When I was five my dad had an affair with an Irish woman.

He packed a bag one night and said he was leaving for good. Left his keys on the kitchen table and took a taxi to the airport. My mum sat in there all night staring at the keys and crying. I didn’t know it at the time and never would have, but my mum told me one night, for some reason, years after he died.

What I do remember was getting up for school that morning and finding him asleep at the front door, his bag like a pillow under his head. I kicked him in the leg and woke him, asked him why he was sleeping out there instead of inside. It’s funny how you remember the wee things your parents say. He said he’d got lost.