Free A Close Connection by Patricia Fawcett Page B

clearer that she fancied me if she had been doing a pole dance half-naked.’
    ‘You are joking?’ she said, watching his face, uncertain because sometimes he was hard to read. ‘I think you flatter yourself, Mr Walker, if you think she was interested in you. She has a very hot boyfriend.’
    ‘So?’ He shrugged and they laughed.
    Nicola liked the banter, also quite liked the fact that other women fancied her husband, as well they might. Later, as Matthew went into the little study to finish off some paperwork, she read a few more pages of her paperback although she was finding it hard to concentrate. The cancellation of the wedding had thrown her a little, jolted her, made her realize that sometimes things did go wrong. Poor girl if she had been jilted: the dress bought, the bridesmaids chomping at the bit, all the guests having to be put off at the very last minute, gifts returned. What a nightmare! Poor bloke if he was the one who had been cast aside. What a blow to his pride. She tried to imagine how she would feel if it had happened to her, but of course it had not. Matthew had been there, in that pretty little church, waiting for her as she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm.
    She would never forget the way Matthew turned to look at her, the love in his eyes. It was true. You carried moments like that with you to your grave. Bar the odd argument and surely all couples had them, she reckoned that she was lucky to have him.
    She had no fears about Matthew because he loved her and she knew she could trust him. She knew her own dad had had a few flings over the years, things she was not supposedto know about, and she knew that her mother soldiered on regardless presumably because she loved him but maybe because she could not bear for the world to know.
    It would never happen with Matthew.
    Like his father Alan, Matthew was a one-woman man.

Chapter Seven
    ‘I DO KNOW THE significance of Juliet’s balcony,’ Paula said, irritated as Eleanor started to explain it to her as if she was a child. Once a teacher always a damned teacher. ‘It’s from Romeo and Juliet and I can even remember what Romeo said.’
    Eleanor was sticking to her like glue and she so wanted to shake her off this morning. A coach had deposited them here and they could have opted, like everybody else, for a proper conducted tour of Verona with a guide, but instead Eleanor had insisted that the four of them go it alone. After all, hadn’t she been before, three times, so she knew all there was to know about the place and she found it all a little frustrating being shepherded around in a gang as if they were tourists.
    Wasn’t that exactly what they were?
    ‘Oh. You’ve heard of Romeo and Juliet ?’ Eleanor seemed surprised that she should have any knowledge at all of Shakespeare but Paula remembered doing the play at school. She was a shy student, but good at remembering lines so she had been persuaded into a biggish role which, funnily enough, she rather enjoyed. She remembered still, with a delicious pride, the way the teacher had taken her aside and whispered that she had acted Shirley Walsh who was playing Juliet off the stage and asked if she was considering a career in acting. Itwas stupid to even think of that, although in fact she recalled how good it felt to be up there on stage pretending to be somebody else.
    Her mother was surprised when her English teacher had repeated the words at the following open evening but, although she had not said anything to the teacher, she had not offered much in the way of encouragement on the way home. A single mother, she had worked her fingers to the bone to do the best for her daughter – as she was so fond of saying – but she had no ambition other than to keep their heads above water and to be able to afford little treats from time to time. She couldn’t wait for Paula to leave school and get a job.
    ‘That teacher doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Who do we know who’s gone