The day I found Daddy had a secret family: City broker’s double life exposed after 30 years

My father was perpetually tired, dog tired, with an unnerving ability to fall asleep anywhere, at any time – including at the wheel of the family Volvo.

There was the mortifying incident at a school carol concert when he dozed off in the front row, his snores chiming through Silent Night, making it anything but. And many more, besides.

It would be another 30 years before I got an explanation, which turned out to be astonishingly simple yet bewildering in its complications. It was an answer which exploded everything I thought I knew about my upbringing.

Daddy was exhausted because he was burnt out by a double life – which meant paying secret visits to his second family on every weekend he could manage.

Later, as the details of his shadow life and secret family poured out, I found myself overwhelmed by the parallels and by some upsetting contrasts, too.

Living just a few miles distant on the other side of Central London, they were not so far away. But while we were comfortably off – my mother was a distinguished doctor, my father a stockbroker-turned-historian – his secret family lived in modest circumstances.

While I’d been brought up in a leafy Earls Court square in West London, they lived in Stoke Newington in Hackney.

It turned out that my father had two more children, including another daughter just a bit younger than me.

I was educated at the prestigious, private St Paul’s Girls’ School, she was at the local comprehensive. We look rather different, too: she has dark skin, I have fair. Strangest of all, he gave my secret sister the same name, Georgia – with only a letter different from mine.

The truth was revealed to me in a phone call shortly after my father’s death. It was the summer of 2013 and George, then 77, had passed away after a bout of pneumonia. It was unexpected and left us in a fragile state – but we were not the only ones.

As we grieved in West London, my father’s mistress and children were coming to terms with their own loss, something they had discovered only when his obituary – as a noted economic historian – appeared in The Times.

It wasn’t long before my half-sister, then aged 35, had tracked me down and called. I was in such a state of shock when she introduced herself on the phone that much of the conversation remains a blank.

I do remember sitting down on the bed as my legs buckled, and that she was inconsolably distressed and wanted to know what had happened to her father, George.

He had missed her birthday – something he had never done before – and had unaccountably vanished from her life.

I explained that he had been in hospital in his final weeks, too ill to leave his room and unable to make any private calls with my mother at his side, night and day.

Georgia explained that she had practically the same name as me and that I had a half-brother, called Oliver.

The dog I’d thought was wholly ours, a deaf but very vocal King Charles Cavalier called Stitch, turned out to be a dog that had once belonged to her, called Chantilly Lace. The feral kitten my father said he’d found wandering the streets had been hers, too. Judged to be unsafe around young children, they had been brought to live with us, instead.

It took a little while before I could meet my new family. Shortly after this emotional earthquake came another blow: my daughter Romilly was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer.

For a while, my entire focus was on my daughter’s recovery and it was only in 2016, when Romilly was over the worst, that I finally felt ready to meet my new family, Georgia and Oliver, face-to-face.

While the discovery was certainly a shock, it also felt as if a huge curtain had been pulled aside. Some people seem to have known, even if I didn’t.

There had been the occasional slip of the tongue from a drunken family friend at Christmas parties.

On the rare occasions I summoned the courage to broach the subject with my formidable mother, she flatly denied it. In truth, I believe Mum was ignorant of her husband’s double-life.

I never had the courage to ask my father. We never discussed anything personal like that. But my husband Jamie encouraged me to meet up with Georgia, which is how I found myself sitting at a Nando’s restaurant, equidistant between the two family homes, with Georgia and her brother.

They greeted me with a huge embrace. Perched uncomfortably on a hard wooden bench, I realised how strange the situation was.

At first, a nervous silence filled the space between us. All I could think was that my half-sister doesn’t look anything like me. Her mother was Jamaican, mine was Scandinavian.

Yet Oliver looked so much like our stylish father – who had done some modelling as a young man – it was uncanny. He had the same willowy frame and killer cheekbones.

Then, all the questions and the feelings came tumbling out. They told me they had always known about me and my brother. Daddy had gone as far as sharing details about our childhood – they knew about my love of art and music, interests they shared.

Georgia said they had been told our father had separated from my mother and were married in name only. I had to explain this was not the case.

I could weep thinking about what lies he must have told, what excuses he gave for hardly being there.

I asked why they had never made contact with us. Georgia replied that George had continually impressed upon them that they must not try to find us. They had respectfully followed his wishes while he was alive.

As we gradually got to know each other, we pieced together fragments from our history. My father had married my half-Danish mother, Diana, in 1967 when he was 33 and she was 35. I arrived in 1971.

There was no suggestion my father had ever strayed until he met Georgia’s mother, an aspiring actress, in a London nightclub in 1976 and fell in love. Two years later, Georgia arrived, followed by her brother Oliver in 1988.

According to Georgia, my father had told her mother that he would divorce Diana and she patiently waited for that day. He had even proposed to her, but she refused to say ‘yes’ until the divorce.

Georgia explained how her ‘Daddy’ would visit her North London home most weekends, greeting them with hurried kisses in the hallway.

She found it odd how he insisted the curtains were drawn before a family meal by candlelight. Georgia explained our father had always been present for big occasions such as her birthday and for the births of her own three children. She showed me many photos of George in their house, including one of him holding one of her children, his grandchild.

As for us having near-identical names, we concluded it was so he wouldn’t get caught out with a slip of the tongue when discussing anything to do with either one of us.

We both lived in homes filled with animals, in my case a plethora of feral cats and dogs. Mostly waifs and strays adopted by my father. He adored Stitch, the old King Charles Cavalier that Georgia had called Chantilly Lace.

Georgia showed me a photograph of the last birthday card he sent her in 2012. In his extravagant, calligraphic script he’d written: ‘Will try to call you via mobile but can’t guarantee. Lots of Love, Papa G and from Stitch, the artiste formerly known as Chantilly.’

As Georgia listed the meticulous ways our father had concealed his double life, I realised the astonishing levels of risk and planning. So many light bulbs went on in my head. No wonder he had been exhausted and impatient.

While he made his sporadic dashes across town, I’d believed he was taking the dogs for an extended walk in Hyde Park. Now I knew why the poor dogs remained so fat and hyperactive.

I also understood why Daddy had repeatedly discouraged me from pursuing a career on the stage. When I made some forays into musical comedy, he suggested I work under an alias.

Georgia told me that she, too, harboured acting ambitions and was met with similar resistance.

When, in 1987, we were nearly wiped out by the Black Monday stock market crash, my mother became the breadwinner. A specialist in histopathology – diseases of human tissue – she embarked on long international lecture tours and took Daddy with her.

He told his secret family these were ‘business trips’.

We both received identical postcards, of course. Following a visit to Dallas, he gave us the same book on cheerleading plus matching sets of blue and white pom-poms.

Yet it became shockingly apparent that the father Georgia described was very different to the one I had grown up with.

While my Papa George was charming and witty, we were never close. In fact, I was scared of his filthy temper. There were times when, apoplectic with rage, red spider veins would flush his sun-tanned cheeks. I’d thought it must have been financial pressure that caused such anger. Now I know differently. He loved me, but he didn’t often show it.

Georgia described a very different parent. Her ‘Daddy’ was calmer and affectionate.

In the years since our first meeting, Georgia and I have had long heart-to-hearts over the phone. We have found it illuminating and therapeutic to write accounts of our respective childhoods and to share these with each other.

We have stayed at each other’s houses and send regular messages and photos.

She and her brother say they are glad they finally found us and established a connection – the only remaining one to their Daddy.

We all know that the secrecy has been such a waste.

Why did he do it? I don’t know now and I doubt I ever will.

In 2020, my mother fell ill and I turned my focus towards her.

At first, I was upset on her behalf, angry that my father could do this to her. Stupefied, too, that she refused to be upset or even feel remotely betrayed.

She stated as a simple matter of fact that many men of my father’s generation had extra-marital affairs and asked what was so wrong with it in any case.

She wouldn’t hear a bad word against George. Arguments ensued if I tried to find out more. Had she known, for example?

It drove a wedge between us which only healed when she was too ill and weak to argue any more.

Was she trying to keep up appearances? Or perhaps they had an understanding I didn’t know about.

She died the following year aged 89 – and I am none the wiser.

Now we have laid her to rest, however, it is time to talk about the story which – although composed so heavily of sadness and deceit – has brought us the happiness of new siblings, nephews and nieces.

The only way I can describe the discovery of my siblings is akin to realising you have been mistakenly singing the wrong lyrics to one of your favourite tunes for years.

Now that I am learning the right lyrics, the song is no less enjoyable – and it finally makes more sense.

Not everyone involved is ready to talk so openly and I understand that. My new sister has been supportive but is not yet ready to give her own account.

Today, I’m not so very angry. Any pain that I feel has been seeping in through reflection, but only gradually. A few tears have been shed while writing this.

Rather, I’m saddened at the waste of time, at the lies and at the terrible hurt – particularly felt by my sister Georgia. I can’t help but feel guilty that I had many privileges that she didn’t. At least she had been showed my father’s love.

The upshot is that I have forged a bond with a wonderful woman whom I greatly admire.

As for our father, it is no mean feat to have produced these imaginative, creative children. For all his failings, he tried hard to keep both families happy, doubtless at the expense of his own peace of mind.

I think he would have liked this new beginning.