‘What are you doing tonight?’ he asked, breaking the silence so abruptly that Nell started in her seat.

‘Tonight?’ she echoed a little breathlessly.

‘I was wondering if I could take you out to dinner to make up for almost knocking you over,’ said P.J., hating himself for sounding so stiff and awkward. This was Nell, for heaven’s sake. They had been friends and lovers for years. He ought to be able to ask her to dinner without stumbling over his words or making up an excuse to want to see her again.

‘I can’t tonight.’ Nell didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that she had a real excuse. ‘I’ve got a date.’

‘A date?’

P.J. looked so taken aback that Nell was ruffled. ‘There’s no need to sound so surprised!’ she said shortly, wondering if he had been expecting her to fall at his feet with gratitude at his casual invitation. ‘It’s allowed. I’m a free agent.’

‘I didn’t mean that…’ P.J. wasn’t sure what he had meant. He had always thought of Nell as essentially homely, he supposed. She was someone warm and comfortable to curl up with on a sofa, not someone who dressed up and went out on dates.

‘It’s just that you said very firmly that you hadn’t married again,’ he tried to explain, ‘and I assumed…’

‘…that I was too old?’ Nell finished his sentence for him, and P.J. could tell from the brilliance of her smile that he had somehow made things worse for himself.

‘No, of course not-’

‘I am only thirty-seven,’ she said huffily. ‘Not all men fantasise about eighteen-year-old girls, you know. Some even find women my age attractive and desirable.’

‘I know. I’m one of them.’ It was P.J.’s turn to be provoked. He had just asked her out, hadn’t he?

There was an antagonistic pause.

‘So, who’s your date tonight?’ he asked after a moment, wanting to sound casual but afraid that he might have sounded belligerent and sulky instead.

‘His name’s John.’ Nell was feeling spiky and defensive for some reason.

‘Have you been seeing him long?’

There was a distinct edge to P.J.’s voice now, which only made her more determined not to admit that John was a blind date. She didn’t need to account to P.J. for what she did, or whom she met, did she?

‘No, not long, but it’s going very well,’ she said, spotting an opportunity to impress on P.J. that she stood in no need of charitable invitations to dinner from him or anyone else. She wasn’t a sad divorcee, desperate for a night out, whatever he thought.

A muscle tightened in P.J.’s jaw. ‘So, what’s he like, this John?’

‘He’s lovely,’ said Nell, improvising freely. ‘Very kind and funny and intelligent. We get on really well.’ At least, Thea had said that they would. ‘I’m beginning to think he might be the one for me. We’ve started to talk about the future, and, well…it’s still all very new, but I feel quite excited.’

Which would be news to poor John.

‘How did you meet this paragon?’ asked P.J. tightly.

‘Through Thea.’ It was a relief to get back to the truth. ‘She actually set us up on a kind of blind date.’ Nell even managed a laugh as if the very idea of her going on a blind date was absurd. ‘She said we’d be perfect for each other, and we are.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re happy,’ P.J. made himself say, although privately he couldn’t help thinking that her precious John sounded too perfect to be real. He just hoped Nell wasn’t setting herself up for another bitter disappointment. He hated the thought of her being hurt again.

‘I am,’ said Nell, lifting her chin defiantly, and spotting a familiar row of shops with relief. She didn’t want P.J. interrogating her about her supposedly wonderful relationship with John. She wasn’t cut out for elaborate fibs.

‘Oh, that’s the dry-cleaner!’ She pointed gratefully. ‘Could you possibly drop me there, P.J.? I need to pick up my suit.’

P.J. pulled over obligingly, and turned in his seat to watch her as she gathered up her bag. ‘Shall I wait for you?’

‘There’s no need. I just work down there.’ Nell gestured in the direction of some office blocks along the road. ‘I’ll walk from here.’

To P.J. it was as if she were deliberately being vague so that he wouldn’t be able to note where she worked. Obviously she had moved on, he thought with a trace of bitterness. There was no place for him in her life anymore, and if he had any sense he would leave it there, but somehow the thought of saying goodbye and losing her as soon as he had found her again was unendurable.

‘What about another evening?’ he asked, and she paused with her hand on the door.

‘For dinner,’ he said as she looked at him uncertainly. ‘I wouldn’t want to come between you and your hot date, of course, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t meet as old friends, is there?’

Only that it was too hard to think of him as an old friend now that he had thickened out and grown into a disturbingly attractive man. But how could she say that?

‘I…don’t think so, P.J.,’ she managed after a moment. ‘We can’t go back. It was good to see you again, and I’m really grateful for the lift, but the past is the past, and I think we’d better leave it that way.’

She opened her car door, and got out, leaning back in to give him a final word of thanks before she shut it firmly on his hopes and turned quickly away.

A taxi swung past, blaring its horn at P.J. for blocking the road, but he hardly noticed. He just sat there and watched as Nell walked away from him all over again.

CHAPTER FIVE

AS SOON as she could, Nell rang Thea. ‘Guess who I ran into this morning?’

‘Um…Hugh Grant?’

‘No.’

‘Brad Pitt?’

‘No.’

‘More or less exciting?’

Nell hesitated.

‘P.J.,’ said Thea, and it wasn’t even a question.

Nell held the receiver away from her and gaped at it. Sometimes her sister astounded her. ‘How on earth did you guess?’

‘Let’s face it, Nell, most of the men we know aren’t exactly up there with Brad Pitt when it comes to exciting!’ said Thea. ‘P.J. is the only one I can think of who’d give you a moment’s pause if you had to compare him.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of him being exciting,’ said Nell, still more than a little unnerved by her sister’s perspicacity. ‘I was just going to say that meeting him was just as unlikely as meeting Brad Pitt… I can’t believe you guessed it was him!’

‘I suppose it’s just because we’ve been talking about him recently,’ said Thea soothingly. ‘I knew he was back in London and it would be a surprise to run into him, that’s all. Tell me what happened.’

‘It was so weird, Thea,’ Nell said. ‘I still can’t really take it in. One minute I was walking along with Clara, and the next he was there.’ She told Thea about falling off the kerb into P.J.’s car. ‘I thought I was imagining things at first. I thought it was the shock of the accident, but it really was him.’

Thea was delighted. ‘Ooh, Nell, you know what this means, don’t you? It’s fate, literally throwing you together again!’

Nell sighed. She might have known Thea would start on that line. ‘It was a coincidence, Thea, that’s all.’

‘A pretty amazing one, though! Well, go on, what’s he like now?’

‘He’s just the same…’ P.J.’s image rose before Nell with startling clarity. Those blue, blue eyes with their lurking laughter, the strong nose and jaw and the humorous mouth that seemed constantly about to quirk into a smile, and something clenched inside her. ‘But he’s…well, he’s different, too,’ she finished lamely. ‘He’s sixteen years older, for a start.’

‘Has he grown into his looks, then?’ asked Thea, straightforward as ever. ‘I always thought he would look better when he was older.’

‘Well…’

‘Oh, Nell, he was gorgeous, wasn’t he? I can hear it in your voice!’

‘Not gorgeous exactly,’ Nell protested, before her sister got too carried away. ‘But, yes, he’s quite attractive,’ she added, rather proud of her cool and casual manner.

Sadly, it didn’t fool her sister. ‘Gorgeous, then,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Are you going to see him again?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Nell, trying to sound as if she didn’t care one way or another. ‘He asked me to have dinner with him but…’

‘But what?’ demanded Thea ominously.

‘But I said I didn’t think it was a good idea.’

There was a pause while Thea made an audible attempt to contain her exasperation. ‘Why not?’

‘Thea, there’s no point,’ said Nell.

‘No point in meeting a single, straight, attractive billionaire who just happens to have been in love with you?’

‘He’s certainly not in love with me now,’ said Nell, alarmed to hear, too late, the unconsciously wistful note in her voice.

She made an effort to sound more casual and upbeat. ‘You should see him now, Thea. He wears a suit and tie now, drives an incredibly flash car. He’s very…assured.’

‘P.J. was always like that,’ said Thea to her surprise. ‘Even when he was a teenager, and all legs and nose, he always seemed quietly confident and at ease in his own skin. You don’t meet many people like that, especially not at school!’

‘Well, he’s even more like that now,’ Nell admitted. ‘It was so…odd. I felt as if I knew him, but at the same time it was obvious that I didn’t know him at all. Maybe it was just that I’d changed too much.’

‘You haven’t changed at all.’

‘Yes, I have. I used to be so young and so confident…’ She trailed off a little sadly. ‘I haven’t felt like that for a long time.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Thea conceded thoughtfully. ‘Back then, it was P.J. who seemed to be the lucky one, wasn’t it? Everyone liked him, but he was a bit of a nerd, wasn’t he? And you were always the pretty one with all the boys after you.’

‘He used to say that he couldn’t believe I would even look at him,’ Nell confessed. ‘He made me feel like I was some kind of goddess…and then, this morning… Oh. Thea, I just felt so dowdy and inadequate and a failure compared to him!’

‘I don’t suppose he’d ask you out if he thought that,’ said Thea.

‘I expect he just felt sorry for me,’ said Nell gloomily.

Thea clicked her tongue in exasperation. ‘Nell, you’re still gorgeous! If he asks you out again, you’re to say yes.’

‘He won’t. Anyway, he doesn’t know how to contact me.’

‘That’s not going to be much of a challenge to an intelligent man like P.J., is it? He just needs to ring Janey, who’ll ring me.’

Nell sat up straight in alarm. ‘Thea, you’re not to give her my phone number!’

‘I most certainly will!’ said Thea in her most uncompromising voice. ‘You may want to throw away the chance of getting back together with a wonderful man who’d solve all your problems, but I’m not going to help you do it!’

‘Anyway, he won’t call,’ said Nell perversely. ‘I made it very clear I didn’t want to see him again.’

‘Oh, well, it seems a pity.’

Rather to Nell’s surprise, Thea left it there. ‘Now, what are you wearing tonight?’

‘Oh, I don’t know… My black trousers?’

‘You’re not wearing those trousers again, Nell,’ said Thea bossily. ‘You can wear that dress you bought for my wedding. You look wonderful in that.’

Nell sighed. ‘Do I have to go?’ she asked, thinking that if she hadn’t had this blind date Thea had set her up on, she wouldn’t have had to refuse P.J. that morning. She could have been thinking about looking wonderful for him instead. She would have let herself be persuaded. Just so as not to be rude.

‘It’ll be awful,’ she grumbled. ‘We’ll just end up talking about how wonderful cars are, or about our divorces the way I have with every other man I’ve been out with since Simon.’

‘Well, there haven’t been many of those,’ Thea pointed out reasonably. ‘Not enough to form a pattern, anyway.’

‘I’ve been on four blind dates this year,’ Nell objected, ‘and every single one has been ghastly.’

‘That’s because they were strangers from the lonely hearts column,’ Thea explained patiently. ‘It’ll be different tonight. Why would I set you up with someone awful? I know this guy tonight, and I think he’s great. He’s perfect for you.’

‘Then why won’t you tell me anything about him? Knowing his name is John and that he’ll be sitting in Bar Barabbas with a Swahili dictionary tonight isn’t much to go on!’

‘That’s because I don’t want you going with any preconceptions,’ said Thea. ‘You know what you’re like. You’ll make up your mind about him before you even meet him, and then you’ll get nervous and go all prickly on him.’

The way she had with P.J. that morning, thought Nell guiltily as Thea talked on. She wished she hadn’t been quite so short. It wasn’t his fault that she had felt so flustered, but if only he hadn’t been quite so…overwhelming. She could recall everything about him in vivid detail-his hands on the steering wheel, the twitch at the corner of his mouth, the warmth and humour in his eyes as he’d turned to look at her.