When You Walked Back into My Life

Flora is in her late thirties, currently working as a private nurse for an old lady in South Kensington. Fin is a climber and all-round adventurer.

For eight years Flora’s love affair with Fin is a whirlwind of fun and spontaneity. But when Flora wants to settle down and have children, Fin vanishes. No phone call, no letter propped against the teapot, nothing.

Flora, naturally, is devastated. But life moves on and her world eventually fills with other people, other cares. She wants to believe there are benefits to being single – no socks under the bed, no mess in the bathroom – but the memory of Fin never really leaves her.

Then one day Flora is out shopping for the old lady she cares for – years after Fin leaves – and suddenly, shockingly, there he is, right in front of her.

‘I’m a changed man,’ he insists. Because he wants Flora back.

Is this a chance to put right previous wrongs? Or is it a massive mistake on Flora’s part?

“I worked as a private nurse for a while… I thought it was quite a strange situation… You have a key to someone else’s home, you almost live there…  you get to know everything about them”

‘I worked as a private nurse for a while, and I thought it was quite a strange situation for both nurse and patient.’ Hilary says. ‘You have a key to someone else’s home, you almost live there. And gradually you get to know everything about them – their friends and relatives, what they like eating, where they like to go, and a lot of their history. It’s a very responsible position, especially as the patient is almost always vulnerable in some way. If the job goes on for a long time – which many do – the house and the person she’s nursing become like an alternative family.’ 

It seemed like a good backdrop for a novel, but it’s always tricky making a woman character sympathetic, when she takes back a man who’s hurt her badly – however penitent he might be. Hilary didn’t want Flora to be a wimp. She wanted her just to be vulnerable, like we all are, to the prospect of love.