When I was a child, and friends asked me what I would do if I ever met my dad, I always replied that if I had a gun I would shoot him. I was a young teen in a small east Yorkshire market town with, at best, minor connections to a burgeoning petty criminal underworld. Even if I had been able to get a gun, I would have been more likely to shoot off a finger in error than aim correctly at my absent father. It was an empty threat that clearly revealed a deep, simmering anger.
My mum was a teenage tearaway who met an older guy, left school at 16, ran off to get married, and had me weeks after her 17th birthday. He turned out to be a violent alcoholic who was abusive. Thankfully, bravely, she left him before I was two, worried about the repercussions of me reaching an age when I could talk back. My dad did a runner to avoid paying child support and that was the last we heard of him. Until 14 years later, when the letterbox clattered open one morning: he had been found and summoned to court, in relation to the thousands owed, and Mum had to go. I insisted I go too.
