Perfect Marriage Material. Penny Jordan
Olivia returned. ‘I must say I felt awfully proud of you when I heard that you’d been head-hunted to join Aarlston-Becker.’
‘Along with a good dozen or so other people,’ Tullah felt bound to point out, ‘and only because they’d decided to relocate to Haslewich almost at the last minute instead of going ahead with their original plans to move their European divisional headquarters to The Hague because the British incentives were so much better.’
‘Well, you’re certainly going to be working for a first-class international organisation,’ Olivia told her enthusiastically. ‘I know how impressed my cousin Saul has been since he joined them six months ago. Like you, he, too, was head-hunted by them when they first relocated and—’
‘Saul,’ Tullah interrupted her, an unusual sharpness entering her normally soft husky voice.
‘Mmm...he’s one of my cousins, well, perhaps a second or even a third on my father’s side. I’m never quite sure with our tangled family history. You may not remember him although he was at the wedding and the christening, as well. Tall, dark and—’
‘Handsome,’ Tullah supplied grittily, adding trenchantly, ‘So far as I can remember, Olivia, you have at least half a dozen second and third male cousins who could answer that description.’
‘Maybe,’ Olivia agreed and then her voice softened slightly as she continued, ‘But there’s only one Saul.’
‘If only,’ Tullah muttered sourly under her breath. Then raising her voice so that Olivia could hear her, she remarked, ‘I do remember him—vaguely. Very dark, rather autocratic and quite the gallant, as I recall. He made a big fuss about making sure everyone knew what a good father he was, but I seem to remember it was your Aunt Jenny who actually seemed to be spending the most time looking after his children.
‘I thought that his side of your family lived in Pembroke,’ she added disdainfully.
‘They did...they do. It’s just that since Uncle Hugh is virtually fully retired, he and Ann spend a good deal of their time travelling abroad. Uncle Hugh is a keen sailor and, well, to cut a long story short, Saul is divorced now and he thought it would be better for the children to grow up in an environment where they had close family ties, and in fact that was the clinching element in his taking this job with Aarlston’s. Quite a coincidence, really, both of you working for their legal department but then, of course, it is a huge multinational organisation.
‘There was quite a lot of local antagonism towards them when they first moved into the area. Aunt Ruth said it reminded her of when the Americans arrived during the Second World War, only they had the benefit of silk stockings and chocolate to ease their way into the community.
‘Aunt Jenny was saying the other day that she’d heard on the local grapevine via Guy Cooke, her business partner—his widespread family are Haslewich, you should know. They’ve been here right from the word “go”—the general consensus of opinion tends to be in favour of the influx, or at least the boost to the local economy that it brings with it.’
‘Mmm...well. it’s good to know I shan’t be facing the local eviction committee,’ Tullah told her ruefully.
Olivia laughed. ‘You? No way. It’s going to be lovely having you to stay for the weekend, Tullah. I’m really looking forward to it.’
‘So am I,’ Tullah confirmed with a smile.
Once she had replaced the receiver, though, she wasn’t smiling. Saul Crighton. She hadn’t realised that he was living in Haslewich now or, even worse, working for Aarlston-Becker. She knew, of course, that Olivia had something of a soft spot for him although she couldn’t understand why. By all accounts and from the gossip she had overheard at Olivia and Caspar’s wedding, Saul had come very close to breaking them up, cold-bloodedly trying to persuade a then very vulnerable Olivia into having an affair with him, even though he had been married at the time.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Tullah had also overheard the same two people discussing the fact that one of Olivia’s young teenage cousins, Louise, was in all likelihood also a victim of Saul’s egotistical and grossly selfish need to boost his flagging self-esteem in the only way he apparently knew how—flattering and seducing young, immature and vulnerable girls into having affairs with him.
Tullah knew all about that kind of man and she knew, too, just what sort of devastation they could wreak, just what kind of hurt and self-loathing they could inflict on their victims. She should do. She after all...
But it was pointless harking back to the past. She had very firmly closed the door on that particular episode of her life when she had come to live and work in London. The young girl who had fallen so intensely and so damagingly in love with the married man who had cold-bloodedly fed on her naïvety and inexperience, her belief that when he said he loved her and his marriage was an empty sham, he truly meant it, no longer existed. How could she? She had been damaged beyond repair, destroyed by the trauma of discovering just how much her lover had deceived her, by learning that not only had he no intention of leaving his wife but that also, far from being the love of his life, she was actually just one in a long, long chain of affairs he had lured his victims into over the years.
If she was honest with herself, she could see now that it wasn’t so much her youthful love and adoration that still festered deep down inside her, but the humiliation he had wrought, the self-hatred, the awareness of her own foolishness and gullibility.
His wife had told her wearily at the time that the only reason she had not left him was because of their children.
‘They still need him even if I don’t,’ she had told Tullah tiredly, and Tullah, aware humiliatingly of how much she missed her own father since her own parents’ divorce, had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to prevent herself from crying like a child herself.
Over the years she had come into contact with a good many men who suffered from the same egocentric needs as the man who had hurt her so badly—shallow, vain creatures, possessed of a dangerously alluring charm that could all too easily deceive the vulnerable and naïve, and so far there was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that Saul Crighton was yet another example of the breed.
She remembered that he had asked her to dance at Olivia and Caspar’s wedding, frowning down at her from his admittedly impressive height of over six feet when she had refused as tersely and abruptly as a child.
She could remember, too, watching Olivia fuss over him, explaining when she saw Tullah watching her that he had been going through a bad time and that he carried a heavy burden of responsibility.
‘He and his wife...are separated,’ she had explained, a little uncomfortably when Tullah had made no response. Tullah had said nothing, not wanting to cause any discord between Olivia and her by informing her friend that she was not surprised. After all, she had just overheard about Saul’s attempt to seduce Olivia away from Caspar.
It had been Max Crighton, another of Olivia’s cousins, Jon and Jenny’s elder son, who had explained the whole situation to her.
‘Saul likes ’em young...he’s at that age,‘ Max had told her cynically. ‘Mind you, he’s not exactly the faithful type. No sooner had he realised that he’d lost Olivia than he started making a play for my sister Louise.’
She had spent a good half an hour listening to Max explaining the intricate interfamily relationships that existed between the various members of the Crighton clan. He himself was quite obviously very much a man who liked to flirt, but Tullah had found his frank and open attempts to engage her in a subtly sensual exchange of banter far more healthy and easy to deal with than, to her mind, Saul’s much more sinister and underhanded pseudo sincerity, especially when she had seen Louise, all coltish limbs and soft, trembling mouth, watching him with her heart in her eyes. No, she hadn’t liked Saul Crighton a bit...not one tiny little bit.
‘You’re looking very thoughtful and broody,’ Caspar commented to his wife as he walked into the kitchen, put down the essays he had brought home to read and went over to the table where she was standing