Page 57 of Last Dance, Second Chance

“I wanted to apologise to your face,” she said. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me?”

“To begin with, I was too angry,” Nathan explained. “Then, once I’d calmed down, I realised there was some truth in what you said about me not having much of a life, and I wanted to prove to you that I could remedy that.”

“I was stupid to say that. I only did it because I was mad. And I’m hardly one to talk about work–life balance. You should never listen to anything I say.”

“I’ll try to bear that in mind,” Nathan said with a smile.

“And what I said about you and your wife...” She still couldn’t believe she’d done that. “You’re so lovely. I don’t actually believe you did anything to make Claire leave you. She’s obviously a complete weirdo.”

“Thank you, but she’s really not,” Nathan said. “We broke up because it turns out we wanted very different things.”

“You don’t have to tell me any of this...”

“It’s OK. I want to.” He ran his fingers through his hair before he continued. “She’s a doctor as well. We met at medical school. We got together in our final year. Anyway, my wanting to be a GP was always a bit of a bone of contention between us. She tried to convince me to be a surgeon and to join a private clinic, but that just wasn’t me.”

Jessica nodded; she definitely couldn’t imagine Nathan as a private surgeon.

“Then Claire decided she didn’t want to practise medicine. She took a job with a pharmaceutical company. It paid really well, and she travelled the world with them, which she loved. I was honestly really happy for her, but it got to the point where she was travelling so much we hardly saw each other. We should have talked about it earlier, but I knew how much she loved her job, and I didn’t want to spoil that for her. It all came to a head when she was offered a position in Tokyo for six months. I said I didn’t want us to be apart for that long. She wanted to go, so she did.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Nathan nodded sadly. “It was really hard at the time. When she came back, we tried to make it work, but we were two people who just occasionally lived together at that point. When she got offered another placement, this time in Berlin, we called it quits.”

“That sucks.”

“Thanks,” said Nathan with a sigh. “In hindsight, we never should have got married. We both wanted completely different things in life. She was far more driven than me, and I was proud of her, but there wasn’t space for me as well as her career.”

“You deserve better than that,” Jessica said.

“Thank you. Anyway, that’s the sad tale of my failed marriage.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“I’m glad too.”

Jessica’s stomach growled noisily. “Sorry!” she said with a laugh.

“You’re hungry?” Nathan asked.

“A bit. I was helping Diana and then I was going to eat at Mum and Dad’s but I heard you were home so I hurried straight over.”

“Do you want to hang out here for a while?” offered Nathan. “I cooked way too much for supper — I can heat you up some if you like... and we could play a bit of Fable II?”

Jessica grinned. “That sounds absolutely brilliant.”

* * *

Jessica set off on her crutches to pick up Emily and Sophie for their first ballet class the following morning. She felt so much lighter now she and Nathan were back on an even keel. She wasn’t used to relying on a friend as much as she did him, and it had been completely discombobulating not to have him around.

Andrew opened the door to his family’s cute three-bedroom cottage on the edge of the town when she knocked.

“Hey, sis,” he said, gesturing to her to come in. “Fancy a quick coffee?”

Jessica checked her watch. “Thank you, that would be great.”

She followed her brother into the kitchen at the back of the house where Molly was clearing up after breakfast.

“Hiya. Did you manage to get everything sorted out with Nathan last night?” Molly asked. “Andrew said you two had argued.”

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