A picture of heartbreak: Pippa after split with stockbroker Nico (2024)

Troubled, careworn and without a hint of make-up, Pippa Middleton had heartbreak written across her face last week, a lonely figure pacing the streets of London.

Days after breaking up with Nico Jackson – the boyfriend of three years who she was expected to 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 duch*ess of Cambridge’s younger sister was so distracted that – as our pictures 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 circ*mstances 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 famous girlfriend. Sadly, the relationship did not survive the long-distance arrangement, although the couple can’t be accused of lacking commitment. Pippa took French lessons and would rarely go more than a month without flying to Geneva, while Nico tried to spend every other weekend in London.

But they were getting by on only four of five days per month together. Some say they also attended counselling sessions although a source close to Pippa insists that was not the reason they visited the Violet Hills Studios in London’s St John’s Wood, a healing centre offering therapy and counselling among many other services. Pippa spent three hours at the centre before emerging on the arm of Nico a month ago.

Some friends are now predicting Nico will be back in the arms of his ex-girlfriend Alice Farquhar by Christmas. As one chum said: ‘He knows full well that she would take him back in a heartbeat. She’s always on the end of the phone when he needs her.’

Pippa – who herself is on the phone daily to her sister and mother Carole – is still living at her parents’ flat in Chelsea and is predicted to fall into the arms of James Matthews – the brother of reality TV star Spencer Matthews – whom she dated back in 2012.

But she is adamant there is no third party involved in the split and was said to be tearful at the thought that Nico’s parents would think as much after reading unconfirmed reports that she was seen leaving James’s house clutching flowers after a recent overnight stay. Intriguingly, Pippa was seen out and about with numerous ex-boyfriends before the split, including cricketer Alex Loudon, who dumped her in 2011. But friends say that far from hoping to rekindle a romance, it was more likely that she was meeting them to garner advice about how to avoid awkward questions if an engagement to Nico were to be announced.

‘Pippa remains close to her exes to keep them on side,’ one friend explains. ‘Though Alex would never talk anyway, he broke up with her because he hated being written about. She never wanted that relationship to end, but with her fame there was no solution.’

Though living in her sister’s shadow may make her, for some men, ‘undateable’, Pippa’s fame has at least helped her attempts to carve out a career. Since hitting the headlines as a bridesmaid at Kate and William’s wedding in 2011, she has tried her hand at journalism, released a party book and was poised to be a presenter on US TV network NBC last year. Sadly all but one of the columns were wound up, the book flopped and the NBC deal fell through because she didn’t want to move to the United States.

Now Pippa is determined to go in what one close friend describes as ‘a completely new direction’.

After training as a nutritionist, she is expected to release a health food book to go with a new business providing nutritional advice to the rich and famous.

Said another source close to Pippa: ‘Health and wellness books written by posh young women are all the rage right now, so she may have struck gold at last.’

But although Pippa may have found the perfect career, for now her perfect husband is still waiting to be discovered.