real life
Serena Morton, 59, thought she’d met her soulmate, but she could never have predicted what was to come…
As I watched my husband David blow-dry my eight-year-old daughter Rachel ’s hair, I couldn’t help but laugh. He was pretending to be a camp hairdresser with a terrible French accent, and it was making her erupt into giggles. It took a special man to take on someone else’s child, and David had done just that.
I’d first met David when I was working in Lloyds Bank in Bournemouth in the summer of 1998. I was 34, divorced with three children and had just left a difficult relationship. David, then 36, would come into the bank to pay in cheques for the insurance company he worked for, and we clicked immediately. He was funny and friendly, but I stopped short of fancying him on account of his ’80s bouffant hairdo!
Then one day he’d had a haircut and I thought, “Well Hello, that’s better.” A few days later we were chatting, and I mentioned my eldest son was having a 15th birthday party that evening. “So, you’ll be taking your hot chocolate to bed early,” he replied flirtatiously.
Not long later my colleagues suggested we all go out for a drink with David but then, one by one, they cancelled until it was just me and him left. Our first date was to a Thai restaurant and our second was a trip to the cinema followed by drinks where we chatted about our friends. “I’ve been in relationships with other men, as well as women,” David said. I was surprised, but not concerned because he was such a warm, kind person which was all that mattered to me.
We carried on dating, sharing an interest in film, theatre and music and the romance blossomed slowly. I even met two of David’s ex-boyfriends and it didn’t feel odd that he was still friends with them because I felt he’d made the choice to be with me.
Then after a few months, the lease on David’s f lat expired so I suggested he stay with us. He’d already met my three children Christopher, then 15, Dan, 12, and Rachel, seven, and they liked him. But the arrangement soon became permanent because we all got on so well and I realised I was falling in love with him. Just a few weeks later, David said he’d love to have children of his own and I thought, “Why not?”
One Sunday morning, I did a pregnancy test and found out I was expecting. When I showed David, he broke down in tears and said, “Will you marry me?” We tied the knot in front of 50 family and friends when I was five months pregnant, and it really was the best day of my life. O
