I tried thinking about our family holidays in Westmorland when we were small children, times when I knew we were happy and my dad behaved as a proper father. I wanted him to be like a normal father, loving and caring for his daughters. I was hoping that remembering those childhood holidays would make me feel better, because for me Westmorland was always such a special place, but it never did. When the boundaries changed in the seventies, Westmorland disappeared and the county of Cumbria was born. I still loved the area for its beauty and its warmth.I can’t remember when it was that I first forgave my father, but for twenty years of my life that was exactly what I did: forgive him. Not once did I speak to him about what he had done to me all those years before. Why? Because I was riddled with a strong feeling of guilt. I wondered what went through his mind each time I saw him and he kissed me goodbye, which happened after each visit home. But he never gave anything away. His face was harder to read than an antique book with an ancient language written on crumbling pages.
