Love and marriage: Michael and Anna's story
Michael and Anna Lea met in 1991 and very slowly and carefully – for while Michael's two children were in their late twenties, the oldest of Anna's three was only 11 – inched their way into a relationship Michael Lea says his children see Anna as a confidante as well as a stepmother and Anna says her children adore him. “Michael's brother Billy asked me once or twice if I was a gold-digger, but I told him that I have my own money,” Anna laughs. Michael and Anna Lea say their relationship had developed in a mature, gradual fashion. “There were no rose-tinted spectacles. What we saw was what we got,” says Michael. And what they both saw was people whose children were almost grown-up, who had already done much of what they set out to do with their lives and who had that great 21st-century luxury, time. Eight years later both sold their houses in London and moved into what they describe as their dream home in Esher. “That's when we really made our commitment to one another,” says Anna, aged 52. Two years later they married, Michael for the third time and Anna for the second. Michael says, “Once we'd done it I felt a surge of joy at being able to say ‘This is my wife Anna'. You feel so ridiculous at our age saying ‘my girlfriend' or ‘my partner' or ‘my live-in lover'.” It was Michael, now 65 and semi-retired from a successful stamp business, who had made the decision. “The government's attitude to couples who make a long-term commitment to one another without getting married enraged me. I wanted to ensure Anna's security.” His reasoning may not have been romantic, but his logic was right, for it's not only tax officials who ignore relationships that haven't been formalised. “A friend lived with someone for a long time and then, when he died, felt she had lost him in death as well as in life,” said one woman I spoke to. “His family stepped in and took everything out of her hands; she was seen as nothing more than a girlfriend. It's amazing how one slip of paper sorts all that out.” While Anna describes herself jokingly as “a Stepford wife”, Michael volunteers that: “It's taken me three marriages to work out what women are all about. I went away to school aged seven – I just had no idea what women need. Since I'm virtually retired we spend 24 hours together and I had no idea how great that could be.” Michael and Anna Lea – I suspect unusually for people in their position – have left all their money to one another with the proviso that it ultimately be left equally to all five children. “We don't want any jealousy between them. That's part of the commitment, isn't it?” says Anna. “I've got five children now, not three.” The big dayThe Leas married in a register office. “When the time came, Anna was shaking so much that she couldn't say the vows, I had to say them for her,” says Michael. But she recovered enough to speak after him at the celebratory lunch they held at an Italian restaurant for their families and close friends. “Was my outfit a little stiff?” Anna muses, looking at a photograph of herself in a navy blue dress and palest blue pashmina. Written by Serena Allott
This article was created: 14 July 2006.
This article was last edited: 14 December 2006.
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