**Diary Entry**
*He said they don’t look like him: How a soap opera tore my family apart*
“He doesn’t look anything like me!” the character from that cheap soap opera shouted at the screen. “Are you blind? He’s your spitting image!”
Victor forced a smirk and glanced at his wife. It was her idea to spend the evening with tea and telly. If someone had told him then that this very show would crack his marriage wide open, he’d have laughed in their face.
“You know, I get where he’s coming from,” Victor remarked coldly, eyes still fixed on the screen. “My boys don’t take after me at all. Not one. All four—your mirror image. Maybe I should get a DNA test too?”
“Hilarious,” Rita grimaced. “What next?”
“I’m serious. I’ve been told. I know they’re not mine.”
“What on earth are you on about?! Who told you that?!”
“A bloke at work. Just looked at our family photo and said, ‘You sure they’re yours?’ And you know what? I realised I wasn’t. Not in looks, not in temperament.”
Rita paled. Her chest tightened with hurt, anger, panic. Twenty years together. Side by side—hardships, joys, illnesses, exams, births. And now… one glance at a photo, and he trusted a stranger over her.
“Do you honestly believe I’d lie to you for two decades? That I’d saddle you with another man’s children?! Have you lost your mind?!”
“Stop playing the victim! Look at them—they’re all you! What am I to them? Some bloke who pays the bills?”
“Who is she?” Rita’s voice turned ice-cold. “This woman who’s put these ideas in your head?”
“What woman? It was a mate from work! He’s been through it himself.”
“Right. And you—gullible as a schoolboy. First whisper of doubt and you crumble. So, you’re leaving?”
“I am,” he said calmly. “I want the test. If even one isn’t mine—that’s it. Let ‘father’ be blank on their birth certificates.”
The kids, hearing their dad doubted them, stopped speaking to him. The eldest, now eighteen, swore he’d never call him ‘Dad’ again. The youngest, just five, stared up at him, confused. “Daddy, are you cross?”
The family crumbled. Friends, relatives, colleagues were stunned. Rita was heartbroken; Victor, stubborn, deaf to reason. The real cause? A girl named Alice—new at work, young, ambitious, with a gleaming smile and the instincts of a predator.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she’d whispered over coffee. “Just odd the boys didn’t inherit anything from you. Not a single trait. It happens, you know…”
First, he was angry. Then doubtful. Then convinced. Then came court, tests, results. Four confirmations: Victor Miller—biological father.
Alice wept, begged forgiveness, swore it was love, that she never meant harm. He married her a week after the divorce.
But there was no fresh start. Work turned hostile. He was sacked quickly. Alice too. Friends vanished. Neighbours muttered insults. Soon, Alice packed her bags and left—couldn’t handle the fallout.
He tried to crawl back. Knocked on the familiar door.
“Sorry,” Rita said, “we don’t need you anymore. We’re fine.”
Victor was alone. No family. No friends. No children—who, as it turned out, resembled him far more than he’d ever realised.
