Off the Record Read Online Free PDF Page B

gorgeous boy, being pushed up on stage by his friends. I couldn’t get up there fast enough after that. He even grabbed my hand and helped me climb up. I just stood there like an idiot, staring at him.’
    ‘Oh Alex!’ Maggie laughed. ‘You’re always so calm and collected I can’t imagine you going ga-ga over a boy!’
    Alex twisted a wry smile. ‘I was only eighteen remember, and this is Johnson Brand we’re talking about!’
    ‘Good point. What happened next?’
    ‘The tradition at Pizza Joe’s was that anyone who went there on their birthday had to go on stage and have the whole restaurant sing “Happy Birthday” to them. Johnson and I were the only ones that night, so we were well and truly in the spotlight. Pizza Joe was tickled pink that we were both eighteen, and that I was the new exchange student from England. He insisted that we have a dance together.’
    ‘I don’t believe this. My best friend danced with Johnson Brand and has waited all these years to tell me!’
    ‘It was an awfully long time ago. We were just kids, and it just wasn’t meant to be.’
     ‘So you had your chance with Johnson Brand and ended up married to David.’
    Alex nodded. Yes, that’s what she’d done. But that simple sentence didn’t go anywhere near explaining the anguish she’d gone through. They’d been inseparable for the rest of the year, but in the end she had had to make a choice, and she had come home.
    When she’d met David, she had still been suffering. His gentle loving had finally healed the wounds left by the pain of leaving Johnson behind.
    David, her David. The memory of her late husband brought her full circle.
    ‘That’s right. I married David and had my beautiful Katie.’ She laughed with relief as the tension and old pain drained away. ‘Didn’t I do well?’
    She found herself wondering whether Johnson would have approved of her new look. It was startling to realise that she’d been daydreaming about meeting him again. Imagining what he would say, what she would say. Whether they would kiss, and whether his embraces would have the same toe-curling effect, tempting her almost beyond endurance. Oh, she was in a bad way if a decades-old memory was getting her all excited! And why was she thinking about Johnson’s kisses when she ought to be remembering David’s? Dear, sweet David, who had loved her unconditionally for so long. She did miss his kisses. She missed him! But at least she’d been able to say a proper goodbye to her gentle, loving husband. Perhaps she’d just never got closure on her relationship with Johnson and that was why the memories came back so vividly.
    ‘Just don’t dismiss the idea of a new romance,’ urged Maggie, unaware of her friend’s wayward thoughts. ‘No one can replace David, that’s a given. But that doesn’t mean you can’t love someone else, you know. None of us knows what the good Lord has planned for us.’
    ‘You may be right, Maggie,’ Alex responded, not really believing it. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?’
    Kate waited until she got back to her flat in Forest Hill that evening before she telephoned her mother at home in Wiltshire. She caught Alex just as she was filling the kettle for a cup of tea.
    ‘Hi, Mum, it’s only me.’
    ‘Kate, darling, how’s my favourite girl?’
    ‘I’m fine. I thought you might like an exclusive on my latest interview subject. You’ll never guess who it was.’
    Alex smiled. Her little girl, the journalist! ‘Was it a member of the royal family?’
    ‘Hardly.’
    ‘One of the archbishops? I’ve always thought John Sentamu would be an interesting subject but I suppose Canterbury has more kudos than York.’
    ‘Mother, it was not a clergyman. Far from it.’
    ‘It must be a politician then,’ Alex tried not to laugh at her daughter’s exasperation.
    ‘I’m working the arts and entertainment desk, as you well know. So stop mucking about and have a proper guess.’
    ‘It’s not