It was odd for her to think that Loretta, a woman who liked the finer things in life, had, according to local lore, spent a childhood without anything fine in it. Ben had always rather enjoyed telling the tale of how the woman with all the airs and graces had grown up living in a caravan, without running hot water and with only a shared compost toilet, at the back of Mellor Waters with her parents and siblings. Rumour had it that Guthrie Mortimer used to ride his horse in the area and took a fancy to the young Loretta, who, twenty-five years his junior, had been swimming in the lake one day. And according to those same rumours, she wasn’t the kind of girl who owned a swimsuit. It was interesting to Merrin that seeing the Mortimers out and about, you would be pardoned for thinking it was Mrs Mortimer, with her shoulders draped in fur and her favoured pillbox hat sporting two curled pheasant tail feathers, who had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and a biscuit fortune in the bank. And old Guthrie – the affable drunk who, before he spied young Loretta, had apparently spent a decade roaming the high seas on a yacht – who had grown up in a damp field.

Merrin felt a little sick at the thought of the woman, who even after all this time and without any contact, still had the power to make her feel anxious. They were on her mind, and no wonder when she was about to return to where a Mortimer might be within touching distance. The thought made her shiver. She had, of course, been sorry to hear about the passing of Guthrie, but mourned him little, as he had passed away at the same time as her beloved Granny Ellen.

And tomorrow she would set off for Port Charles. Excited and agitated thoughts about the weekend ahead raced around her mind and left her breathless with anxiety. She was nervous about taking Miguel home for the first time, hoping for the thumbs up of approval from her family, but aware that it was so much more than taking a new boyfriend home. It would be the first time she had been to a wedding, and the first time she had paraded around Port Charles, since that day, and the only thing that made the thought of it bearable was that she would be doing it with Miguel by her side; someone to cling to. With a man by her side no one was going to view her as pitiful – instead, if viewed through the right lens, she might be seen as triumphant, vindicated and happy! This felt important to her, especially if the Mortimers were within sight.