I grew up fatherless. My dad abandoned my mum and me when I was nine years old. I never missed him, nor did I long for his return. The house had always been filled with their arguments, echoing like distant thunder; I actually felt relief when he finally left. Mum raised me by herself, but she sought child support. I always thought she did it not for the money, but out of spite, as a kind of poetic revenge. There was never much hope for those payments, anyway. My father, ever slippery, managed to avoid paying much by never registering an address and always working off the books.
He started another family and bought a flat for his new wife, but refused to acknowledge his son from that union, perhaps determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. In the end, his choices left him destitutea beggar in all but name. The flat belonged to his wife, and when he began drinking and stopped contributing, he became a stranger to his son. Eventually, he was kicked out of the very flat he had purchased, his world shrinking to nothing at all. Then he appeared at my door, as though in a strange, misty dream.
By then, Mum had passed away, leaving me her two-bedroom flata pocket of silence amidst the noise. I lived there with my husband and our child. My father turned up when things with my husband were beginning to unravel, days blurred with tension and muted voices. He threatened that if I didnt take him in, hed take me to court; after all, hed paid child support, so now I owed him shelter. Something softened inside me. I let him in, hopingperhaps foolishlythat he might change, that he might sober up and become a good grandfather.
It soon became clear how wrong I was. Not only did he continue drinking, but he drew my husband into his spiral as well. In the end, with a resolve that felt both fierce and surreal, like a scene in a peculiar English dream, I threw both my father and my husband out. I didnt bother seeking maintenance payments. My own earnings were plenty for me and my son, enough to keep us afloat in the odd haze of London days.
