I don’t have a problem with any of this, by the way. I believe that business should regulate itself, and that legislation designed to protect workers exponentially stifles innovation and growth. Tie the hands of a corporation too tightly and it will have no choice but to move its headquarters somewhere else – a disaster for the UK economy. Simon played within the law, and I don’t blame him for exploring the limits of it.
I found it hard to accept who my father was for a different reason, and I’m aware that it may paint me in a bit of a bad light to you, Grace. But I’m being totally honest here, and it’s not like you can do anything with this so I have the freedom to be blunt. My main reaction when I found out who my real father was after twenty-three years was one of enormous embarrassment. Christopher was a man who knew which Wellington boot was just the right shade of green so as not to be flashy. He wore subdued wool suits and would never have countenanced a gold card for fear of looking gauche. I grew up in a family where taste and etiquette were innate, bred into us, never discussed because we never needed to articulate any of it. But this man was the opposite of everything I understood. I spent a couple of days searching the internet for every bit of information I could find on him and every single page I clicked on horrified me. Simon owned a fleet of cars with personalised number plates. He wore a ring on his pinkie finger with a coat of arms he’d had designed for his family by a jeweller who sold mainly to Russians. There were various Hello! spreads which showed off the Artemis family home and the amount of cream and gold on display made me groan out loud. It was all indescribably tacky. It was new money, new furniture, arriviste. Everything I knew I wasn’t, without ever having to articulate why.
I just couldn’t get my head around how Lottie could’ve been seduced by such a chap. She was weak and young, sure, but Christ this man was antithetical to everything she’d ever known. It disgusted me, truth be told. My sisters were born into a happy family where convention and tradition meant a lot. I thought that I was too. But instead, I had landed here after my mother was foolish enough to give herself up for one night with a playboy who holidayed in Marbella and occasionally featured on a TV show about new business ideas called Mogul Wars.
Class matters, Grace. I know it’s not the done thing to say that, but I think it’s utter madness to deny a truth just because it’s uncomfortable. I don’t know what you thought of Simon’s background or his fondness for watches so large they could be a bedside alarm clock, but I imagine you had similar reservations. I don’t want to say that it was worse for me, but come on, it was worse for me. I grew up bang slap in the middle of the rigid class system the British skilfully created a thousand years ago. It’s always worse for those of us who are teetering precariously between the categories – at least you knew where you were in the order.
I spent a few months bouncing between work and Lottie’s house, trying to give my sisters a sense of normality, and if I’m honest, trying to give myself the same. In London, I was progressing in the office and earning a decent whack, but back in Surrey it became increasingly obvious that Christopher hadn’t been quite as comfortable as we’d assumed. His will left everything to Lottie – the house, the car, his investments, and pension – but he’d remortgaged without any of us knowing just three years ago, and he’d been dipping into his pension to pay the girls’ school fees and cover lifestyle expenses. Nothing too fancy – Christopher wasn’t a spendthrift – but as I say, our social circle had pretty exacting standards and Dad was clearly as keen to keep up with the Joneses as anyone. Only in our case, it was the Guinnesses, the Montefiores, the Ascots.
Lottie preferred to bury her head in the sand, distracting herself from any immediate issues that her husband’s death had thrown up by gardening almost obsessively from dusk until dawn. Every time I tried to broach the subject with her, bulbs would be shoved in my hands or weeds lobbed at my person. Once she walked through a spiky hedge just to get away from the conversation. But I had pored over the numbers and I knew that we needed a cash injection and fast. Losing the house would be an indignity that none of us would easily bounce back from. Our family is traditional, and I was now the head of the house, regardless of modern norms. Lottie couldn’t or wouldn’t face up to the facts, so I took on the mantle.
I’m practical, Grace. I was often berated by my English teacher for lacking the imagination necessary to understand great fiction. I couldn’t see the point in most of it myself; if I’m going to read a book, I want it to be an autobiography. Sports focused if possible. I’ve never felt it held me back in life. I’m not a dreamer. I know what I want and what I need for a good life, and I’ll work my arse off to get it. But I didn’t have enough time to secure my family’s future while holding a junior position in the City. So I took a different course of action.