After my dad, Peter, died in 2011, I found a box of papers and a photo album under his bed. That’s how I discovered he had a secret wife named Irene, and that he was 10 years older than he had said he was. Even his birthday was different. I found photos of his family and discovered he had 12 siblings he’d never told me about.
Dad was a first-generation immigrant from Ghana. He went to Harlech College in Wales, on a scholarship in the 1960s and later worked at the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). He met my mum, Su, who is white British, in 1987 at a work conference. We lived together in Wolverhampton in the 90s. My parents separated eight years later – after that, I lived with Dad on weekdays and spent weekends with my mum.
