Nadia Knows Best Read Online Free PDF Page A

dangerous thing to do.
    Laughing at his earnest expression, Leonie had thrown back her long blonde hair and said, “Are you dangerous?”
    Realizing that she was laughing at him, probably because he wore spectacles and drove a Morris Minor, James had replied, “Of course not, but the man in the next car to stop might be.”
    Cheekily, she had yanked open the passenger door, climbed in, and said, “Better give me a lift then, before he turns up.”
    Three months later, Leonie had announced that she was pregnant. Two months after that, they’d been married. James had never met anyone like Leonie before. He’d never known there were people like her in the world. She was fearless, a true free spirit, with a breathtaking zest for life. And James was utterly enthralled. He was also happier than he’d ever been in his life.
    It didn’t take long for James to discover that free spirits don’t necessarily make great mothers. Nor great wives, come to that. When Nadia was born, Leonie launched into her earth-mother phase, but it didn’t last. Shortly before Nadia’s first birthday, James came home from work to be greeted by his wife thrusting their daughter into his arms, yelling, “Why did nobody ever tell me being a mother was going to be so bloody boring ?”
    It had taken all James’s energy to calm her down and persuade her not to walk out on them. Somehow they managed to stagger on for another year and a half. Then, just as their marriage reached its lowest ebb and separation seemed inevitable, Leonie discovered to her horror that she was pregnant again. Clare was born and the situation went from bad to worse. Leonie felt as if she was trapped in an airless Lucite cube. She loved her children but was unable to cope with their incessant demands. She was twenty-three, married to—of all things—an accountant, and a mother of two. Reality had fallen woefully short of her idyllic pre-pregnancy fantasies of parenthood.
    It was while she was in Canford Park one late spring morning that she met Kieran Brown. Having taken Nadia and Clare along to commune with the tadpoles and baby frogs in the pond, she had made the unhappy discovery that Nadia’s only interest, at the age of three, was in trying to eat them. Then Kieran, who was there with his own four-year-old son, had engaged her in conversation. He was an out-of-work actor and utterly charming. Bewitched by his attentions, Leonie promptly forgot all about the task in hand—that of persuading Nadia not to cram her mouth with tiny frogs—and arranged to meet Kieran that evening for a drink. When James asked her where she was going, as she flounced past him at the front door, she replied, “To talk to someone who understands me.”
    A fortnight later she packed her bags and ran off to Crete with Kieran Brown, whose own girlfriend was, frankly, glad to be shot of him.
    Witnessing the extent of James’s shock and desolation—and having inwardly predicted from the start that her son’s marriage would come to a sticky end—Miriam had promptly taken charge and insisted that he and the children move in with her. Widowed but wealthy, her house was large enough and helping to look after Nadia and Clare would give her something to do. At forty-seven, Miriam had the energy of a twenty-year-old. And the children adored her. It was the obvious solution, Miriam had briskly informed her shell-shocked son, so he needn’t even bother thinking of other ways he might manage.
    Since James couldn’t begin to imagine how else he might manage, he had accepted his mother’s typically generous offer. The children adapted to the changes in their young lives with gratifying ease. It had, he decided with heartfelt relief, been the right thing to do. In a couple of years, maybe, the difficulties would ease and they would find a place of their own.
    Twenty-three years on, it hadn’t happened yet, and