He must have been at lunch when I opened
the email. He – my biological father, half of
my DNA – wrote that he no longer wished
for any connection, that the emotional effort
that he believed he had given our tenuous
relationship was unrewarding. Forty-five
years lived with a mostly absentee parent and that was it – an
annulment received via my inbox. He was “tidying up his
life”. Who knew a father-daughter blood bond could be
cancelled like a subscription?
Snapping shut my laptop, I leant out of my 14th-floor
apartment window, scanning for the blue-crab seller, the
ginseng and herb merchant, the lottery ticket hustler...
familiar sights in my Hong Kong landscape. I could hear the
automated bell of the pedestrian crossings as the grey concrete
and electric neon signs flickered in a filmic blur through the
spattering, humid rain. It was a Friday night in September.
I dressed and left for a dinner at Duddell’s club, flagging
down a red taxi, earrings in one hand, a Chanel purse in the
other, choking on the absurdity, eardrums pounding as if in
deep water. I mentally filed the email under “review”. The
assessment would take more than a year.
He (my biological father, Father Mark One) had also lived
in Hong Kong – he had been posted to the then colony by
the Royal Navy when my brother was born, and returned
home to England near the time of my arrival. Now he had
taken it upon himself to sever abruptly his relationships with
both my brother and me. Can you whitewash life like that?
Pick up a machete? Delete? Gone?
The next couple of days were punctuated by telephone
calls – to my mother, my brother, a friend – to discuss my,
our, disbelief; and a dozen email responses were discarded,
as empty packets of saltine crackers and cigarette stubs
tumbled into the bin. I ricocheted between bed and desk,
sofa and window, engulfed in a searing pain that I had never
known before, nor wish to know again. It curdled in my
stomach, gripped the oesophagus, hammered across the
prefrontal cortex and jammed every muscle. I now appreciate
the anguish of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
On Monday, I called in sick to my job at a publisher’s and
hiked up to Victoria Peak, flicking off mosquitoes, slipping
on the mossy stones, and later curled up in bed and howled.
Over the following weeks and months, I let work consume
me. I swam endless laps, willing the smithereens back into
a whole. I wore black, navy and white in an attempt to create
the semblance of order, and bright emerald tie-dye T-shirts
to protect my jagged psyche. At weekends I escaped to Ho
Chi Minh City in Vietnam, to Hangzhou or Shenzhen –
walking and biking through alien cities that I observed
dispassionately through an iPhone lens, numbed. There were
messages of love from my family, reminders that it was “his
loss”. That put him centre again. What was eddying around
me was trauma.One morning in October, a typhoon eight struck with
sheets of black rain and winds that sent traffic swerving. A
taxi driver refused to pick me up. “What’s wrong with me?”
I despaired, oblivious to the stay-at-home warnings. This
may be the cruellest aspect concerning what one, rightly or
wrongly, perceives as a rejection. The child inside, whatever
one’s subsequent accomplishments, will always subconsciously
doubt that they are “good enough”, and think that they have
done something “wrong”.
The puzzle pieces often rattled in the early hours. Father
Mark One had left the family after a divorce, when
I was aged four and my brother six. After wider family
discussions, it was decided that he would remain at
a distance; in the 1970s, the practice of weekend
fathering was not as common as it is today. My kind
and loving new stepfather became Father Mark Two,
and our relationship grew strong over the years – kids,
like parents, are hardwired to adapt and flourish.
Growing up, my only contact with my biological
father was an annual Christmas card, featuring a
stained-glass window or a Pre-Raphaelite painting,
signed “with love” – no message. Father Mark One
was a ghost, shaped by my teenage myth-making –
fighter pilot hero included (of course, that mysterious
half of me could not be “average”). Only a couple of
photographs of him remained, leaving a blank canvas
for the imagination. My mother was delicate with
her truth. She was wary of delivering prejudice against
a person we might wish to meet as adults.
In my late teens, I met him awkwardly at his house.
He was tall with a broad smile and had recently
become a vegan – I remember a nut roast, salad,
staccato conversation and admiring a vintage sports
car that he was restoring in the garage. He was
widowed with two daughters. A sliver of connection
was established around a skein of letters, lunches and
telephone calls scattered over two decades plus.
Neither of us knew what role to play in this nebulous
father-daughter relationship, nor did I have the
language to express the intricacies of my bewilderment.
“You don’t have to continue meeting him,” advised a
boyfriend, but I was convinced it was good for the
soul. Being alert to the notion that father issues can
snag future relationships, my default was to zip up.
For the most part, meetings with Father Mark One
felt like encountering a stranger. No milestones –
graduation, boyfriends, holidays, second marriages,
weird haircuts, career promotions – had been shared,
and we struggled to know each other, to colour-in
our lives beyond mere facts. And yet I never stopped
wanting to be his daughter, or for him to recognise
me as such. “You know, he’s a very good man, your
father,” said his new partner after one Sunday lunchALL TORN UPWhen her long-absent father abruptly severed contact, Thea Jane May was so lost
in grief, it was more than a year before she could begin to comprehend the hurtVIEWPOINTALAMY03-20-FOB-Viewpoint-Disinheritance_1687417.indd 208 17/12/2019 15:44