– He doesn’t look a thing like me! – shouted the character from the cheap telly drama. – Are you blind? He’s your spitting image!
Victor gave a strained chuckle and glanced at his wife. She was the one who’d suggested a cosy evening with tea and telly. If someone had told him then that this very soap would tear his family apart, he’d have laughed in their face.
– I get where he’s coming from, actually, – Victor said coldly, eyes glued to the screen. – My boys don’t look like me either. Not one. All four—carbon copies of you. Maybe I ought to get a DNA test.
– Hilarious, – Rita grimaced. – What next?
– Dead serious. Someone told me the truth. I know they’re not mine.
– What rubbish! Who fed you that rot?
– A mate. From work. Took one look at our family photo and said, ‘You sure they’re yours?’ And you know what? I realised—no. They’re nothing like me. Not in looks, not in temperament.
Rita went pale. Her heart clenched with hurt, betrayal, panic. Twenty years together. Through thick and thin—illness, exams, childbirth. And he… he just took one look at a photo and believed a stranger.
– You honestly think I’d lie to you for twenty years? That I’d saddle you with another man’s kids? Are you mad?!
– Stop pretending! You see it too! They’re your bloody doubles! What am I to them—some uncle?
– Who is she? – Rita’s voice turned icy. – The woman who put this nonsense in your head?
– What woman? It was a bloke! A colleague! He’s been through it himself.
– Right. And you—like a schoolboy. First whisper, and off you go. Divorce, then?
– Divorce, – he said calmly. – I’ll get the test. If not one of them’s mine—that’s it. Let ‘father’ stay blank on their forms.
When the kids learned their dad doubted them, they stopped speaking to him. The eldest, eighteen, swore he’d never call him ‘Dad’ again. The youngest, just five, stared bewildered. ‘Daddy, are you cross?’
The family crumbled. Friends, relatives, colleagues—stunned. Rita was shattered; Victor, stubborn, deaf to reason. The cause? A woman named Alice, new at work, young, ambitious, with a gleaming smile and the air of a predator.
– Don’t take this wrong, – she’d whispered over coffee. – Just odd, isn’t it? The kids got nothing from you. Not a single trait. And it does happen…
At first, he bristled. Then doubted. Then believed. And so—court, tests, results. Four certificates: Victor Miller—father. Biological.
Alice wept, begged forgiveness, swore it was love, that she meant no harm. Victor married her a week after the divorce.
But the new life soured. Work turned icy. Sacked in no time. Alice too. Friends vanished. Neighbours spat as he passed. Soon, Alice packed her bags—‘couldn’t take the pressure.’
He tried to go back. Knocked on the familiar door.
– Sorry, – Rita said. – We don’t need you. We’re fine.
And Victor was left alone. No family. No friends. No children—who, as it turned out, resembled him far more than he’d ever imagined.
