Dominic Saul was a golfing friend of Dev Alahan, whose paths crossed with each other at an upmarket hotel where they were both in attendance as guests at the extravagant 50th birthday party of a mutual acquaintance one Friday evening in November 2014. Accompanying Dev was Julie Carp who, despite being recently snubbed romantically by the widower, agreed to step into the breach last-minute having learned he'd be attending alone and wrongly assumed he'd had a change of heart.
Julie was oblivious to the fact that originally, Dev had been somewhat bulldozed into agreeing to take his twins' nanny Mary Taylor as his plus-one, but after spending the entire day pampering herself, was forced to decline the invitation when she suffered an allergic reaction to the glue of her false eyelashes.
Following on from the introductions, Dev made it clear to Dominic that Julie was just a friend and told him that the lady he was originally bringing had a last-minute emergency. Julie soon believed that she was evidently second choice and to save face, began hanging on to the suave Dominic's every word - although the attraction was in fact mutual and they quickly hit it off. Somewhat surprisingly, Dev's smugness turned to jealously and despite him trying to tell Julie the "other woman" was in fact Mary, his warnings that Dominic was "brash, thoughtless and crass" also fell on deaf ears as she thought the exact opposite and the pair eventually exchanged phone numbers when Dominic got called away on a work-related matter and had to leave the soiree early.
Within a few days, Dominic and Julie had arranged a date at Just Nick's. In light of this, Dev was at pains to mask his ever-increasing jealousy in front of an effervescent Julie and the growing number of friends and neighbours that were also in the know about the potential new romance. On the day before the date, Dominic called into the corner shop to seek Dev's advice on what he could present to Julie as a token gift, but still smarting at the thought of their burgeoning romance and trying his utmost to deter him, told Dominic to get her anything with a cat on, kidding-on that Julie had chosen a reclusive lifestyle and allowed nine of the said animals to sleep in her bed with her like children. Similarly, in a separate attempt to deter Julie herself, Dev led her to believe that Dominic had recently gone through a bitter divorce, encouraging her to tread carefully and not get her hopes up that the impending date would be a success.
While dining at the bistro however, the realisation that they'd both been spun a yarn by Dev soon dawned when the "feline-loving" Julie wasn't particularly impressed with the cat keyring she'd been gifted and Dominic's "recent, bitter divorce" turned out to have occurred eight years earlier - and he was still on extremely amicable terms with his ex-wife. Both in puzzlement at Dev's strangely out-of-character behaviour, Julie excused herself and ran out of the eatery to confront the man himself, only for Dev to finally confess that he was jealous and admitted that he did have feelings for her. Dominic had settled the bill and was just leaving the bistro when he was stunned to witness Dev and Julie passionately kissing across the street and demanded they not involve him in their silly games again.
List of appearances[]
2014