remained incurably romantic, marrying a second time when Tullah was in her early twenties after a whirlwind courtship with a man she had met whilst on holiday.
Tullah liked her stepfather, who adored and doted on her mother. He was a kind, gentle man whose first wife had died ten years before he and her mother had met, and was nothing like her father.
‘It isn’t that I wish you were married, darling,’ Jean told her now. ‘It’s just...well, I can’t help feeling if your father and I hadn’t divorced and if that dreadful man hadn’t—’
‘The divorce wasn’t your fault,’ Tullah reminded her, ‘and, as for that dreadful man... I should have realised what he really was instead of being so gullible.’
‘Darling, you were sixteen,’ her mother protested. ‘Still, perhaps now you’re moving out of London you might meet someone nice.’
‘I doubt it. Haslewich is Crighton territory and judging by the—’
‘Crighton territory?’ Jean looked puzzled.
Tullah laughed. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘Just my little joke. Olivia Crighton as she was then, whom I used to work with, lives in Haslewich. Her family come from the area.’
‘Olivia...oh yes, you went to her wedding.’
‘And her daughter’s christening. She invited me to stay with her last month when I went to Haslewich to meet the relocation agent.’
After getting to her feet, Tullah went into the small kitchen of her soon-to-be ex-flat and started to fill the kettle.
‘Oh? You don’t sound as though you enjoyed it. Didn’t the two of you get on?’
‘Oh, we got on. It’s just that Olivia has this cousin...of a sort. There are so many of them, I’m not quite sure how Saul slots into place.’
Her mother came to join her in the kitchen. ‘Decaff for me, darling, if that’s coffee you’re making,’ she instructed. ‘But who is Saul?’
Tullah hid a small smile. Her mother was, if not subtle, certainly disarmingly difficult to sidetrack.
‘Saul is...Saul,’ she told her uninformatively, pouring the boiling water into the coffee mugs. As she handed one to her mother, she added quietly, ‘He’s another Ralph...only worse.’
Tullah paused and frowned before taking a sip of her coffee, then explained the situation.
‘He’s got children of his own, three of them, two girls and a boy,’ Tullah eventually finished by saying. ‘So you’d think as a parent he’d understand at least some of what Jenny and Jon must be feeling.’
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