The Learning Curve Read Free Page A

post-Blair-to-present-day sort of history – which gave their friendship that special glow. Unfortunately, the other plain fact was that it had been Rob who had ended it.
    And the problem with that was (as Nicky often reminded Ally) that when you weren’t the one to finish a relationship, the general assumption made by everyone was always that, given the choice, you would still be in it. But plain facts don’t always tell the whole story. Yes, technically, Rob had been the one to finish their six-month-long affair, just two weeks after Nicky’s twenty-third birthday, all those years ago. Yes, at the time she had thought her life might as well end. Yes, at the time she had thought she would never find love again and might as well give up her dreams of ever getting married and having a family.
    But that was a long, long time ago. Seven years! A lifetime! And she was a very different person now. In fact, as a happy thirty-year-old career woman, she now sometimes wondered gratefully if she had subconsciously, all those years ago, pushed him into finishing what she knew, deep down, was fundamentally a terminally flawed relationship.
    After all, at only twenty-three, there she’d been, telling the college Romeo whom she adored (and who had fallen so dramatically in love with her that he’d chased her for a whole year and then stayed faithful for the longest period of his entire life) that if he couldn’t promise to marry her this side of twenty-five and provide her with the babies she so desperately yearned for, there was frankly no future for them. How could she have known that instead of droppingto his knees and proposing, he would spend a week ignoring her calls and then chuck her? Fickle, fickle boy! After all those wonderfully worded declarations of adoration! After such exquisite nights and mornings of love-making! After swapping favourite books (with his grave assurances not to break the spine) and pencilling secret notes in the margins! What girl could possibly have predicted such an outcome?
    Yet here again, the facts do not reveal the whole story, because he ended their relationship so beautifully that she almost believed that his heart was breaking more than hers. Almost. He broke down and wept. He told her that she deserved more. He confessed that he wasn’t the man for her because he never, ever wanted to marry or have children. His own parents’ doomed relationship had put paid to that. He told her that it was because he loved her so much that he couldn’t let her waste the best years of her life with a man who ultimately could not give her what she wanted. He told her that he had loved her more than any other woman in his life. (And he’d had a gap year, so was talking from experience.) He told her he would never forget her. And he made her promise that they must always remain friends. It was a chucking that left her shell-shocked and traumatised, but not ashamed. She lost no respect in its recounting.
    Even more amazingly, they did manage to remain friends. So successfully, in fact, that when four years later, both of them fully trained teachers with some experience behind them, Rob heard about two jobs coming available at the same school, he gave Nicky all the details, they both applied, and were thrilled to start work together at the same time. And so, three years ago, they joined Heatheringdown asbosom buddies, and soon her friendship with Ally and his with Pete formed a tight-knit foursome.
    Over the years since their relationship had ended, Nicky couldn’t help noticing that while Rob had had many flings and one-night stands, he had never started another relationship. She herself had made a couple of attempts, but they didn’t last long. During these, Rob had always maintained a keen interest in their outcome, but he never seemed too alarmed. However, it was always during these relationships that his gentle teasing began. He would drop into conversation how his mind was slowly changing over the