Chapter 31
From: Theodore A. P. Mandeville
Subject: We need to talk
To: Anna Piasecki
Anna, we need to talk.
Theo
From: Anna Piasecki
Subject: Re: We need to talk
Date: Friday 12 December 2025 at 22.10
To: Theodore A. P. Mandeville
I’m assuming, Theo, this isn’t just to wish me Merry Christmas?
From: Theodore A. P. Mandeville
Subject: Re: We need to talk
Date: Friday 12 December 2025 at 22.11
To: Anna Piasecki
Please, Anna, this is terribly important. I can take the train down to London early morning. Meet me tomorrow? Come to the house?
Theo
From: Anna Piasecki
Subject: Re: We need to talk
Date: Friday 12 December 2025 at 22.13
To: Theodore A. P. Mandeville
Holland Park? 1 p.m. tomorrow?
Anna
Even after all these years, my heart continues to come to a standstill, before lurching and racing like a bloody express train whenever I see any mention of Theo Mandeville either in the news or on TV.
Both the hall and the estate have continued to be used for filming period dramas, but also, about fifteen years ago, the lake and nature reserve, plus the farms, were scheduled for a series of nature programmes on Yorkshire wildlife and I’d sat, avidly watching each episode, catching sight of Theo as he worked on the land, with the sheep and with a herd of rare-breed cattle he’d introduced to the estate.
Honor Mandeville had obviously been determined to get in on the act, floating around like Little Bo Peep in a bloody huge straw hat and Laura Ashley-type smock, but it was the beautiful, quite exquisite little girl who followed Theo and his dog – Beryl – around the estate, scrambling up haystacks, sitting beside her father on the tractor and fearlessly cantering her pony around its paddock.
I’d fallen almost as much in love with blonde little Immi Mandeville as I had her father in Leeds, so many years earlier.
So, on this Saturday afternoon, I check on Mum and tell her I’m just popping out to do a bit of Christmas shopping. She’s more than happy to sit with a sherry and her feet up, watching an inevitable rerun of The Sound of Music in front of the log burner.
‘Stick a shovelful of coal on that, lass,’ she says as I slip on my coat.
‘It’s a log burner, Mum!’ I laugh, throwing on another piece of wood. ‘They haven’t burnt coal in London since the great smog of whenever it was.’
‘Aye, well, more’s the pity.’ Mum sniffs. ‘Just pass me the TV control and that box of Quality Street and I’ll be right as rain. Where’s our Noah?’
‘Catching up with all his mates from school. Always the same when he’s back from uni.’
‘Is he not seeing his dad?’
‘Michael?’
‘Who else?’ Mum gives me one of her looks.
‘Of course. He’ll be popping over to see him and Tania and the girls. I did invite them all over for Boxing Day, but they’re off to Dubai for the week.’
‘Dubai? On Boxing Day? I don’t understand folk. Why would you want to do that in December?’
‘To get away from the bloody cold?’ I kiss Mum, tuck the travel rug she always has with her around her knees, and go to check my appearance once more in the downstairs loo.
Despite telling myself not to get dressed up for Theo, to go round to Holland Park in my usual weekend wear of jeans and sweater, I think, sod it, and am dressed to impress in cream flared gabardine trousers, and a Katherine Hooker brown tweed waistcoat over a Loro Piana cream shirt.
Despite loving Hooker’s Italian cashmere and British wool fabrics, as well as the attention to detail in every garment, I can’t take her clothes from the wardrobe without thinking of Fliss and Sara Cleeves.
Which obviously takes me straight back to Hugh Mandeville and, of course, to Theo.
I tie the belt of my camel Jaeger coat securely and reach for the brown fedora I’ve taken to wearing recently, angling it on my still dark shoulder-length hair. Too much? Sod it, I think again, and add more lipstick. There, not bad for a miner’s daughter from Rothersley.
‘You all right?’ Mum calls, peering over her glasses. ‘You seem a bit, I don’t know, not yourself. Got yourself a hot date, Anna?’
‘Mum, when do I have time for dating, hot or otherwise?’
‘I bet you’re on that there Tinsel like a good ’un.’
‘Tinder, Mum. And no, can you imagine any man swiping left or right – or whichever way you swipe – on the Secretary of State for Justice?’
‘Well, you look pretty dolled up for a bit of shopping in M a house so full of memories and love.
Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I exit the car and walk up to the door, ringing the bell and waiting.
‘Anna.’ Theo opens the door almost immediately, standing while gazing down at me from the hallway. We face each other, our eyes locked for what seems an eternity until Theo breaks the spell. ‘Come on in. How are you?’
It’s been ten years since I last saw him.
He still has a full head of hair and, being fair, it hasn’t turned to that iron grey I know, at some stage mine, being dark, will become.
But I know this, having seen photographs of him in Tatler and in the Yorkshire Post magazine.
Tracy, Les’s wife, still up in Rothersley, posts the latter on to me.
‘You look well.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, taking off my hat. ‘I am. How did you know my email address?’
‘It’s the same as you’ve always had. Your personal one, I mean. I took a gamble that you’d still have it. If you’d changed it, I’d have had to somehow contact you through your office. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way. How are you finding it?’
‘Nerve-racking. Exciting. Imposter syndrome. You name it, I’ve been through every damned emotion.’
‘Tea?’
‘Lovely. Thank you.’ I follow him into the kitchen and it’s really quite different, certainly from forty years ago, but also from twenty. ‘Ah, you’ve an Aga? I always said this kitchen needed one.’
‘You did say that. It’s why I had one put in.’
I smile. ‘Surely not?’
‘Of course.’
We say nothing further until he’s made tea. There’s one of those Quooker taps and the whole thing takes no more than a few minutes.
‘Let’s go into the sitting room.’
‘OK,’ I say, taking off my coat and sitting down on the Chesterfield. ‘What is it, Theo?’
Theo looks at me, places the mug that he’s brought to his lips but not touched back down onto the exquisite little Chippendale table in front of him. ‘Did you know Noah and Immi are seeing each other?’
‘Sorry?’ My pulse races and for a moment I can’t breathe. And then I manage a few deep inhalations and say, ‘What do you mean, seeing each other?’
‘What do you think I mean, Anna? According to Immi, she’s fallen in love with Noah.’
I bring a hand up to my mouth, find that it’s shaking.
‘She’d have confided in me at some stage of her being home – she’s a lot closer to me and Angus than she is to either Miles or her mother – but she’d only been back an hour or two, we were having dinner, and Miles teased her about her seeing rather a lot of the son of the new Secretary of State for Justice.
She didn’t appear to know that Noah was your son. ’
‘Well, to be honest, Noah rarely tells people that both his father and I are in government. Finds it all a bit embarrassing, I think. And again, I’ve only been in the role a couple of weeks.’
Theo nods and then pulls a hand through his still thick hair. ‘Anna, they could be brother and sister.’
‘Theo, I told you, the last time I saw you ten years ago, when you came into my office, demanding answers: you only have to look at Noah to see how much like Michael he is. Noah is not your son. He’s Michael’s son. He’s dark haired. You’re fair. Their politics are the same.’
Theo gave a hollow laugh. ‘That’s no answer and you know it. Anna, you’re dark haired and I can be pretty sure, without asking, that your and Noah’s politics will be the same.’
When I say nothing, when I have no further argument, Theo goes on, ‘But you still refused to confirm it by having a paternity test. I’m assuming that’s still the case?’
I indicate with a nod that I’ve never gone down that route.
‘Why the hell not? Surely Michael wanted to know?’
‘Theo,’ I breathed, ‘we discussed this when I saw you just after Noah was born and again – ten years ago, was it? – when you wanted me to have a test. Michael would have little to do with me throughout my pregnancy: I’d cheated on him, and the baby I was carrying was possibly not his.
He couldn’t cope with it at all. I couldn’t cope with him at the time.
Didn’t need his constant haranguing of me for the truth.
Which I didn’t know myself. This was my baby and, at the time, I felt that was all that mattered.
Maybe wrong of me, I don’t know, but I knew I wouldn’t be seeing you again after… you know…’
Theo looks away, unwilling to meet my eye, says nothing.
‘My dad had just died and Mum basically – despite hating London, or so she professed – came down to the apartment towards the end of my pregnancy and looked after me. Made me eat nutritious things like steak and kidney pudding and…’ I shiver at the memory ‘…cow heel…’
Despite getting off the subject of Noah’s paternity, Theo pulls a questioning face. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘Don’t ask. It’s disgusting. And then, as I told you, within a few months of Noah being born, Michael couldn’t keep away.
He so desperately wanted a child of his own – particularly a son he could take to see his precious Everton – that it didn’t seem to matter that there might be a chance he wasn’t actually the birth father. ’
‘What does it say on Noah’s birth certificate?’ Theo asks.
‘Again, Theo, I know I’m repeating myself, but I told you.
I showed you the actual certificate. It says Father: Michael Wrathmell: Member of Her Majesty’s Government.
And if there’s even the slightest chance that it ever turns out Michael is not Noah’s birth father, then does it matter?
Michael is his father! He’s changed his nappy, he’s been to parents’ evening, he saw Noah take his first steps, he’s been Dad to my son for all Noah’s life. ’
‘Does it matter?’ Theo breaks into my glowing CV of Michael Wrathmell as father to my son. ‘Does it matter? Well, yes, if there’s even the slightest chance that Noah is mine, then of course it fucking well matters. Immi is his sister.’
‘His half-sister.’
‘Oh, sorry for being pedantic.’ Theo is beside himself.
‘Theo, I’ve so many times been going to do a paternity test,’ I now admit.
‘As Noah’s got older, I’ve thought perhaps he should know the truth, you know, if the truth does turn out to be different from what he’s always believed.
But how was I going to do that with a ten-year-old?
To a bolshy teenager? He’s smart, smarter than most. He’d have wanted to know what was going on, me messing round in his mouth with a swab.
And then, if it had turned out he was yours, was I supposed to tell him?
Tell him that Michael, who adored him, the dad he in turn adored, who took him to football, picked him up from school, had him most weekends, wasn’t actually his father?
That his half-sisters – Michael and Tania have two girls only a few years younger than Noah and they’re as close as full siblings – are not actually any relation of his?
Do I now tell him that his dad turns out to be just some bloke his mother went out with for a year?
Who she didn’t want to marry or move in with because at the end of the day, she knew he wasn’t the one?
Had never been the bloody one? Because… because…
for me there was only ever the one…’ I look at Theo before dabbing furiously at my eyes with a tissue.
‘And…’ I’m on a roll now, crying through my words.
‘Would you really have wanted Noah to come up to North Yorkshire, knocking on your door, saying to Honor: Excuse me, but I think your husband is my dad? Or saying to your children: Erm, I think your dad’s my dad as well? ’
Theo takes my hand, pulls me into him, wiping at my tears with his thumb and I breathe in the very essence of the man I’ve loved for…
how long is it now since Fliss and I caught sight of him in the Wimpy Bar in the centre of Leeds?
Since I saw him, full-on bollock naked, as he climbed, embarrassed, out of the bath?
For forty years.
‘You and I have must have upset the gods somewhere along the line,’ Theo says, breathing into my hair, his arms wrapped tightly around me.
‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods – they kill us for their sport…’ I murmur back.
‘King Lear?’ Theo whispers into my ear.
I nod. And I know what I must do. For Noah’s sake. And for that beautiful, happy little girl I once saw following her dad around the North Yorkshire estate on the nature programme.
For Immi’s sake.