Beautiful bastard

We were sat in the dark gloom of curtains drawn on August when you told me quietly and earnestly that you were embarrassed to have been illegitimate. This made no sense to me, Essex girl, it was not uncommon to have been born with unmarried parents in the Birds of a Feather late 80s of Romford. Some people still think it’s important, you said, I was embarrassed at my wedding when people asked where my dad was. I looked at the cool dark of the ceiling, my Dad was illegitimate in the forties. That was a problem, I said, though not sure that it was. My Dad took his dads name at least. His name was on the birth certificate. Yours just has big blank boxes with crosses through it. I saw it once, when I was rifling through some stuff in the back bedroom, along with your wifes GCSE certificates, and photographs of you with dyed blonde hair. I sighed and said it didn’t matter to me, it doesn’t matter to the world now. You didn’t seem convinced. Somebody had once called you a bastard but you wouldn’t tell me who or why it mattered so much.

I really thought that I could be everything to you, your mum, your dad, the sister you didn’t have, the daughter you said you wanted and the wife that she already was. I thought I could fill the shoes of all of these absent people and then kick her out of the heels she was already wearing. The bitch of it all though, was that she only had size 4 feet and I couldn’t squeeze my size 7 clodhoppers into them, however hard I tried.