Pippa’s pain for all to see
After her split from Nico, how lonely Pippa shows she can’t hide the pain ...or escape from her sister’s shadow
TROUBLED, careworn and without t a hint of make-up, Pippa Middletonn had heartbreak written across her r face last week, a lonely figure pac- ing the streets of London.
Days after breaking up with Nico o Jackson – the boyfriend of threee years who she was expected to o marry – Pippa was seen leaving the smart members-only South Kensington Club, where she had been putting herself through a stress- relieving gym session.
Yet the Duchess of Cambridge’s younger sister was so distracted that – as our pictures, right, reveal – she managed to drive through a red light later that same evening.
Things could hardly have been more different just three weeks ago, when this paper published photographs of Pippa and blue-eyed stockbroker Nico, 36, walking through North London looking blissfully happy.
She was obviously delighted to allow the tall and handsome man she loved to wrap a protective arm around her shoulders.
Now everything has changed. At 32, Pippa finds herself without an established career, without a property of her own, and now without a boyfriend, leaving some to wonder if she will ever escape the shadow of elder sister Kate, whose young family is never out of the news. How, then, did it all go so wrong? The truth is that such a dramatic change in circumstances is probably a shock even to Pippa herself.
One source close to her says, unequivocally, that the decision to end the three-year relationship was a mutual one. But was it perhaps too mutual for Pippa’s liking?
Friends say that when she suggested a break-up to Nico, Pippa had suspected he might react with a grand gesture to win her back – like a marriage proposal...
Instead, Nico surprised her by accepting all too swiftly that the relationship had indeed ‘run its course’ and walked away, flying back to the Geneva flat he has called home for almost two years. Pippa was left behind, broken-hearted.
In fact, it is Nico’s relocation – to work for Swiss hedge fund firm Jabre Capital – that is said to be mostly to blame for their problems. An irony, then, given that Nico moved there to make himself more eligible.
With the relocation came a much bigger salary, which he hoped would put him in a better position for a future proposal.
When friends from his home town of Folkestone, Kent, asked about life in Geneva, he reported that it was boring, but he was there to ‘stay in and save’ for the future.
Nico promised his parents Ulrike and Martin, who run a small ski shop in the seaside town, that when he returned he would have plenty of money for a large house deposit, and enough left over to buy a ring for his