Chapter 27

All through that spring and summer, I had expected press interest. There was none. Life was eerily quiet. My courses came and went. The children were out and about in their triplet pushchair. Neighbours and friends visited. The babies were much cuddled and cooed over by my foreign children at the schools.

Without shouting the details from the rooftops, I made no particular secret of their background. No one expressed any objections. It no longer entered my head that anyone could be other than delighted at this happy family or that it might arouse any public interest whosoever. My application for ‘leave to remain’ was with the Home Office. I thought, or probably wished to think, that any newsworthiness must have disappeared by now.

How wrong I was.

Just after lunch on Friday 7 September 2001, I had a call.

‘This is Social Services. I gather you are trying to adopt three babies.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Foster them, then.’

‘No. I have three of my own.’

‘Well, that’s not for me, then.’

‘Who are you?’ I asked. I thought I heard ‘Suzanne.’ 1471 yielded ‘the caller withheld their number.’ A call to the local Social Services revealed that no Suzanne or Susan worked there. My mind raced.

The press? Maybe. Surely they would not pass themselves off as Social Services. Maybe it was some Social Services central unit. I was beginning to forget about it when, at exactly the same time the following week, the doorbell rang and my assistant answered. He invited the visitor in.

‘Hello, I’m Susie Boniface of the Daily Mail. We are doing an article on surrogacy and issues regarding citizenship. We have heard that you have three children by surrogacy and would like to interview you.’ Pause. ‘Well, let me put it this way, if we have the information, you can be sure that the Sunday tabloids will have it, too. If you talk to us now, you can have copy control. You can tell me to sod off, if you wish.’

‘I would never be so rude,’ I answered, thanked her and took her card.

As soon as I closed the door, the calm façade fell away. ‘Information’, ‘tabloids’—all this was new to me. So far, the anticipation had been vague; unthreatening. The reality that my little ones and I were to become a tabloid story was a bombshell. The story was breaking and I still did not have settlement.

I may have closed the door on this reporter, but something unstoppable and undoubtedly unpleasant was happening and I was supposed to make a contribution to it. I had no experience of tabloid newspapers; never read them. I just thought of them dealing in sensation. I didn’t see my family as sensational in any way. I could not imagine how we could be presented as such. I was soon to find out.

I phoned a friend with experience in this field. She said, ‘As your unpaid media advisor, and any advice is as good as what you pay for it, I can tell you that you could do worse than the Mail. The trouble if you make it exclusive, though, is that if any of the other papers want information and they can’t get it from you, they get it elsewhere.’

‘Or make it up,’ I added. ‘OK, I think it’s clear, I’ll get her back and talk to her.’

Susie Boniface took notes in shorthand. I found I was giving just factual answers to her questions. They were mainly of the ‘when, how and why’ variety.

‘So what input do I have?’

‘I’ll read you back my notes, if you like.’

‘OK, I thought that would be all. I’ll get my assistant in.’

We listened and made some brief corrections. Her snapper was at a local pub and responded at once to her phone call. I presented an existing photo of us all rather than have the babies presented for photographing. I was photographed sitting in the garden and idly lounging on the lawn—a somewhat unaccustomed pose for me. An hour later, she phoned back and asked the value of my house.

‘What do you want this for?’

‘So our readers can make informed judgements.’

Just before midnight on Sunday 16 September 2001, I had a brief foretaste of what that meant.

‘Are you the Ian Mucklejohn in the Daily Mail?’

‘You have the advantage. I have no idea what’s in the Daily Mail.’

‘You are and the story about the baby deal.’

‘You’ve just woken me up. Do you know what the time is?’

‘About 11 pm?’

‘It’s almost midnight. You’ll forgive me for saying that I find this unacceptably intrusive.’

‘Sorry. Can we call you in the morning?’

‘I’m at the optician.’

‘When’s that?’

‘Look, you’ve woken me up, I’m not thinking straight. Just phone me and take your chance.’

I went straight to the computer. Nothing on the Mail’s web site. What would be in the story? I was seething, tired, anxious and unable to sleep for hours. The babies remained blisfully ignorant of the media nonsense that was engulfing their home. They have always been great sleepers. Of all the concerns I had at that time, my little boys were the least of them. They just carried on being babies and I was reassured by the continuity of this part of my life.

I awoke the next morning exhausted and red-eyed. My gate was blocked by a silver car. Trapped. Must be the press. What on earth do they want? Is this what it’s going to be like? In fact it was Susie Boniface clutching a copy of that day’s Daily Mail. She offered to be a minder and, in return for an exclusive arrangement whereby I would talk to no one else, she would undertake that the Daily Mail would run an article on any subject I wished. She knew that the care of the elderly was close to my heart. While we were talking, she saw me getting my father ready for breakfast, feeding him and preparing him for day care.

‘If I agree just to talk to you, the rest of the pack will think there’s something to hide. They’ll talk to people around me or just make it up. That’s not what I want. I’ve nothing to hide. I think I should be able to talk to anyone.’

‘You’ll have everyone on your phone.’

‘I’ll take my chance, but thanks anyway.’

She expressed interest in having someone see what I was doing with my father.

‘He’s not an animal in a zoo.’

She talked about care and left when I agreed to her suggestion that a writer should come and interview me about this subject the following day. In hindsight, I was naïve to go along with this, but care for elderly was a subject I would very happily talk about.

‘We’re not out to get you. I have done people over, but only when they deserved it. You don’t deserve it.’

That was reassuring. I told her my father was away by 10 in the morning and that I could be available then,

Within an hour or two, I had been approached by TV stations, papers, magazines and radio stations over the phone and in person. When the last satellite van had left the road; when the last photographer and TV journalist had removed themselves from my house; when I thought I could get back to my life, a radio station in Melbourne, Australia called. By ten to nine that night I was in a radio discussion with them. By nine I had turned off my phone system. They might want me to do a lunchtime programme in New Zealand. They could want. I was off to bed.