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 shock at the narrowness of her escape.
‘It’s OK … I’m OK …’ she said as Clara flung herself at her, and she hugged the little girl tightly to reassure her.
A car door slammed and quick footsteps came towards them. ‘Are you all right?’ a male voice asked, sharp with concern. ‘I didn’t hit you, did I?’
Clara pulled herself away from her mother and turned on him furiously, venting her fright in shrill anger. ‘You should be more careful! You could have knocked her over!’
Nell braced herself for a mouthful of abuse. A lot of drivers would react aggressively in a near accident, and it had been her fault, after all. Fortunately, this man seemed to take in Clara’s distress and was calm enough not to take out his own fright on a little girl.
‘Yes, I could,’ he said to Clara, sounding almost as shaken as Nell felt. ‘I’m really sorry. I wasn’t expecting your mother to step out into the road like that, but that’s no excuse, I know.’ He turned to Nell, who was rubbing her arm. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No, I … I …’ She trailed off in disbelief.
He looked just like P.J.
Older, tougher, more solid, but yes, exactly like P.J. He looked like him, he even sounded like him, but clearly he couldn’t be P.J. That would be too weird. Coincidences like that just didn’t happen. It was just that she’d been thinking about him.
Nell shook her head slightly to clear it. Perhaps she had been knocked over after all and was having some bizarre out-of-body experience? But he was staring back at her and the blue eyes that were uncannily like P.J.’s widened with incredulous recognition.
‘Nell?’ he asked in a tentative voice.
‘Hello, P.J.,’ she said weakly.
CHAPTER TWO
P.J. STARED at her, trying to take in the fact that it was actually Nell. Janey had been doing her best to drop her name into every conversation they had had since he had come back to London, and he had been disturbed by how vividly he could remember her.
Nell was divorced now, Janey had said pointedly. Why didn’t he give her a ring?
P.J. had been hesitant. It wasn’t as if he had been pining for Nell all these years, but the memory of the look in her eyes as she gave him back his ring still had a surprising power to hurt. The raw pain had faded to the merest twinge now, of course, but he didn’t want to go through that again.
Still, the idea of seeing her again had both intrigued and unnerved him, and he had been thinking about it more than he should have done. That was probably why he hadn’t been concentrating as well as he should, until she had stumbled out into the road in front of him.
And now here she was, his first love, his lost love, standing in a busy London street, while the passersby, hopeful at first of some gory incident, had quickly lost interest and were now surging impersonally past them once more, oblivious to the fact that his world had just turned upside down.
Nell.
She was older, of course, and thinner, he thought, and she had lost the golden bloom that had so entranced him as an adolescent. There was a wariness and a weariness in the lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there before, but it was unmistakably Nell. She had the same wide grey gaze, the same sweetness in her expression, the same air of deceptive fragility.
‘Nell …’ He ran his hands through his hair a little helplessly. ‘This is bizarre … I always hoped I’d bump into you again one day, but not literally! Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?’
Nell looked down at herself as if to check, becoming aware for the first time of a dull throb in her ankle. She must have wrenched her bad foot as she’d tried to right herself.
‘I think my arm just caught your wing mirror,’ she said, feeling more shaken by coming face to face with P.J. than by the accident.
It was disconcerting to find him so familiar, and yet so changed. She had been right in thinking that he would grow into his looks, but she hadn’t expected him to turn into quite such an attractive man. Where the young P.J.’s face had been thin and beaky, now it was strong and angular. His neck and shoulders had broadened as he had thickened out with age, and he had acquired a solidity and a presence that was almost unnerving, but the crooked smile and the blue dancing eyes were just the same.
‘Let me see.’ Unaware of the train of her thoughts, P.J. took her arm and felt it gently. ‘It doesn’t seem to be broken, anyway.’
Nell was unaccountably flustered by the feel of his hands, and miserably conscious of her bare face, and scruffy clothes. If fate had wanted her to meet P.J. again against all the odds, it could at
