Dear Annie,
I never wanted to write this. And I certainly never wanted to share it publicly.
But I’ve come to realise something. The more you behave like this—shutting us out, hiding behind lawyers, refusing to even engage like a human being—the more I feel that telling this story isn’t just justified. It’s necessary.
Because this isn’t just about grief anymore. This is about truth. This is about accountability. And the more you distance yourself from both, the more I begin to believe I’m doing the world a favour by showing exactly how you’ve behaved.
I hope anyone else reading this thinks twice about engaging with you, professionally or socially. I urge wives to be wary as you let her into your home. Be cautious before letting someone like this into their life, or their home. Be wary of kindness being exploited. Of trust being used as cover. Of people who can sit at your table, eat your food, and then dismantle your family without a flicker of conscience.
You didn’t just do this once. You did it multiple times. You befriended our mother, then took advantage of her good nature. She welcomed you, supported you, treated you like family. In return, you betrayed that trust. She confided in you and thought you were a friend with a shoulder to cry on, as our father distanced himself from his marriage as your affair continued. You made a joke of our mother, bringing your friends into her home who were in on your secret, your affair with her husband, and allowing her to unknowingly serve and host those who were laughing at her behind closed doors.
Then you did the same to us. You promised warmth and unity. You smiled and offered peace. But it was a distraction, a temporary performance until the silence resumed and the real agenda took over. And finally, you did it to him—our father. You stood beside him in his final years, and whatever the reality was behind closed doors, it’s now impossible to ignore the consequences: a family divided, children cast aside, and a legacy of confusion and pain.
There’s a difference between something being lost and something being taken. Grief is natural when we lose someone. But the grief we’ve experienced has not been natural. It’s been stretched, blocked, and distorted, because the closure we deserved was taken. Compassion was withheld. Dignity was denied. And every chance to mourn our father with peace was quietly, consistently, and cruelly removed.
From the beginning, I approached you with openness and a desire to preserve connection. I wrote to you with kindness, with vulnerability, and with the hope that we might find comfort through each other in this loss. I believed then, as I do now, that grief doesn’t need to divide people. But instead of meeting that grief with understanding, you met it with silence, lawyers, and ultimately, rejection.
You’ve shown no interest in how we, his children, are doing. Not once have you asked if we were okay, despite us doing exactly that for you And now, eighteen months on, do you hide behind your legal wall. And when we asked the most basic of questions about the will, about his estate, about basic facts, we were treated as adversaries.
There is no law that says you have to honour your word. But there is decency. There is respect. And there is the natural human impulse to offer comfort when others are grieving. Your refusal to engage may be legal, but it has never been moral.
To this day, I have not been to the place where my father died. I was told not to come. I didn’t even receive a call from you directly when he passed. I was never told whether his body had been accepted for research or not. I’ve received no communication from you about probate or the most basic updates regarding his affairs. And the solicitor managing the estate, the one meant to assist all parties, is now the very person you are threatening us with. He has failed to reply to nine of our last ten emails. If that is how he treats grieving families, it’s appalling. If he’s doing so under your instruction, it’s indefensible.
If anyone is ever in court, I urge you to question her morality her integrity and ask her directly about the family she destroyed, a marriage she ruined and a friend she betrayed.
We came to you with an open mind and were met with indifference. We asked questions born not from malice, but from confusion and concern, because everything we thought we understood about our father’s wishes had suddenly changed, in secret, right at the end of his life.
And for you to now weaponize that confusion, to turn our legitimate grief into an excuse for shutting us out, is deeply unjust. Anyone can look at this situation and clearly see you have betrayed our father’s trust, and what a mistake he made to think he could trust you. Because even now, you continue to take. Not just objects, not just silence, but the very right to grieve. And the only way you’ve responded to that grief is by cutting us off completely, now choosing to forward any message to your solicitor rather than facing the consequences of your actions.
You have not just failed us. You have failed him. Our father. A man who, despite his flaws, believed in decency, fairness, and above all, truth. I do not believe, even for a moment, that he would be proud of what has unfolded in his name. I believe he would be heartbroken to know that the people who loved him most were left with questions, confusion, and an unbearable silence. He would be ashamed that instead of helping his family heal, you made sure they never got the chance.
You didn’t just take someone from us. You took our right to mourn him properly. You took our peace of mind. And now, with nowhere else to go, I write this for the record. I write this for everyone who understands that closure isn’t a luxury. It’s a right. And that love for a parent doesn’t end when their voice goes quiet. It ends when no one else speaks for them.
We came to you, and we forgave you. For the damage you did to our family and to our home, we forgave you. You took advantage of this good nature. The emotional expense to sit at your table, toasting ‘truth and transparency’, only to find out more lies and more deceit were coming our way, carefully planned by you behind the curtain.
This is what we had to forgive, your relationship with our mother baffled why her marriage was on the rocks, and it was all because she invited you in as a friend into her life, that you then ripped apart.
You’ve made it clear you want no part in dialogue. So be it. But the truth doesn’t require your participation. The story will be told. And when it is, it will show a family that was grieving, asking, reaching out, and one person who turned her back, closed the door, and called it self-protection.
This letter is not about revenge. It’s not even about you anymore. It’s about making sure no one else has to discover too late who you really are. It’s about giving grief its voice back. And it’s about honouring the man we lost, in the only way we still can—with honesty.
Michael