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Chapter 1: An inheritance
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"How does it feel to finally inherit your family fortune?" asks Wendy, my wife for the last nine years.
My grandfather Mycock had outlived my father by ten years. According to grandfather's will, the bulk of the Deans family fortune now passes to me. Strangely, I don't think my father ever wanted to own the wealth that generations of my ancestors had accumulated. My father and grandfather had barely tolerated each other. The loss of my father in a catastrophic fire ten years ago was a tragedy that affected all of our family, with the exception of grandfather Mycock who barely mourned him at all. Even the medal posthumously awarded to my father for saving dozens of lives at the expense of his own, meant nothing to my grandfather.
"I don't think it has sunk in at the moment," I reply to Wendy's question. "I never realised how much was involved."
"What about your mothers? How are they treating the news?" asks Wendy when I finish my phone call to Valentina.
"They are pleased for me, and no doubt the money left to them will come in handy. However, they never liked grandfather Mycock because of how he treated my father. It's the reason they didn't make the journey here for the reading of grandfather's will."
Wendy had long ago accepted the fact that I have grown up with two mothers. Valentina is my birth mother, but Isabella has always been my mother in all but name as well. These days the pair are legally married to each other, but they have been lovers since before my father met them. Did their intimate relationship ever bother my father? According to what he told me when I was a teenager, he didn't mind in the least. Perhaps his attitude was a reflection of his own parents' influence over his life. To some extent, my father was a rebel, and he lived an unusual life once he left his parents' home.
"Are you William M. Deans?" asks a young woman, interrupting my train of thought.
"Yes," I reply. "This is my wife, Wendy. And you are?"
"Helen," she replies, handing me her business card. "Helen Forrester. I work for your late grandfather's lawyers, Forrester, Blythe and Rivers."
"And are you the Forrester of the firm's title?" I ask.
"No," she laughs. "That Forrester is my uncle. I'm the firm's media adviser. I'm here to advise you if that's OK with you."
"A media adviser?" queries Wendy. "Why would Bill want a media adviser?"
"You do realise that the press are going to want to interview you," says Helen. "It isn't every day that someone inherits thirty million pounds. You will need to be careful that any skeletons in the family closet are kept well hidden, or they'll be public knowledge in a matter of days."
I understand what Helen is driving towards. I don't doubt that the gutter press will have a field day if they get their hands on all the juicy bits about my father's triangular relationship with my two mothers. A 'ménage à trois,' the French call it.
"We need to feed them enough of the truth without revealing anything of substance," continues Helen. "Perhaps you should think back to everything your parents have ever said on the subject of how they met, and where things went from there. Only then can we cherry-pick what is appropriate for the press."
Helen clearly knows that my parents didn't have a simple boy-meets-girl type of relationship. But how much should I confide in Helen. We've only just met, so I'm hardly going to spill my family history... secrets and all... on the strength of one brief meeting.
"We can stall the press for a few days," says Helen. "Why don't you and Wendy talk with your mothers and decide what story you are comfortable to tell. I'll contact you again at the end of the week."
The next morning, Wendy and I return to Norwich and we go to see my mothers. They are relieved that the bulk of the inheritance has come to me. Unknown to me, they had feared that grandfather Mycock might have disinherited me because of my father's rebellion against his wishes. The specific offence my father and mothers committed was to modify Deans family tradition, and name me William Mycock rather than just Mycock. For centuries the oldest son of each generation has been called Mycock, after a distant ancestor who won glory and wealth at the Battle of Waterloo.
When I explain what Helen had said about the press wanting to interview me, Valentina and Isabella sit down with Wendy and me and tell me the story of how they met each other, and my father. Most of their story I already knew, but some parts are given a new perspective. While none of it is any business of the world at large, I know that the press will want something. Helen insisted that feeding the press the story we want to tell was infinitely better than leaving them to dig deep for some dirt.
Wendy carefully writes everything down as my two mothers spill their tale. Their story starts thirty-five years ago, when my mothers were aged in their early twenties...
