Did your eyes just roll back inside your head so hard it made you wince? Well yes. We can dwell on my mother’s stupid decision to place her faith in a man who wore large buckled belts and enjoyed the music of Dire Straits, or we can move on. I don’t have enough time in this place to unpack the manipulation on his end or the naivety on hers. Obviously, my father was already spoken for. Not just spoken for, he was married with a baby, and he lived in a house high on a hill in North London which had several live-in staff, two pedigree dogs, a wine cellar, swimming pool, and several acres of grounds. He wasn’t just committed, he was embedded.
This bit of the story was left out when I was first told about him. I don’t blame Marie for glossing over some of the more delicate details I probably wouldn’t have fully understood anyway. Instead, my mother attempted to explain why my father never came to see me, never sent me a birthday present, never turned up at parents’ evening. Stroking my arm, Marie told me that he was involved in big and important business deals which affected the lives of thousands of people, and that’s why he couldn’t see us. He flew around the world, she said. He loved us both very much, and when the time was right, we’d all be together, but right now, we had to let him work hard and prepare for the time when we could live as a family. Did she believe it herself? I’ve often wondered. Was my smart, kind mother really so, to be blunt, stupid? Maybe. My sex is so often disappointing – I remember once reading about a woman who married a man who convinced her that he was a spy. He persuaded her to sign over her life savings to him, to the tune of ￡130,000, saying that he was undercover and needed it to tide him over until his handlers could safely make contact. She’d never asked for proof, so desperate was she for this ridiculous charade of a love affair to be real. And to compound her humiliation, she’d willingly posed for photos in a weekly magazine and told her story, looking downtrodden and sad. Was I supposed to feel sorry for this person, a grown-up who dreamt of fairy-tale romance, and didn’t question why this man whisked her, a woman in her fifties （who looked every inch of it）， off her feet? Marie was a cut above this woman and those like her, but she obviously still had the capacity for similar delusion.
For all the ridiculous promises that Marie made to me about my father and our eventual life together, she was wise enough to only tell me selective information about him. Enough to stop my questions, not giving me anything too concrete. But she did make the mistake of pointing out his house to me after a trip to Hampstead Heath a few months later. We got lost in a wooded area, and it started to rain. My mother grabbed my hand and marched me up a hill, attempting to find a route to the main road where we might get a bus. But when we finally got to the bus stop, she briskly carried on, as I grumbled and pulled my anorak tightly around me. Despite the torrential skies, we walked another ten minutes down a long private road, until she slowed down and finally stopped.
We stood in front of a house and Marie stared up at it silently for a moment, until I yanked on her hand impatiently. I say we were looking at a house, but the enormous iron gates with security cameras attached deliberately obscured most of the actual property. We lived in an attic room on a main road. I had never imagined that a house could be so important it would have to be hidden from view. Without looking down at me, my mother gestured towards the gates, almost reverentially. ‘This is your father’s house, Grace,’ she said, still not looking at me. I didn’t know what to say. I felt uncomfortable lingering in front of this grand place, drenched to my skin. Marie must have noticed that I was slowly moving backwards, trying to encourage her to head to the safety of the bus stop and home, so she smiled brightly. ‘Such a shame your father isn’t in today, but isn’t it lovely, Grace? One day you will have your own bedroom there!’ I nodded, not knowing what else to do. She took my hand, and we turned around, and headed away, back down the hill to our home. We never mentioned that trip again. But I thought about that bedroom she’d promised would be mine many times growing up. I imagined it, with pink wallpaper and a big double bed, and maybe even a wardrobe full of new clothes, but even when I burrowed down deep into this rabbit hole, I knew that Marie had been lying, and that there would never be a bedroom behind those grand gates for me. And even then, I remember understanding so clearly, that something very wrong had been done to Marie and me.
So that’s my dad. Not the one I’d have picked had I been consulted, but there we are. Some people have fathers who beat them, some have fathers who wear Crocs. We all have our crosses to bear. I haven’t told you much about his personality or his background, have I? That’ll come. But if you really want to understand why I did what I did, I have to go back to my childhood again first. Hopefully it won’t sound too self-indulgent, but even if it does, well, it’s my story. And I’m currently lying on a bunk bed in a cell which smells like a potent mix of sadness and urine, so I’ll take any excuse to escape into my memories.