I think Paul was particularly hurt by Elizabeth because he had thought of her as someone very kind and caring.
"You can't say a bad word about her".
He had treated her as a confidante on a mumber of occasions, particularly about his feelings after surviving evictions. How I remember her
"Oh, sweetie!"
followed by a hug when she saw how upset he was. She was very insincere, yet he was touched by it.
He made an error of judgement trusting her, and a greater one in describing the flirting as 60/40%. He was trying to justify what he saw as behaving dishonourably.
However he wasn't wrong about the ratio, and it only became awful when Elizabeth passed it on as the proprtion of FEELINGS he had for Helen. That's what hurt him the most, and more crucially, what hurt Helen the most.
If you watch things he said at the time, and his face when he saw her cry, and comments he made about hurtful media reports, he doesn't complain about how he feels. He remarks about how he resents the fact that it hurt someone he cared about deeply.
So, I think he will have forgiven Elizabeth, and after all, he did tackle her on BBLB. Again, I thnk it was because Helen cried. However, he hugged Elizabeth immediately after. I don't think he bears grudges. Elizabeth is unimportant to him and Helen, so I would imagine he has put it behind him long ago.
Miriam, I too am working on forgiveness.
However, I have just had a flash of clarity about how sad we I am even worrying about this any more, so I think I'll have to say it's something I can live with now.
The thing is, imagine if Elizabeth, Brian and Dean had just sat and discussed how sweet it was, and how life-enhancing the experience of watching them together had been for them all. How they hoped to even touch on the happiness that Paul and Helen had found together. What a wonderful, kind and fascinating person Paul was and HOW they missed him.
Wouldn't have worked really, would it?
The reason we were so in the thrall of it all was the poignancy, the tragi-comedy, the pantomime good and badness of it all.
It was exciting, uplifting, and incredibly moving.
It is also sadly unrepeatable, as we have seen this year. They threw everything at it, but it still remained a pale shadow of BB2.
So, (she continued to the ever thinning crowd) my summation is this.
We needed Elizabeth. She gave the added touch that made the fairy tale.
I mean, where would
have been without the
wicked stepmother?
Which makes Brian into Buttons I suppose.........................