Father remembered me… when he heard about Gran’s inheritance
My life has never been a bed of roses, but the real blow wasn’t a childhood without parents—it was the sudden reappearance of the man I once called Dad, after nearly fifteen years of silence. He didn’t come with flowers or apologies. Just a demand: “Split the inheritance.”
My parents split when I was four. Mum lost herself to drink soon after, the courts took her rights away, and Dad, lacking the backbone to be a proper father, dumped me with his mother in a backwater village near Sheffield. He lived in Manchester, turning up maybe twice a year, if that.
I went to the village school, learned to till soil, stitch on an ancient sewing machine, fish, bundle herbs for tea, and make jam. Life with Gran was plain but real. In year three, Dad showed up with a strange woman. They shooed me outside. When I came back, only Gran sat in her chair, eyes distant.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Won’t be coming back, love,” was all she said.
And he didn’t. Started a new family, forgot his daughter. Gran and I made our own life. She was everything to me—mother, father, friend. Wise, quiet, firm but kind.
When I finished Year 11, Martha, the village seamstress, told me, “You’ve got proper talent. Go to college, don’t waste it on turnips.”
I listened. Moved to Leeds. Studied, scraped by, stayed afloat. Dad lived three bus stops from my halls—never once checked if I was alive in four years. I didn’t seek him out either.
After college, I got work at a tailor’s, married Simon. We rented a shoebox flat but took the train to Gran’s every Friday. She adored him. When she heard I was pregnant, she glowed. Never got to meet her grandson, though…
When Gran passed, the world went hollow. Then the solicitor came—cottage, land, savings, all left to me. I cried over that letter. Not for the money. For the memory.
Dad skipped the funeral. No call, no note. He heard she’d died six months later. And about the will. Then—for the first time in fifteen years—he knocked on my door.
I barely recognised the grey-faced man on my step. He didn’t mince words:
“Gran’s estate needs splitting. Half’s mine by rights.”
I laughed in his face. Bitter, loud.
“You? Half? You bailed on me, on her. Now you remember? Smell the pound notes, did you?”
He snarled, but Simon stepped in:
“Piss off. Walk away, or I’ll help you.”
Dad took it to court. Even the law sided with me. He lost, paid costs, vanished again.
Simon and I opened our own workshop. Made workwear—for builders, nurses, garage hands. Orders kept us busy. We built our life.
Haven’t seen Dad since. Don’t care to. Gran—she was my real family. I survived because she decided, once, I deserved better. Now I live to make her proud. Somewhere beyond the clouds.
