ABANDONED

he phone to Teddy as Timmy lay aming in pain in the room next door. eddy remembers bursting into tears hanging up the call, feeling alone afraid as she battled the toughest s of her life without her husband. immy needed his father,” she says in memoir. “I needed him, too.” the days after Timmy’s initial brain our diagnosis aged six in 1952, many mbers of the family, including Teddy’s her Ware, nephews, nieces and my, excitedly gathered to wait for y as the Queen Mary liner pulled New York, told by the tycoon that would be on board. ut a message from the captain firmed he had never fulfilled his mise of travelling across the Atlantic. y had not only failed to board the ship – he had not even bothered to let his family know.

Two days later, Timmy had to undergo one of his countless operations, hopes dashed of having daddy by his side.

Later that year Getty wrote a letter from the Ritz Hotel in Paris which would be callous from a pauper, but was positively cruel from a billionaire.

He said: “I hope Timmy can keep away from doctors, except for a $10 visit. I don’t think doctors can do much for him now, except for a check-up, and that shouldn’t be more than $25 unless the doctors charge on the ability to pay and not on a tariff and I avoid such doctors.” He told Teddy the money she paid for a pony to comfort Timmy must come out of her own purse.

Maybe she should have spotted the writing on the wall from the beginning of their relationship.

When Teddy took operasinging lessons after the couple met in a New York nightclub in 1935, Getty agreed to foot the bill – but only if she paid him 10% of any future singing earnings.

When he moved to Surrey, 3,500 miles away, Getty gave Teddy a pile of diamond jewellery wrapped in a handkerchief. The glint of romance was dampened by Getty asking: “Will you promise to give it back if you ever divorce me?” Teddy did divorce him after Timmy’s death in 1958 – but she never gave back the diamonds.

Teddy, in her memoir, writes: “I always wondered why Paul had never come back to see Timmy. It had killed me inside, it was what made me divorce him.

“After Timmy’s death, Paul had said, ‘Don’t leave me, stay married to me, and you can be richer than the Queen of England’. I said no. I was too hurt.”

A decade and a half after Timmy’s death, Getty had not learned his lesson.

After the 1973 kidnap, he eventually agreed to pay a portion of the ransom to return his tortured grandson, who was known by his middle name Paul – but only after his accountants told him it was tax deductible.

It was only five and a half months after Paul’s ear was sliced off – and after more threats – that the ransom was paid.

The news made headlines across the world in the 1970s – and Ridley Scott’s version in All the Money in the World has been applauded by the critics.

Getty’s family never forgot his miserly ways. Teddy went on to wed her friend, William Gaston, and they had a daughter, Louise Gigi Gaston, who is now a film director in Los Angeles.

In a touching social media post last year, Gigi said Teddy “died in her arms” with their dog. Unlike her ex-husband, for Teddy, family always came first.