I used to be a daddy’s girl.
The kind who tagged along on his work trips, riding shotgun as he delivered bus engines all over the country.
He’d let me come with him because I didn’t shut up, my words kept him awake while he drove, and my chatter was the rhythm of those long hauls.

Back then, I thought he was the coolest man alive.
He let me feel big in a world that didn’t always make space for little girls.

But he had a dark side.
He was a man who lived with shadows.
Depression, weed, and later, drink.

My parents split when I was about 14.
One night, he turned up out of his head.
My mum and I were upstairs bathing my sister, and in a moment I’ll never forget, he tried to wrap a telephone wire around my mum’s neck.
I ran downstairs with a  Spice Girls-inspired  platform shoe and all to stop him.
He said someone must have spiked his drink.
He said he didn’t remember it.
I don’t know what the truth is.
All I know is, it happened.

After that, Mum left.
My sister went with her.
And me?
I stayed with him.

I thought I was choosing loyalty.
What I really chose was chaos.

His drinking got worse.
We were broke most of the time.
No gas, no electricity.
I’d take my school uniform to my grandparents’ every Sunday to get it washed.
We didn’t have a fridge — he used a sink of cold water to chill his Bacardi.

I lived on spaghetti and chopped tomatoes.
Babysat for Mum just to earn a bit of money to go out with friends.
He found out, assumed I was helping her meet other men, and threw me out.

I bounced between Mum and Gran until it all felt too hard, too fractured.
I eventually landed at my grandparents’ full time.

Years passed.

At 16, I got my GCSE results.
They were horrendous.
Still, I wanted to show my dad.

I walked to his flat, but as I turned the corner, I saw the metal shutters on his windows.
His neighbour said,
“Your dad’s done something stupid.”

I thought he’d taken his life.
But no — he’d stolen money from some very dangerous people and disappeared.

That was it for years.

Then, out of nowhere, I got a call from heir hunters.
Someone in the family had died.
The inheritance should have gone to me and my sisters.

But Dad had reappeared.
And taken it.

He tried, half-heartedly, to come back into my life.
I saw him once.
He talked about himself the entire time, like he was in witness protection.
Like he hadn’t burned every bridge with his own bare hands.

I tried to keep in touch.
He’d go months without replying.

Eventually, I gave up.

Then came the final call 
From his ex-girlfriend.

“He’s gone,” she said.
No funeral.
Just a direct cremation.

I made the drive to see his body.
Six hours there.
Fifteen minutes with a man I barely recognised.
Six hours back.

And that was Dad.