Who is Nicola Janks in the novel, This Must Be the Place?

Nicola was a celebrity intellectual and one of the first female engineers in the United Kingdom. By the time of the novel, she has been dead for some 30 years, having died of a weak heart brought on by frequent bouts with anorexia.

Nicola, though much older than Daniel, begins a relationship with him that leads to her becoming pregnant and choosing to have an abortion despite Daniel wanting to keep the baby. However, Nicola’s last-minute second thoughts go unheeded by the abortionist, and the abortion itself creates a rift between Nicola and Daniel. Nicola later finds Daniel having an affair, and the two break up. Nicola’s anorexia returns after Daniel leaves for America and never gets in touch with her as promised (though she does not know Todd has intercepted the correspondence) and so she falls back into anorexia until her death several months later.