nell made herself push it away and squared her shoulders mentally. It was ridiculous the way she had let thoughts of P.J. unsettle her recently. She had been fine when she’d thought he was in the States, but, really, what difference did it make if he was back in London or not? It wasn’t as if she mixed with a wealthy crowd, let alone with billionaires, so she was hardly any more likely to bump into him.
So she might as well put him out of her mind. Again.
The trouble was, her life just wasn’t big enough at the moment. That was the only reason P.J. suddenly seemed so important. Thea was right, she needed to get out there and meet someone new, or failing that take up a hobby. Basket-weaving, or train spotting or something … There must be some interest out there for her. There was no use hankering after what-might-have-beens.
They crossed the last road and turned into the busy street where Clara went to school. There was still a cluster of parents and children at the gate, so they weren’t too late, thank goodness.
Nell glanced at her watch. She might get the earlier tube after all. It would give her time to pick up her suit from the dry-cleaner’s and get changed and made up before she had to face her boss. Eve was always banging on about the importance of professional image, and she wouldn’t think much of Nell in old track-suit pants, faded sweatshirt and trainers, with a naked face and hair all over the place. This would be the morning she had slept through her alarm.
This was better, thinking about work instead of about P.J., Nell congratulated herself. A motorised wheelchair was buzzing busily towards her along the pavement, and, her mind still on not thinking about P.J., Nell stepped automatically out of the way.
Only to misjudge the kerb and stumble into the road, right into the path of a passing car. There was a glancing blow on her arm and a squeal of brakes, but all Nell could see was her daughter’s white, horrified face.
‘Mum!’
The car practically stood on its nose and Nell reeled away from it, feeling sick with