Jane Gent

“call him Dad and it felt like the worst kind of betrayal.’ ‘How old were you?’ I ask. ‘Seven, when he died. Probably eight when Tony came on the scene. And he had this daughter, Lou, who was a couple of years older than me. His wife had died, too, so they were both single parents. I can understand, now, that they took comfort from each other, but at the time, I was so angry. It felt like Mum was choosing him over me, and over Dad. Plus he wasn’t very nice to me, never wanted to get involved with anything I was doing. I’ve just… never really been able to forgive them for it.’ ‘So once you were grown up, you cut them out of your life?’ ‘There was never a conscious decision to do that. But while Lou lived with them until she was in her early twenties, I went to university and never moved back. I’d see them now and again, but Tony and I just don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and every time I’d see them, it was like Mum had moved slightly more towards his way of thinking. We just didn’t seem to have much in common”
― Laura Pearson, The Last List of Mabel Beaumont