I met a very refreshing person, purely by chance, and she left quite an impression on me. I was taking a taxi to the train station in Paris from my hotel, she was waiting for a taxi and obviously looked like she was in a hurry. I offered her a ride, as she too was going on the Eurostar from Paris to London.

Very pretty and dressed conservatively in Chanel and Ferragamo, Pia could have passed off as a teenager. The ride to the train station was about 40 minutes and we struck up a conversation.
I don’t really know why, but I asked her if she was married. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I have a child but I am not married.” I assumed that she was with someone. A pretty girl like her seldom remains unattached unless she is not interested in men!
Anyway, we shifted the topic to what she did. She was involved in beauty technology, she explained. It was a company that put together the makeup or skin care that would suit your skin type correctly.
Pia had a daughter who is two-and-a-half years old. “So where is the father?” I asked her.
“We’re not together,” she answered. “So why…?” I left the question hanging, trying not to sound inquisitive. But there was something about her that made me decidedly curious. “I left him when I was seven months pregnant,” she said, a half giggle underlining a serious tone. Then she shrugged. “He was too weak,” she said.
I was quite astonished. How does a young girl leave the man with whom she is about to have a child? It is a time when most women are not only physically dependent on their men, but are also hugely emotionally dependent and need their men’s attention. This girl is either extremely bright or stubbornly stupid, I surmised.
“You reach a point in your life when you realise that you have only been giving and not getting back. You keep doing it because it becomes a pattern,” she said. “I just did not want this one-way relationship anymore. I had had enough.”
Sure, I understood what she was saying, but you have to be an extremely strong person to be able to snap out of something like this at such a needy time. It took a few moments for me to digest this, especially as the hormones of the fairer sex are quite topsy-turvy, more so when a woman has just delivered a baby and needs nurturing at that stage.
“He was there when the baby came,” she smiled. “In fact, we had a family month together and then that was it. He was a pleaser, always pleasing others. His mother did not approve of our relationship and that made him weak. A man has to ultimately know what he wants, and if not, then the woman must know that it’s not right. It is not a real relationship if you are not really happy. It’s an act in a play. It has to end,” she said.
“He keeps asking me to come back, but actually, he is still doing the weak thing. He has a girlfriend and yet, he does not want to let go of me entirely. Someone has to know the direction of the relationship, otherwise all you’re doing is living from day to day without growing,” she said. She sounded many years older than her age.
We then started talking about the oppressive mother-in-law and how many of these women feel secure when they have their sons under their control. “It surely can’t do these mothers any good to see their sons unhappy,” I said. She then asked me a very intelligent question. “Is it their nurturing or their nature that makes them weak?” However, that story is for another day.
The ride to the station, the conversation, it all seemed longer than 40 minutes. I felt I had known her for ages. “You think I was stupid, huh?” she asked me very directly. “No,” I shook my head. She was obviously very happy two years down the line. “Just very strong,” I said with a smile.