Over the next few years, that was the pattern. Everything would be OK for a while, Mama acted like a mother should and held down part-time jobs cleaning or in local cafés and the like – something that fitted in with when I started and finished school. Then she’d meet a man – some of whom were better than others – and she’d become less interested in me. After a few weeks or months the man would leave, she’d break down entirely, and I’d be sent back to Rhonda’s until Mama was strong enough to have me back.

Sometimes there would be a few weeks between the start of a breakdown and the time when I (or sometimes Anna) decided it was time for me to move out again, and that’s when I started to find out little bits about my dad and what had happened before I was born.

I’d always asked about Dad. When I was little, Mama would tell me he lived on a mountain far, far away. I pictured him in a stone hut, young and good looking, maybe with a small beard, doing stuff like rounding up sheep with a dog who was also his best friend, driving a tractor around fields and perhaps even washing in a stream instead of in a bath or shower. When I asked why he never visited or why he couldn’t live with us she just said that he lived too far away. Sometimes she’d play me what she called ‘their’ song. It had a nice tune, but the words always sounded sad, with the man singing about how everybody hurts. I wondered why they didn’t choose a happier song, I think I would have done, but I didn’t say that to Mama in case it made her cry.

By the time I was about eight or so, I started to believe that Mama didn’t know who my dad was, like some of my friends at school, or that she’d split up with him when I was a baby and didn’t want to tell me. I thought perhaps she’d made up the story about the man who lived on the mountain and about the song they listened to together just to make me feel like I had a nice dad somewhere who would like if he met me and who would want to get to know me if only he didn’t live so far away.

It never occurred to me that he was dead, until her most recent breakdown.