in conversation with Saul Crighton.
‘Olivia was telling me that you’ll soon be joining us at Aarlston-Becker,’ Saul commented to Tullah, shaking his head as Caspar offered to refill his wineglass. ‘Better not,’ he told the other man. ‘I’m driving.’
Well at least he had some sense of responsibility, Tullah reflected, although she didn’t think much of a man who quite obviously considered his driving licence to be more important than his children.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she agreed, answering his question and then turning to Jon, who was seated on the other side of her, to ask him if the arrival of the huge multinational locally had had much effect on their own business.
‘Well, it’s certainly bumped up our conveyancing work,’ Jon replied, smiling, ‘although, as you know, all of Aarlston’s internal and corporate legal work is handled by its own legal department. Olivia was saying that you specialised in European law.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Tullah agreed again between spoonfuls of Olivia’s delicious home-made vichyssoise. She enjoyed cooking herself, not that it was something she got much time for.
‘Tullah spent a year working in The Hague,’ Olivia informed her uncle, smiling at her friend. ‘Something else you and Saul have in common,’ she added to Tullah. ‘Saul worked there for a while. That was how he met Hillary.’
‘Your wife?’ Tullah commented coolly to Saul.
‘My ex-wife,’ he corrected her evenly, but he was looking at her, Tullah noticed, in a way that said he was aware of her hostility towards him.
Aware of it, she suspected, but not particularly concerned by it. But then, why should he be? By any normal standards, Saul would be considered a very attractive and personable man, and it was plain from the way they talked to him that both Olivia and Jenny had something of a soft spot for him. He was certainly not the type of man who would ever lack female company or appreciation, but he would certainly never have hers, and Tullah could only admire the friendly and warm way that Caspar treated him in view of the fact that Saul had deliberately tried to break up Caspar’s own relationship with Olivia.
‘Aarlston’s certainly sounds an excellent firm to work for from what you’ve told us about them, Saul,’ Jon intervened tactfully.
‘They are,’ Saul confirmed, adding, ‘In fact, they’re acknowledged as being leaders in the field of sexual equality and they were one of the first multinationals to provide not just crèche facilities for the mothers amongst their employees, but also to introduce paternal leave on the birth of a new baby as automatic. I’ve certainly found them very good about the amount of time I’ve had to take off recently over the children, especially with the custody case.’
‘It always amazes me how many men seem to develop a strong paternal instinct when they’re threatened with losing their children,’ Tullah commented grittily, darting an acid look in Saul’s direction.
‘Fathers can tend to take their role in their children’s lives for granted,’ Jon agreed peaceably.
Saul said nothing but he was watching her very closely, Tullah knew, and the look in his eyes did not suggest that it was any kind of male desire or approval that was prompting his visual concentration on her.
Good! If she had probed beneath the arrogance of his self-confidence and found a vulnerable spot, so much the better. She could still remember the anguish her father had put them all through by insisting on his visiting rights with them—visits that more often than not were forgotten or, when remembered, turned out to be miserable afternoons spent watching television in his high-rise apartment, forbidden to disturb him whilst he worked. But then, of course, it had never been their company he wanted. No, what he had wanted was quite simply to deprive their mother of it and to cause as much upset in her life as he could.
Olivia started to collect their empty soup dishes, and Tullah jumped up to help her.
‘There’s no need...’ Olivia began, but Tullah shook her head, quickly gathering up her own and Jon’s dishes, and then tensing as she realised that Saul had picked his up to pass to her.
The temptation to simply ignore him was so strong that she was almost on the point of doing so and turning away when she happened to catch his eye.
The cynical comprehension she could see there was disconcerting but nowhere near as disconcerting as his easy but oh so calmly determined, ‘You sit down. I’ll take care of these,’ as he neatly turned the tables on her and stood up, towering above her, or so it seemed. He deftly relieved her of the dishes she was holding and then, turning away from her, told Olivia warmly, ‘That soup was delicious. You’ll have to give me the recipe.’
‘Oh, it’s simple enough, really,’ Olivia started to assure him as they both headed for the kitchen. ‘Just so long as you’ve got a decent blender.’
‘Saul’s really determined to give the children a stable home background, isn’t he?’ Jenny commented when the couple were both out of earshot. ‘I really do admire him for what he’s trying to do.’
‘Why is it that when a man’s a single parent he gets so much more sympathy than a woman in the same situation?’ Tullah asked grimly. ‘And Saul isn’t even a full-time single parent.’ She fell silent as the kitchen door reopened and Saul and Olivia returned.
Tullah could see that she had surprised Jenny a little by her antagonistic remark but she was growing irritated hearing Saul given so much praise that he patently did not deserve.
‘Did you get much chance to visit any of the museums while you were working in The Hague?’
‘Some,’ Tullah responded dismissively to Saul’s question. She had made up her mind not to respond to the man’s conversational overtures. The longer she sat and listened to the others, the more aware she was of the high esteem in which they all, but most especially Jenny and Olivia, held Saul, and for some reason that made her all the more determined to hold on to her own antagonism towards him.
Why, after all, should a man be praised simply because he took on the responsibility of his own children for one weekend in four or whatever it was that Saul’s access arrangements allowed for? Even then he apparently couldn’t bring himself to spend the whole of his time with them but instead found someone else to take care of them for him so that he could come out to dinner and bask in the admiration and affection of his female relatives. Some father!
She could well remember her own father doing much the same thing, leaving them with his mother, their grandmother, on the pretext of having to see someone about business.
‘Tullah...I was telling Saul in the kitchen just now about the cottage you saw this afternoon. Tullah’s fallen in love with a cottage she viewed earlier today,’ she explained for the benefit of the others. ‘It’s—’
‘It’s completely out of the question,’ Tullah interrupted her quickly, ‘and totally impractical.’
‘Sometimes it does us good to be impractical, to indulge ourselves in our daydreams...our fantasies,’ she heard Saul saying. ‘They are, after all, an important part of what makes us human.’
Tullah felt a small frisson of sensation run down her spine but when she looked at him to refute what he had said
