How to Kill Your Family(98)

Grace, you’re the only other person in the world who I care to share this with. I know you’ll find it fascinating, without being interested solely in the gossipy element of it. I was direct, I did not apologise for the false pretences. I sat down in an armchair across from him and looked him dead in the eye, and I told him that I was his son. Even before I explained further, I have to say he didn’t seem very surprised. Perhaps he’d been waiting for a stray child or two to appear. Sensible, if so.

I told him about Lottie, I asked him to cast his memory back. I waited. He examined my face with his eyes, and I examined his right back. We alighted upon our identical noses at the same moment. I guess in a film that moment would have cued up some soaring background music. But we sat in silence. Then he asked what I wanted. Now in business there are two ways of approaching this question. You can obfuscate, flatter, and throw up vague and unfinished ideas, or you go direct. I have no time for the first option. I told him that I had no intention of embarrassing him, that I didn’t want to be the long-lost son eager to join his new empire. I respected him, I assured him, but I had a family to support now and he was the only person who could help me out. I proposed a one-time deal, slid a figure tucked in an envelope across the table, and sat back. He opened it, and he laughed. I’m not sure what I was expecting but laughter wouldn’t have been my top guess. Looking back, I think it impressed him. Maybe he thought it was a power play. It wasn’t – I just wanted money plain and simple – but perhaps the leverage I had was enough to make me bold.

The strange thing was, it broke the ice. I guess when you’re that rich you spend your life assuming and suspecting that everyone wants something from you. If a person just confirms that outright, you can move on together. Instead of addressing my request, he stretched back in his chair and pressed the intercom, telling his PA to cancel his next meeting. Then he asked me about my life – where I lived, what I did, which football team I supported. It felt a bit weird initially, but I went along with it. He nodded when I told him about Christopher, and smiled when I said I was working in the City. It turned out that we both supported QPR, and we swapped opinions about the manager for a bit, him ribbing me for missing their last big game. To an outsider, it might have looked like a standard father–son encounter. I kept thinking that. I kept remembering that this man was my dad. This tanned, gym fit man in a steel grey suit who was wearing a gold watch which flicked sunshine into my eyes when he moved his arm.

God, I’m boring on, Grace, I’m sorry. But this whole situation has been truly bonkers for me, and I’m not the sort to let it all out to a therapist. Best to crack on, I always think. And I’ve got very little to complain about really. A nice family, a good job, financial stability. Ah yes – I should get to that. Simon gave me the money. It took some wrangling, which was surprisingly good-natured. My initial figure was rejected out of hand, but we eventually settled on a nice six-figure sum to tide Mum over until I was in a more senior position to shoulder the burden. It came on the proviso of a DNA test, which I understood, but still silently seethed about. I felt like Lottie’s honour was being called into question. But there’s little honour with businessmen like Simon, is there? We both know that.

In the six weeks it took to negotiate the settlement, I met with Simon a few times. Often at his office, but once in a while at a private members’ club off Berkeley Square. On one occasion, we went to a match together, eschewing his private box for the stands – I suspect he didn’t want to introduce me to his friends, which I understood. How do you introduce your secret son to a bunch of property tycoons who would love to tap that kind of vulnerability while eating food from a buffet you’ve paid for? QPR won 2–1 and our relationship stepped up a gear. It didn’t take a genius to see that Simon enjoyed having a son. I might not have been a son he raised, or even a son he knew very well, but he got a kick out of it anyway. He bantered with me, mocked my blazer, offered to introduce me to his City mates. Sometimes he’d arrange to meet me under the pretence of going over the terms of our little arrangement, only never to mention it when we were face to face, preferring to buy me a drink, tell me about his latest deal, challenge me to a game of cards.

There was a swagger to our dear old dad. Not exactly charm, but a teeth-baring grin, a confidence that overwhelmed others, a feeling that things could go well for you but only if he wanted them to. His handshake conveyed a serious strength, but it felt a little contrived – like he’d read a manual on how to show dominance with physical contact. He knew the names of doormen, valets, the cleaner in his office, and more than once I saw him press money into their palms with a sort of aggressive gallantry. And still everyone who passed him looked faintly scared of the man. It felt pretty good to be the one in his company, truth be told. Respect, that’s what it felt like to me. People nodded at me as though I must be someone too, if I was part of Simon Artemis’s inner circle.

But when I wasn’t being dazzled by the power he exuded in the flesh, I would remember that he wasn’t wholly respected in the way he’d have liked to imagine he was. People in the City took a dim view of his bully boy tactics – it looked pretty grim when the Evening Standard did another splash on him double parking his latest supercar outside a hospital entrance so he could go get a massage, or berating a waiter for failing to clear plates at the speed he felt it warranted. A table was turned over on that occasion, if I remember correctly. The worst of his behaviour was his propensity to take a piss off the top of his office building, no matter which unfortunate might happen to be walking the pavement below. Luckily the press never picked up on that delightful titbit. Simon would call journalists who wrote such pieces, haranguing them for writing ‘bollocks’, and dismissing the stories as jealousy. Once, after he held a fiftieth birthday for his wife at the Colosseum (he actually hired out the bloody Colosseum, Grace), a tabloid ran a story sniffing at the reported ￡500,000 price tag, and he sent the journalist a first-class ticket to Rome with a note which read ‘Sorry you’ll have to queue with the rest of the great unwashed fuckers. Bet you’d have liked to see it at dusk with a glass of champagne in hand like we did.’ I wonder if she took him up on the offer?