Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Callum takes one look at my face as I get into the back seat of the car and says, “I’m guessing it went well?”
“Yes, it went very well.”
Callum is staring at me expectantly, so I continue. “He’s nice. Normal. Just an all-round great guy.”
“An all-round great guy,” Callum repeats. “Maybe that’s where you got it from?”
I roll my eyes at that, but I can’t suppress a small smile. Because meeting Grant exceeded all my expectations. I hadn’t wanted to get my hopes up and have them dashed.
The thing is, for most of my life, my father has been whoever I needed him to be.
When I was six, he was a firefighter. He was the head of a mobster family when I was twelve and the kids on the estate were asking.
By the time I made it to Oxford, he was nobody, because being raised by an impoverished single mother and grandparents on a council estate fit my narrative better than focusing on my missing parent.
Now, he’s definitely not a nobody. He’s a builder from Manchester who takes two sugars in his tea and remembers exactly where he was when I was shot.
“How did he react to finding out who you actually are?” Callum asks.
“He was shocked at first, as you’d expect. But he seems to have got his head around the idea. He wants me to follow him home so I can meet his wife and his daughter. I mean, my half-sister. And he wants to meet you too.”
Callum’s sunshine smile comes back. “So we’re doing the full family introduction tour then.”
“If you’re all right with that.”
“I would love nothing more than to meet your family.” He says the words with such sincerity that I have no choice but to lean over and kiss him.
As we kiss, it strikes me that I spent my whole career ensuring I always had an escape route. It’s the first rule of politics, although I actually learned it long before my career, on an estate where you never went anywhere without knowing the way out.
But sometime in the last two years, I’ve stopped needing a fallback position.
Is this why I was prepared to meet my father now? Maybe my subconscious has always liked the fact that I’ve had the possibility of a perfect father somewhere, a theoretical family I could imagine whenever the loneliness got too sharp. As long as I never looked for him, he could be anyone.
Finding the real answer meant letting go of that comforting fantasy. It meant accepting the reality instead of the infinite maybes.
The only reason I could face the potential loss is that I have Callum now.
If this meeting had gone badly, if Grant Thompson had been awful or indifferent, I would have survived it—because Callum taught me that family isn’t about blood.
It’s about choosing each other, again and again.
“I love you,” I say when we finally draw apart.
“Ditto,” Callum says. His face is flushed and his hair mussed from my hands. “Now let’s go meet your family.”
Grant Thompson’s home is a solid Victorian semi-detached in Didsbury with a well-maintained front garden and a Range Rover in the drive. It’s exactly what I’d expect from a successful Manchester businessman, the kind of house that clearly says “we’ve done well” but doesn’t shout about it.
We pull up on the street just as Grant’s car is turning into the driveway. The protection officers are already out of the lead car, doing their usual thing of trying to look casual while checking every window and garden hedge.
“He’s got your walk,” Callum says as Grant climbs out of his car and comes toward us.
“I think it’s more that I’ve got his.” I open the door.
Callum follows me out, and Grant stops a few feet away from us, looking flustered.
“Sorry, I realized halfway home I didn’t ask what the appropriate protocol is for meeting a member of the royal family. Do I bow?”
Callum gives his easy smile. “A handshake is fine. Hi, it’s so great to meet you, Grant.” He extends his hand.
“Nice to meet you too, Your Royal Highness.” Grant shakes his hand, looking slightly dazed.
“It’s just Callum,” Callum replies.
“Right. Callum.” He gazes around at the small army of security personnel now occupying his front garden. “This is all perfectly normal.”
One of the protection officers steps forward. “Mr. Thompson, we’ll need to accompany you inside.”
“Oh. Sure. Of course.”
Grant leads us up the path, past carefully pruned rose bushes, to the front door, which is painted a cheerful red.
He unlocks the door and ushers us into a hallway that smells like furniture polish.
Family photos sprawl across one wall and spill up the staircase. There are pictures from holidays, graduations, Christmases.
I lean forward to examine a school photo, and my breath catches.
Because there’s a boy in the second row who has got the same jaw as me, the same slightly suspicious look at the camera that I used to give, the same ears I eventually grew into.
This has to be Grant’s middle son Josh. The one who dressed up as me for a party.
I’m used to seeing my own face everywhere.
I’ve seen it on billboards, on the sides of buses, and once on a dartboard in a pub in Sunderland. But I’ve never seen myself in a school uniform I didn’t wear.
And spotting Josh in the other photos on the wall gives me a weird sense of dissociation.
This is what my life, nestled in the center of a loving, middle-class family, would have looked like. Ski goggles pushed up on my forehead with my arm casually slung around the shoulders of my older brother. On a tropical beach with wet hair, building a sandcastle next to my younger sister.
I check my emotions the way you’d probe a sore tooth with your tongue, but I find I’m not envious. After all, my own upbringing and experiences made me into who I am, and I can’t really complain about how my life turned out, can I?
But I find myself thinking I would have liked to meet a version of myself that would have been on this wall, to see how he would be different.
Grant watches me examine the photos with an expression somewhere between pride and apology.
He clears his throat. “If you just wait here, I’ll go find Sarah and Margaret.”
“Sure.”
He disappears down the hallway through the door at the end. He doesn’t completely close it behind him, so the sound of a woman’s voice comes clearly down the hall to us.
“Dad, what the hell is going on? Mum said some random guy contacted you online, claiming to be your son?”
“Keep your voice down. He’s in the hallway with his husband, waiting to meet you.”
“He’s here?” The younger woman’s voice sharpens with concern. “Did you even ask to see the DNA results or any proof he’s your son?”
“Sarah, please—”
“No, Dad, listen. There are scams like this all the time. He could be trying to get money out of you.”
“He’s not after my money,” Grant says firmly.
“How can you possibly know that? You met him for, what, an hour? In a café?”
“Just…come meet him and his husband. Please. Both of you.”
There’s a pause, and then Grant reappears with two women behind him. The older woman—Margaret, presumably—has graying hair while the younger woman has dark hair and a defensive set to her shoulders.
She barrels down the hall toward us, but then stops dead.
For a long moment, my half-sister just stares, her mouth falling open as the color drains from her face.
“Oh my god,” she breathes, reaching out to grip the wall for support. “You’re…you’re…” Her eyes continue to dart between Callum and me.
She turns wildly to Grant. “What the hell is going on?”
“You must be Sarah.” I step forward, extending my hand. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too,” she says in a dazed voice as she shakes my hand. “But I’m struggling to understand why the Prince of Wales and the Prince Consort are standing in my parents’ hallway.”
“Well, as you know, your father got a message from his long-lost biological son,” I reply.
Sarah drops my hand, blinking a few times as she processes the words. Margaret’s forehead is creased into a puzzled frown.
“Hang on a sec, you’re saying you’re…?” Sarah’s gaze flies to her father and then back to Callum and me.
“Well, I believe my husband’s parentage is well known, so yes, I’m the person claiming to be your father’s biological son,” I say.
Her mouth falls open.
“But please don’t worry, I’m not after your father’s money.” I lean forward and say in a mock whisper, “Keep it between us, but I married well.”
Sarah lets out a surprised snort, which turns into a laugh with a slightly hysterical tinge.
And suddenly all of us are laughing. It’s the kind of laughter that boils out of you and is contagious. For me, it’s a release of so many emotions simmering inside me.
But Sarah’s laughter abruptly curtails.
“Oh my god, you laugh exactly like Dad!” She’s staring at me like I’ve just pulled off a rubber mask, Scooby-Doo style. “I never noticed that when you were in Downing Street.”
“Well, it wasn’t really a laugh-a-minute type of job,” I say.
“No, I guess not.” She’s still shaking her head. “I just can’t believe any of this is real.”
“I understand it’s a shock.” I turn to my father’s wife and offer my hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Margaret. This is my husband Callum.”
Up close, Margaret has kind eyes and the calm of a woman who’s raised three children and dealt with a lot of unexpected things.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” she says as she shakes my hand before turning to Callum. Then, with the kind of grace that reminds me of Callum’s grandmother, the Queen, she straightens her shoulders. “I suppose we’d better put the kettle on. Would you like some tea, Your Royal Highnesses?”
“I would love a cup. Callum would probably prefer coffee, but don’t tell the tabloids that.”
As we walk down to the kitchen, Margaret turns to her husband with a look of mild rebuke. “You might have warned me royalty was visiting. I’d have hoovered the rug.”