dad and I’m your daughter.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw your photo in Teen Scene I thought I was going mad but then I compared it to the only photo I’ve got of you and I just know it is you. Even though the picture was taken before I was born I can tell you’re my dad because when you’ve spent the majority of your life looking in the mirror trying to imagine one of the two most important people in your life you know exactly what you’re looking for.
I haven’t told anyone about you (not even Mum). And I don’t think I will as it will cause too much upset. But I’d like to meet you just once, if you don’t mind. Mum and I live in London (Wood Green) so it should be pretty easy to arrange.
I’ve enclosed the only photograph I’ve got of you and one of me taken at Christmas. I’ve written my mobile phone number on the back of it. So please call me if you can. Please.
Yours faithfully
Nicola O’Connell
PS Don’t ring during school hours, though, because you’re not allowed to have them on.
shake
I read the letter several times but nothing’s going in. I look round the office to check I’m not dreaming: Lisa, the production manager, is putting a new CD into the office hi-fi; Daisy, the senior writer, is talking loudly to a friend on the phone; Jessica, the junior designer, is standing by the colour printer in the far corner of the art department. Everyone’s going about their business. No one’s looking at me waiting to go ‘Ha! ha! Had you fooled there!’ I’m alone on this one.
I check the postmark on the envelope several times – it has been posted in London. I study the enclosed photos and one definitely features an eighteen-year-old me. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t believe the content of the letter for a second. But the thing is, I’ve never seen this photo in my life.
I look at the letter again, the letter that is trying to tell me that, for the past thirteen years, I’ve been a dad and haven’t known it. Is this the answer to my unspoken prayers? How can it be that while I’m still feeling the pain of loss for a child that never was, I should discover that there’s a child in the world who is mine all along?
I just can’t take it in.
I can’t think straight.
None of this is happening to me. It’s happening to the person who is responsible for it – the eighteen-year-old Dave Harding – a person I haven’t been for over fourteen years.
sun
Corfu. August 1986. It was the summer before I went to university to study English. I’d been working part-time in the warehouse of a frozen-food supermarket to earn enough money to pay for the holiday. Four of us went: me, Jamie Earls, Nick Smith and Ed Ellis. All friends from school. We’d been looking forward to the holiday all year. Everything was planned down to the last detail and we had even bought a tourist guide to the island that listed where all the bars and clubs were so that we could work out where we wanted to go on our first night out. None of us had girlfriends; Jamie had been seeing someone for a few weeks but he dumped her because he didn’t want to be the only one of us who was attached.
The bravado of four eighteen-year-old boys together on a foreign holiday was intoxicating. We soon established a regular daily pattern – get up at midday, slope to one of the many roadside cafés for an ‘English breakfast’, then go to the beach, lie down and stare at girls. About four o’clock in the afternoon we’d wander back to the apartment to sleep and at about eight o’clock we’d go out to get something to eat, usually burgers, then head for the various bars and clubs Benitses had to offer. We never arrived back at our apartment before five a.m. if we could help it.
Our success rate with the opposite sex wasn’t high. Despite this, though, we’d stand each night in a group in the corner of whichever bar or club we were in, watching girls. Eventually one of us would declare that someone was
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw your photo in Teen Scene I thought I was going mad but then I compared it to the only photo I’ve got of you and I just know it is you. Even though the picture was taken before I was born I can tell you’re my dad because when you’ve spent the majority of your life looking in the mirror trying to imagine one of the two most important people in your life you know exactly what you’re looking for.
I haven’t told anyone about you (not even Mum). And I don’t think I will as it will cause too much upset. But I’d like to meet you just once, if you don’t mind. Mum and I live in London (Wood Green) so it should be pretty easy to arrange.
I’ve enclosed the only photograph I’ve got of you and one of me taken at Christmas. I’ve written my mobile phone number on the back of it. So please call me if you can. Please.
Yours faithfully
Nicola O’Connell
PS Don’t ring during school hours, though, because you’re not allowed to have them on.
shake
I read the letter several times but nothing’s going in. I look round the office to check I’m not dreaming: Lisa, the production manager, is putting a new CD into the office hi-fi; Daisy, the senior writer, is talking loudly to a friend on the phone; Jessica, the junior designer, is standing by the colour printer in the far corner of the art department. Everyone’s going about their business. No one’s looking at me waiting to go ‘Ha! ha! Had you fooled there!’ I’m alone on this one.
I check the postmark on the envelope several times – it has been posted in London. I study the enclosed photos and one definitely features an eighteen-year-old me. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t believe the content of the letter for a second. But the thing is, I’ve never seen this photo in my life.
I look at the letter again, the letter that is trying to tell me that, for the past thirteen years, I’ve been a dad and haven’t known it. Is this the answer to my unspoken prayers? How can it be that while I’m still feeling the pain of loss for a child that never was, I should discover that there’s a child in the world who is mine all along?
I just can’t take it in.
I can’t think straight.
None of this is happening to me. It’s happening to the person who is responsible for it – the eighteen-year-old Dave Harding – a person I haven’t been for over fourteen years.
sun
Corfu. August 1986. It was the summer before I went to university to study English. I’d been working part-time in the warehouse of a frozen-food supermarket to earn enough money to pay for the holiday. Four of us went: me, Jamie Earls, Nick Smith and Ed Ellis. All friends from school. We’d been looking forward to the holiday all year. Everything was planned down to the last detail and we had even bought a tourist guide to the island that listed where all the bars and clubs were so that we could work out where we wanted to go on our first night out. None of us had girlfriends; Jamie had been seeing someone for a few weeks but he dumped her because he didn’t want to be the only one of us who was attached.
The bravado of four eighteen-year-old boys together on a foreign holiday was intoxicating. We soon established a regular daily pattern – get up at midday, slope to one of the many roadside cafés for an ‘English breakfast’, then go to the beach, lie down and stare at girls. About four o’clock in the afternoon we’d wander back to the apartment to sleep and at about eight o’clock we’d go out to get something to eat, usually burgers, then head for the various bars and clubs Benitses had to offer. We never arrived back at our apartment before five a.m. if we could help it.
Our success rate with the opposite sex wasn’t high. Despite this, though, we’d stand each night in a group in the corner of whichever bar or club we were in, watching girls. Eventually one of us would declare that someone was
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