The Misfit of MI5 (HIATUS)

The Misfit of MI5

The Misfit of MI5

Have you ever looked at your life and wondered how you got there? Where the dreams you had growing up went?

I have.

I'm twenty six, and I'm supposed to have a dream job – one for the boys. I'm a spy or a spook, a man who takes on multiple personalities to keep this country safe – a member of MI5, the British Secret Service and I hate it with every fibre of my being.

Standing beneath the imposing stone arch with the doors right before me all I wanted to do was get back in my car and drive down Horseferry Road and away from Thames House, yet that was not an option for me. Through that door was the other member of the family who worked for Section D – my overbearing father, the third generation of the family to work here. It was madness really, MI5 was the Trelawny family business. I was the fourth generation to work here, I had planned to travel the world with my girlfriend Scarlett and get to see the sun rise over the river Ganges, maybe race in Dakar and play roulette on the strip in Vegas. Instead I was here, in London on a drizzly day cursing my father to Hell and back. As I went to light the cigarette that had been balancing on my lip for the past five minutes I heard the gruff voice of the man himself.

“Alexander my boy, why are you standing here? There's work to be done – the country to save and all that before lunch.

I really wish you would stop smoking, you know it upsets your Mother.”

The cigarette I had been dreaming about since pulling out of my driveway about an hour earlier was snatched away. Immediately I felt like the naughty fifteen year old who was caught smoking by my Mother and suffered the embarrassment of a public dressing down by the pompous fool before me now. I was and would forever be lost in the shadow of the great Edward Trelawny and my grandfather before him, James Alexander Trelawny, the man I was named after.

“Will you leave me be. I have told you since I was fifteen that I didn't want to be here – this was not the life I wanted. You never listen to me, I work for an organisation where I have to keep my mouth shut and my ears open, it's funny really, that's all I've ever done thanks to you and your obsession with me being here.

I don't belong here, I never did. I'm living a lie and I'm tired, why can't you see this is not the place for someone with hopes and dreams – this fine building with it's imposing stone walls and carvings is a prison to me? It's like working inside a machine here and I'm tired of being a cog in it's mechanics, I want more.

You constantly call me a failure so why not let me go?”

I watched the blue eyes of the man before me turn a steely grey and his brow crease. God here we go, I'm in for another tyrannical rage.

“Alexander Trelawny get in there – you have no idea what you're talking about. You have had the best test scores, passed interviews with flying colours and received praise from the Home Secretary himself for the work you have done in the last twelve months alone.

There is work to be done and you are needed.”

I was saved it seemed by a call, as his mobile rang out through the crisp air. It was true, I had been successful despite trying my best not too. I had sat looking at various exam forms and attempted to answer incorrectly, it had been impossible as I knew the vast majority of the information in front of me as well as others knew their football teams or formula one teams. Despite everything, I wanted my father to acknowledge I was capable of doing the job as a case officer within these revered walls even if I didn't actually want to be here. Call it male pride, arrogance or just a boy looking for their father to love and acknowledge me for who I was and not the name I bore.