‘Simon’s not a cruel father. He pays his maintenance for Clara on time, and he does his duty by her…but that’s just what it feels like, a duty. It’s as if she’s a tiresome obligation now that he’s got a new family. And I don’t think Elaine feels comfortable with Clara. She’s always changing the arrangements when Clara is due to go over there, and they never include her in their family holidays.’
‘That’s hard,’ commented P.J.
‘I don’t mind not being part of Simon’s life anymore,’ Nell tried to explain, ‘but I do mind for Clara. She’s always been an incredibly sensible child and she never complains, but she’s only ten.’
‘I can’t imagine having a daughter like Clara and not wanting to spend as much time with her as possible,’ said P.J., stopping at a pedestrian crossing.
‘I know. That’s why I-’ Nell caught herself up just in time. She had been about to tell P.J. about her efforts to find a man who would be a better male influence in Clara’s life, but that would be taking confidences a bit too far. P.J. had only been back in her life for a matter of minutes, and a girl had her pride, after all.
‘Why you what?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
P.J. sent her an uncomfortably searching glance. ‘You’ve never thought about marrying again?’
Nell had never liked his habit of being able to follow her train of thought even when she was trying to be her most inscrutable.
Nell thought about asking him if he had any idea how difficult it was to find someone new when you were in your thirties, and had a child, and couldn’t afford to go out, and in any case were too dog-tired after working all day and then looking after your daughter to dream about anything more exciting than a hot bath and an early night. And that was before you started looking at the single men who were available!
‘No,’ was all she said in the end, though.
It was definitely time to change the subject. ‘What nice children Jake and Emily and Flora are,’ she said, and meaning it. ‘You must be very proud of them.’
‘I am,’ said P.J. ‘Although I must admit that I haven’t really had that much to do with them over the last few years.’
Nell couldn’t help staring at him. How could he sound so casual about not spending enough time with his own children? She would have expected that P.J., once he became a father, would take his role very seriously.
‘Their mother deserves all the credit for bringing them up, I think,’ he was saying. ‘She doesn’t get as much support as she should.’
Nell’s brows drew together. ‘In that case, perhaps you could do a bit more to help her?’ she suggested coolly.
‘I’d like to,’ said P.J., ‘but it’s difficult…and I have got a business to run.’
That had always been Simon’s excuse too, she thought bitterly. ‘I haven’t got time,’ he had used to say. ‘I can’t afford to take time off. I can’t support you and Clara unless I work, can I?’ His job, it seemed, was always more important than giving his daughter some attention.
‘Oh, well, if your business needs you…’ she said, not bothering to disguise her sarcasm, and P.J. looked at her with a puzzled frown.
‘It probably doesn’t need me as much as I’d like,’ he admitted.
‘Does it need you more than your children?’
P.J.’s brow cleared. ‘Are you thinking about Flora and Emily and Jake, by any chance?’
‘Of course.’
‘They’re not mine,’ he told her with a grin.
‘But I thought…’ Nell trailed off, trying to remember exactly what he had said about the children.
‘They’re Janey’s. You remember my sister, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said a little stiffly, feeling foolish. It was an easy enough mistake to make, but, still, she shouldn’t have leapt to conclusions.
And did this mean that P.J. did not in fact have the perfect marriage and the perfect family after all? Nell fought down the flicker of excitement that came with the thought.
‘You obviously get on very well with them, anyway,’ she said.
‘I’ve been based in the States for the last few years, so I just saw them occasionally, but I’ve tried to make more of an effort since I got back to London,’ P.J. told her. ‘I still haven’t sorted out a house, so I quite often spend the night with Janey. It gives me a chance to get to know the kids, and, as Janey’s husband is away on business a lot, I think she’s glad of the company.’
He grinned. ‘Of course, the kids only like me because I give them a lift to school in the morning. Janey normally makes them walk.’
Janey had been just another giggling friend of Thea’s when she and P.J. had been going out, but the more Nell heard about her now, the more she thought the two of them would get on. Not that she would get a chance to find out, Nell reminded herself quickly. She and P.J. had very different lives now, and it would be best to keep them that way.
Still, she thought P.J.’s nieces and nephew probably liked him as more than a chauffeur.
‘It’s a lovely car,’ she said, stroking the soft leather seat appreciatively. ‘I’m not surprised they like being chauffered around in it!’
‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ P.J. gave the dashboard an affectionate pat, and Nell was submerged in a wash of memory so powerful that she clutched onto the seat as if it were all that stopped her being swept straight back into the past.
P.J. had always loved cars. She could see him now, showing off the first car he had ever owned, the one he had worked so hard to buy. His face had been alight with pride as he’d pointed out wheel trims and carburettors and propeller shafts, none of which had meant anything to Nell, who had only been able to see a battered old car. But she had nodded and looked suitably impressed, happy because he had been.
‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ That was what he had said then, too, and Nell had smiled and agreed.
Now she couldn’t help smiling. ‘She’s absolutely gorgeous,’ she teased, exactly as she had then.
P.J. laughed and glanced at her as she sat beside him, and as their eyes met the air was suddenly charged with the memory of what had happened next.
‘She’s not as gorgeous as you,’ he had said, pulling her towards him and turning her so that he could press her against the car door and cup her face between his hands. ‘She’s not beautiful the way you are,’ he said, his young man’s voice low and husky, and then he kissed her the way he had never kissed her before, a boy no longer but a man with seductive lips and sure hands.
Nell could still feel the way the door handle had pressed into her back. His urgency had taken her aback at first, until her own body had risen to meet it and match it, and she had wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
Her mouth was dry, her throat tight, and she swallowed as the memories pulsed and pounded through her. His hands had been so persuasive, his mouth so warm against her skin as they had explored each other, tentatively at first and then with increasing urgency, as they had discovered new sensations that had been thrilling and almost frightening in their intensity.
How could she have thrown all that away? Nell tried to remember when it had all changed. When had she started to take that excitement for granted? Had it been when P.J. had gone away to university, or when she had a year later? By the time she had graduated, they had been going out for five years. She had been ready to start a family, but P.J. had wanted to be sensible and wait until he was established in his new career.
Then Simon had turned up, and everything had changed again. He had been so confident, so dangerous and intriguing and exciting, and P.J. had been dear and familiar and not there.
And she had been young and silly, Nell knew that now. Too young to appreciate what she had in P.J. and too silly to understand the risk she was taking in throwing in her lot with a man she hardly knew.
Now the air was crackling with the memory of that first car, and the good times she and P.J. had shared. Nell bit her lip. She had known that getting in the car with P.J. was a mistake. She should have taken the tube, and to hell with her ankle, whatever Clara might have said.
The past was past. There was no point in sitting here and remembering how much she had loved P.J. now, not when he had turned into someone so attractive and so successful and so out of reach.
P.J.’s eyes had gone back to the road, and Nell stared fiercely out at the traffic and willed the memories down as she tried to think of something to say.
In the end it was P.J. who spoke. The silence between that glance and his words had probably only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity to Nell.
‘This car was the first thing I bought when I came back to London,’ he said. ‘Janey said it was typical of me to buy a car before a house.’
Nell was pathetically grateful to him for turning the conversation into neutral channels. She cleared her throat and tried to pretend that she had met him for the first time a few minutes ago, that they had never loved each other.
‘Have you come back to London permanently?’
‘Yes…I think so, anyway. I had a great few years in the States but I started to feel…well, restless, I suppose.’
P.J. couldn’t really explain how that feeling of faint dissatisfaction had crept over him, as if his life were missing something, and he couldn’t work out what it was. ‘I kept thinking about coming home,’ he said at last, ‘but, of course, I haven’t got a home here, at least not yet. I’m renting an apartment at the moment, but it’s not the same as having your own home.’
‘You could buy a house, couldn’t you?’ said Nell, thinking that, if he was half as rich as Thea said he was, London property prices weren’t going to be a problem.
‘I guess so.’
The trouble was that P.J. couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for the idea. He would just have to hand a house over to designers and decorators, who would make it too smart. ‘I’m not sure where I want to be yet, though.’
‘You could take your pick of properties, couldn’t you?’ said Nell. ‘I hear you’ve done well for yourself.’ To say the least.
P.J. glanced at her again. ‘Where did you hear that? I never thought of you as an avid reader of the business pages.’
‘I hardly have time to read the headlines, let alone the business section,’ she told him dryly. ‘No, I had it from Thea, who had it from Janey when they met up on that internet site. It sounds as if Janey’s very proud of you.’
‘That’s not what she tells me,’ said P.J. with a wry smile. ‘She’s usually giving me a hard time about something.’
Building up a billion-dollar business meant nothing to his sister. ‘What’s the point of all that money if you haven’t got someone to share it with?’ she would demand. ‘You need to get married and have a family.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ P.J. complained. ‘I don’t want to get married unless I’m sure I’ve found the right woman.’
‘Well, I can tell you you’re never going to find her until you stop hankering after Nell Martindale!’ Janey said.
‘I got over Nell years ago,’ P.J. protested, but Janey only smiled in that knowing-and particularly annoying-manner she had sometimes.
‘Oh, yes? Has it never occurred to you that every single one of your girlfriends has looked a bit like her, and somehow none of them has ever quite measured up to her?’
P.J. had always pooh-poohed the whole idea. ‘Rubbish,’ he always said firmly. ‘It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with Nell at all.’
But Janey wouldn’t let it go. She couldn’t wait to tell him about her conversation with Nell’s sister, and that Nell herself was free.
‘That slimeball Simon Shea made her life hell for a few years, and then he dumped her and left her high and dry with a baby to look after and minimal maintenance. Thea says that she’s been struggling on her own ever since. You should look her up,’ she went on airily. ‘Maybe you could finally get her out of your system.’
‘She’s not in my system,’ P.J. said through gritted teeth. ‘Nell was great, but it was over years ago,’ he told his sister firmly. ‘I’ve moved on since then.’
‘Sure you have,’ Janey scoffed, and he was so incensed that he ended up letting her set him up on some stupid blind date just to prove to her that he was perfectly ready to meet someone who bore not the slightest resemblance to Nell.
But now, extraordinarily, Nell was here, sitting beside him, and he could smell the faint drift of her perfume and see the curve of her cheek and the downward sweep of her lashes. He yearned suddenly to be able to reach out and touch her and feel her warmth, for her to smile at him and make the lost years disappear. But years didn’t just disappear like that, P.J. knew. They were gone, and nothing could get them back.
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