In fact, I don’t remember even thinking about him. Sometimes, my brother would cry and scream at my mother, ‘I don’t want you. I want my daddy.’ And she’d shout back at him, ‘If you want your father so much, you can fucking go and live with him.’ To Chris, though, the words weren’t simply something he’d say to try to get back at my mother when she was being mean; he really did miss his dad. I couldn’t understand how he felt, and it wasn’t until many years later that I realised his experience of living with our father was completely different from my own, because he’d had an opportunity to develop a relationship with him. My father had always wanted a son, and as much as he was able to love anyone he loved my brother, whereas I could never form any type of bond with him because, for some unknown reason, he hated and distrusted all women, including his own mother. But although I didn’t miss my father, I never lost hope that one day he’d change his mind about me and see that I was worthy of his attention.
