Marie and I arranged to have DNA test carried out on myself in Manchester and you in Surrey and before too long we were meeting up again to discuss the results, which Marie had.

The results of those tests confirmed what you have known for a long time, that you are the daughter of Marie and me.  It was something of a bitter sweet experience learning absolutely and unquestionably that I was your father.  Bitter because of all those times when I wished that you were mine but thought otherwise yet sweet because I was and always have been intensely proud of you and hoped that there would be some part I could play in your life from then on.

For me the way ahead was almost immediately clear, and Marie agreed.  You have to remember that by this time I think that you were almost five, Marie was married to Paul and Josh had arrived.  So you were the centre of a very stable and happy family unit, something which in your early years you definitely didn't have.

What you did have in those early years, as I have mentioned previously, was the absolute and continuous love and caring which Marie gave to you, in a way which I found quite magnificent.  I never quite understood where all of this knowledge about being a mother came from.  To me it seemed to come from within her and she just created a wonderful environment for you and nurtured you to become the person who I knew for all too short a period of time. 

Knowing all of this about your first few early years made the decision about what I thought was required now all the more easy.

My sister's children were in their late teens by now but the role I had fulfilled with them was that of an uncle (although they were never allowed to call me uncle, it was always Graham) who, because I lived some distance away from them, I would see perhaps three or four times a year but would always be available to them whenever they needed me.  I would spend time with them and love them but it wasn't one of those relationships where they saw me every week.

It was the same with my Godchildren.  At the time of writing (November 2002) one is 9 and the other is 6, so the elder one is very close in age to you.  I see them about the same number of times a year, maybe 4 or 5.  They live 250 mile away from me so I'll go and visit them whenever I'm going 'up north' and generally stay overnight.  I love to see them and they respond to me really well.  I think it's fair to say that they are my substitute for you and I just love to buy clothes for them and play with them.  If it's one of their birthdays then they both get presents (usually clothes) mainly because I love to go shopping for them, and their mum and dad (who of course are my very best friends) understand what it means to me to be their Godfather (I'm actually only Godfather to the youngest, but I think that was my reward for being such a good 'uncle' to the oldest).

But the point of this is that I love the relationship which I have with my sisters children and my Godchildren, which has been quite successful despite the fact that we haven't seen each other week in and week out.  Therefore for me, I wanted to build a similar relationship with you.  I don't think that being a  'Sunday father' is a natural kind of relationship.

So Marie and I decided that we should take things slowly, build me into your life gradually and when the time was right you would eventually come to know me as first an occasional uncle or friend of the family and ultimately as your biological father.  What was absolutely paramount was that the stable family environment which you were now enjoying and the relationship that you had with Paul should not be compromised.  He had not only been a good friend to Marie, but was now her husband, your daddy and Josh's father.  The last thing that you needed in your life at that time was any more upheaval.

On top of all of this, what made such a decision easier to make was that Marie and I had been very good friends for at least six years up to this point.  I could never imagine a time when Marie and I would not be friends and so there would be no need to try to have some kind of legal framework built in to what had become an agreement between two friends about the best way to 'manage' the situation we had created for ourselves.

So armed with the information regarding your parentage, Marie was able to take her first husband out of her and your lives at last.  I don't pretend that it was quick and painless, but eventually it happened to the great relief of all concerned.

I think that shortly after this Paul and Marie decided that it would be helpful to draw the matter to a close if you could have the same surname as the rest of your family.  It was going to be a continuous reminder of a particularly unhappy time in Marie's life, that you would legally have the surname of a person who she was married to for a short time and who she and everybody else would rather forget.  Furthermore, you had this persons surname and wasn't even his child, so the case for you now taking Paul's surname was compelling.

It turned out that the only way for this to be resolved was for Paul to adopt you.  Perversely, even though Marie is your natural mother she would also have to adopt you, in what seems to be a typically English piece of legislation ignoring any amount of common sense.  I know that this disturbed Marie quite a lot and I must say that I was more than a little upset by the fact that in order for you to be adopted by Paul, the legislative system required Marie to relinquish her legal status as your natural mother to become your legally adoptive mother.

Well, the greater prize in all of this legal quagmire was that you should all, Paul, Marie, Josh and you, have the same surname and so the appropriate forms needed to be completed.  It was at this point that I had that Sunday morning phone call where I owned up to Marie for this first time exactly what my age was, to Paul's great amusement.

The only part I played in your adoption was really a very minor part.  Legally, as my name did not appear on your original birth certificate, I actually had no part to play in the process.  But as your biological father it was thought helpful if I could write a supporting letter to the court, which I happily did.

I don't know if a copy of that letter still exists, but I wanted to place on record the love I had for you, the friendship I enjoyed with Marie and the absolute respect which I had for Paul.  I was confident that the friendship which Marie and I had enjoyed over the previous years would not only continue but ensure that we would manage the questions which you would have in the future.  I also wanted you to enjoy a relationship with me, on whatever level was appropriate, without compromising the love and stability which the only real family you knew had given to you.

I believe that this letter was presented to the court at the time of your adoption hearing and I was delighted that I was allowed to write that letter even though it had no legal basis or requirement for the adoption process.  Obviously the adoption went through easily and from that point on your family was united in everything, including name.

I think shortly after that you moved to Coventry (Kenilworth).  Marie's brother, John, was living there at the time and Paul's work took him there, so it was quite a fortunate piece of timing to put a little distance between Marie's former husband and allow a fresh start to be made.