On the run from my father

On the last day of junior school my mum was parked outside the school gates. These were the days when most kids walked to school by themselves, so it felt odd. Without a word, she ushered me and my little sister into the back of her tiny Triumph Spitfire car. There was a hump across the middle so we scrambled in and sat sideways on, scrunched up, legs entwined. We were best friends, two years apart but inseparable, so we laughed.

Still silent, Mum drove to my big sister’s school and opened the door for her to climb in. Then instead of driving home to get ready for the end-of-term party I was so looking forward to, Mum sped on until we reached the outskirts of London.

From her constant glances in the mirror I knew something was up.

To the outside world we appeared to be a lovely middle-class family, enjoying camping holidays abroad and trips to the circus and Ballet Rambert.

As the rest of the world stood transfixed by the Moon and watched live images of Neil Armstrong taking one giant step for mankind, for us this was to be the start of a summer on the run. From my father.

After moving away to live in Hampstead, he had reappeared without warning just a few days before and set up shop in the living room. Dad was lying on a camp bed, elegantly smoking a Gauloises cigarette. A window in the kitchen had been smashed.

I was pleased to see him. Although an imposing figure, my dad could be fun with his silly faces and schoolboy tricks. He’d run up railway station escalators the wrong way and loudly chastise the staff in his best Richard Burton-esque voice. To a 10-year-old, he was hugely persuasive and exciting; the funny walks and acerbic asides to complete strangers were straight from a comic book. Even the time he removed himself to live in the attic, or painted on a moustache to greet people for dinner seemed bizarrely normal. His eccentricity was alluring and funny.

There was, of course, a darker side, one I neatly sidestepped. I learned it was best not to cross my dad, so he wouldn’t get mad. It was safer never to take him on, play the yes-boy and laugh at his jokes, so he’d slap me on the back.

As Mum stood riveted to the spot, drained of colour and scared, he merely raised an eyebrow, took a long slow drag on his cigarette and pointed upstairs for us kids to go to bed.

In the morning, my 13-year-old sister was doing what nobody did. She was yelling at Dad, telling him to leave. He responded by screaming back, telling her to get out of his sight. He threw her bus fare across the floor. As she stooped to pick up the coins, he turned to me and my little sister and complained fiercely about her outburst. He said it with a smile but I wasn’t sure if he was being funny as his face was puce.

“Why was she being so naughty?” I later asked my mum, when she finally stopped the car near Ruislip Lido in north-west London. I was at the age where your parents can do no wrong.

In a five-minute conversation by the side of the road my world was shattered. My father had taken it upon himself to phone my big sister’s school and demand that she be placed in a boarding school for difficult children. She was, he said, unmanageable, out of control and in need of institutional discipline.

Mum appealed to a social worker for help, citing many examples of my father’s hugely erratic behaviour, made worse by excessive alcohol. She was advised to get the children away to a safehouse.

“When are we going home?” I asked.

“Not tonight,” she said, unable to foresee that we never would. My clothes, my toys, my hamster, my Chelsea posters were all abandoned.

That night we holed up in a friend’s house, but not quite far enough away to be safe. When the door bell started ringing, I could feel sweat beads forming across my forehead. The hushed, insistent voices in the hallway made my stomach churn. Then the shouting started and glass shattered. A brick was working its way through double glazing, furniture was being kicked. Within moments the sirens came. It was then that I heard my dad’s loud voice, complaining to officers that he just wanted to see his kids. Nothing else.

By early morning we were heading to Margate, four of us crammed into the tiny sports car, driving so fast that the engine blew up. There was a hole the size of a fist in the side, plumes of smoke billowing across the carriageway.

Hitching a lift in a friend’s Mini, Mum’s car was towed away.

Margate was followed by Amersham, Watford and places I no longer remember. Each week we were somewhere new, always ready to move on at the slightest provocation: a car that passed too many times, an unanswered phone call and once the sound of footsteps, were all enough to see us hightail it out of town.

Towards the end of the summer, we were back at Ruislip Lido, staying with friends who lived nearby. It seemed the worst had passed. My big sister spent the afternoon sunbathing at the reservoir, relaxing in the sunshine, while back at the house I played Monopoly with my little sister, laughing at the fun of it. Suddenly my big sister strode past us, refusing to look up. I leant out the window and yelled at her to say hello. She continued to ignore me. Then I realised why. A dark blue Fiat was following her at walking pace, and I caught the faintest whiff of Gauloises smoke.

Instinctively, I dropped to the floor, grabbing my little sister’s hand. My mum slammed the door and yelled at us to stay exactly where we were. But my little sister showed no such fear and jumped up to wave hello to Dad. He marched up the path and started yelling through the letterbox, demanding to see his youngest children.

“For five minutes,” Mum agreed hesitantly, as my little sister responded to his pleas. I shook my head, preferring the safety of the floor.

Seconds later, I heard dad’s car skid off and then horrible crying. He had taken her. He drove away, all the way to Derbyshire, and dropped her off with his parents. Now he was coming back for me.

Shortly afterwards, under cover of darkness and with a blanket over my body I was carried like a sack of potatoes and dumped on the back seat of a friend’s car. I was hidden and sweating as we drove to King’s Cross station, while Mum was driving her own car round and round the suburbs as a decoy. She had learned the hard way that paranoia was the sensible option.

I was on my way to Manchester to stay with my uncle.

The hiding couldn’t last for ever because in September I had to start secondary school. I crept in through the grammar school gates, long trousered and newly blazered, thinking this was a new start. With the final bell, I ran out to my mum standing by the entrance – and seconds later, from behind a hedge, emerged my dad and granddad.

As I smiled nervously at my dad, the blood drained from Mum’s face and there followed an awful stand-off. Dad demanded I come with him. I hadn’t seen my little sister for weeks and the temptation was so great. I looked at my mum and took her hand. Walking swiftly to the corner, she tugged on my jumper and shook her head. My dad and granddad circled us as we walked.

When we got to Mum’s car it was penned in, back and front, by two other cars: my granddad’s and my dad’s. Nothing symbolised more how I felt. It was a lightbulb moment. And the smile on my dad’s face was too much to bear.

“Come on, let’s go,” he said.

For a moment I stood motionless, looking back at my brand new school, watching my classmates walk past. It felt like a dream.

I threw my new satchel on to the pavement and, with my blazer flapping, I ran so fast even my dad couldn’t catch me. I charged down the middle of the road only stopping when I knew he was no longer there.

I had made my choice.

Of course, it never stopped him trying. Nothing was going to stop him. He told me he would crush anyone that got in his way. He told me he’d cut his right arm off to have me. But then he said a lot of silly things.

As a family we were now damaged beyond repair. Once a line has been drawn, stretched and finally snapped, there is no going back. My little sister never came back to us. Five minutes became a lifetime. And a year later, once the divorce was through and we children legally separated, she was the one at boarding school. Not because she was naughty, not because she needed discipline, but for reasons only my dad knew. Winning was too important to him to ever explain his motives.

Once each term, my mum, older sister and I were allowed to see her. That’s three times a year. So we’d travel up to Northamptonshire and leave feeling completely empty, watching her wave from the window of her dorm.

These were soulless visits, a quick meal out, a hug and back in the car. Never time to play or do the normal things families are supposed to do. God knows how my mum felt. But sitting alone in the back of a Triumph Spitfire was no fun. I didn’t want the extra room, I was desperate to be scrunched up like before, kicked and tickled. But it was never to be.

Now, when I look back, finding answers is like chasing shadows. How do you explain the actions of people on the edge of sanity, driven by fear? The courts, in their wisdom, split us children up because we were too divided to place back together again. Way back then, such domestic disputes were hidden. A whisper, wrapped within a secret, hidden in shame.

I would never stop loving my dad, but he lost my trust. He became a figure of fear, instead of a figure of fun. I could no longer deal with the daft faces, the exaggerated statements, the conversion to Catholicism and always the booze. At times he was a lost man, desperate to prove his self-worth and find meaning in it all. And when he was prescribed mood-altering drugs to lessen the anxiety, his struggle only became harder.

A letter came through the door shortly before my own son was born. It said my dad had died two weeks before and was already buried. I did cry. But after a while part of me smiled at the madness of it all. With death, the right of reply is removed so when I went to his graveside I mourned for what we both had lost.

These days more help would have been available, to both Mum and Dad. He would be given coping mechanisms, counselling, space to take a breath. She might have been supported, not left dependent upon the good will of kindly friends. It may not have stopped what happened, but it might have softened the blow.

Yet in my dad’s wake, a closeness arose between us kids, often unspoken, from what we witnessed that summer.

In its own strange way it bonded us as adults and, though we go our separate ways, we are always there for each other. Some things can’t be broken.