As with many second marriages, ours trailed plenty of baggage: hurt exes, hostile grown-up children and a bewildered younger one. For me, the good middle-class girl who obeyed all the rules in the past, it was madness, a coup de foudre; for my new husband, a handsome, funny, streetwise photographer, who’d played the field most of his life, it was a startling commitment, a sea-change.
Dave and I met as successful professionals on a big newspaper, and together, with my son Doug, we created a home life in a tumbledown rural paradise. We had 18 years of golden times; laugher-filled, hectic, sustained by that wonderful sense of being on the same side, supporting and adoring each other. Dave believed in me more than I believed in myself; a novel experience…