It was in fact whilst recovering from the shock of Hugh Mortimer's marriage to Jane Templeton that Meg met - and fell for - the silver tongued Malcolm Ryder.

 

Ryder pretended to be a director of a company, impressive enough until he persuaded Meg to find £10,000 he needed to settle urgent debts.  Meg somehow was taken in by Ryder's pleas, and in the process he managed to secure an insurance policy on her life.  Then he tried to poison her to claim on the policy!

 

By this time, December 1968, Malcolm Ryder had already married Meg and when his attempts to murder her were discovered he fled to South America.  After hearing that Ryder was in fact still alive after an earlier report had pronounced him the victim of a road accident, Hugh was determined to find and expose him.  Fortunately it wasn't long before Ryder had the gall to return to the motel, whereupon Hugh informed the police, and Ryder was deported to South America to stand trial for murder - and divorce! 

 

 

 

 

If it's possible to have two loves in one's life, then Sandy Richardson must be the living proof!

 

Anxious to help his mother run the Motel, Sandy never regretted leaving school without taking his GCE A levels.  Always a tower of strength to his mother despite his relatively recent relegation to a wheel chair when he was found to have an incurable spinal injury, Sandy has nevertheless found time to direct his interest, and talents, into other spheres.

 

Firstly there was the time he spent working on the farm of the enigmatic Mrs Ash.  Then there was his career as a journalist on the local paper which, ironically, was the direct result of the report he submitted following the explosion of a wartime bomb that wreaked havoc on Crossroads Motel in April 1967.

 

Sandy's perennially boyish charm and characteristic directness have won hima permament soft-spot in the hearts of Crossroads' fans - to say nothing of Meg Richardson's!