One misty afternoon, my father beckoned me into his study, insisting we needed to talk about something quite important, as he called it. I can remember a dull concern settling in my stomach. In the sitting room, there was a woman waiting for me.
My family had always revolved around my father. He raised me single-handedly, cared for me, and offered a steadfast pillar of support. My mother left us soon after I was born, and my father had never remarried, perhaps frightened at the thought of reopening old wounds. Life had not shown my father much mercy, and I longed to grow up faster, just to shoulder some of the burdens he had carried for so long.
Due to the state of our finances, I began working at fifteen, scribbling columns for the local newspapers and dreaming in ink and print. Three years later, I managed to nab something better, and after a handful of years drifting through jobs like shadows in the fog, I landed at a desk with enough pounds in my pocket to finally support myself and Dad.
One hazy day, Dad called me to his side for one of his serious conversations, as he liked to say. Anxiety fluttered quietly in my chest. There, perched on our timeworn Chesterfield, was a woman who, according to my fathers quiet, trembling words, was my mother.
When our eyes met, she dissolved into tears, mumbling apologies between hiccups while she tried to embrace me, arms outstretched like soft branches in a storm. My feet felt shrouded in fog as I gently slipped from her grasp and wordlessly left the room, leaving the grown-ups to their secrets and their sorrow. I decided it was best to let Dad handle things as he saw fit. How could I forgive someone whod abandoned us without a word, without a birthday card in years, vanishing into the London drizzle? The feeling hovered, strange and heavy, as if the whole scene belonged to another world.
