Sheer Abandon Read Free Page A

double first in classics at Oxford. He had rather old-fashioned manners—at any rate, with the older generation—and was much mocked for standing when a grown-up, as he put it, came into the room. But he had developed an early passion for politics and after an initial foray into the real thing had decided he could move into the corridors of power faster via the political pages of a newspaper. He was a brilliant investigative journalist, and came up with scoop after scoop, the most famous, if least important, of which was the revelation that a prominent Tory minister bought all his socks and underpants at charity shops.
    It had been love at first sight, Jocasta always said, for her. Nick had walked into the newsroom of the
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on her first day there, fresh from a news agency in the west country, and she had gone literally weak at the knees. Told he was the political editor, she had assumed, joyfully, that she would see him every day; the discovery that he only came in for the occasional editors’ conference, or one-to-one meetings with Chris Pollock, the editor, was a serious blow. As was the news that he had a girlfriend on every paper. She wasn’t surprised; he was (as well as extremely tall: about six foot four) very good-looking in an untidy sort of way, with shaggy brown hair, large mournful brown eyes set deep beneath equally shaggy brows, a long and straight nose, and what she could only describe rather helplessly as a completely sexy mouth. He was very thin and slightly ungainly with large hands and feet, altogether a bit like an overgrown schoolboy; he was hopeless at all games, but he was a fine runner and had already done the New York as well as the London marathon, and could be seen early every morning, no matter how drunk he had been the night before, loping round Hampstead Heath where he lived.
    It was not entirely true that he had a girlfriend on every paper, but women adored him. His secret was that he adored them back; he found them intriguing, entertaining, and treated them, certainly initially, with a rather old-world courtesy. When Jocasta Forbes arrived on the
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he rather miraculously had no one permanent in his life.
    She had pursued him fervently and shamelessly for several months; she would feel she was really making progress, having flirted manically through evening after evening and been told how absolutely gorgeous he thought she was, only to hear nothing from him for weeks until some newspaper happening brought them together again. She had been in despair until one night, about a year previously, when they had both got extremely drunk at a
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party, and she had decided a proactive approach was the only one that was going to get her anywhere and started to kiss him with great determination. Unwilling, this time, to leave anything to chance, she then suggested they go back to her place. Nick declared himself hooked.
    “I’ve admired you for so long, you have absolutely no idea.”
    “No,” she said crossly, “I haven’t. I’ve made it very clear I admired you, though.”
    “I know, but I thought you were just being kind. I thought a girl who looked like you was bound to have a dozen boyfriends.”
    “Oh for God’s sake,” said Jocasta, and got into bed beside him and their relationship had been finally—and happily—sealed.
    Although certainly not signed. And it troubled Jocasta. She stayed at his flat sometimes, and he at hers (in which case it was Clapham Common he loped across), but they were very much an item, recognising that the next step would be moving in together. Nick said repeatedly that there was absolutely no hurry for this: “We both work horrendous hours, and we’re perfectly happy, why change things?”
    Jocasta could see several reasons for changing things, the strongest being that they had been together for well over a year and if they were so happy, then that was a very good reason indeed to change things. There was also the fact that she was