I did a thing people have told me to do for years. I went to the doctor and asked to be referred for and that’s the problem.
I don’t know what. You walk in. You don’t know where to start or what to say. I’ve got, I’ve been told, a warm, nice, calm voice. The kind of voice girls like. I speak clearly. I used to have the most awful Sloane bray and if I can’t hear and I’ve been drinking, I still do, but the doctor’s surgery was quiet and and I haven’t had a drink today. I’m going to when I’ve finished writing this.
I sat down. I watched the doctor getting impatient. I could see her face clouding. So I told her I’d been abused as a child. She thought I meant sexually, but I don’t think I was. Physically and mentally. As Meatloaf used to sing, out of three ain’t bad, doc. Two out of three ain’t bad.
My father was a bigamist. Probably. He was definitely a professional liar. He pretended he’d been born in Australia, but he wasn’t. I found out by going to get a copy of his birth certificate. He’d removed it and mine and my sister’s and my other sister’s and every other piece of official paper in the house when he finally left, but for most of my childhood he was hardly ever there, just two or three times a week as I remember it. We went on holiday a couple of times, and he had to do bizarre things on his own, like going to visit a church to see the special window dedicated to the RAF, which he claimed he was in as well. He never, ever went near a church in all the time I knew him, so I’m presuming this story, like every other story he came up with was pure horseshit. He was probably phoning his other family, the one he ran at the same time.
