“I’VE drawn the short straw,” Dad told me, swearing me to silence as he revealed that Downing Street had written inviting him to become Archbishop of Canterbury.

As a young journalist I’d already chosen to specialise in religious affairs and was working for The Church of England Newspaper. Mum and Dad had already delayed telling their family for a full two weeks. Now I couldn’t even tell my own editor that a press conference was going to take place only an hour after our deadline.

In my own small world of religious affairs reporting I was sitting on the biggest scoop imaginable and I had to continue sitting on it till it hurt for the next frustrating day until the official announcement was made.

To his credit, the editor, a genial and able Australian, never gave me the dressing down I expected, nor any word of reproach. Instead he made sure that I helped to arrange his first exclusive interview with the new Archbishop a few days later.

My father’s tenure as Archbishop continued to be frustrating for me as a journalist fascinated by the world of religious politics. I had to separate any conversations I had with my parents from my professional life.

Many people thought that knowing me would give them some advantage. I had to decline to pass on messages and operated strict rules for compartmentalising my life.

But with the publication of my dad’s memoirs this week my biggest secret is now out — that Camilla Parker Bowles once sat in my living room in Peckham.

It was the first meeting between the Prince of Wales’s long-term consort and the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1997 after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and in the period when there was a backlash against Charles and Camilla. If the meeting had become public there was no doubt that the press would have interpreted it as a bid by Prince Charles to open the way for him to marry Camilla.

In fact, Dad was worried about the way Camilla was being portrayed in the media. He realised that she would continue to be Charles’s partner and felt that it was his duty as the head of the Church of England to get to know her. News of the meeting would come out immediately, he believed, if he met her at Lambeth Palace or at her home, or anywhere in Central London. So the best chance of keeping the meeting quiet was to go to the unlikeliest place — my house in Peckham.

I never knew whether any of the curtain twitchers on our relatively quiet street spotted the Archbishop of Canterbury in civilian clothes enter our Victorian terrace one weekday morning, followed half an hour later by the well-known face of Camilla Parker Bowles. If they did, they never let on.

I can’t imagine that Mrs Parker Bowles, used to high living, had ever entered either a less salubrious area or a more incomplete home.

Helen, my new wife, and I had just moved in and we were still in the middle of decorating and furnishing. We were proud of our new navy blue sofa but we hadn’t yet been able to afford any other chairs. Instead we were using a green and white striped deckchair. We rushed out to buy a wicker chair and folded the deckchair out of sight, and spent hours cleaning after Mum and Dad had broached the subject of using our house for their clandestine meeting.

I assume to this day that Dad perched on the wicker chair while Camilla had the luxury of the sofa. And although neither of us was present, Helen and I will always remember Camilla’s visit to our first home.