Autobiography

pain whilst desperately wanting to believe him
when he told me everything was going to be
different.
He was always going to change our lives, and
there were moments of hope; brief flashes of
optimism that he would make those changes,
but he never did. He would tell us that next
time he came back he would make it up to us.
I remember him arriving home from prison
once and I was so sure in my mind everything
would change and he would make us all proud
of him as he had promised.
But I was always disappointed, and at school,
to cover my shame, I told my friends he was
away fighting in the army.
After the war had ended they asked me,
‘where is your dad?’, ‘why isn’t he home?’. I
told them he was dead, embellishing my tale
by adding that he had been killed in action. I
received some sympathy from my chums, but
then he was released and reappeared.
How do you reinstate a dead father? I had to
lie again and say he had been missing,
presumed dead, but had miraculously survived.
In fact, my story made him a hero.
I just couldn’t admit that my father was in
prison when other fathers were coming back
from the fighting with tales of heroism and
adventure. When he wasn’t there, particularly
when he was in Dartmoor for so long, I had to
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