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 to take her in his arms and kiss her. ‘Mmm...that was nice.’
‘Mmm...very,’ she agreed, telling him, ‘I spoke to Tullah earlier. She’s definitely coming up this weekend.’
‘Ah, now I understand. It’s the thought of doing a little bit of matchmaking that’s turning you all broody, isn’t it, and not—’
‘Well, Tullah is twenty-eight, just the right age to settle down,’ Olivia told her husband defensively. ‘And she’s so motherly....’
‘Motherly?’ Caspar gave a shout of laughter as he visualised his wife’s friend. ‘Is this the same Tullah we’re talking about? Tullah with the figure that’s straight out of every man’s fantasy...somewhere between Claudia Schiffer and a Baywatch babe? The same Tullah with those wonderful, dark gypsy eyes and curls and that gorgeous pouting mouth that makes her look so provocative and yet at the same time somehow more vulnerable and less knowing, if you know what I mean...and—’
‘Caspar,’ Olivia warned.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised unrepentantly. His eyes twinkled as he admitted, ‘Perhaps I was getting a trifle carried away...but you have to admit that no one would ever think she’s a highly qualified lawyer. She looks as though her sex-appeal rating would be through the roof while her IQ—’
‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned more darkly.
‘OK, OK...calm down. You know perfectly well that my taste runs to sassy blondes with flashing eyes and... All I’m trying to say,’ he added patiently, ‘is that stunning and sensual and very, very sexy Tullah may be, but motherly...’
‘That’s just because you’re judging her on the way she looks,’ Olivia told him severely. ‘As you’ve just said yourself, she is highly qualified. She actually started working in a small professional practice, you know, but the trauma of dealing with so many divorce and custody cases got to her so much that she decided to switch to industry instead. Her own parents split up when she was in her teens, and from what she’s told me about it, I suspect it had a very traumatic effect on her.’
‘Mmm...very probably.’ They exchanged long, understanding looks with one another. Caspar’s own childhood had not been an easy one, passed as he had been from parent to parent, forced to take a back seat as they both remarried and produced further families, which in his mind seemed to supplant him.
Olivia’s childhood, too, had not been without its problems. Her father, David, her uncle Jon’s twin brother, had disappeared whilst recovering from a serious heart attack, simply discharging himself and walking out, leaving no trace of where he was going or what he intended to do and her mother...
Tania, her mother, after years of suffering from an eating disorder, was now living in the south of England. She had telephoned Olivia several weeks ago to tell her excitedly that there was a new man in her life whom she wanted her daughter to meet.
‘I was thinking of how perfectly one of the Chester cousins would be for Tullah,’ Olivia told Caspar.
‘One of them?’ he repeated, raising his eyebrows.
‘Well, there are so many to choose from,’ she defended herself, ‘and now that Luke and Bobbie are married...well, it might just give the others the impetus they need. After all, it can’t be lack of financial security that’s holding them back.’
‘You sound like one of Jane Austen’s characters,’ Caspar teased her.
Olivia laughed again. ‘You mean, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”’ she quoted. ‘I was thinking more of the emotional need,’ she informed Caspar with great dignity. Now let me see... There’s James and Alistair, Niall and Kit.’ She ticked their names off on her fingers.
‘She can’t marry all of them,’ Caspar interrupted her.
‘Of course not,’ she agreed, giving him a scathing look. ‘But I am sure that one of them... After all, just think what she’s got in common with them.’
‘What?’ Caspar invited.
‘Well, for a start, they’re all members of the same profession,’ she told him, raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Honestly, men!’ She turned to the papers she had been about to read before he came in, shaking her head.
‘Livvy...’ She stared at Caspar as he drew her gently to him, ‘Look, I know you mean well, and yes, your cousins and Tullah possibly do have something in common, but she’s a high-flying professional woman of almost thirty. Don’t you think if she wanted to settle down and have children she’d have found a partner of her own choice by now?’
Olivia bit her lip. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t interfere?’
‘Well...’
‘I was only thinking of having a couple of dinner parties...returning invitations...that kind of thing.’
‘Mmm... I suppose I should take it as a compliment that you enjoy marriage and motherhood so much that you want to inflict it, er, share its pleasure, with all your friends.’
‘I suppose you should,’ she agreed. ‘Speaking of which...do you remember how we were talking the other night about it being time we thought about a brother or sister for Amelia?’
‘What, you’re not—’
‘Not yet,’ she told him demurely. ‘But we really ought to—’
‘Oh yes, we really ought,’ Caspar agreed, laughing as he turned her towards the kitchen door and the stairs that lay beyond it.
‘SO. HAVE you seen anything locally yet that’s taken your fancy?’ Olivia asked Tullah eagerly when she returned from the property viewings organised by the relocation agency.
‘Not really, apart from this little moppet.’ Tullah laughed as she broke off from cuddling Amelia, Caspar and Olivia’s two-year-old daughter, to
