Wrong permalink displayed in WP-Admin

Created a page, saved as draft. Came back later to finish it and publish. Went through same process with another page (save as draft, finish later & publish).

Noticed something strange…both permalinks had the annoying “2” added to them. Normally, that indicates a duplicate page somewhere. Searched usual places, e.g. trash, came up empty. No sign of any duplicates but WordPress still refused to save the page without the “2” added.

Deactivated all plugins and tried again, to check for conflict. Still couldn’t remove “2”. In the end, I went into the database and found dozens of copies of those two pages with the attribute “inherit”. I carefully deleted each one, testing as I went along, then changed the one remaining instance of the page (with attribute “publish”) to remove the rogue “2”.

Back in WP-Admin, that seemed to have worked BUT with a weird quirk. When I preview the page, the URL is correct (no “2” appended to it). If I click the “quick edit” option, I can see the correct slug with no “2” BUT when I go to edit the page itself, the permalink still displays the address with a “2” added to the end. I couldn’t see anywhere else to amend the permalink within the database itself; I just don’t understand where this “2” is coming from.

I’m loathed to leave it like that, as I’m concerned it causes some sort of conflict further down the road. I’m mystified as to the cause of this, so any suggestions would be gratefully received!