My dad walked out on Mum and me when I was just twelve, leaving us high and dry with no roof over our heads and not a single pound to rub together. He didnt bother with the police or any sort of explanationit was as if hed scrubbed us right out of his memory. By the time I was fifteen, things only got trickier when this young couple suddenly turned up at our flat, demanding we make room for them because, apparently, my dad had promised them a spare bedroom.
Naturally, Mum called him about the situation. He had the nerve to sayutterly unfazedthat the pair were like his own children. Mum, fed up with the whole farce, couldnt stand sharing the flat any longer. She sold it and handed a chunk of the money over to someone Dad considered his own. With what was left, Mum snatched up a two-bedroom through some online estate agent. To help cover the mortgage, I had to put my education on ice for a few years and start working.
Eventually, Mum passed away, leaving me with just a year left to pay off the loan. In the thick of my grief and stress, Dad resurfaced as if he’d been missing the whole plot, after his new wife chucked him out. Now he was old, poorly, with a pension that wouldnt pay for a cuppa, never mind a place to live. He turned up on my doorstep, hat in hand, asking for help. I couldnt stop myself from wondering out loud whether he was downright cheeky or simply daft. After twenty years of complete radio silencea time in which he never lifted a finger or showed even a flicker of careafter hed even taken the flat that shouldve been mine, scuppering my chance at university and landing me in debt, did he honestly expect a heros welcome?
I felt absolutely no pity for him. Maybe someone could feel sorry for you, but it certainly isnt going to be me, I thought. Hed done far more for that so-called other child than hed ever done for me, never giving my well-being a second thought. So I told him, as politely as I could muster, that if he needed help, he ought to knock on the door of the person he preferred to menot on the door of the daughter hed tossed aside for decades. I made it crystal clear: I wanted him to forget both me and my address forever, because hed never been, and would never be, a proper father to me.
