God. Was it really fifteen years since Mum died? Time played such strange tricks. In some ways I could barely remember what it was like living with Mum and Dad and yet at the same time my memory of that awful December day was as sharp as if it had only just happened. Dad had left us the week before. One day he was there and the next Mum was in bits and he had gone. I was used to him not being around that much. Mum would moan about it and sometimes they’d argue, but basically him not being there was our status quo. And there was nothing odd about it either. Most of my friends lived in a home with no dad at all, so the fact that I did have one part of the time put me head and shoulders above the rest of them.

I missed the final, fatal argument. I was out at an eighteenth birthday party when it happened. By the time I got home Mum was completely broken, smashed to bits by whatever Dad had said or done. I tried to get her to tell me, but all she’d say was that he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was and that he wouldn’t be coming back. And that was it. That was all the explanation I got.

I kept asking questions for a few days. I was desperate to know what had happened, but Mum just seemed to retreat further and further into herself. Dad hadn’t taken any of his stuff – nothing to even remind him of me. That really hurt, but I kept hoping it meant he’d come back. Then one day I got home from school and his stuff was just in piles all over the garden where Mum had thrown it. I had to bag it all up on my own. Well, I couldn’t just leave it there for all the neighbours to gossip over, even though they all knew what had happened. Most of them had heard the row and those that hadn’t were soon filled in on all the gory details. I didn’t know what to do with his stuff. At first, I thought I shouldn’t throw it away in case he came back, but then I got so angry with him that I just dumped the lot outside the Oxfam shop.