A Close Connection Read Free Page A

had wanted to do, before her son convinced her that it was not a problem. He had popped over to see them last Sunday, pleasing her with the impromptu visit, although he had insisted on taking them out for lunch at some posh hotel when she would rather have cooked him a proper roast dinner instead.
    The hotel was out in the country, on Dartmoor, but not the one Nicola worked at. She was on weekend duty which explained why he was alone.
    ‘She’s fine, thanks,’ Matthew said when she enquired after her. ‘Rushed off her feet of course. They are very busy with wedding receptions. Why does everybody want to get married in June?’
    ‘Your mum and I got married in June,’ Alan said with a smile. ‘Remember that, sweetheart?’
    ‘Of course I do.’ She gave him a fond glance before looking at her son, who was watching the pair of them with a silly grin on his face. She hoped to goodness his marriage would prove to be as happy as theirs but it was not the sort of thing you could ask about. She hoped her womanly intuition waswrong, but she had always harboured a slight doubt about the speed of it all. It wasn’t as if there was a reason for it because Nicola was not pregnant, not that that sort of thing mattered these days. These days, as often as not, the couple’s children were at the wedding.
    Things had come a long way and she wasn’t sure whether or not it was for the best, but there it was and you couldn’t change it. Just like there was no way they could go back to being without the Internet or mobile phones. They were here to stay. Even in this restaurant they had been interrupted once or twice by somebody’s phone going off. She kept her thoughts to herself though, because she did not want anybody accusing her of being a grumpy old woman. She was not grumpy, not often, and she certainly was not old.
    Matthew had had a few girlfriends over the years since he left university but none of them were particularly serious. It never occurred to her when he brought Nicola home to see them that there was anything special about the girl, or that it would be anything other than casual, petering out eventually as the others had. To her, he had never quite got over losing his first love who had upped and left the area – and him – just before he went off to university. It hit him badly even though it would never have lasted in any case and then shortly afterwards they lost Lucy too so it was a double whammy for Matthew.
    Nicola, cool-eyed and a little aloof, was different from the others. Her first impression of the girl was mixed. She tried to like her for obvious reasons but it did not quite work that way. Worryingly, she liked Nicola a lot less than she had liked some of the others but she had no option but to make the best of it. Nicola was a little too brisk for her liking, too superficial with her perfect make-up and immaculate clothes and, right from the off, she had the uncomfortable feeling that she was looking down at her, sometimes annoyingly talking to her as if she did not possess a single brain cell.
    ‘Give the girl a chance,’ Alan said when she told him about her doubts. ‘I know she’s a bit on the posh side but we shouldn’t hold that against her. She can’t help that, can she?’
    No, of course not, but the doubts persisted.
    She knew she was guilty of making snap judgements about people, not always getting it right and so she had to hope that on this occasion she was wrong and that her feelings would mellow and that, in due course, certainly before a baby appeared on the scene, she and her daughter-in-law might become friends of a sort.
    She knew she had a tendency to overreact and dwell on anything associated with class and she had to remember that Nicola was her son’s choice so she must keep quiet. Even so, she still felt awkward in Nicola’s company and was happier when Matthew came to visit on his own and, on this occasion, this Sunday surprise was a delight. Matthew drove them out to the