Five years have passed.
DH [50]: Francesco Martinelli (Wordsmith)
DW [47]: Claire Delphine Martinelli, née Villeneuve (Julia)
DS [24]: Thomas Lorenzo Martinelli (RowenaRavenclaw)
- ExGF [24]:
— DD [3]:
DD [21]: Rhea Ginevra Martinelli (Darkbone)
- DBF [22]:
Throughout his time at university, Thomas partied, slept around, and did the bare minimum to scrape through his course. None of it had any consequences right up until the last term of his third and final year, when a physics student he had been sleeping with casually for a couple of months called to let him know that she was pregnant, and the baby had to be his. Francesco, being a reasonably devout Catholic, was disapproving; nonetheless, he was determined that his first grandchild would be provided for. Thomas took a role at his father’s bank and, with the help of lawyers his father paid for, drew up a custody agreement which saw his daughter living full-time with her mother, but spending some weekends and school holidays with her father. Francesco offered to buy a flat for Thomas’
ex, but she refused his offer, choosing to rent a flat herself near the university where she would be undertaking a Master’s degree (although she was more than willing to allow Thomas’ healthy salary to pay for their daughter’s daycare). Since then, she and Thomas have co-parented rather peacefully, with Thomas taking to fatherhood rather better than anyone had expected, and she has started a PhD.
All this excitement rather overshadowed Rhea’s preparations to leave to study the history of art at Cambridge. Her parents kissed her goodbye in London and sent her off in a private car to move herself into St Catharine’s College. Free from her mother’s constant air of disapproval, Rhea has thrived, and in her first year started dating an international student from Sweden. Her
boyfriend is now in his final year studying engineering, while Rhea is finishing up her art history degree and on track to graduate with a first.
Thomas’ ExGF’s first name was in the top 100 in England in 2003, her middle name is after her grandmother (and so is a name which one might expect to find on a woman born in the 1940s), and her surname is an English occupational surname.
Their
DD’s first name ends in -ette or -ine, her first middle name is a nature name, her second middle name is her mother’s surname, and her surname is her father’s.
Rhea’s DBF’s first name is a Swedish name which begins with a vowel, his middle name is a Swedish name with an Old Norse origin, and his surname is a Swedish name which does not end with -son.
"Do you not find it happens very often, that you are as gay as Garrick at dinner and then by supper-time you wonder why God made the world?"