I don’t know a huge amount about my father, but I know enough to say that he wasn’t partner or dad of the year.
He treated my mother shabbily and broke her trust. She left him a couple of years after I was born – deciding their relationship couldn’t continue.
Two years later, in the late 1980s, my mother, grandparents and I sat down to lunch one weekend when the bell rang. We weren’t expecting anyone, but my grandad duly answered the door. There, on the step, was my father.
I remember hearing a muffled conversation while hiding underneath the dining room table, not wanting to see him – or him to see me. I did this on instinct; I was too young to understand what was going on but I was frightened.
Sitting between the chunky wooden legs, I was also confused. In the end, my father never entered the house. My grandad told him to make himself scarce – and he did.
I was four years old. That was the last time we were ever in the same place. To be honest, I never thought we’d see each other again – but then I didn’t realise one day I’d need his help.
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My mother was very clear that she wouldn’t stand in my way if I wanted to contact him.
But when my father wrote to me out of the blue in my mid-teens, asking how I was and how I was getting on at school, I wrote back asking him never to contact me again.
To his credit, he didn’t.
In the years that followed, whenever my dad came up in conversation, friends would look at me in amazement when I said I didn’t want a relationship with him. It really wasn’t a big deal. I’d grown up with a strong male role model in my grandad.
We were very close and his death in 2015 hit me hard, but I still didn’t think about reaching out to my father.
Then, all of a sudden, my hand was forced.
Just before the pandemic, aged 34, I applied for Irish citizenship through my paternal grandmother who’d long since died. I’d lived in France before and wanted the option of living in the EU again in future with an Irish passport.
Except, when I finally heard back two years later, there was a problem. My dad’s name wasn’t on my birth certificate – so there was no way to prove a direct link from me to his mother. To have his name added to it, I’d need his approval.
I ran through all the possible scenarios. If I did get in touch, would he be angry I was making contact only because I wanted something? Would he give me a piece of his mind?
Thinking I might be letting my imagination get the better of me, I set about finding him. I traced his address then set up a digital PO Box so he could contact me without knowing where I lived.
I rewrote my initial letter to him a dozen times; I mean, what do you say? In the absence of any better ideas, I opened with ‘hope this finds you well’. I typed the letter thinking that even showing him my handwriting made me vulnerable.
A couple of weeks later, I was on holiday with my wife. I checked my emails while we were queueing for a museum and I froze: ‘You have new mail in your PO Box’. It could only be my dad.
I thought I was going to be sick. It felt like I’d opened Pandora’s box and was petrified my life would never be quite the same again.
Once my wife had calmed me down, I took a deep breath and opened the email. It wasn’t what I was expecting.
The handwriting was tiny and entirely in capitals. As I zoomed in on my phone, the first words I caught sight of were: ‘WHAT A SHOCK TO HEAR FROM YOU’.
My heart rate went through the roof. Worried he’d tell me where to go, and exactly what he thought of me now.
My dad then mentioned my broadcasting career. He’d heard me reading the news on Magic Radio and BBC Radio 2. I’d sometimes wondered if he knew what I was doing with my life given the public nature of my job, and now I had confirmation.
He also said he was happy to cooperate. I didn’t really know what to feel.
We exchanged a couple more letters and I got the paperwork I needed for my citizenship application. It was all very formal, and he didn’t ask me any questions – he probably felt he couldn’t. I thanked him, wished him well again and left it at that.
Since then, I’ve thought a lot about whether I should have said more. The ball is clearly in my court but given everything that happened in the past, can I really have a relationship with my father? If I involved him in my life, would that be a positive thing? Would I just run into the same problems my mother faced all those years ago?
I shared this story on social media – on Father’s Day, funnily enough. Friends reached out to say what I’d done was courageous but that I might regret it if I didn’t take things further and then it was too late.
I still need more time to reflect on that and the implications for my family. But the door has gone from firmly slammed shut to slightly ajar – and that’s enough for now.
Degrees of Separation
This series aims to offer a nuanced look at familial estrangement.
Estrangement is not a one-size-fits-all situation, and we want to give voice to those who’ve been through it themselves.
If you’ve experienced estrangement personally and want to share your story, you can email [email protected] and/or [email protected]
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