In this house we do REAL

We do mistakes

We do I’m sorry

We do second chances

We do fun

We do hugs

We do forgiveness

We do really loud

We do family

We do love

We are family!

What attracted me most was her ability to connect with all of my kids. That was her biggest quality, and I think that’s her core. She never had her own family. Maybe she fell in love with Noah at Sylvano’s and had to marry his dad! Or maybe she fell in love with all of us because we’re a family, and that’s very important to her.

It was important to me that Noah and Elias were comfortable with their dad having a new girlfriend. I’d been single for almost 10 years. Noah had known a couple of my girlfriends in between, but when he saw I was getting serious with Lilly, we had a father and son discussion. I asked him if he liked her. He said he obviously loved his mother, but added about Lilly ‘she’s the best one you’ve had since. I like her a lot, and she’s cool with us, so if you want to marry her you have my blessing.’

In December 2008 we had a skiing holiday in St Moritz: Noah, Elias, Lilly and I. It was such a beautiful holiday. On 30 December I asked Lilly if she would marry me. We married in St Moritz six months later. Elias helped in finding our engagement rings. St Moritz is not that big, and in the Badrutt’s Palace there’s a beautiful Cartier store which I walked past every day, so I signalled to him what I liked, and he got them.

There was then the question about where we would live. Lilly was pregnant and we had to decide where we wanted to have the baby and raise it. Lilly had a flat in London, my daughter lives in London, and I had two or three weeks of work per year at Wimbledon. I was living in Zurich at the time, but Lilly and I have spoken English since we first met, and all my children go to English or American schools, so we agreed to live in London. London is big, and it didn’t have to be Wimbledon. But my history with the All England Club drew me towards Wimbledon, and things naturally fell into place. I like the lifestyle, I like the village feel despite being close to one of the biggest cities in the world, we have proper parks, and there are elements of country living despite being so close to the city. It has always seemed a good place to raise a family.

At the time of writing this, we’ve been in Wimbledon over five years. Lilly and I have had our ups and downs, as all couples do, but I feel our little family is part of a bigger patchwork family that’s largely intact. There are many situations when all my kids speak with Lilly behind my back, perhaps when I’ve done something wrong or if I’m moody, so they talk to each other about how they can ‘relax Dad’. That’s Lilly’s biggest quality: her ability to understand the importance of my older kids to me, and the guilt I feel that I’m no longer with their mother. I know things happen, that in this day and age unfortunately 50 per cent of marriages go wrong, for whatever reason, but we have kids, and I’m a strong believer that we have our responsibilities as parents, and we have to find a way to include all members in any new family structure. Sometimes it’s very difficult, to the point of being impossible, but we should always try to find a way. It’s not the kids’ fault that parents get divorced, whatever explanation every parent has.

My wife and ex-wife often speak on the phone, about holidays, birthdays, parties, presents. I appreciate that and don’t take it for granted – I can’t force that to happen but it’s nice that it does. Both women are mature enough to understand that it’s just part of the deal. And Noah and Elias have a younger brother – we don’t say ‘half-brother’, we say ‘brother’. They also have a sister, not a ‘half-sister’ but a ‘sister’. We’ve never managed to get all four of them together. The three older ones have had holidays together in Majorca, but we’re yet to get all four together in one place. It’s one of my goals for the near future to find a situation where all four can be together for the first time. I don’t want to force it, everyone has to be cool with it, but it’s obviously my wish.