Page 4 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
Didn’t stop it being a mistake.
She had trusted the wrong person. Again. Worse, she had trusted herself. And been burned. No skin graft had been required. There was no treatment other than the passing of time and, more critically, the avoidance of any further damage.
But that wasn’t the only reason that stopped her from dating or even thinking about dating. Her eyes dropped to the third finger of her left hand. She didn’t wear Ettore’s ring any more. Not since he’d walked out of her flat and her life two years ago. But legally, they were still married.
Separated. Estranged. In limbo. But married.
And despite not having seen or heard from him since, frustratingly she stillfeltmarried.
It wasn’t just the legality of it. Or the lack of definitive closure. She felt bound to him in other ways. Ways that she couldn’t properly identify much less articulate to anyone. But then who would she articulate them to?
Since moving to Cambridge, she had colleagues rather than friends. Mainly because friends required a level of commitment that she simply couldn’t give right now. Her limited free time was devoted to Oscar. Because her brother needed her. Because it was her fault that he was so fragile, so volatile. So damaged.
Her shoulders tensed as she remembered his outburst at the weekend.
‘I knew you didn’t want this. You’ve never wanted me in your life.’
He had been furious, shouting, smashing things and then tearful and scared, clinging to her, begging her not to leave, promising to change.
It was a cycle that had happened so many times already, often enough that she could sense it at a distance as an animal could sense a storm building unseen over a distant landscape. And it was her fault that Oscar was like this. She was the one who had left him with their alcoholic mother. She had abandoned him to an unstable, fractured childhood bouncing between children’s homes and foster care. He was an addict because of what she’d done. And what she hadn’t done.
She couldn’t change the past. But she could atone. She could give Oscar the support and love he so badly needed. In the short term, that meant she needed to keep working, keep studying so she could finish her master’s degree. Then she could get a better job that paid more money, and she would be able to get him some proper treatment.
That was her longer-term goal, although, truthfully, he needed treatment now. But supporting the two of them was already stretching her finances to near breaking point.
For the rest of the hour, she focused on Dr Blake, and fifty minutes later she was closing her laptop and following the other students down the stairs of the lecture theatre into the hallway. She wanted to ask the professor a question but there were so many students, and they all seemed to be dawdling like drivers on a motorway looking at a crash on the other side of the carriageway.
What were they looking at?
She stood on her toes, trying to see over their heads, mentally rolling her eyes as she saw that it was just some random man. He had his broad muscular back to her so she couldn’t see his face, but he must be good-looking, she thought as a group of young women slowed to glance over their shoulders as they passed by, their eyes widening in appreciation.
Curiosity piqued her. She knew most of the staff at the college, and, even though he was standing with his back to her, there was something familiar about the shape of his head.
As if he could sense her gaze, the man rubbed the back of his neck, and she felt a flicker of recognition roll over her skin.
He must be a visiting lecturer. Probably he was waiting for Dr Blake, but as the professor got close enough to speak to him, she pulled out her phone and started talking.
‘Hey, do you mind?’
Dulcie scowled up at a group of young men as they shoved in front of her, hemming her in with their rucksacks and shoulders, their extra height and width momentarily blocking the man from view.
And then suddenly they were stepping to the side of the corridor one after the other as if there was an obstacle in their path or some unseen hand was forcing them to move out of the way.
Five seconds later she saw what it was.
Or rather who it was.
The man was walking towards her, cutting through the mass of students, who turned towards him, their faces tilting up like flowers drawn to the sun. And at first, she was so distracted by their reaction that she didn’t even look at him, and then, when she did, what she felt was not recognition but pure, unfiltered admiration.
Just as she had that first time when she saw him at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
She could still remember it now. It was the end of a stressful and ultimately fruitless day. The storm that had been brewing over the city for days had escalated suddenly overnight, unleashing a ferocious deluge of rain before pounding the city with marble-sized hailstones. Travel around and out of the city had ground to a halt. Her flight, all flights, had been cancelled, and the concourse was crowded with refugees from the storm staring up at the blank departures board as if they could conjure up a plane by the power of thought alone.
Everyone looked tired and crumpled, including her, and she had been contemplating a coffee, but the queue was already curving across the concourse like the tail of a depressed cat.
And then, there he was, moving towards her with the muscular grace of a bigger cat, a puma or a jaguar.
Time had stopped. Or that was what it felt like. The edges of the vast room had blurred and everything inside that space was suddenly crisply outlined as if he were the eye of the storm.
