Dream come true

The chemistry between Laura and Raf's children couldn’t have been more natural, and they bonded almost instantly – not only did they welcome Laura with open arms, but for Laura, it was seeing Raf with his children that made her give in to her feelings for him. “I was actually still quite cagey up until this point because I’d had this disastrous internet thing happen. I sort of knew Raf was great, but I still had my ‘back doors’ to everything, just in case. But when I came to the house and saw how he was with his kids… I mean, the energy in the house, and their manners and how he was with them – it just said everything.

I said to myself: ‘This is who he is. This is the kind of man I want to be with.’ Looking back, that moment was what sealed the deal for me. And his kids were so beautiful. I was in love with his kids in 24 hours.”

Funnily enough, Raf’s children’s affection for Laura became most clear after the couple’s first big argument – it was Raf’s daughter, Olivia, who helped the couple ‘kiss and make up’. “We had a big argument, and Raf sent me home,” says Laura.  At this point, Raf interjects. “Well, she said: ‘That’s it; I’m leaving,’ and I said, ‘Oh, so you're leaving?’” So he picked up Laura’s bags and walked her to her car. “I was horrified,” says Laura. “But at the same time: finally, a man to stand up to me. It just made me love him,” she says.

But that didn’t stop them giving each other the silent treatment the next day.

“I was pretty upset and didn’t know when I’d be ready to talk to her,” says Raf. “But the next morning, Olivia, who had heard the argument, said to me, ‘Daddy, are you going to call Laura?’ And I said, ‘Well yeah, I’ll call her.’ And every half an hour, she’d ask me the same thing. Finally, about the third or fourth time she said, ‘Okay, well I’m going to play outside for a while…’ and she looked at me, put the phone down next to me and went outside!”

Needless to say, they did resolve their differences and soon found themselves living together, and, before long, planning a wedding. And that’s the refreshing thing about Laura and Raf. Despite the prophetic dream and all the fate-laden coincidences that brought them together, the couple are reassuringly down-to-earth about what it takes to stay together in the future: you have to work at it. “We really do want the relationship we have both dreamed of, and in order to have that, you need to be willing to go, ‘Okay, how do we make this better?’ says Raf.

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