How to Kill Your Family

by Bella Mackie

  She gave me my father’s name on a Sunday, just as I was loading my car up to go back to London. As I lifted the last bag from the boot room, she came over to me, wrapping her arms around her body as though she was protecting herself from me, and kissed my cheek.

  ‘Simon. Simon Artemis,’ she whispered, as she pulled away from me and walked purposefully back towards the kitchen where my sisters were making cakes.

  I am not au fait with the world of celebrity. Ask me about the Kardashians and I will proudly tell you that I thought they were a Middle Eastern dynasty until two years ago. But I know the world of business and that name hit me right between the bollocks. The whole drive home I scoured my brain for every detail I had on him. His parents were bog-standard comfortable middle class – and proud of their recently attained status – but Simon wanted much more for himself. He had that aggressive business mind from the start. He started a market stall selling second-hand electronics down his local high street, but moved on to selling vintage clothes in a poncey West London neighbourhood, when he realised the resale value was higher on a grubby old poncho if you could spin a line about how Jane Birkin might have worn it in the Sixties. He bought his first shop aged 19, which he stocked with old tat bulk-bought from flea markets. It didn’t look so grubby when modelled on stick thin mannequins and bathed in cool neon lighting. Buffered by his family’s own financial security, Simon ran this mini empire all while attending university. Much of his ‘self-made image’ is just that. Image. But it’s helped his reputation immensely.

  Clothing wasn’t Simon’s main business interest, though. His real money came from investment and property, but the fashion brand kicked it all off. Since then the Artemis empire had only grown, making him a permanent fixture on the rich list. Simon Artemis was a government adviser on trade and commerce, a token role really but it gave him a sheen of respectability that, to be honest, he didn’t earn.

  I don’t know how much you know (or care) about his businesses, but he was a wheeler-dealer from the start and not much changed over the decades. His fashion business worked when so many others failed because he kept a fierce eye on margins and exploited every loophole available to him. He bought Sassy Girl with money from private investors and then paid them back with assets he drew from the business. It didn’t cost him a fucking penny! He pivoted to churning out new clothes when he discovered factories in faraway countries where labour laws were non-existent. This changed when there was an outcry over factory conditions in the mid-Nineties, but he just moved operations to another country more eager to turn a blind eye and more able to keep journalists and activists at arm’s length. Simon employed a team of lawyers and accountants to ensure he paid the minimum UK tax possible, and he kept staff on very dubious contracts which often ended before he’d have been liable to pay benefits. NDAs were rife at his company – God only knows what they covered. There were at least eight cases of women dismissed when they got pregnant, and though his representatives were able to successfully argue that there had been legitimate reasons for the firings, everyone knew that the Artemis company was run by sharks.

  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.

  Can you see what’s coming a mile off? I guess it’s fairly obvious. I decided that Simon would
be our lifeline. The thought first came to me one night in my bedroom, as I went over the accountant’s notes on the mortgage, the school fees, the running of the house. The outgoings were enormous and there was no future income large enough to knit it together. Just ask your real father, a voice inside my brain whispered. I almost laughed. Me, contacting that man out of the blue, and asking him to fund a family he knew nothing about. Nonsense. And even if I could, I certainly didn’t want to get involved with that man. Not from any moral qualms – money is money and he certainly had plenty – but because it was all so tasteless and grubby. A newfound father, a man who was photographed with oligarchs at slightly seedy private members’ clubs. A Bentley driver.

  I dismissed the thought, but it kept coming back. Every time I looked at the finances, his name danced around my mind. Finally, after a slightly harried conversation with the accountant, who explained bluntly that the girls would have to leave their school at the end of the year unless something was done, my resolve crumbled.

  You don’t email a man like Simon Artemis. I’ve learnt that from a few short months in the finance world. People like that are too important. They have five assistants and their inbox is monitored, sieved, messages prioritised and actioned in minutes. Anything I sent would be assigned to the ‘bonkers’ pile and left well alone. So I turned up at his office. It was a risky move, but I felt the direct approach suited me well. From reading the financial pages every day, I knew that the Artemis company was eyeing up a smaller clothing company called ‘Re’belle’ with choice real estate in Soho and Kensington. The ancient owner wasn’t budging, insisting that the business would always be a family-run one. I used the name of his son at reception, and said I was there to open up a new channel of communication. It could’ve all gone tits up, but the assistant seemed to know who I professed to be (I suppose Benny Fairstein is a fairly memorable name if you’re in the fashion business) and got on the phone immediately. I only had to wait for ten minutes before I was shown into Simon’s office. His eyes narrowed as I entered, and I knew I only had a moment to explain who I really was.

  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?

  He wanted to be part of the establishment, but he couldn’t quite conceal his provenance. I once looked down at his hands as he was talking and noticed that his nails were buffed shiny, almost as if he’d had a manicure. I suppose he might well have. I’m no metrosexual, but I know there are chaps who go in for that. But it’s never going to sit exactly right with the old guard, is it? But then he’d have known that and he still retained those gaudy edges. It was like he understood he’d never quite fit and so he doubled down. He’d drive up to a charity dinner in a car so flashy it would make people actually grimace, but then he’d spend more money than anyone else at the after-dinner auction, knowing that that way, high society would be forced to talk to him. To thank him. To engrave his name on a gallery wall.

  Christ, I’m rambling again. All of this is to try and sum up how conflicted I was about the whole thing. He was charming and interested in me and I’ll admit I was a bit swept up in that. But I never felt totally comfortable in his company and was relieved when negotiations were wrapping up. The way I saw it, he’d pony up for eighteen years of my upkeep, and I’d be able to look after my family. Done and done. I’d never have blackmailed him or anything sordid. If he’d rejected my request I’d have walked away. I’m pretty proud and I wouldn’t have begged for it. I hoped that he’d be a gentleman about it all, and to an extent, he was. But there had to be something in it for Simon. You don’t get to be that rich without a constant quid pro quo, I guess. I’d thought my silence was the leverage, but I was completely wrong.